You Should Consider Investing In Commercial Real Estate!-with Jake Harris- EP 159

Most real estate professionals and agents do not take the competitive advantage that they have with their license and the data they have access to for  investing in real estate.  On today’s episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, host Jeff Pfitzer is talking  with Jake Harris about how to make commercial real estate more profitable and easier to manage. Jake is the author of a book called Catching Knives - A Guide to Investing in Distressed Commercial Real Estate. You won’t want to miss this one!   Episode Highlights:  Jake kind of grew up on a construction site. He got into the army, and when he was getting out of the army, somebody gave him the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and it was a lightbulb moment. Now, he has been a professional investor for the last 20 years. Jake was a bartender at a country club because that is where rich people hang out. He asked their advice and said, “I am 23, ready to grab the tiger by its tail, and I want to build skyscrapers. What should I do? And they said, “work for a contractor.”  Jake worked in commercial construction as an estimator superintendent and as a project manager, did many projects, and started flipping houses.  In the early 2000s down in Phoenix, Jake met Robert Kiyosaki, and he hung out with him at his studio. Robert warned him to be cautious of greed. Robert was from Hawaii, but he moved to Arizona. Jake talks about the journey and what he learned.  The book’s momentum created real revenue for Robert and allowed him to start investing. And then, as a millionaire, he was able to continue to assemble good teams around him and continue to double and triple and quadruple down on real estate. For Jake, part of writing his book was to showcase or show people like it is not as complex or more difficult to do a commercial deal as it is to do residential. All the other areas of Jake’s life were bankrupt, but real estate was the thing that he still was meant to do. He shares how he needed to focus on all those other aspects to become kind of a whole life millionaire. Jake even put one quote on the back of his book from Baron Rothschild, “The best time to be buying real estate is when there is blood in the streets, even if it’s your own blood.” In the commercial real estate world, putting together the financial systems is not about how good the individual is but about putting together a team because it is a team effort. What is interesting about commercial real estate and real estate as a whole is you get a free option. There are ways to do $100 million deals with no money, and you only need a goal to find out how to do that.  In commercial real estate, you can tie a piece of property up in escrow. When you are in escrow and tied up controlling it, you have a very intensive time trying to figure out all the things that could go wrong with this deal. Many brokers want to close deals similar to a real estate agent who sees the transactions going on, but very few own real estate. They all want to be the sponsors, and they know how to structure it.  Reonomy is a commercial real estate database that tracks all the mortgage holders and owners of the particular asset types. Jake shares his view point on where he thinks the market will go. He also talks about the market shift. He shares his opinion on what is coming, and should investors wait because prices are so inflated right now. Jake thinks there are opportunities in infill housing that already has the infrastructure built in because of the people buying houses in square footage and rent by bedrooms.  3 Key Points: Jake focused a lot more on the commercial space, building a hotel on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, converting an office building to apartments, doing new ground-up construction on apartments in East Austin and other markets. Systems are great for those that want repeatable and predictable success. Jake had a goal to become a millionaire before 30, and he achieved that, but goals are great for those who want one-time success. For people looking to get from residential to multifamily, it has some very similar mechanisms of fixing up a kitchen, a bathroom, or whatever, and that becomes a very easy place for people to transition to on the small scale multifamily. Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Jake Harris  | Instagram | https://www.reonomy.com/ https://www.catchknives.com/ https://www.catchknives.com/course/ - Course 50% off by using the code word Jeff