Going Beyond Cash Flow to Understand The Total Return of a Rental Property

In this episode, our guest Chris Willard tells us about his total returns strategy and how he uses it to fuel the rapid growth stage of his investment career.  --- Transcript   Michael: Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and I am joined today by my co host, Tom Schneider. And we have a very special guest with us, Chris Willard. And he's going to be talking to us today about total returns and using that to scale his portfolio. So I won't take up any more time. Let's jump into it.   Before we get into it, we want to talk really briefly about a special offer that we have going on for the Roofstock Academy. And for those of you who might not be familiar, Roofstock Academy is your one stop shop education arm of Rootstock. It's comprised of one on one coaching, over 50 hours of on demand lectures, cashback incentives for closing on properties through Roofstock $2500 cash back to be specific, as well as private access into our online forums. So as you go to roofstockacademy.com into the checkout section, use coupon code SANTA2020 for $151 off a registration. Again, that's roofstockacademy.com. And coupon code is SANTA2020.   Tom: And to make this even more of a no brainer, it is a lifetime satisfaction guarantee. Take the coaching, watch the lectures, if you're not happy, get a full refund. No expiration, you're not gonna find that anywhere else. And on the cashback aspect, if you do the math, right, the discount, taking a 151 off, that's gonna make it $1,098. And you're going to be getting $2500 in return. So you're actually making money with the program. So join risk free today. SANTA2020   Michael: Awesome. Well, Chris, welcome to the show, man. super happy to have you here. Thanks for taking the time.   Chris: Thanks, guys. Always fun talking to you both right on.   Michael: So maybe you could give our listeners for those who are not familiar with your background, your story, a little bit of background on yourself. And then we'll jump into this thing about total return.   Chris: Yeah, so I've been in real estate for going on about 10 or 12 years, several different capacities, but more recently on the single family rental side of it with Roofstock. I currently, you know, work as the head of sourcing, oversee a lot of our larger portfolio transactions through our platform, but through my life here at Roofstock. And prior at Waypoint with Tom been able to do a lot of investing on my own, which is pretty exciting.   Michael: Awesome. Awesome. And I know that you kind of invest all over the country, is that right?   Chris: Yeah, I don't have any specific markets that are interesting to me, deals are interesting to me. So I'm always pretty opportunistic, and happy to go into new markets when I find the right deal.   Michael: Awesome.   Tom: Chris, I'm gonna interrupt a little bit. So Chris and I are in a special Roofstock Club. So our CEO at Roofstock. Gary has been on the episode a couple of times, he was formerly the CEO of one of the very first publicly traded single family routes. And both Chris and myself used to work with Gary at this company. And when Gary and Gregor and those guys came up with the idea of Roofstock as a company, we shortly thereafter joined Gary on this adventure. So Chris, why don't you just talk real quickly about all the different stuff you did at that single family read as well. I think it'll give good context experience.   Chris: Yeah, so at way point, and even prior to waypoint I was underwriting hundreds of homes a day, we were buying off the courthouse steps back in, oh, nine 2010, you know, when right at the downturn of the market, when everything was when the world was falling off, I had the opportunity to join the waypoint team. And as 2011 or so down in Southern California, we started growing the region, buying hundreds of homes quickly grew that over a couple years to several 1000 homes and really manage kind of all facets