Scaling up to 90 units in just nine months with Chandra Lacy

Chandra Lacy’s career in real estate is one of her greatest passions. Years ago she saw a shift in the market, and with the dramatic decrease in inventory, she realized that there was a need to find more homes for her clients. The key was going to be to create them. Chandra immediately began to work with investors to assist in renovating properties to create beautiful "like-new" homes. This experience has been such a fulfilling part of her business and has created stronger relationships with her clients to help them find and purchase the home of their dreams.  As co-founder of YILA, Chandra has been crucial in its ability to effectively scale to 90 units in just 9 months. In this episode, Chandra will share her journey in the real estate business, how she achieved her goal to become an owner of so many properties so quickly, and finally, she tells us about her passion for teaching women how to invest in real estate and build residual income.   Episode Links:  https://www.instagram.com/chandralacyrealestate_/?hl=en   https://www.instagram.com/yilahomes/   http://yilahomes.com/   --- Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.    Michael:  What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by Chandra Lacy and she's going to be talking to us today about how she scaled 90 units in just under nine months. So let's get into it.    Chandra, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I really appreciate you coming on.    Chandra:  Absolutely, I'm so excited to be here.    Michael:  We're excited to have you. So we're gonna be talking about some really interesting stuff, I think it's interesting anyhow, I think you find it interesting. Hopefully our listeners will too.    Chandra:  Right, beyond interesting.    Michael:  Right, so I before we were recording here, I was learning a little bit about your background. But before we get into the nuts and bolts here, I would love if you could share with all of our listeners, who you are, where you're coming from, and what it is that you're doing real estate.    Chandra:  Yeah, thank you for, thank you one, I'm a huge fan, I know we kind of did our intros. But I'm such a huge fan of this podcast and you've had some very exciting investors that I have, like taken rigorous notes from so it's fun to be here and I love just hearing about this because I, I'm remotely invest and so it's exciting to be here, so…    Michael:  In the right place.    Chandra:  Right? This is my people…    Michael:  Right…    Chandra:  So I have just a very interesting story, and I love sharing it. So I appreciate the opportunity to share it. Um, I pretty much hit rock bottom in my life. I was, I'm from Seattle originally and I was living in Texas, and I just had a baby, my son, my second child, and I had to fully Texas due to a domestic violence situation and it was devastating and my life was in shambles and fortunately for me, my parents opened up the doors to me and my two kids my brand new baby. There, they opened up the doors we were living in, well, they were living in a 1300 square foot, two bedroom, two bath home with an office. So their tiny home had me come live with them to get a new start in life and to start out.    And, you know, I will say that when people are in domestic violence situations, it can be men, and it can be women, I've talked to a lot of men that are in these situations, you just not sure what to do. You're scared to start over and I will say the moment I made the decision to leave that situation, I felt this tremendous freedom in my life. Now it took me a while to get to where the freedom met the actual level of life, not just the emotional feeling. But so I encourage anybody in those situations, please reach out to me, I'd love to have more conversations about that. But what it allowed me to do is, I was broke, two kids, I had a baby and I went and got a job at Starbucks and which I know sounds crazy. But I went got a job at Starbucks, and I got fired. I got fired from Starbucks…    Michael:  Oh, no.    Chandra:  And it just, I just wasn't ready and I kind of took a breath back and fortunately, from the two months of working, I've just saved up enough money where I could go get my real estate license and I knew because I had always kind of had this back backing and edge education and knowledge with real estate, I had just always read books, I had always been talking to people that were in real estate and so it was always a big passion of mine.    So the first thing I did said no money, nothing is I just went to get my license and then I signed up for the best brokerage that was making the most money closest to the house, I lived I went interviewed about three or four of them and I was like, okay, whatever they're doing on your part of it. Well, I learned very quickly in real estate, that if you are not in charge of product, then you're in customer service and there's not a lot of people say that way, but that's what I found and so I use one of the best jobs I ever had was working for Nike, and they were phenomenal. I worked for them back in the day I managed one of their huge Nike town stores, we were generating about $18 million of revenue at employees and I learned about moment that I love customer service, I love Nike but the guy who's making the most money is Phil Knight, he's the guy putting the shoes on people's feet. So I knew in real estate, if I want to make the most money, I need to be putting products in the marketplace.    So I learned real quickly that I need to flip houses get in this investment side of it, if I really want to have that financial type freedom. So I dove in, I was doing traditional real estate, I was just taking any client I could and I started working the auctions and I was really the auction side through this kind of network of people I had met.  And was learning, I was just any way I could get my foot in the door and investment real estate I was going and so I started working auctions, I started working auctions, and I would drive properties about three times a week, eight hours a day for auction and I had my little son who was like two years old at the time in the backseat of my car and we were out all over three hour drives away from Seattle driving auction properties and I did that for a year and I would come home and I would drive progress. And I would evaluate all these properties and I would combine them and I would put budgets together for these properties and then I would go pitch all these auction properties to investors and so I was just like hustling. So I learned so much in that route.    But what it also let me do is it allowed me to build a foundation of money. And so then I started putting this business plan in practice and one of my pillars by business plan is that I use investment type money to flip houses and so I put this money in and I started to flip houses, and I just flipped one house and then I started flipping another house and I would always partner with investors and know that I was now achieving that putting that product to market.  But the other piece of that business plan I put together was that I'm going to use that money that I'm using to flip houses, I'm going to take that revenue, I'm not going to pocket it, I'm gonna take that revenue, and now I'm going to go buy multifamily properties and I was saving up to go buy those multifamily properties.    And two years ago, to a little over two years ago, two years in like two months now I bought my first rental property two years ago, and it was three hours away from me. It was a little condo and I just I saw the potential I… because I'm just so familiar with driving properties in areas that I bought this little condo with my brother who became a business partner of mine, an investor of mine and flipping houses. We bought this whole condo, and we drove for hours and we actually made this one into an Airbnb, smaller remote investing, but we jumped into the Airbnb market.    Michael:  Oh my gosh.    Chandra:  And then two months later, or not even two months, like about one month later, another condo in that complex came available, we bought it right away, put it put a there was already a renter in there, we increase the rent a little bit. So now in a matter of couple months went from zero to two rental properties. But while I was doing that, I was flipping all these houses and my flipping business had grown tremendously and I was, I was at the peak of the market in the Seattle area, which has been phenomenal it has across the nation, but in Seattle, and all of a sudden my flip business was producing a ton of income, a ton of income, a ton of income and so me and my business partner, we began to just buy all kinds of rental properties producing properties.  We own mobile parks, we own storage units, we own single family homes, we own four plexes and 16 Plexus we have a big portfolio of properties and we did that all the nine months and I just yeah, just this just today. I think if we would be recording, we added another four Plex to the portfolio today, so very exciting. Yeah…      Michael:  That is awesome.    Chandra:  Yeah. Can you believe it? It's so fun to talk about, I can't just the timeframe is just insane. When I started looking back and saying, when was that first rental property purchase, what was that first income producing property for purchase and it was little over two years ago, I just I can't even believe it…    Michael:  There's so much here that I want to talk about some of the questions I have. But I mean, first things first Chandra, I just want to say like thank you for sharing your story and it's, it's just wonderful to hear that you've come so far in your journey and you were really vulnerable. So I you know, I really appreciate you sharing that with all of our listeners.    Chandra:  Thank you.    Michael:  So now moving forward, I mean, you were saying you said that you were, you were doing flipping and which is a very we talked about on the show a lot as a very active form of real estate investing and when you do the flip, then you get paid and it's like a paycheck. It's kind of like a job in that sense. It's not gonna pay you year in and year out for the work that you're doing today and so you said that you were saving the profits from those flips to invest in ultimately in multifamily and I'm just curious why multifamily?    Chandra:  The reason why we wanted to do rental properties is because I want financial freedom I wanted to, I wanted to retire in 10 years, but then I started cutting that in half. So then I was like, okay, how can I retire in five years? How much property do I need to buy that produces this amount of income for me, so that I can retire in five years?  And so then I just like, okay, execute and go, why do I have to wait 10 years, I don't need to wait 10 years, I can do this in five and so just just knowing that, okay and once you start running those numbers, like I used to do on all those auction properties, I ran the numbers, I was like, I need to buy $20 million in real estate, I need to produce, you know, $120,000 a year or whatever it is, you know, and how do I do that?  Okay, let's go, let's go, let's go and so for me, it was I wanted to retire, I knew that I need to have monthly income coming in. But I also wanted the freedom to be able to do what I want to do build a business that I can then have a platform for doing other things from as well, too. So it's kind of a two prong reason for me to get into rental business.    Michael:  Makes total sense. And are you targeting multifamily specifically, when you put that roadmap together?    Chandra:  Cash flow properties is what I'm targeting multifamily when is nice, because when you go out of state, you know, all your all your, all your real estate is right there together, you have 16 units, or 23, or whatever it is right there. So it's for me, it's a little easier to manage one property manager. But you know, I'm open, I'm open to all kinds of opportunities. It doesn't have to be multifamily can be storage units, I bought a property that has storage units that has warehouses on it that has RV parking, it has, I have another property that has camp spaces on it, because it's all about the numbers and so when we go through, when we look at a property, we are dissecting those numbers, and I don't care what that property is, if it's making income, and the income that I want to see, then we're going to buy it and we're going to figure it out.    Michael:  Oh my god, I love it, I love it. It's funny, because this is like so in direct opposition to what people say and like, get Rich in a niche. Like go niche down, pick one thing, know your lane, stay in your lane, pick a lane kind of a thing. And you're like, to hell with that I'm making the highway and I get to play in all the lanes. So how do you fit, like, how do you learn all these different businesses, because mobile home parks at imagine is a little bit different than self-storage, which different than multifamily. So talk to us a little bit about that.    Chandra:  So that is right. And I think what I did in my journey is I did pick a niche, I picked how to dissect properties and that was my niche and so I can put anything into that, that that mode for dissecting a property and as long as it fits.    So I guess for me, my niche maybe wasn't the same as like a multifamily or storage unit. My niche was I, how do I find a property and dissect the numbers and that's when I went 120, that's, I am the Michael Jordan…  Dissecting properties…    Michael:  I love it…    Chandra:  …And that's like, that's, that's we do, and then my business partner. So making strategic decisions for your business, I have a 50-50 business partner where some people are like, oh, my gosh, you give away 50%, yes, because I brought in a strategic business partner, and him and I have so much synergy and he brings so many other things to the table and so our partnership has, has enabled us to take off into all these other realms, so maybe I might not be the best, in fact, I know I'm terrible at figuring out utilities from old parks right like it that is a that is a business in of itself and if somebody figures out I will hire you to do fine.  But my business partner, he he is phenomenal at those details and he will break and work down those details and really get us to that level. And so those two things, having my niche of being able to dissect any property, make sure it's going to cash flow, make sure the numbers are right the areas right and then having him and his strengths come into the equation has really put no cap on what we can buy. We only buy real estate though, I will say we have talked sometimes about buying other businesses and we're not ready to jump into that field yet. Because I see especially over the last six months I see the power in real estate and how important is to have that in your investment portfolio. So if you are out there and you are on the fence of whether I should buy real estate, yes, you need to buy it now, so please do.    Michael:  So good, well, you touched on a couple of things that I want to come back to. So first and foremost, you say that you're the Michael Jordan of running the numbers and first, I love the analogy. What is it, that allows you to be so good at it? Because I think so many investors, they run the numbers, and then they get into a property and you're like, oh, crap, like, this is not at all what I thought it was gonna be. This is so different than my Excel spreadsheet. So what tips or tricks can you give listeners to run the numbers and be Michael Jordan esque?    Chandra:  Practice. So for me, I was I was running property numbers for a year on about 40 properties a week. So if you do the math on that, that is reps, right? I'm gonna go back to our analogy, Michael Jordan, I was running reps, and I was getting all the reps. So for a new investor out there, do your reps go, I'll be more than happy to partner with a new agent that just wants to help calm properties for me, because I look at about 20 properties a day. So I'm still running reps, I look at about 20 properties a day. And I am doing that.  So, so some tips to know is that you have to absolutely look at your comps and you have to know that the variables of what's happened and you need to go out. So go out not only a year, but maybe two years almost comps and don't be afraid to go a little outside the box like you don't need to do like for like all the time on your comps. But you can do, you could do different variations to kind of see what the markets doing and then we always talk to about two agents or one property manager just to get a feel for an area and so those are some other like things I really recommend when running when running and looking at areas.  And then we always get it's this is probably pretty the most critical thing we do for getting for running our numbers is that we get actuals, we require bank statements. So we get actuals or actual utility bills like we get those actuals because we have found that not everything that is presented to you is true or false. So we get as actual as we can, so talking to local people, running those comps out go out year, two years, find out really what's going on that market. Also run your rental comps, not when you're buying just rentals, but run rental comps per seat, like when you're buying single family homes and all that, because you might there might not be any rentals in that marketplace and you have no idea. And then so that means you can elevate your rental numbers by a ton, you know, because there's just no rentals. So there's, you know, there's lots of little tricks and things you can do so,    Michael:  Okay and on to that point, specifically in running rental comps. If you find a market where there's no rentals available, is that mean that there's really no rental market? There are… is that a great sign for you?      Chandra:  I think it's a great sign. If there is economy there, then then absolutely, there's going to be rentals and so just depends upon what you do. So like, for instance, we have a remote property in eastern Washington is a very remote it is like on by the border of Canada, nothing around it and that's a property as lots of seasonal like camping and other things on there, as well as mobile homes that are mine. I own them and they're rentable. So why would I buy a remote area, if I own 19 of those I need to rent out on top of the seasonal?  It's because I know that there is zero rentals available in omit county, there's nothing to rent. So there's about 20 restaurants, there's a huge Walmart in town and all of those people need a place to live and they don't want to drive an hour to the local apartment building. They want something in town and so that was a good example of like, there was zero, there was no rentals available. In fact, as soon as we bought that property housing authority call that's more like, hey, would you be willing to add more rentals to your portfolio, you know, there is…    Michael:  Oh my gosh…    Chandra:  We said no, unfortunately, but… purchase.    Michael:  Oh, that's incredible. That's really, really cool. All right, well, then getting back to talking about getting your your reps and getting your practice. If I'm doing my reps, you know, and I'm getting my practice in. How do I know that I'm doing it right? Because the last thing you want to do is practice incorrectly because then your form is going to be crummy. So how do you how do you get validation for the things that you're practicing are going to get you or at least on point?    Chandra:  Yeah, great question. So there's two things:  One is your confidence right as a as a woman in real estate, there are real estate investment. There isn't a lot of other women and the reason why I bring that up is because I like to talk to my circle about properties, I like to talk to my circle about things I'm buying other real estate airs, and a lot of time on my phone, there was a lot of guys, and now I tend to reach out and have created almost a whole community of women, and we talk about these properties and get the reps in, you know, for these properties and build the community and that gives me confidence. Having that community around me helps to build my confidence.  And then also having, you know, strategic partners, like my business partner and I, we dissect a property so thoroughly that we have conversations, we talk about the what ifs and what ifs, because we are spending millions of dollars on these properties, that we want to find everything we can out just even through that, that you know, good and bad conversations, you know, and, and that is that is very critically important.  So find a community to have those conversations with, and there are so many communities out there, I also will recommend finding a coach, I know you guys do a great coaching program and if you're in an area where you're unsure, you're trying to get in market, get a coach, get a coach, get somebody that will push you and get a group and a community together that will push you and build that confidence in you. Those are those are huge, huge, important factors and the light, how to push how to just do it dive in.  I will also say that there is some optimism that needs to be part of this because if everything is negative, and if you never take that step to buy that first property, or step out in confidence, then you're just always going to be on the sidelines, you know, so. So take that step, I was listening to this podcast, I'm gonna I'm going to give us another awesome quote here, as this is this podcast, and Jay Z was talking about how you know some of the big things he does. And he the the podcaster asked him, you know, what, weren't you afraid when you when you made that big, huge business move? And he said, no, he said, you you are afraid I'm not and don't rub your fear on me. And I think that's a lot of times happen is that you're talking to people who aren't in this world of investing, and they're putting fear or doubt what if the market crashes or what it duh duh duh…? You know what, don't rub the fear on me, I'm going to go to my community and build my confidence to push the button to buy my first property. Even if it's three hours away, you can buy your first condo, you can get your foot in the door.    Michael:  So good, Chandra so so good. So I know you mentioned that there are tons of communities out there and you've created your own for the women around you. If there are women listening to this, that are just getting started that really read that vibe within the resonate to them. What are some recommendations? Where can they go to either create their own community or plug into an existing one?    Chandra:  Yeah, so um, we. I'm local to Seattle. So we have a really good meetup. It's women investing in real estate wire and so that's an exciting meetup by hosted and we've been offline with COVID. But we actually just this weekend, are gonna start launching that in April again. So that's really exciting. One of my favorite groups that, one of my favorite groups that I love is the InvestHer podcast and I know you had Liz…    Michael:  Yeah, Liz, she was on the show.    Chandra:  Yeah, she was phenomenal and she is phenomenal. And that is a great group to log into and they're nationwide and they have, so in my community, they have a local one, which is phenomenal. But DM me, or, you know, we'll share our information with you because there is so many opportunities for women out there and one of the pillars of my pillar. So my business is that my goal is to get more women to invest into real estate, whether that's buying their first house, or whether that's helping to help other investors buy properties and that's a huge goal of mine, because women have really weren't even allowed to own real estate up until about eight years ago and then really, it was really challenging for us to get mortgages as a solo individual up until about the 80s.    So we've had such a deficit of being able to buy real estate, and we are still behind, this last year, the they've put a statistic that women for the first time bought more properties than men did. But which is exciting. We're at 60% last year, women bought properties to men, which is very cool. Yeah, but that deficit only puts us still we only own about 30% of real estate to men owning net 70% across the nation. So we're still at such a huge deficit that it is such a like a I'm on a I'm on a crusade to get more women to invest in real estate to step out and it is a little bit of a lonely journey, but with the right community and the right people around you, it's not lonely, and it's really fun.    Michael:  That's so good, that's so good. Talk to us a little bit about your business partner and how you formed that relationship. Because I think a lot of people who are looking to scale think, oh, my God, I could never do it on my own, I either don't have the time and the experience or the money and you said that you and your business partner have such great synergy and so did you find someone that had this similar traits as you and then you got along with well, or did you find someone that compliment that you kind of Yin, Yin to your Yang, what is here?    Chandra:  One of my strengths, one of the great book, and I highly recommend this book, it's called Strength Finders. And that book, just I mean, that book transformed my thought process, because it the premise of the book is that we're going to, we're going to build our strengths, and almost like not forget our weaknesses, but we're not going to focus on those.    So let's go back to the Michael Jordan analogy, they get, you know, if he just focusing on the strength of basketball, basketball, basketball, right and so he became Michael Jordan basketball. So I started doing that I said, I don't, I'm not going to focus on this, I'm gonna focus on my strengths and one of my strengths is I thrive in teams. And so I, I started flipping, I didn't flip a single house solo, I would only flip houses with business partners and I flipped about three houses, actually, I'm sorry, four houses with different business partners, very successful, had great relationships with them and the fifth house, I flipped was with my current business partner, and him and I just had this tremendous amount of a likeness, but diversity, which is really rare, because we are very much similar. We're both dreamers, we're both visionary, but he has a skill set of details and systems that is offset some of my other things, you know, non non strengths and…    Michael:  So well said…    Chandra:  My non strengths and so that those two things combined, really helped elevate it, because what I would find is that my dreamer visionary personality would sometimes scare others away, I want to do this, and I am doing this, and I'm going to do this and this is my business plan and I'm 50% here and my business plan. And I'm, you know, and that would scare other other business partners away, right and so with him, it was like, launch, hey, what if we were to get 50 investors? What can we do with that? Okay, great do we have the contractors, okay, I've got two contractors, great. And so our strengths just started to really escalate and so our so that's what I find, I found that find somebody that's like me, like me, but also can bring some other skillset to the table was what has launched exponential growth.  So focusing on what my strengths were first, getting in align with that getting the business plan in line with that, and then bringing on business partner just it was what's the saying? It's like, preparation meets opportunity as luck, you know, by Random Play as luck, right? Preparation met opportunity when we when we partnered.    Michael:  Totally and so those first four partners that you had to do those flips with successfully, you said the relationship was great. I mean, why did you keep why did you do a fifth flip with somebody else? Why didn't you go back to any of those four?    Chandra:  Um, great question. You know, there's a property that comes up, and I'm all I was always seeking investors or partners to partner with me on those properties and they were out of cash, or they didn't want to invest into, you know, different counties with me or different things. And so I bring in other business partners for those other reasons.  And with Daniel, Daniel's his name, my partner, now, he was ready to go, he didn't care where we invested, he was comfortable bringing other investors to the table to launch our business, all that kind of stuff. So again, it was more of our synergy and actually, I have partner Daniel and I have partnered with now, some of those first first investors on some deals that we've gone back to and flipped with, so yeah…    Michael:  That's awesome, that's awesome. Chandra, I want to be very respectful of your time, and I'll get to the chat here. But any final thoughts for any of the listeners out there who are just getting started, words of wisdom?    Chandra:  Yeah, I would love to speak a little bit more on the remote investing because I think that that is when you're a seasoned investor when you flipped a couple houses or you your house hacking or your you know, comfortable you know, and but yet you know that your business plan is this or your dream was to do this. I would really recommend, look into areas that you either want to retire one day that you would love to visit and make it fun to go remote invest like make it something that's exciting.  We just bought a vacation rental on the coast and so now there's this great exciting ocean beach house that all our families get to enjoy and share so stepping out in remote investing can be a little weary but I will say if you make it something that is exciting place that you've always wanted to go you know something that's fun for you to look in those numbers or talk to people in that community or go visit, you will love to step out remote vesting and then you'll be like oh maybe I should buy a house in Hawaii or so don't all the places I'm looking at right now you know so, so that's exciting about remote investing and I would really encourage you to take that step if you're looking for an easy angle into it that's what I found was really easy.          Michael:  We say in my family, you know do things for multiple reasons and this is like a prime example you kill in so many birds well you're checking a lot of boxes we don't need to kill any birds and Bobby invest but we're checking a lot of boxes with one fell swoop which is really cool.    Chandra:  Yeah… Yeah, we don’t kill birds here in Seattle, right? They're protected. I'm almost positive so...    Michael:  That's awesome. Well, Chandra, if people have more questions for you want to reach out get in touch with you? What's the best way for them to do that?    Chandra:  I would love to connect with everybody on my Instagram, it is: @chandralacyrealestate_ .We also have a website our company's name is called: Yila – Y I L A,  that's insight, that's our last names combined. http://yilahomes.com/ ,we have a website you can visit there. Also, you can visit us on social media for @yilahomes as well. So love, love to connect with all of you guys in those places, I'm very social, and will answer all DMS and messages. So please hit me up, let's talk.    Michael:  Amazing. Well, thank you so much again for coming on and dropping so much knowledge sharing your story. Really appreciate it and I'm sure we will chat soon.    Chandra:  Me either guys, appreciate it.    Michael:  Oh my pleasure, take care.    Chandra:  Bye.    Michael:  Alright everyone, well, that was our episode a big, big, big thank you to Chandra, thank you so much for coming on for sharing your story for being vulnerable with us and for encouraging others to reach out to you. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to see you on the next one.  Happy investing…