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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PODCAST:
1:09 - Greg Kurzner explains how he got into Real Estate 04:02 - Greg explains how to survive in real estate during a recession 6:12 - Resideum Partners and what it does 10:16 - Greg explains a reverse wholesale and what a deal looks like 14:25 - What he looks for in a buyer 22:41 - What new investors are doing right 26:03 - The factors that make it a Fix & Flip vs a Buy & Hold 29:34 - Areas Resideum Partners buys the most Contact Greg: (678) 710-6130 [email protected]
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST AUDIO
Spencer Sutton: All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Atlanta Real Estate Investor. I am one of your co-hosts, Spencer Sutton, and I'm joined as always by Matthew Whitaker, so here he is. And we are excited to have a special guest, somebody that we've known a while, Greg Kurzner. So Greg, man, thanks so much for joining us today. Greg Kurzner: Thank you for having me. It's always fun. I appreciate it. Matthew Whitaker: Greg, we are super excited to have you. I think for us to be very transparent, we do have a history. One of the reasons that we're in Atlanta is because we bought a business from you. We bought your property management company. Is it good to be out of the property management business? Greg Kurzner: I'll tell you, the air smells sweeter, the birds chirp louder. Property management is such a vital and critical function to an investor, but it is, as everyone knows, what I call a thankless job. And you guys do it amazingly well. And so, yeah, it really is a nice to not have. It's just so much work. So we're able to focus on other stuff, and it's good. We're good. Matthew Whitaker: Well I appreciate you saying that. I'd love to just get started hearing your story. I know it, but for the audience, tell us how you even got into real estate. Greg Kurzner: Well, to try and make a very long story short, pretty old. I started out in consulting when I got out of graduate school, and I really hated to travel. So I was looking for a job that I could get into where I didn't have to travel. And so real estate made perfect sense, because essentially you have to be in the city that you work in. And so I went to Clemson as everyone can probably see, as an undergrad. And I had a bunch of friends that had settled in the metro Atlanta area afterwards, so I reached out to some of them and they said, yeah, it's great up here, come on up. And so I quit my job in consulting and moved to Atlanta without a job, and fell into real estate. Greg Kurzner: And my first real estate job was working for, what doesn't exist anymore, but it used to be called the Federal Savings Loan Insurance Corporation, which is the sister to the FDIC back when savings and loans were the ones that primarily made mortgages. And that was right at that first market crash, the savings and loan crisis crash. And I was hired there to sell the foreclosed real estate out of the savings and loan crisis for the government. And that was my first experience in real estate, and in default real estate. So I figured out my longterm path right off the bat in real estate. Greg Kurzner: I went from there to a commercial real estate developer and did shopping centers and office buildings for a while. But I gravitated back towards the residential side, and I had been a broker ever since. Through the years, built our team, really focused on foreclosures and default real estate on both sides, as a buyer as well as also the broker for the seller. We did our management, as I mentioned, in 2006. Then we decided back in 2015 to set up a separate company that is now a licensed general contracting company, that now allows us to do the renovation and the work that we need to. So we have a vertically integrated group here with brokerage and with renovation remodeling services, in addition to our investment side. Matthew Whitaker: And I'm super excited to talk about that. We're going to get into that in a little bit, but I want to go back through your career and just talk about a few lessons, because I think there's some things that are really important to point out. Number one, for those of you listening to this on audio, Greg has a huge Clemson football helmet behind him. I think the lesson there is that you don't have to be real smart to be in real estate. I'm just kidding. Greg Kurzner: Absolutely. Matthew Whitaker: Spencer and I are huge Alabama fans, and obviously still stinging over our last loss to Clemson. Spencer Sutton: That's right. Matthew Whitaker: But one of the things I want to go into is just the idea of buying. You bought for a lot of institutions back during the last recession. And I believe we're headed towards another recession at some point, it's hard to see it in the stock market today. But at some point the real estate market is going to soften. So I'd love to know what you learned buying for those institutions during a recession. Greg Kurzner: Well, I mean, cash is king. And obviously they had access to capital that was allowing them to really take advantage of the real estate market swing. And so I think, obviously everyone that was buying their homes in 2005, '06 and '07, didn't really see that in '08 and '09 and '10 that they were going to be worth 70% of what they were paying. They just assumed things were going to continue to go up the way that they had. And we're in that realm right now, really out of say 2017, the market has increased and it's been very strong since then. And that's really a combination of the economy and supply. So if we do anticipate that we're going to have a decline, and a lot of people... It's sort of what I call the bottom of the pyramid are the group that gets hit, because they're the ones that are buying at retail. Greg Kurzner: And then if the market goes down, they're the ones that are stuck. And so investors, those that have put their money in the sidelines, or have cash available, are able to take huge advantage of that. You just have to make sure that, where's the opportunity? When it's in a hot market, the opportunity is that it's easy to sell something, so you have to do a better job of buying it. You have to really buy it right. In a market where it's really soft, you can find deals everywhere. But the key is, how do you add the value and then sell it and make a profit? I think you can be successful in any market. It's so critical to know what hard part is in the market that you're in, to make sure that you don't overspend on the front end or overestimate your market on the out. If that makes sense. Matthew Whitaker: And you're helping people now buy these homes that are off market deals. So why don't you tell everybody what your plan is and what you're doing with Resideum Partners. Greg Kurzner: So Resideum came out of a desire for us to do for ourselves what we've been doing for others for a long time. And initially we were approached back in 2012 by one of the large hedge fund institutional acquisition buyers called Progress Residential. And they were coming into the Atlanta market with $2.3 billion worth of money to invest across the country, and were looking for brokers to help them find properties that worked. And because we had a big REO shop and we were able to mobilize that staffing to put high volume towards them, we were an attractive broker partner for them. That has continued, even though now at this point we don't work for Progress Residential, we do work for two other very large institutions. The biggest is Invitation Homes, and they are the largest corporate homeowner in the country. Greg Kurzner: And then Tricon America, which is also a top five institutional group. So we had the luxury of helping them buy properties for rental. And we also had the opportunity for a period of time to do the management of that. They did subsequently vertically integrate their management, but the great part of that was it wasn't our money, and we got to see through several years and thousands of transactions, what worked and what did it. So it was very helpful for us from a learning point of view to understand what makes a great investment, whether it's a flipped investment or a rental hold investment. Greg Kurzner: When I say that, that means not only where to buy, how to buy, how to renovate those properties so that they're good longterm rentals, and how to model those things. That's one of the things I think a lot of investors, especially anxious investors in a market like we're in right now, which is kind of a hot market, deals are hard to find. They've got money burning a hole in their pocket, and a lot of times they make bad decisions and invest properties that they shouldn't. They either overpay or they buy properties because they want to, and it's not a good deal. And so that's what we're seeing in our market right now. Inventories are very, very low. There's a lot of competition for them, so they're selling it, sometimes numbers that don't make sense. Spencer Sutton: So let me ask you this, what are you telling investors? Because I'm sure you talk to investors who are looking, some of these people who are anxious to get a deal. What are you telling them when you talk to them? What's your best advice? Greg Kurzner: Well I think, again, for us it comes down to beginning with the end in mind. So when you're looking at a property or an investment, what's your outcome? What is it that you want to accomplish? So if it's a property that you want to rent, then there's a different approach to it that I would suggest they do. Versus if they're looking at a pure fixed and flipped investment, or just a regular investment like that, where they're going to try and earn their profitability in a short period of time, 90 days, 120 days. Obviously still, location is key. Because in my opinion, you want to turn your money. I'm more focused on what the house will sell for, and making sure I have a really legitimate, solid after repair value that isn't going to sit on the market for several months. Greg Kurzner: Or the same token would be, am I going to have good solid rents? That's so critical. I don't want to be in a market where rents are iffy. There's no over supply, or we're seeing rents decline. So it depends on what they want, but if it were me and I put myself in their situation, I always say, figure out what it is that you want to accomplish and what the timeframe is. And that'll lead you to what the right deal is for you. Matthew Whitaker: Do investors come to you and you help them work this out? Because I know one of the strategies that you're implementing is called essentially a reverse wholesale. Which you're going out and finding property, just like you did for the institutions for these investors. Are people calling you and basically telling you their goals, and you're helping them with that? Or do they need to have their goals in mind and have the strategy in their buy box before they call you? Greg Kurzner: Well, even before we launched Resideum, when we were primarily working as an acquisition broker for the institutions, with the property management connections that we had. As you know, we have a lot of investors who say, gosh, I own two and I want to buy two more. And we were really almost kind of like, ah, we don't really have time for two. Where we're selling 40, 50 a month to these institutions, so we kind of have to put the time and energy to please them. And we would give it a little bit of lip service, but we wouldn't really cut. I mean, if something dropped in our lap we thought was a good deal, we would say, hey, what about this? But also, in fairness, a lot of investors like the idea of investing, but they really aren't there to pull the trigger. Greg Kurzner: When you put something on their plates, this is a good deal, you should buy it. And they don't. At some point you get frustrated. So I think there's a little bit of a fairness that investors, now that we are focused on this, and we are looking to accomplish... I'm sorry, somebody must... My phone's going crazy. Forgive me. But we're looking not only to buy properties for ourselves to fix and flip, but also potentially wholesale properties that just don't work for us. Rental investors are a tremendous beneficiary of some of the stuff we're doing. And the reason I say that is, is that, if you're a fix and flip investor, or you're trying to wholesale a property, you're trying to make your money very quickly. And those deals are very difficult to find. But if you're buying a property for rental, the cap rates work extremely well if you get a good discount. Greg Kurzner: But you don't have to have a great discount. And so there are many more opportunities if you're buying to hold than there would be on a fixed and flipped basis. So when I say reverse wholesaling, what we're doing is essentially spending a lot of time and energy, trying to create seller distress leads. We get several a day. And these are not just bogus leads, they're good leads. The problem is, many of them we can't buy. We just can't make our numbers work. And you know I'm very kind of corporate, institutional. We do a little gut going, but if the numbers don't work, we don't buy it. And so there are many opportunities that we feel like we just waste because the numbers don't work, but they could work for others. So for us to have a, if you will, a cash of ready, willing, and able buyers, most of them being buy and hold buyers, we would rather work with them and understand what their buy boxes are. And then go out and market or use our marketing efforts to target homes that are going to fit for them. Greg Kurzner: And that works great for us, because if we buy two of the houses out of the 10 that we find, and we're able to help eight other investors buy those properties, and we make a little bit of money on the wholesale side, it works great. And the thing that I find, most of these small investors, they don't have the capacity or the power of an institutional group to get brokers to really run around and look for them on deals. So brokers will lose interest and effort over a period of time, or they'll get busy with something else and then nothing happens. Or again, it becomes a scenario where they can't find deals elsewhere. So they're really only their solution is Zillow or Craigslist, or some broker. And so that's an opportunity we think for us because, we hate to waste leads that have great opportunity but may not be a good fit for our business model. Does that make sense? Matthew Whitaker: Oh, absolutely. What would somebody need to do to be prepared to buy from you? I would imagine they would need to know what their buy box is in the areas that they're looking in. Just give me a quick, if you had the ideal buyer come and tell your area, what are the things that you would want to know? Greg Kurzner: Well, obviously we'd want to make sure that they were financially capable of acting a good deal. So if they have cash, without getting into too much detail, show us a proof of funds that you've got the cash available. If you have an LLC set up. Let us know that they're actually really prepared to be in this business, because that helps us know that they're serious. Understand, because some people say, I don't want to do anything right away. That's fine. Or, I've got money to burn if I can find it, and it works I'll buy it tomorrow. So what their motivation level is going to be. But the financing part, their ability to perform on a contract and move forward on a deal quickly is important to us. Greg Kurzner: So if it's proof of funds, if it's a private lender letter, something like that. And if they don't have it, but they want it, we can put them in the right direction to get that set up. Because if we're going to essentially talk to a distressed seller and say, you know what, this doesn't work well for us, but we've got somebody that will buy it from us, and we'll offer you X. Most of these folks are going to take that. And what we want to make sure of is that we don't have to go back to them a week later, like a lot of wholesalers do, and say, I got to give you a termination and give me my money back. Greg Kurzner: We just would rather not do it in the first place. Because we know from the other side of the coin, these people are a lot of times distressed financially. They've got foreclosures, facing divorces. And the last thing in the world we want to do is be one of those guys. It's almost like a used car salesman, the wholesale and the investor business has a bit of a bad taste to it because there's a lot of folks running around that are all hat and no cattle, if you will. How we say it in Texas, right? Matthew Whitaker: You certainly don't want to add on to their problems. And I think one of the things that people that first get into this business mistakenly do is, they're so busy trying to make a deal that they're willing to sacrifice reputation. And if you want to be in this for the long game, which is what the three of us preach is, you need to really build your... Even sacrificing early profitability to build your reputation. And that's what you're talking about there is, you really want, as a wholesaler, if you're going to essentially resell this home to somebody, you really want a done deal because you're putting your reputation on the line. And what you don't need is somebody getting cold feet on the backend, then all of a sudden it ruins your reputation. Or you may even have to buy it to protect your reputation, and now you have a house that doesn't meet your model. Greg Kurzner: Right. Well, and you're the point is really well taken. Which is that we feel like when we talk to an investor, or an investor calls us and says, look, I'm trying to find a home to buy. And we can say, look, we can help you look on the MLS. We can help you as a broker do this. But, we are actively looking for distressed properties for ourselves, and we are finding many properties that may not fit for our business model, but they would be ideal for yours. And the difference here is that most wholesalers, my opinion of them is, I mean we get hundreds of wholesale deals pushed to us a month. And we bought one. One. And that one ended up, probably of the number that we've done, one of the least or the worst performing deals. But we felt like we got to do one just to feel like it. Greg Kurzner: And there are some of them out there, here and there. But wholesalers, by and large, they're spinners of the truth, as I would say. Comparables are not accurate. And the house condition is not accurate. And their repair estimates are not accurate. Their goal is to get you to buy this house, not necessarily to make sure that it's a good deal for you. And well, everybody is buyer beware. We come out of the acquisition for others model. We have to prove that we know what the rents are and that they're legitimate, and that they will rent for that or close to that, or better than that. That the after repair values are accurate. So we feel like that if we have an investor that's coming to us and saying, hey look, I want to buy this property. Greg Kurzner: If you find something off market, that's a good deal to work for you, then we're going to give them the straight numbers. We're not going to just necessarily... Because it's not so much that you're going to risk your reputation with a seller. But if you risk your reputation with buyers, then you're out as well. So we would rather then say, ah, it's not for me. Then, oh gosh, now I bought this house and said it would sell for 300 and it only sold for 200. Spencer Sutton: I think that's a great point, because when Matthew and I were wholesaling houses, we were doing it in Birmingham, 95, or maybe 100% of our buyers who are buying houses from us, were living in Birmingham. And so we were literally building this reputation. We were taking them to lunch. We were shaking hands. I mean, it was definitely something you wanted to build your reputation on and not just pass it off as, oh, it's better than it was. Greg Kurzner: Right. Spencer Sutton: But now today with so many out-of-state investors, the temptation for wholesalers is to potentially be that spinner of truth. Greg Kurzner: Yeah. Well, and I also think that a lot of these folks are, they just jumped in the business. A lot of these companies that are wholesalers, you talk to the points of contact, and these are kids, they're fresh out of college or not even out of college. Young. And they don't know that much about the market, they just know how to run the modeling. I mean, I don't want to bash them. All we're saying is, is that from our perspective, what's a very successful approach for us is this reversible selling because we already have contact relationships and we have a reputation that people can trust. So if we say, hey look, tell us what you're looking for. And back to Matt's question of, what is it that works. I mean, right now we have a property that we bought that is a fire damaged property, and we paid $20,000 for it. Greg Kurzner: We've also bought a property that we spent $400,000 on, and we're going to be doing $300,000 worth of renovation. So it's a pop top. I mean, almost a complete renovation. Lead based paint, you name it. Any kind of mitigating factor we got in that one, we got. So we're an opportunity buyer. And what I don't want is somebody to come to me and say, hey look, can you help me find anything? Because that's hard to find. But if they have a particular geographic area, beds and bass, a rental price point range that they're looking for, age, that becomes very easy. Greg Kurzner: And while we're actively trying to get leads for distressed homeowners all over the place, what we find is that if we target them in a particular area geographically or demographically, we're pretty successful finding others. As an example, the property that we bought in Buckhead, right near Piedmont hospital, which is a higher end property, we've already had three neighbors approach us that want to potentially sell their homes off market to us as well. And so you don't know where it comes from, but it generally comes from around the neighborhood, there's opportunities that pop up just by being in that market. Matthew Whitaker: And Greg, don't let Spencer fool you, he was a spinner of the truth. He sold me my first wholesale deal and it led me to this life of real estate. So he's the drug dealer. He's the drug dealer that swore I was going to make millions on Cherry Avenue. Spencer Sutton: But I mean, you literally walked the house. What else could I do? Matthew Whitaker: I should've known when I walked down bunch of fleas that there was more extra fleas that you were hiding. Spencer Sutton: Don't mind the foundation, sir, just keep walking. Greg Kurzner: We literally were at a house yesterday that I felt like I was on a roller coaster. It was wavy. Matthew Whitaker: We were talking about first deals, tell us what you see investors doing right. Especially new investors when they get in, what are some things that you see that they do right? Greg Kurzner: Okay. And this is a little pandering, so bear with me. But I respect investors who are not penny-wise and pound-foolish. A lot of newer investors are, let's just say not so much newer, but maybe from out of state, don't know the market area. Don't try and do it yourself. Not the first time, not the second time. It's worth investing in a team, whether it's a broker, whether it's a general contractor. Pay the price, put the budget numbers in that you need to, to have that professional advice so that you don't lose. Because one of the guys that I took training from when I first started real estate, had a great saying. And I always say, which is, the fastest way to make a million dollars in real estate is to start with $2 million. So you can lose one while you're learning. Matthew Whitaker: Spencer should have told me that. Greg Kurzner: Yeah. And there are a lot of snakes out there too. But I think if you can... Once you feel like you got it and it's a waste of money to have somebody else do a portion of whatever you're doing, great. But until then, especially buy the expertise that you need to be successful, and just make a little less profit, because you'll be a lot safer that way. You don't lose by hitting singles and doubles. You lose by trying to hit a home run and striking out all the time. So that's my opinion for a newer investor, get help and vet them. I mean, if somebody wants to vet me, great, because I want them to know that we have integrity, we've been around a while, we know what we're doing. And we're doing it for ourselves, so I think that's a good demonstration of how we can do it for others. So that would be my biggest advice is to get help. Matthew Whitaker: And the worst thing you can do is have a big loss right off the bat. I mean, if you're going to get into this business, you need to expect some small losses. But you don't want to be out of the game loss right off the bat. And the way you can avoid that is by getting expert help, so I appreciate that advice. Greg Kurzner: Well, and I would say too, especially because I think the majority of investors who are not down in the weeds with us all the time, are buy and hold investors. And that's where most of them should be, because that's where you're going to build wealth over the longterm. And I know it's a little bit of a plug on you guys too, but I'll say it because it's true. Which is that the biggest area where you can have a problem and lose money is in the management of a property that you own. If you don't love it, and you're not right down around the corner and have all the software and all the licenses and all the training. That is absolutely the most important component to a successful investment is to have a property management company that knows what they're doing and to be professional about it. Greg Kurzner: And that has to be budgeted in. Because, to scale and to be able to enjoy that investment return, you got to have residents, you have good residents, you have to have problems solved. And personally, and I'm in the industry, now you get busy with other stuff. If it's not your primary thing, things don't get done as quickly, you just lose money slowly and you don't notice it. So I stress that, that those buy and hold investors definitely need to have that property management partner that helps them out. Matthew Whitaker: And when you're evaluating a deal, I'm curious what the decision looks like when you're deciding whether it's a fix and flip or a buy and hold. What are the things you look at to make that decision? Greg Kurzner: Well, a lot of times, it's kind of made at the beginning. Because if we can fix and flip it, we'd rather. And the reason for that is that we don't have to put it into permanent financing. We don't have to find an end user buyer. Because we're not in the management business. And we're not, at this point in our development, wanting to build a larger portfolio. We don't have a fund behind us as a buy and hold fund behind us. So our primary focus is always going to be fix and flip. Now that could change as we move out of phase one and we look to leverage additional partners or money. We may end up set up a small fund to take properties that aren't good retail flips and put them into a rental portfolio. Greg Kurzner: But what we're happier to do now is to focus on fixing and flipping. And that flipped then goes to either, maybe eventually a portfolio that we have, but until then, to another investor, if it's not going to go to an owner-user. Typically the only difference between selling to an investor versus selling to an owner or occupant, is money and time. And so most properties that are going to be in the 400 to 500, above that price point, aren't good rental investments because they don't return the cap rates that are necessary. So some of it is strictly driven by the value. A lot of what we've bought, kind of wheelhouse has been buy it for about 185, put about 50 in it and sell it for about 350. And those are rough numbers. Greg Kurzner: The problem with 350 is, not a lot of investors want to buy that, in that price point. But the deal we bought, the fire damaged house, we bought it for 20. We're going to put about 93,000 into it. And it should retail in the 160 to 170 price point. So that would be a great rental investment. And that may be what we'll look to do. Which is, even before we've finished it we might push it out to investors and say, this is a bird in the hand. If you can give us this price, we'll sell it to you now. And now what's the benefit of that? Because maybe if we stick it on the market, we sell it for five or 10 grand more. Well there's risk. We have a property on the market now that's been on the market for coming up 60 days that we thought we would sell for 350. Greg Kurzner: We're now down at 309, getting ready to go to 299. So every once in a while, things just don't work right. And to have an exit for that, that's a bird in the hand is where we would really love to be. Because for us it's about velocity. A lot of wholesalers, a lot of fix and flippers, it's not about maximizing the return it's about turning the money. So if you could come to me and say, look, I'll buy everything that fits my buy box the moment it's ready to buy, we take that all day long. We take the haircut on the sale, because it's a certain sale. It cuts 30 to 45 days off the market and the interest carry on our money. So there are great opportunities to do that and partner with investors who are buying a home. Matthew Whitaker: I think if people understand what you just said, and wholesaler's reason for doing that, then there are a lot of people out there that would want to be wholesaler's go-to for that type of velocity. Because if you look at the numbers, and if wholesalers really understand the numbers, then velocity is much more profitable than maximizing each deal. Especially when capital's limited, which most wholesalers, the reason they're in that is because capital is limited. I'd be curious about some areas that you're buying in, or some areas that you're excited about in and around the metro area. Greg Kurzner: We've purposely, in this first phase, I mean, we've seen lots and lots of properties sold all around. Whether it's in town, or it's out in the suburbs, or even in what I would call the exurbs, the outer circle. And right now everything in Atlanta is pretty hot. It's easy to be successful right now because you don't have to be real smart, everything's selling. In a price point. That being said, over the years that we've seen how things have developed, what we feel more comfortable with is suburban stuff, because it's homogeneous and everybody knows it. The in town stuff, it can be very profitable. There's markets here, like everything that's around this new belt line, the project that runs all the way through. Greg Kurzner: And so we do have some in town deals that are working. But we would much be happier with first time home buyer and suburban type properties that work well, because there's multiple exits. Those are the properties, you know from your portfolio here in Atlanta, that rent well and consistently continue to increase in value. And those are the ones where you're getting good quality residents and you're getting good solid home buyers. There's not a bunch of investors. These are people with families and kids and dogs and stuff. So that's what we like. It's easier. And there's just not a worry, because there's so much more comparable data on those types of deals as well. Matthew Whitaker: Yeah. I always think of, especially rental homes, you don't want to be different. You want to be the same as the market. Because you want to appeal to the broadest audience. A lot of people are very focused on being different, maybe personally, maybe your personal residence is very different and you enjoy that. But you don't want to translate that into your investment career where you're buying the different house all the time, because it's only going to appeal to certain people. And so when you're doing this, and especially when you're doing it at scale, you're wanting to get that, what you said, homogeneous house that is just like every other house in the neighborhood. That you know what it's going to rent for. You know what you're going to need to do when you turn it. And you know the type of people that are going to rent these homes and what they're going to rent them for. Greg Kurzner: And I think even further, some of it I can't take credit for. Because having worked for so many years with these institutions that have bought properties, and seeing where they bought and then where they've stopped buying, and how they've eliminated. What they've essentially tried to do is to eliminate what I would call any kind of location-based negatives. So properties that have deep slopes down, properties that have high driveways up, properties that back up to retention ponds, to the interstate, to- Spencer Sutton: Railroad tracks. Greg Kurzner: Yeah. Those kinds of things, eliminate that. Properties on septic. Now, again, we'll buy properties on septic, but it depends on how much risk you want to take. Because the more homogeneous you are, the more vanilla you are, the easier it is, and the more consistent it's going to sell or rent. So you might say, well gosh, but if you do that, it's harder to find deals. You're right. But you're going to have a much better outcome exit-wise as well. So a lot of times I'll also say, you don't make money when you sell real estate, you make money when you buy it. But also, making money when you buy it is about buying a good investment that's going to continue to appreciate. When you put a location negative on it, sometimes it doesn't. So that's important to know. Spencer Sutton: There's a reason why the largest home builders in the nation have just certain ... they have certain layouts that they do all the time. Because they sell. It's because that's what people want. And so those are the types of houses you really need to look for. We used to to call them white elephants, Matthew, those location deficiencies. Greg Kurzner: Right. I think again too, it even comes down to preference. Because I know lots of people who disagree with me in a lot of ways about where to buy, what types to buy. They're happy with three bedroom, one bath. They're happy with areas that are pretty saturated or that have poor schools and other kinds of stuff like that. And they're able to be successful. So this is just my opinion. But what I like at my age, and with my gray hair, is less stress. And the elimination of stress comes from eliminating things that can be gotchas. Greg Kurzner: And if you can do as many as you want to by doing that, great. If you have to then start to make an exception to scale, or to add more properties because of the market, or whatever, then be very cautious and judicious about what you're willing to give up. Whether, maybe it's a school score, maybe it's that the grade of the property isn't right, or the configuration is not right. Or maybe it's got stucco and you don't like that, or whatever. But I think that's a really important thing to think about is finding something that everybody else is going to like. Matthew Whitaker: I think that's the perfect place to leave it, Greg, this has been very awesome. It was good to catch up with you. And thanks so much for taking the time with us. Greg Kurzner: You're you're a very welcome, I always love to talk. So you can hire me anytime to come onboard and fill you in on my opinion. Nobody else wants to Matthew Whitaker: Wait, did we tell you we were going to pay you for this? Greg Kurzner: Oh, no. I meant- Matthew Whitaker: Oh gosh. Greg Kurzner: No. I don't. Yeah, it's great to see you guys. I appreciate the opportunity. Spencer Sutton: Thanks Greg. Spencer Sutton: All right everybody, if you haven't subscribed, go ahead and do that. And Greg, where can people get in touch with you if they are interested in learning more about what you're doing, this reverse wholesaling, they'd love to get in touch with you? Greg Kurzner: Perfect. Fix and flip fund is called Resideum, and they can reach us at [email protected]. Resideum is spelled R-E-S-I-D-E-U-M. So it's reside-um, if you will, .com. And they can call us at (678) 710-6130. Spencer Sutton: Thanks everybody for listening. And stay tuned, we'll be back with another episode.
