Helping Pierre Get Unstuck and Land His First Rental Property

This episode is the first of a new series in which hosts, Tom, Michael and Emil help the producer of the show, Pierre with his first remote real estate acquisition. In this episode, we help Pierre get out of analysis paralysis and determine the next steps towards his acquisition.  --- Transcript   Michael: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by,   Tom: Tom Schneider.   Emil: Emil Shour.   Pierre: Pierre Carrillo.   Michael: And we've got kind of a special miniseries coming up for everybody. Pierre is our producer here, awesome dude at Roofstock. And he's actually going through the process of buying his first investment property as we speak. And so we thought it would be super fun to help him out, answer all of his questions that he has, as well as give everybody an insider's look and kind of behind the curtain at what Pierre is going through on a day to day basis. So in today's episode, we are going to tackle Pierre’s, questions, comments, concerns, we'll be recording episodes like these throughout the hero's journey. So everybody listening at home can join him along for his ride and his experience. Let's get into it.   Michael: All right Pierre, bring everybody up to speed on where you've been thus far, where you're at now, and where you're trying to go? The past the present the future.   Pierre: Yeah. So full disclosure, this is not my property. I am teaming up with my brother. I'm trying to save up for my property. But in the meantime, my brother has some capital to deploy. He's been listening to us. He's been in the academy for a while now. So he's getting stoked on the idea of real estate. So he's employed me to help him acquire a property.   Michael: Awesome.   Emil: So you're his acquisitions manager?   Pierre: There it is. Yeah, exactly.   Michael: And so Pierre, you've been using some of the tips and tricks that Zach Breverman talks about in episode 73 because he's a CFP, we had him on talking about how to save up your reserve to get started investing for yourself, right?   Pierre: I have, you know, I could be a little bit better. I always struggle. You know, I'm at the beginning of my career right now. And expenses always seem to… I have an automated system to set aside money into my savings. But somehow I always find myself dipping into it for some sort of expense, or life emergency or something always seems to hit me.   Michael: Right. Right. And I get that goes.   Pierre: Just getting the snowball started is tough right now. That's why I'm stoked to be working with my brother because I am stoked to invest in real estate, and I'm not ready for it. And having my brother's capital to work with is giving me a practice run so that when I buy my first house, it's not going to be my first transaction.   Michael: Right.   Tom: Awesome, great way to do it.   Michael: All right. So talk to us a little bit about what kind of property you and your brother are targeting. And where you both are looking without giving away too much of the secret sauce.   Pierre: Sure, we are looking for a single family rental property that has a rent of over 1000 per month, or 1000 and above, that's just something that we thought would be safe, a better tenant pool in a better quality neighborhood with good school ratings. And, and we have been looking at Georgia, we like Georgia. Awesome. So some of the ways that we've been zeroing in on different markets is I built a Google map. So you can make your own custom Google Maps and then import data sets. So I've downloaded these spreadsheets about property taxes, and then overlaid that on my Google Maps. And you can add layers onto the maps. And so I color code each layer. So I found all these different industries imported those in I had to do those manually, because I didn't just have like a spreadsheet of all the different big companies, but I researched all the big companies drop them in on a green layer for industry. I did the top 25 school districts put those in on a blue layer. I did property taxes, put those in on a red layer, because to heck with property tax, to heck with taxes.   Michael: Yeah.   Pierre: And then I did the history of natural disasters like flooding, and tornadoes and just all these different data points that I found interesting. And then I put like a little radius around them, and then where I'm seeing all these different overlapping of my Venn diagrams, then we start zeroing in on those markets.   Michael: Awesome.   Pierre: So we are on the outskirts of Atlanta right now. That's what we’ve zoomed in on. Shouldn't have told everyone that because everyone's gonna…   Michael: Thanks for the hard work.   Emil: Biggest kept secret Atlanta.   Tom: Little market nobody's ever heard of.   Michael: So, tell us your what you and your brothers kind of investment thesis is are you targeting cash flow? are you targeting appreciation?   Pierre: Yes. So following the Roofstock archetypes of investor profiles, we find ourselves in the balance buff category, which is seeking cash flow, but with the balance of appreciation, but with you know, heavy on the cash flow.   Michael: Awesome. And so I'm gonna stop blabbering here for a minute. And I'm going to turn the mic over to you here and give you an opportunity to ask some questions to Tom Emil and I, in the section that we like to call coaches coaching coaches.   Pierre: Cool. Yeah. So I mean, we're at this place where we've done a lot of analysis I think we're at the analysis paralysis stage, where we've done a lot of the research we we built our buy box in our financial so in the roofstock Academy we have this seven step investment plan know your financials great SMART goals, choose a strategy build your buy box     Pick a target market, identify your team. So we've gotten most of those things done. But now it's like it's a big purchase, it's a lot of money to drop down. Do we know enough? Is our research sufficient? Should we act? Or are we, you know, fooling ourselves and thinking that we know enough, and we're gonna just make a stupid decision with all this cash like, and for me, it's, I'm a bit nervous, too, because it's my brother's capital. And so I would feel terrible to advise my brother to do something that would not be the best investment with his cash. So that's where we're at right now we've done the research we found where we like really built a map and studied the market. And now we're like, Is this good? Are we in a good place to make a decision now?   Tom: Something that I think could be a way to kind of break through that paralysis by analysis is, start leveraging that team, I do not think you can bring them in too early. So as a way to get myself comfortable in a specific sub market that I may not have a lot of experience in, is in going to the process of analyzing this properties. Bringing in specifically, I know Roofstock, has a buyer broker in the market, there is also a local property manager, what I wouldn't wait on and I think as a way to kind of keep momentum going is start bringing in a sanity check with some of these partners, that you're working with them and really leverage them as you're in your acquisition process. I think some specific questions I would ask, I would come to them with specific properties, and ask them what they think about the rent, what they think about the neighborhood, more times than not you're going to get a good is a informative answer. You know, one way or the other.   I've gotten responses back that you know, this property, this area doesn't appreciate a lot or, you know, maybe there's a little more tenant turnover, or Oh, great, this is a four bedroom, you're showing me and there's not a lot of those, it's going to run really quickly. So I find a way to personally get over that hold up, is to bring in some other eyeballs into the process. So that would be my first tip right now and getting over that initial kind of hump. Because I mean, man, from what you're the way that you're talking about it. And the way that you're evaluating this market, I'd say you're, you're pretty far ahead of advanced in the way that a lot of people think about it. And Atlanta is an awesome market. I love Atlanta, it's like a big part of my portfolio, especially kind of on those some of those suburb edges. So, I mean, it sounds like the next good step to kind of keep the pistons going is not just identifying those partners, but start engaging with them on a specific deal basis.   Michael: I'm going to piggyback off Tom's answer and tweak the approach just a little bit. And so I think absolutely engaging with those local folks on the ground is going to be huge, but I wouldn't necessarily ask them their opinion outright, I would actually tell them your opinion and your conclusions of a property and see if they're going to validate them. Because what you're also going to determine is if your evaluation process is accurate. And so if you tell them, Hey, I found this property in this neighborhood, this is what I'm thinking to rent for this is what I'm thinking it'll, it'll sell for, and they can tell you yea or nay or anything in between. and they can actually help tweak your evaluation process and start educating you as opposed to a Yeah, I like it or no, I don't type of answer from them. And so that's something I always tell folks in the academy is, hey, if you ask me a question about a property, I want to know your conclusion. And then I want you to ask me a question. So that way, I can help you evaluate how you're thinking about properties and how you're actually evaluating properties, rather than just yes, no, I like it, or I don't.   Pierre: That's great.   Emil: I'm gonna go in a little bit of a different direction. I want to ask you, are you guys looking for something turnkey? Or are you looking to take on a project to start? Are you in different?   Pierre: That was another question that I had, I mean, my brother is a contractor. So he is very well versed in the domain of building and rehab. But this is remote, he lives outside of the country, and a timezone far, far away. So we would have to have someone in the location that we trust, if we were going to do any rehab, but we're open to rehab, just to say tendon that's a little bit related is that we had enough cash to maybe buy to, to finance two properties. He met with Michael and we've kind of established a new strategy was to buy an all cash and then because to prioritize cash flow, we're going to buy an all cash property and then refinance it down the road. So we are open to doing a rehab. But, you know, what? Is that wise? I hear a lot of people saying your first property should be turnkey.   Emil: I don't think there is a right or wrong. I think it's your level of comfort, just speaking from personal I went turnkey. For that reason. I was like, I don't know anything about real estate. I'm investing a couple 1000 miles away. Like I got to build trust with this property manager in this area, like feel confident enough before I go and take that on. So that is an approach a lot of people take. There's tons of stories of people who do the same thing and they take on a project and they do fine or they take on a project and they get in over their head but then they have a lot of learning that they can take the second one so I don't know. I think it's it's kind of just like what do you feel comfortable. That'll allow you to just take step one, right, like we talked about all the time, I think the most important thing to remember is this is not going to be your home run deal. This is like your learning property, you're going to do a lot more, and each one should get better. So like when you have that in mind that it doesn't need to be the perfect or the homerun deal. I think it just helps you like realize this is part of learning part of just the process.   Alright, so if you're open to both, I would say like, the biggest thing that can build confidence is like you're thinking, I don't know if this is a good deal. Is it a good deal compared to other deals? Right? Like, do I feel like I'm getting the right deal in this market? Now that you've chosen your market? Right? So I think the best thing you can do is just look at a lot of properties, underwrite them, analyze them, and just look at the returns. And then you can start to figure out this is what Michaels Zuber talks about, you know, we've had on the podcast about learning a market is like in the areas you're interested in, what are the returns in those areas, right. And then once you've looked at a lot of properties, you'll know what is a good deal versus a bad deal versus an average deal or whatever. So I think that helps build a lot of confidence, I think is when you've looked at enough deals in that market you're set on, then you're like, Okay, I've analyzed a bunch of properties, I think this one's going to be a good deal compared to the others I've seen.   Pierre: So just more specifically, around underwriting. I know you guys have spoken a lot about the assumptions that you bake into underwriting, what are some considerations that I should be taking in mind when calculating the returns of a particular property?   Michael: You should go listen to Episode 67, or whatever it is. Just kidding.   Piere: Yeah. That's how I was thinking I was looking for one episode that we had just to revise, because I mean, I hear you guys talk about it all the time. But I, I don't have the hands on repeated experience of it. So I can hear you guys talk about it. But I always forget, like, oh, when I'm calculate 2% for insurance or whatever, or calculate this much for… what are the top five things I should be looking for when making an assumptions for a property?   Michael: I would say first and foremost is your property taxes, you've got to get that right. And very similar to like what a meal was mentioning, talking about what Michael Zuber talks about is go there in the market. And so if you're pretty committed to Atlanta, or you're very interested in Atlanta, I would go find out what counties are in Atlanta, and then call the county assessor and ask them, How do you calculate your after sale property taxes and investor? Because then you'll know that it'll give you some kind of formula, some kind of millage rate times value, whether that's the purchase price or some assessed value. Now, you know, for every property you evaluate in that county, how do you calculate your property taxes, so it becomes much less of an assumption, and much more a calculated value.   Pierre: So you would say, and that's interesting, because I haven't been doing that with my property taxes, I've actually gone through and just downloaded a spreadsheet of every County's median property taxes. And so I have like, by the median property tax, I haven't done a calculation, I just have a straight hard number that is the median property taxes for that particular region.   Michael: So the problem with that I had a problem with that…   Tom: I think I'm gonna say the exact same thing you're gonna say.   Michael: Yeah, go for it. Tom.   Tom: There's a lot of owner occupied taxes where they have homestead exemptions. I'm glad I stole this from Michael, just to get the average number.   Pierre: You're so good, Tom.   Michael: You're like a hyena.   Tom: Man, I feel like I just stole some candy. Homeowners, they typically get a pretty big discount on their property taxes. So doing that kind of flatline, is going to be that that I would be a little little weary of.   Pierre: Good to know.   Michael: Same thing goes for insurance. And it when you look at the average insurance rates, it's typically going to be quoted for homeowners, which is a different rate than for investors and landlords. So that's why I just like calling the county assessor and just getting it directly from the source, they'll give you some kind of millage rate, and they'll just likely tell you how to calculate it. And I wouldn't let that person off the phone until you have a pretty clear understanding of how you come up with that number.   Emil: You can also ask your property manager, I've called county assessors, and sometimes they're very unhelpful. And they have these really complicated formulas where I'm like, there's no chance in hell that I'm going to be able to figure out what you're talking about. So like, I think your property manager, if they own investment properties, like a lot of property managers, the founder owns a couple investment properties. Sometimes they can be a good resource as well, or just people who invest there, I can just tell you, like their rate that they see on investment properties can be helpful as well.   Pierre: Cool.   Emil: But the county assessor is a good place to start, because it's Yeah, it just sometimes aren't helpful.   Michael: What other expenses should Pierre be thinking about? When he's making his assumptions?   Pierre: We're looking at cap x, we're looking at closing costs, a maintenance reserve, property taxes.   Emil: So Episode 72, which I think the one we were talking about, ignore the noise. Here's how to actually calculate projected cash flow that walks through a lot of the assumptions A lot of us take, I think, for single family. The big ones we were talking about is like a percentage can be misleading percentage of rent. So just having a fixed number there. I think I do like $150 total ish for cap x and R&M per month thing, Michael, you said you do a little bit more.   Michael: That's kind of right in there I like 75 $200 a month for R&M. And then cap x is driven by the property, vintage and the age  of the systems in the home. So the mechanicals, water heater roof, that kind of stuff that can go up or down depending on the condition and vintage.   Pierre: So the way you presented it Emil right now was you had capex and R&M. That's one category. And, Michael, you have capex and R&M separate? What's the relationship between those two? And why do you separate them?   Emil: They're gonna be different repair and maintenance is ongoing little stuff, capex is the big stuff having to replace an H vac, when you do turns, let's say you place floors or kitchen stuff, or whatever it is, those will be capex, but I just lump them together. Because, to me, it's like one thing, it's paying for stuff that is broken or needs to be fixed. So if that stuff, you know what I mean. So I just kind of lump it together under one line item.   Tom: And I would say, for some of these values, I can just guarantee you that your assumptions are going to be wrong, you know, like capex and repairs. So what I mean by that is like, don't boil the ocean and trying to come up with these perfect assumption, I think get something that is directionally correct. And hopefully, it averaged out and the stuff comes to a wash. So use these your these best practices as it relates to coming up with these assumptions and then move on and then like plug through, plug them into your, into your process just because I think if you get too overburdened with these, like small, you know, we're talking about smallish, like tweaks to the system, I think you can kind of get lost in that and build onto that paralysis by analysis, my, my 10 cents, and also, you know, within Roofstock within their individual property listings, if you're looking at a listing on Roofstock, or you bring one to the cloud house analysis tool, it's going to list all these assumptions and and break them out using some best practices, either as a percentage as the purchase price, or what you'll see some some values for those. But again, my advice would be is, a lot of these numbers are not going to be correct, that you're coming up with a friend, obviously, you should try to get the ones that you can be correct. But to not kind of lose sight of making progress by just getting buried and tweaking little marginal marginal stuff.   Michael: And like Emil said, at the end of the day, you know, I separate them out. But at the end of the day, it's paying for stuff. Like it doesn't really matter what stuff that's for, whether it's monthly or annual, whatever. But for me, because I'm a very process driven person, and I'm a very numbers driven person, it makes more sense for me just mentally, in my mind to break things out on kind of a line item. So I can attribute different expenses. But not everybody operates that way. So there's no right or wrong way. It's just whatever makes sense to you and how you think about it and how you better think about it. Is it one big bucket that takes care of everything cool. For me, I want to break it out, turn reserve R&M capex, it's just easier for me to visualize.   Pierre: All right. So looking at insurance assumptions, I think I remember you saying something, Mike, about 1.8 to 2%, or something.   Michael: Yeah, sort of. So for properties under 150,000 purchase price, I'll just throw point oh, eight of the purchase price to 1.2% of the purchase price. So if you that straight up the middle on $100,000 purchase price, I would call it about 1000 bucks in insurance. And like Tom said, you know, it's going to be probably around there. And could you get insurance for less? Yeah, absolutely. But that's the number that I use personally, just from my personal experience based on the types of coverages I want to get. And then that may also include an umbrella as well for some additional liability. So I'm saying my own insurance cost is going to be about 1%, roughly, of the of the home cost.   Pierre: Okay, so for making assumptions, your tax assumption should come from the county assessor, your cap x and R&M should be $1 amount, and your insurance is going to be a percentage?   Michael: I break everything down, basically into dollars and percentages. And I totally flip flop back and forth between the percentage value I attribute to the income or to the property purchase price. So I will think about it as a percentage, right as 1% of the purchase price, but I'll then mentally shift to $1 and think okay, great for $100,000 purchase at 1%. That's 1000 bucks and insurance costs, and my property taxes is going to be 2400 bucks. And then my repair maintenance is 75 bucks a month, which is 100 bucks a year. That's why writing all this stuff down and having a calculator built out is super helpful to look at everything. Once I have everything built in terms of either annual dollars or monthly dollars or percentage of the income. I then kind of sum everything I sum the monthly dollars, I sum the annual dollars and I sum the expense ratio totals. And so for every line item, there's a monthly amount, an annual amount and a percentage of rent them out. I looked to see where my big expense items in terms of percentage of the rent, how much of my rent is getting eaten up on a percentage basis by this line item expense and then looking at the total that total summation because we have the 50% rule, which says take 50% of the income and throw it out to expenses. I want to see how close did I get to that?   Emil: This is probably another one where it's probably good to not guess and maybe call a couple insurance providers. Because the one place where this could just go completely out the window with these kind of rates that Michael mentioned, which are I think, are a good rule of thumb is like when you invest in a place like Florida, because there's hurricanes and all these potential natural disasters, my insurance is way more over there than it is in somewhere like St. Louis. So that's where the rain could potentially go out the window.   Michael: Yeah, super good point, insurance is hyper local. So this is a very broad stroke that I've used, and I don't invest in places like Florida, which is the only reason that put bracket probably has held true for me for as long as it has. And that also goes out the window in places like California if you're getting earthquake insurance. And that's something you opt to purchase. That's expensive coverage like flood. So just be mindful of that this is just for your primary dwelling fire policy, in a non crazy has hazard zone.   Pierre: So to get a clear picture of that, I just call an insurance agent down in the area and present them with a mock property and say, how much would this cost? Is that a reasonable thing to do? like telling the County, Tax assessor?   Emil: I think so? I think they should be able to?   Michael: Yeah, I think so. I think so they're probably going to ask you some questions about and just give them your best answer, like when How old is the roof? Is there a basement? That kind of stuff they'll want to know about? And just guess, and then you'll get a kind of ballpark idea of costs? But again, just keep in mind that as soon as you change, like zip codes, that insurance costs can can vary drastically.   Pierre: All right. I think that's that section. I know a lot of people talk about you guys. Tom, you love single family rentals. Michael, you love multifamily? What should I know? Like we still haven't set our sights on a particular property yet we've looked at we've analyzed quite a few. But we're not set on whether we want to do a duplex or single family, what are some considerations that I should be taking to zero in on exactly what we're going to buy?   Tom: I would say it kind of depends on your availability to analyze properties. So if you're looking at an area that has a ton of single family rentals, as well as duplexes available, if it makes sense to maybe make that decision earlier, if you have the time to look at both multifamily as well as single family, like why not run through that exercise. So I mean, I would say you don't necessarily have to make your decision. But it could be helpful in making that decision in the limit the number of properties that you're going to be evaluating. Typically there, there isn't a ton of multifamily. So there's no reason to take a look at those like as they're popping up in the areas that you're interested in buying. I would also mentioned this before is talk to the local property manager and get their input on if there's, you know, a good pop on single family rentals on that rent amount. And then look at your spreadsheet, you know, have them both kind of run in where you do cumulative income and costs and comparing them but I would say you don't necessarily have to make that decision right now, especially if there's not a lot of properties that you're evaluating.   Emil: And you can also refer back to Episode 19 where we did our those are first or second showdown of the century series where we talked about single family versus multi family overriding their pros and cons to each speaking about my own investment journey. I'm happy I started with single family. I have both single family and small multifamily. I'm happy as a single family again, remote investor easier to get started with you have one tenant one unit, your tenant usually stays longer than a multifamily. So just like less things to deal with less headache. And then from there, you know, you sort of look at other stuff and say it is small multifamily, or medium sized multifamily make more sense. And I think take it from there. But I think I think single film is a great way to get started personally.   Michael: Echoing the guys I started with single family too. And I'm so glad that I did. I would also say talk to your brother and determine what you want your ownership experience to look like and talk to property local property managers about what the difference in housing stock looks like in terms of different tenant pools. Oftentimes with multifamily, you have a very different tenant class tenant pool than you do with single family. And so if you have a much higher retention rate in a single family that is compared to multifamily, definitely think about that that'll affect your vacancy rate that will affect your property management fees that you're paying. So there's a lot more I think, than meets the eye when it comes to taking single family versus multi family. But think about how much you know, again, what do you want your ownership experience to look like?   Pierre: Cool. So on the topic of property availability, like what's available in the market. Currently, we like the idea of buying on Roofstock buying on Roofstock provides some pretty cool securities and guarantees but right now I'm not seeing a ton of properties in the areas that we have selected as our high priority areas. So can you talk to me, Tom or Emil about BYOP Do we need our own agent and BYOP does Roofstock sock act as our agent there, do the Roofstock guarantees apply in Bring your own property is the acronym there.   Emil: BYOP or bring your own property is a program that we we launched I think over a year and a half ago. And it allows people, when they find a listing on the MLS realtor.com, wherever just something not listed on roofstock, you can submit it for evaluation. And if it's approved, you get all of the guarantees and the safety net of roof stock without actually being listed on the site. And so what happens is you submit a property it has to be in one of the cities that we serve. So I think right now, it's about a dozen cities, I think Atlanta is one of those areas that bring you on property is available. So you would submit a property, goes to our underwriting team, they look at it, they analyze whether they believe it would qualify for the roof stock guarantee, if it's approved, we basically put you in touch with our local buyer broker agent in Atlanta. And they're the ones who actually submit your offer to the seller's agent. And so you'll work with that local buyer agent. And they'll help throughout the process, you still get again all the all the guarantees of Roofstock So the 30 day money back, you get the lease up guarantee if the property is vacant, if you go into contract on the property, Roofstock covers the inspection, think we're gonna be growing that program to more and more cities. But right now I think it's about a dozen cities, I believe you go to the homepage and you go to the menu, there's like a, either in the top menu or the bottom, there's…   Tom: Like a learn it's the Learn drop down menu.   Emil: Yeah. So if you click the Learn drop down, you'll see the bring your own property link, you click on that, it'll take you to the landing page, the landing page will tell you the different markets were available in for that program.   Pierre: Cool. Do you know anything about like, if the fees are? Do you pay what you would pay an agent if you just found an agent on the MLS, or you're paying the fees that you would pay Roofstock?   Emil: Yeah, so with Roofstock as a buyer, the only fees you pay are the marketplace fee. So it's either half a percent of the purchase price, or $500, minimum, whichever is greater. So if you think about it, it's kind of like a way of covering the inspection cost. It's kind of how I like to look at it. But you as the buyer, in a typical transaction, like let's say we're going off Roofstock, you don't pay anything. Usually during a transaction, the only thing you're paying for is you're paying for your own inspection report, you're paying for all those the fees and normal things, but it's the seller who's paying a lot of those fees.   Tom: I think that BYOB program is a good opportunity. I mean, one of the to be you know, totally candid, one of the things I'd love to see with your stock is to get more listings. So with what this program with b y o p, it basically opens up the full MLS on the markets that we're in to be able to take advantage of the guarantees, take advantage of the transaction coordination services, as well as the post transaction support that we provide. And also, you know, we talked before about Roofstock Academy, as you get 20 $500 in credits to buy properties, you get to use those too. So in the last thing, just kind of like what you're paying agents, the seller is paying those Commission's so you as the buyer are just paying that one $500 or a half of 1% on that amount. So yeah, I would say BYOB is a good strategy. If there isn't something specific on the research platform that you're interested in B y o p is a great way to take advantage of some of those warranties, guarantees and all that good stuff.   Pierre: Cool. I mean, I have a ton of other questions. But I guess we can revisit this, I don't want to dive into a whole new topic with just a couple minutes left here. So just wrapping up here. Do you guys have any final takeaways that I should consider?   Tom: I think the most important thing you can do right now here is open a dialogue with some of those local partners. A very quick way to get trapped in paralysis by analysis is getting into a dark room and not talking to anybody. So like ultimately, real estate is a little bit of a it's a people business like a lot of businesses. So I think by setting kind of internal deadlines on yourself like okay, I got to talk to one property manager or a lender or whatever are turns broker do that and put self imposed deadlines, so you get it done. Otherwise, I think that is a risk of getting into paralysis by analysis by being in a dark room by yourself.   Emil: And my biggest takeaway for you going back to just like, how do you get that feeling of confidence and know that you're making the right move? Wherever you decide to go analyze a bunch of deals until you have a good feeling, you know, analyze 50 plus deals and you feel like Alright, now I know, what kind of seems to be like an average deal, what's a bad deal? And what's a good deal so that you can invest with confidence?   Michael: Yeah, I'm gonna kind of borrow a little bit from Tom and Emil and say, don't be in an echo chamber with just you and your brother, because every decision you've made is has gotten you to this point. So it's helpful to get input from from outside folks. And then like Emil was saying, analyze as many deals as you can and really learn about what you don't want. Because that will then bring to the surface, oh, this is what I do want. And so if you're having a hard time putting your finger on that, again, look for the stuff that you don't want, shed that and then move on.   Pierre: Cool, that's really helpful, because I guess one of the main things that I was looking for from this first session here was that my brother and I, we meet every Monday evening, and we were at a loss of how do we use our time wisely? What's our checklist? What's a formula for our agenda that we meet every week, like what should we be doing? So I guess this is really helpful because I think now we can say Oh, analyze five properties and add them to our spreadsheet and let's go through and really see what this market is looking like return wise.   Michael: Yeah. And what you can also do is I think I found it to be very helpful exercise. You both analyze the same property independently, and then meet up and talk about it. Cool. You get to see how he thinks you get to see how he thinks.   Pierre: Nice.   Tom: That was a freebie a final freebie.   Pierre: Thanks, guys.   Tom: Go get em Pierre.   Emil: Yeah, let's check in with here in like a month. Yeah,   Michael: Yeah, we'll definitely circle back and record another one of these. I think this is a really great insight into the journey of Pierre.   Emil: I was gonna say it will be cool, also super fun to do an episode with you like while you're in escrow? And then after you close, like…   Michael: Yeah as you're pooping your pants.   Emil: Yeah, exactly. I think that'll be really fun to document so we should definitely do that.   Michael: Yeah.   Pierre: Awesome, guys. Thank you so much.   Michael: Totally. Alright, everybody. That was our episode with Pierre. A lot, a lot of fun, super great insight into his journey, what he's going through with his brother right now. We will definitely keep you all posted going forward. If you'd like this episode, feel free to give us a rating and review wherever it is your podcast that's super helpful for us. And we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Happy investing.   Emil: Happy investing.   Tom: Happy investing.