Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. This is the highest and best podcast where I bring on people who are striving to reach their maximum potential in the real estate market, industry, whatever you want to call it. Each week I sit down with someone in and around the industry and talk about what they're doing to reach their highest and best potential. I'm your host, Jake Verna, and this podcast is brought to you by VRA Realty. More information about VRA realty. Look up vraality.com today. I'm here with Rob Lawrence.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Hi.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Jake is. I mean, you were one of the original DRA Realty members.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: I was agent number 17.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: That's pretty solid. I mean, we're at. I think we just did the count the other day. I think we're at 113.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Number 17 is pretty significant.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Almost 100 people passed me now. Was that 20?
[00:00:57] Speaker A: 20. 2017. Oh, shit.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: How old now?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I'm 52, but. Awesome, man.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: So you got your license in 2017, right before you joined VRA and yeah, didn't. Did you interview other places or did you just sign on to vra?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: I did. I interviewed with kw, but I actually got licensed because I knew I wanted to be a real estate investor. And one of my good friends Saul was like, hey, remember Steve Seymour? He's doing really well real estate investing now, so why don't you hit him up if you're thinking about, you know, joining a brokerage?
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: And I went and talked to him, and not only was it a great deal, commission split wise, I just knew I wanted to be around people, real estate investing. And I had to say that has played out well.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Good.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: So.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: And we'll. We'll get deep into investing later on in the show.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: But I kind of want to hit surface level. Like, what. What was that? What was that first thing that kind of got you interested in real estate in general, and then what got you more interested in real estate investing?
[00:01:53] Speaker B: So I had a job, and the guy that was my boss basically said, you're totally crap at sales, and so why don't you go look up some training? So I went online and I looked up sales training, and I found Robert Kiyosaki. And then I read Rich Dad, Poor dad, and then the veil was lifted from my eyes, and I understood the whole thing around assets. So then I just really intensely started studying real estate investing, and I was like, hey, as part of it, why don't I get licensed? Just so I have more knowledge.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: And then, you know, knowledge is Good.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: So funny. I, like, I have the same exact story where I read Rich Dad, Poor dad, but it's not so much about, like, what the book was about, but it's what open. What it opened my eyes to and, like, what should I go and do? I was so much younger. You were what, about 30?
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably in my early 30s when I read that. Maybe like 32, maybe 31.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Did you just stumble across it or somebody recommended it?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Well, again, I, I, I found it on, on YouTube. I found him on YouTube. When my dad told me, I want to cut that. I don't want to say my dad.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Oh, that's okay. Go ahead.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: All right, we'll cut.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: So where'd you find the book? I'm sorry.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: So you asked me that already?
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yes, I did. Okay.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: All right, so when I. So the reason I found. So, all right, when I was working, I was working for somebody else, right?
[00:03:21] Speaker A: You were working for sales.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: I was doing sales. And then they told me I was totally crap, right. And I didn't agree with them, of course, but they said, why don't you go look up some sales training online? So I googled it. I found Robert Kiyosaki. Robert Kiyosaki wrote Rich dad, Poor Dad. I read Rich Dad, Poor dad, and it definitely. Drop the veil. Yeah, drop the veil. Opened it my eyes to a whole thing. And I was like, oh, I need to, like, be building assets. And I realized I hadn't been doing that. I've been building other people's assets my whole life.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: So once I got excited about real estate investing, then, you know, that's where.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Everything started just clicking.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it started clicking. I just, I got up. I'm obsessive, so I'm passionate, you know.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: That's a good thing. It's a really good thing because a lot of people, they're not passionate about what they do. So.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I don't know how else to be. Basically, it's just I got one speed, so.
Yeah. Anyway, so then when I started. Sorry. I started studying that, I decided to get my real estate license. Once I started to get my real estate license, then I talked to my one friend, and he was like, hey, Steve, Seymour has been doing a ton of real estate investing. Why don't you interview with him? I interviewed with him. Nkw, right. Commission split was here was way better. And also I just wanted to be around people. Real estate investing. And I was like, if I just hang out with this guy, I know good things will happen, right?
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that was My plan, now you're here. I mean. I mean, there were seven years later. Yeah. And then now the brokerage is at 113 agents. And I mean, you've seen it grow from. From nothing. I mean, it was. I mean, 17 agents is pretty good, but, I mean, now we're getting a lot bigger. And not only have we been growing, but you've been growing as well. Now you have the Rob Lawrence team. You have seven agents.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: There's six of us total. Six, including me. Well, soon to be six. I got an exciting announcement to make soon about a really talented person who's going to be joining.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: I'm excited about that.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Well, I want to talk about a little bit about building a team. Why did you build a team? And, you know, I just feel like I see teams all the time. When I first started, I was on a team of 50. I was number 49 out of 56.
And, you know, a lot of teams, they stagger on that number of about 10. Yeah. And we've seen people that just have, like, their name and team with no agents around them. You know, I've seen that as a faux team.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: I mean, no, hate to that, but, you know, you see it. But what's the importance of having that team? And does that give more value to your clients? Does it give more value to your agents? Or is it just a money grab for a team?
[00:05:50] Speaker B: I love money. I wanted much money as possible. No. But basically what happened is I just got really busy and I wasn't able to handle everything myself. And, you know, some people can work more and more and more, but I had young children, and I just was like, okay, I need help. And I'm okay for paying with it. You know, paying for it with, like, a transaction coordinator. So I kind of started there, and then she was Tracy. Shout out to Tracy Herbert, and she was awesome. And then she became buyer's agent. And then we had another teammate and another one and another one, another one. And, you know, I had teammates for different reasons at different times. Sometimes I feel like it's. People want to work with me. They want my help to kind of learn the business and be more successful. And so it's partly just more business than I can handle personally. Plus, I just have a heart to help other agents succeed. And I enjoy that. I just genuinely do enjoy that. So it wasn't something I really set out to do, but it just happened. And then here we are. We have the Rob Lawrence team now.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Something I heard you talking about in the hallway. The Other day, I think you were talking to Scott and I welcome you to shout out your entire team when I asked you this question.
But you talked about hiring people in the right seats. And when a lot of agents, when they hire someone to their team, they're only thinking about their transaction count, so it makes them a certain split. Right. You talked about hiring people in the right seats. Can you elaborate on that and how you hire who comes onto your team?
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, everybody's got their own talents and own abilities, and if you put the wrong person in the wrong seat, like, for example, Zach is absolutely crushing it with investors. But if I made him transaction coordinator, he would fail and, you know, vice versa. Right. So it's understanding people's individual talents and what's going to make them successful and then magnifying those successes. And I think, like, you know, some teams have a one size fits all policy. Like, this is what you're going to come in and this is what you're going to do.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: There's going to be a cold caller.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Called upon or something.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: I don't really particularly enjoy cold calling, and I don't really like to ask people to do things I don't like to do. There's some things I like to do that some other teammates don't like to do. Like, I like making videos. One of my teammates doesn't really like to make videos. Right.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: So she's really good at being behind the scenes and making the systems work.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Exactly. So it's. It's really just magnifying people's strengths. And I'm always trying to empower people to, you know, do the best they can with what. With what they have and where. Where they're going to succeed, because otherwise they're just going to get frustrated.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And then there's burnout, and then they. No one's happy. Then it's, oh, Rob didn't do this. And you have a reputation you got to hold yourself to.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: It's a terrible reputation. But I'm trying to. It's a great reputation.
Yeah.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Talk about your. Your partnership with Scott. You don't have to go too into detail, but Scott's been doing real estate for a little bit over 30 years now. He started with ReMax and then came over and you guys kind of partnered. Partnered on the Rob Lawrence team. Talk a little bit about that.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Scott, you know, Scott has vetted me probably more than like, someone would vet their wife before they got married.
So for like a year and a half, like, we talked. He he was, you know, looking to make a change in brokerage. He's also like thinking about retiring down the line. He's like, well, you know, I want to make sure that's a smooth transition. I'm just throwing my database into the garbage. And it's what a lot of agents.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Do though, they just throw it away.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: I know. Yeah, there's a thing called the golden handoff where you can kind of retire into another agent or another team and then they can, you know, absorb your database. So that's kind of what Scott and I are working through. And, you know, he's been a fantastic guy just to have sitting next to me because he's just got so much knowledge and anytime I have an issue, I'm like, Scott. But there was one time I had a deal held up for like three months and he's like, oh, you need to talk to the attorney on the writ. And I'm like, oh. And then we got the piece of information we needed to get HUD to release the property was a foreclosure through hud. So, like, just having him there has been awesome. He's just also a happy person and a great guy and he's got tons of connections and you know, overall it's been a really good decision to work with Scott over with. It's been almost two years in the office and a year and a half before that. Just getting to know him, you know, going fishing, that was the dating phase. Yeah, I mean, you know, he put me on a fishing boat in 40 degree weather in 17 mile an hour winds and see if I cried, you know. But like we did. Yeah, we caught fish. I mean, you know, he's. Scott's a great hunter and fisherman and everything.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: So he's out today, right?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: I think so, yeah. His son is awesome hunter also. And you know, I know it's just, it's just great to see him, you know, enjoying life and doing the things he loves to do. And that's what I, I'm always thinking about my team in terms of what impact are we making and what freedom are we creating in people's lives. So around the teammates and around our clients, like, are we moving them towards freedom or away from freedom? Are we making a positive impact on them or no impact or negative? You know, you have to always keep those things in mind. And that's usually like a guiding light for me in terms of how I'm treating people and who's coming onto the team. And I'm really particular about who we do add because I feel like I don't want anybody who's not committed and not fully engaged.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Something that you keep bringing up and you haven't used the word yet, but it's something that we talk a lot about here is intention. It sounds like you're very intentional about all of this, and I just wanted to say that.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: And let's talk about an intention on something else. You have a lot of events. You have the VRA Investor Meetup that is held every Tuesday, second Wednesday, second Wednesday of every month. Sorry about that.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Yeah, we got a great speaker coming.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Up on the 9th right here in this office. More information. We'll put it down below and then. But just talk about the intention of why you do these events. I know you do a lot of, like, client related events. You know, there's so many events, real estate events here. I get invited to them on Facebook all the time. It's like, yeah, come to this, come to this.
But why? Why should someone come to your event?
[00:11:46] Speaker B: So I've been going to the Real Estate Investor meetup for about five years or so, maybe six years. I don't know, something like that. Because I wanted to learn and I wanted to get in community with other real estate investors. And then I guess it's been maybe a year and a half now that I've been running the event.
And I just, I just love it because I'm like always learning more about real estate investing, different tactics, connecting with different people. And then I also love, you know, sharing the knowledge with other people. Of course it results in clients. Like, we help a lot of real estate investors succeed.
And, you know, that's fun. I mean, again, we're having a good impact for them and, and making more freedom in their life. And that's again, what we're about doing.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: So you're coming from contribution to these people. It's not just about.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: One transaction here is creating opportunity.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: What I've heard about our events is that they're genuine.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: So, you know, when people come, they're not like getting a commercial or like, hey, you want to have lunch with me? It's 300 bucks. You know, like it's, it's more about just like, hey, like we're all in this together. Yeah. It's not perfect. Like, I'm not some grand high and mighty real estate investors above everybody else or anything. Like, I'm sitting there learning, asking as many questions as I can from the speakers, and I'm trying to get the best speakers that I can to help inform me And I keep learning and learning and reinforcing things, too. Sometimes it's like, you know, you just gotta block and tackle and remember to do that, you know? But, yeah.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Something I love about your events compared to some others that I go to is I'd say nine out of 10 times, there's no sales pitch at the end from your speakers. I love that. I hate sales pitches when I go to these events and then these people. Because, like, we get it. We know why you came to speak is to show your value in the marketplace. Oh, my gosh. We were at an event, I think you were, when the guy from Tony Robbins came in.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I left before his pitch.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Oh, my God. It was, like, amazing. He put it on an amazing.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: What a speaker.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: He was really good speaker. Yeah. And then at the. He was the worst salesman I've ever met. That his sales pitch.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Not everybody could sell. Dude selling hard, you know, really good.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: But, yeah, I just wanted to point that out because I hate. You know, you get to the end, you're like, wow, this is super valuable. And at the end, it's like, you get the sales pitches, like, sign up right now, and you're like, okay. And then the room, silent, right, Offering your services, and they're there. You can go get them.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: I think just making genuine connections is super important across business, Right? Like, you know people. When you make a real connection and you serve people in a real way, then, like, everything else just falls into place. The money comes, everything else comes. You don't need to make a bunch of pitches or do a little dance or whatever, right? You just kind of like, hey, like, this is what I want to do. Like, if you want to talk to me, fine. If you're not ready, you know where to find me.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: That's right.
Let's ease things up a little bit. Let's go back to the Rob Lawrence story. We didn't talk about where you're from. Tell me a little bit about your family. What are your hobbies outside of real estate? Give me the rundown of Rob.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm from Westchester. I grew up here. I was born in Wilmington. Grew up from, like, 6 to 18 in Thornton, Pennsylvania, and then went to, like, Westchester East High School. Went to Cornell for mechanical and aerospace engineering. Got out, started selling industrial machinery. Was living in North Jersey for a while, doing that. And, you know, I was traveling a lot. I was doing, like, sort of the traveling salesman thing, selling industrial equipment worth, like 60 to $6 million. Like, so big stuff.
I, like, I learned. I learned A lot about sales during that time.
Yeah, I. I got married really young, divorced at 30, lost everything, had to start back over. I was living in my friend's second bedroom for a while there when I was about 30, move back to, you know, move that back down here.
And then, yeah, I got remarried. I have three beautiful children. Great wife, Marie. She's super supportive. She helped me transition into real estate, like, as I was leaving the corporate world.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: And then coming into this. So, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I love the area. I love Westchester. I definitely feel just like, relaxed when I'm here, you know, versus, let's say, North Jersey, for sure.
No, no hate. No hate. But we hate Jersey. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So my wife's from Southern Jersey, so.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: South Jersey is good.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. North Jersey is a bit. A bit challenging of a place to live, but people like it, I guess. Some people there.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: So you're from Westchester? You live in Westchester?
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: What's your favorite restaurant in Westchester.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Man? Probably a Suka. I like it. It's a sushi place down the street. I go there really often.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: You like it over Kuma?
[00:16:27] Speaker B: I mean, Kuma is good too, but I've always just say, like, where do I go the most? Like, it's there.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: What's. What's the best restaurant in town in the borough?
[00:16:35] Speaker B: And Andor's. Is that the right.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: I don't even know what's Andor.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Is that the right?
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Will you take me there today?
[00:16:43] Speaker B: No, you have to get, like, a reservation, like, a month in advance, and it's like 300 bucks to eat dinner, but it's unbelievably good.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk more about. I've never heard of this place.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it's super good. It's super good. It's super expensive. Don't go there. You can't afford it.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the gonna. For me when the podcast takes on.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: I think that's. I think that's the name.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: It's not 9 prime. I've been there.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: No, no, it's not that.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: I love nine Prime. Are you talking. Are you talking Battle?
[00:17:13] Speaker B: I am not saying anything bad, and I'm not. I'm a nice person.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: I love it recently, and this is just something that I just thought of. Yeah, we've seen, you know, a little bit of a change in the rental market. You're a real estate investor. Yeah. You don't own anything in the borough or. You do you have interest in something in Westchester? You have a listing right Now? Yeah, with the rental and I have a couple rental listings in the borough. We've seen a little bit of a switch with the rents. I talked to Steve the other day and we kind of think we've hit the top of where the rents are going.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: I've seen for now really significant slowdown. Yeah, for now, of course. And then the summer kicks back. It's a whole different conversation. But I don't know, man. I've gotten a lot less or a lot more tire kickers on the rentals recently.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I would definitely say that. I've noticed the rentals and the home sales. I think that we're. Or just in a bit of a stall right now. Yeah, that might be election related. Oh, we'll get into that. Can't wait to talk about that. So that might be election related. I don't really know exactly. I mean, maybe people are waiting for rates to drop, but it just doesn't really make sense to me. I mean, like, I'm shocked by how little activity the rentals are getting right this second.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: It's a weird, it's a very weird stall. It's like it came out of nowhere. I mean, we were full steam ahead a couple just like last month and then it kind of just slowed out of nowhere.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I, you know, I don't know. Yeah, you got to be prepared for. Anything in Every single realtor is going.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: To have their different opinions on this matter. Yes. I don't know.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: It's a thing that's happening. I do, I know exactly why I don't.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Do you think rent prices in Westchester are going to come down?
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Well, the one I've listing listed, I've been lowering.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been lowering mine as well. Yeah, you got to find that 10 that the investors obviously don't want to have it sitting for too long.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean vacancy is extremely expensive. Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: But as a whole, averages wise, do you think?
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Well, you've got an interesting problem between cost of mortgages versus rents. So like if rents drop too much, then people will sell the properties if they're not cash flowing or they won't buy properties to rent. So it's going to shrink the rental inventory. So, you know, I think that there are a lot of investors that still have rentals that work because maybe they got them at a 3% rate and they haven't like refinanced all the debt out. But if you're looking at the return on capital right now, the rents are actually cheap relative to what the places cost and what the mortgages are.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: I know mortgages are so expensive right now we're at a six and a half percent.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: So I guess my prediction is that if rents do drop, you'll see a reduced amount of rental inventory and they'll again be less coming on and it'll bounce. Yeah, yeah. Rents are going to always chase, I think, like, how much it costs to own a property because, like, that's what an landlord is doing. Right. They usually, you know, have a, have a mortgage. They're trying to pay their mortgage with the rent. If their mortgage is going to be way higher than the rent, we can't buy the property, you know, so you sell that property.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: It is. It's very simple.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: It is, it is.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: It's into too much.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess it just like, you know, unless prices drop or if interest rates drop, that would allow for rental prices to drop. So.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Yeah, but I don't see that happening. Yeah, I don't see them coming down under five. Maybe they'll get to five next year.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: But like my point earlier with, you know, it's all. It always gets slower towards the fall winter months, and then spring, summer picks back up and yeah, it'll probably be right back to where it is. I wouldn't have any. Nobody get their hopes up about western home prices coming down.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we keep hitting record prices in Chester county and it's, it's unbelievable. But, yeah, I mean, obviously there's some resistance, I would say, to that at this time. You know, I don't know how long that will last. I mean, could be just back to school.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: I think the average days on market Last month with 13, this month is 14 or something like that. It's.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: It's. Yeah. One day not much of a change. But yeah, let's. I mean, we'll now let's dig into investment strategy. It's something that a lot of people know VRA for is when agents are looking to come invest, they come to VRA because we have the most knowledge and experience in that space. And sure, thanks to Steve Seymour that he's been investing for a little bit over 10 years now. He's built up, I think he's around 15 million in rentals.
You know, so he's doing a lot. He has, you know, he has his strategy.
Talk about your strategy in investing and how do you find your strategy? I mean, the first thing to do when you're like, I want to go invest in real estate is you got to dive in on your strategy. You know, obviously, you have to learn about how it works, but you got to understand your strategy. So what's. What's yours? Kind of talk about that.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, huge shout out to Steve Seymour in terms of. He's been an awesome mentor around the real estate investing space for me.
You know, I still always am looking to him to what's next in terms of just like, okay, like, I've hit this point, what do I do next?
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: You know, there's levels to it. Yeah. I mean, one of the big things that Steve taught me was and, you know, some. Someone says something to me, and then I can click in on the math because I'm an engineer, you know.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: I'm like, oh, you know, and I would say that, like, I'm a Burr investor, which means I'm going to buy something, I'm going to rehab it, I'm going to rent it out, then I'm going to refinance it, get all my money back out, have some equity sitting in that property, and then go again. So it's all about keeping the velocity of your money moving. And, you know, maybe I will flip here and there, but, you know, overall, where the money's made is kind of on the equity gain that you get from that rehab. And so, I mean, if you make $100,000 on an equity gain, for example, but you're like, oh, but I'm really focused on cash flow of the rentals. You know, you're talking 500 bucks a month in cash flow. How long does that take to get to $100,000? Right. And you're talking 200 months, which is, you know, whatever, 16 years, something like that. Right. So when. When you're. When you're looking at how do you build wealth quickly, you're going to build wealth quickly through the equity gains. And then additionally, we got inflation on our side. So everybody's complaining about inflation and does suck for a lot of people, and it's really a difficult thing. But if you own assets and they're leveraged, leveraged assets are great in inflation.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: So, you know, Covid made a lot of us real estate investors look like geniuses because of all the inflation that took place.
And I did have a video that was like, this is coming. You know, do it.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Do this.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: You know, buy stuff now.
And, you know, I did kind of see like, okay, that made sense to me. So, yeah, so I buy, renovate, and rent, and then I'm just holding, trying to get my money back out so that I have my capital again to.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Go and buy another house and do.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: The same thing again. Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: I know a lot of people that are gonna be watching this are like, whoa, what did he just say?
[00:24:22] Speaker B: But slow it down, watch it back again.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: It all makes sense. Look up. Brrr.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah, brrr. Investing.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: I know. Bigger pocket test. Probably a million videos on it.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: There's a ton of stuff. There's a ton of content on that.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: If you know what to look for. But, you know, some. Some of our clients flip.
Know, some of them want to, you know, buy and hold.
But, you know, there's. There's really, like, a couple fundamentals in real estate that are going to make money. But, you know, Steve really made the point to me, just like, Rob, like, the equity gains are where you're going to build wealth the fastest, because you can make $100,000 or even $200,000 in six months. And, like, think about the cash flow. So on the cash flow side, I mean, it's still important. You don't want to be negative because then, like, you're losing. Yeah.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: For your mortgage.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah. You need to be positive. Maybe a few hundred bucks a month, but, like, that's not where you're going to build wealth, in my opinion, in our market. So in every market can be different, right?
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: So because you. When you. When you look at these equity gains, I mean, the prices of houses really matter. Right. So, like, if you're investing in Pottstown, for example, equity plays are a lot harder because the top end of Pottstown is lower than Westchester, for example.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: My example is going to be Coates votes, the same way. It's. A lot of people are investing there for cash flow. Right. Whereas when you invest in a more. A nicer area, you're going for those equity gains. But that's very interesting.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I'm glad we brought this up. So I wanted to bring up your. You invested in a property in Clearwater, Florida.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Have you ever. Before you bought in Clearwater beach, boy, before you bought. What drew you to buy there?
[00:25:57] Speaker B: My wife, Marie, she.
Before she met me, she almost moved there. And she really loved Clearwater Beach. She grew up there. And then when we were dating, we started going down there, like, a couple of times a year. I loved it. It's a great place. It's a beautiful beach. It's white sand, family environment.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: I was. I went down there.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: It's really nice. Yeah.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Philly's spring training.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And then we just had Hurricane Haileen. Go right through there and put the whole island that my property is underwater. But I will say, a wise man buys a house on a hill and the water just came up to a lip of my garage and literally flooded almost every other property. So, yeah, right now we're actually got two months vacant that I'm hoping we can help someone who's lost their house and then they could come in and rent. Yeah. So Marie was very interested in having a property in Clearwater Beach, Florida, and it was definitely our next move after doing our Live in Flip, which is a huge way to start for people. I always try to start people on Live and Flip, but yeah, we pulled the equity back out of our Living flip. Use that as a down payment for Florida. We Airbnb that out.
You know, it's the Airbnb market's been.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: But you just gotta fight.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: You get, you know, everything's competitive.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: It is, right?
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Like, if you want something easy, I don't know, go to kindergarten or something.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: My line is, if it was easy, everybody would do it.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah. It's not. Nothing's easy. And then again, like, even just being average is terrible. So you've got to look to make your property excellent. You've got to get good pricing, you've got to market it well. You know, all those things. But yeah, so Marie really wanted a place and I was like, so resistant to doing it. Cause I was like, this is, you know, we don't caret.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: I mean, it's very.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And then I talked to Steve once again, you know, and he goes, rob, what are you talking about? You can't afford it? And I'm like, ah, I can if I Airbnb it out. And then I went home, told my wife she was right, we started looking.
Yeah, sometimes this is married, man. You gotta do that, you know. But we started looking down there and I think within six months we had a place. We got a great deal. Yeah. I mean, that's appreciated. Maybe $150,000 in value since we purchased it. We've done some renovations to it as well.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Florida is like the hottest place to move.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah. It actually has a long inventory right now of about six months because they've got a lot of problems with both HOA fees. We just got assessed $23,000 this year by our HOA. And then also the insurance issues because of all the hurricanes and things like that, and just a lot of insurers pulling out of the area, insurance prices doubling and things like that. So it's definitely increased the cost to operate In Florida. But you know, that is the cost of living at the beach. I mean, you know, you want to live near the sand, there's waves, got.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: To pay the prices.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Well, if you want to learn more about investing in different areas or investing in Pennsylvania, feel free to reach out to rob. At the end, we'll have all of his information. I don't want to get too deep into the Florida one. Yeah. Let's also talk about the one you.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Said you have in Spring House, Spring Valley.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Spring Valley, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: It's in Westchester here. Yeah, it's a house. Yeah, it's a neighborhood. It's in a neighborhood. Yeah, it's like a four bedroom house.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: You said Spring Valley. I was like, where is that?
[00:29:09] Speaker B: It's a street.
Yeah. So I have a burr in Westchester. So you want to know about like what?
[00:29:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, tell me what happened. How did you stumble across it? Because I mean the first thing for a lot of real estate investors. Find the deal.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: I mean it starts there.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: I just actually taught a class on how to find on market real estate deals and both to agents and investors and you know, that's something we can definitely help people with. But this was on market. It was coming up around this time of year about two years ago. And it was in my neighborhood. And I've already renovated my house in my neighborhood. So I knew how to renovate the next house more, more easily.
So that came up.
I think they wanted 450 for it. And I made an offer and they kind of asking, I think, but it was really clean. And there were six offers on the property and they decided to choose mine because the people just really wanted a sure thing. They were moving into, I think, assisted living and they needed the money so that they could pay for their care. So, you know, they decided to choose me over the other six offers because I was just like the cleanest and most, most guaranteed to close and fastest to close. So I bought that for 450. I invested I would say around 80,000 into it. Needed like 10 trees taken down. We ripped down the whole inside. Did redid the kitchen, you know, we did. We did so much to it.
But then reappraised.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: So you're all in right now at 5:30.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that's about maybe a little bit of closing cost, you know.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: So let's call it. You're all in 540 right now.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Okay, let's. We'll call it that. We'll say that. Yeah. And then I've Been renting it out, so I'm getting 4700amonth for it, so it's decent cash flow.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: And for a house in Westchester, that's normal. Just so out there.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Everyone yells at me for how much I rent things for, but yeah, just everyone calm down. Okay.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's normal. Rents are very high. Special for single family homes in West Chest. Why with the school districts?
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Because the rent is too damn high.
But anyway, yeah, listen, you know, it's a great house. It's. It's, you know, totally done head to toe and, you know, great family in it right now. And, you know, it appraised at 700, I think, like six months after I bought it and then did renovations. So, you know, whatever. That's like 100. Let's just say 150 in gain. I would say right now probably sell for like 750. So maybe it's up 200 in about two years. So. Yeah, so that was it. That was what I would call home run. I mean, if you're gonna get that big of an equity gain, plus be able to cash flow on the rent, you know, that's definitely.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: That's a home run deal.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: A home run deal.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Especially on market. It's hard to find those on market. When was that?
[00:31:49] Speaker B: What?
[00:31:50] Speaker A: When was that?
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Two years ago.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: Market was even hotter than it was.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Very hot then.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, again, I mean, limiting beliefs are gonna stop people from doing things, but you just got to keep an open mind and take your shots. I mean, we buy on market properties for investors in all markets. I mean, that, you know, there's just gonna be houses that homeowners are not able to really process. And then you've got investors who are looking at the numbers, and you've got to basically know your numbers. You got to be able to control your costs, and. And you've got to find. Find a way to win in a competitive space.
Everyone's fears. Competition.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: I love competition.
I love winning.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: You know, that's it. You know, how am I going to beat you? Yeah, I'm going to try.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Well, we'll start to wrap things up, but I want to just talk a little bit about, you know, vra. Why do you think someone should consider coming in and being an agent here?
[00:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, well, one, I think it's a pretty economical brokerage to operate in.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: I mean, it's a pretty low fee situation, which is great. I know in this challenging environment, I think, I think the number one Thing is mindset. So we're always working on our mindset, I would say weekly in those Friday meetings. Like, they're almost always something to do with how we're thinking about things, where our mindset is what we're feeding our minds. So, you know, if you want to get around to people that aren't, you know, moping around and blaming everything on something else. And, you know, I think agency, like, you know, taking, you know, going out of victimhood, you know, Steve is always knocking that out of me every time it starts creeping back into my mind.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Well, it's so easy. That's the easiest thing to do, is.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Just, yeah, blame something else. Blame the market, blame your brokerage, blame, you know, whatever. The sun's not shining today, the election, whatever, it doesn't matter. Right. Like, end of the day, you've got to put bread on the table. Your kids don't want to hear they can't go to daycare because there's an election or something.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: Like, you just have to, you have to learn, learn, learn to find a way to win. And I think, you know, other than that, the big thing is the real estate investing focus is such a huge thing. I mean, I've made a lot of money from being a part of this brokerage. I am basically unrecruitable because of that. Like you. There's no, there's no way that anyone could offer me something that would make me jump brokerages because of the value of the investing piece is so high. It's so much. And it's such a big thing to think about as agents because, you know, a commission versus a investment, there really no commission. There's really no comparison.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah, agents are chasing their commission until they're 60 years old and then they retire. And, you know, in real estate, you don't have a 401k.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, so many people are. So many people are doing that. I mean, and I, you know, they're going into credit card debt or they're, you know, having trouble with money and you really need more money than you think you do. And that's one of the main, main problems people run into. And, you know, you just have to be fighting forward to making a good income for yourself as well as make strong investments and build your wealth because you really just don't know what's coming down the pike. So you don't. Yeah, yeah. And it's everybody. I mean, like, there's so many people that struggle with money and investing and things like that. So I'm Just huge on the mission here around financial freedom. And it's something I've embraced. And really, for me, it's a thank you to Steve for everything he's done for me is to push that forward for other people. So try to pay it forward to. And went through the meetups just like, in general, everybody. I mean, I'm basically evangelizing real estate investing almost all the time. And it's kind of annoying, probably to a lot of people, but, you know, I love helping people through it. I love their personal journeys as they go through it. My personal journeys. I go through it because, hey, yeah, sometimes it's hard to rent a place, you know, it's like, okay, what. How do you get tougher? How do you get better? Where do you improve? You know, and just digging into, you know, your own personal journey and improving yourself.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Great. Well, I was gonna ask if you have any closing statements, but it sounds like you.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: I think I've made a pretty good rant there.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Rob Lawrence, thank you so much for coming on the show. You really do show how to hit that highest and best potential, and it does start with mindset. I mean, that's gonna be one of the biggest things that we talk about on this show. So thank you so much for coming on.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. If anybody, you know, would like to talk with me, like, help with real estate investing or buying or selling a house. Happy to. Happy to interact with them, help them however I can.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: We'll put your information at the. In the description below. Thank you so much.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Thank you, brother.
