Mastering Real Estate, Partnerships, and Global Investing with Shiloh Lundahl

Christian (00:02.234)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. have my special guest here Shiloh. Shiloh is a husband, a father, therapist, and an international real estate investor. Shiloh, I’m super excited to talk with you about everything that you have experience in. sounds like you’ve been in this industry and doing a lot of great things for a long time. So Shiloh, how about you introduce to the people, you know, who you are, you know, how you got here, and I’ll let you take it from there.

Shiloh Lundahl (00:26.161)
Sure. Thanks, Christian. Thanks for having me on your show. So my name is Shiloh Lundahl, and I am an international real estate investor and real estate investing coach. I’ve been investing in real estate since 2010.

but more actively since 2015, 2016. And so the way that I kind of got into real estate was, you know, I was reading the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, back in the day, and, you know, it talks about the importance of having real estate. And so this was back in the crash and I was in Arizona and the prices in the area that I was in had dropped like, I don’t know, like 70%.

And I bought a property at that time and so I got a really good deal. And they were still depressed for the next couple of years. And so I bought another property in my same neighborhood. It’s like a five bedroom, three bathroom home on a golf course for like 90,000 bucks. And so it was awesome. And I also knew the people that wanted to live in the neighborhood. So I asked them before I bought it if they’d want to move in, if I bought the house and they said, yeah. And so I had opened up a home equity line of credit.

And because I had just graduated from college like the year before, I didn’t have a whole lot of money, but I did have some equity in the house that I purchased. Anyway, so we took, and it was a small equity line of credit, but we took it out and we were able to purchase that home. And then the people moved in and it worked out great. They lived there for five years. They purchased the house and with that $50,000 that I gained over the five year period.

I took that and I invested it in some real estate education. So I did a program in 2000, I think it was 15 and 16, and that really kind of got me going more with real estate. And I had a buddy that was doing it. He and I partnered up and we built a large real estate portfolio of up to about 250 units over a, I think it was a five, six year period of time. And most of those were about 80 were single family homes that we sell on lease options. So that’s kind of my.

Shiloh Lundahl (02:33.352)
my niche that I do really, really well with. buy properties and I’ll sell them on lease options. We also picked up some mobile home parks, some small multifamily, a commercial building. And then I have five nice short-term rentals or vacation rentals. Three of them are in Costa Rica and two of them are in the mountains here in Arizona. And that’s kind of my story. And then since then, my partner and I have kind of split up the company and I still have about 50 single family homes. still have…

vacation rentals, still have some mobile home parks and things like that. So anyway, that’s my story briefly.

Christian (03:06.938)
Well, that’s incredible Shalo, that’s incredible. So I mean, to get to 250 properties, right? I mean, that’s huge. mean, could you share maybe some strategies, maybe some challenges that you went through of like building your 250 property portfolio when you had it, and maybe just maybe how you leverage key partnerships that fueled your growth.

Shiloh Lundahl (03:26.844)
Yeah, I those are really good questions. So if we look back in 2010, I bought my first property. Didn’t do anything else because after reading Richard at Port Ad, I also read Dave Ramsey’s book about getting out of debt and stuff like that. And so I really focused on that, which there’s a lot of merit to his information. I think it helps a lot of people. But if you’re looking at really kind of building wealth, I don’t know if his…

Christian (03:28.794)
Mm.

Shiloh Lundahl (03:54.648)
His strategy is as good as building wealth quickly. You can do it very slowly through his program, but there are other ways of doing it quicker. so I was just focused on getting out of debt for the next couple of years. And then 2014, this building where I’m sitting in right now, this is actually a therapy office. So I’m a therapist, a child and family therapist in Arizona. And the building that I have my practice in, it came up for sale.

And so I talked with the other therapists and I’m like, hey, do you mind if I try to buy this property? And they’re like, yeah, sure, whatever, that’s fine. And I don’t know if they thought that I could really do it, but with different resources, I had some help from some family and I had my experience in purchasing real estate. So I ended up buying this property, this building, had six therapists, bought the other half of the building as well. And so I…

filled it with 12 therapists. And it was a, I don’t know, it just kind of made a switch in my mind to where it’s like, wow, I can really do this. I can buy properties. And so from there, so that was a big kind of pivotal moment when I purchased this commercial building. I went back and I thought, you know, I remember listening to Robert Kiyosaki. I wonder if he has any other books. And lo and behold, he has a lot of other books. And so I started listening to his other books.

And as I was listening to those books, I don’t know, I just got really motivated, contacted a buddy of mine who helped me buy that property back in 2010. And I said, I want to do a deal with you. And so he had done real estate as an investor, but then he lost everything in the crash of 2008, nine. And so he was just kind of starting to get back into it. And as he was getting back into it, he had a deal and he’s like, well, you can lend on this deal.

And I had a home equity line of credit that was available. So I took money out of that to lend on this deal and he structured the whole thing. Didn’t have any money out of his own pocket. Most of it was just my money, but he structured everything. And then when all was said and done, I got like 13,000 out of the deal and he made like 40,000 out of the deal. And that was kind of another pivotal moment where I’m like, wow, this could really work. And so my wife and I are watching some.

Christian (06:06.17)
Hmm.

Shiloh Lundahl (06:15.204)
know, flip or flop and, you know, different flipping shows. And so we thought, well, let’s give it a go. And so I get another property from kind of at the auction and I take me like six months to do it from start to finish. And I ended up losing $5,000 on the deal. But I learned a lot throughout the process and it was, you know, it was an experience. I do another deal with somebody and I make like 7,000. And so my first year in 2015 that I really kind of was, you know,

trying to do this more seriously, I lost 5,001, gained 13, gained seven. So it isn’t like a super stellar year if you look at it, but for me it was huge because it taught me that this is a real thing. I can actually really make money doing this. Then the next year we do like seven deals and between us we both made about $95,000 on

on our flips that year. And so for my buddy and I, the way that we kind of got into partnership together was we just tried out one deal to see how it worked and it worked out well. our friendship was, cause he was a neighbor of mine and I knew he was an investor and he was a cool guy, but our relationship just kind of got stronger and stronger and stronger along the way. And it was really cool to see how that relationship was growing and our business was growing. And so after doing a deal and then another deal and another deal, we thought,

hey, why don’t we just become partners and we’ll start buying and holding? Because we went to a training in Arizona that talked about lease options. At this point in time, a lot of the margins for profit were getting smaller and smaller because more and more people were jumping into it and they were willing to buy the properties for higher and higher. And so, know, the margins of profit were getting smaller. And so we go to a training on lease options here in Arizona with a guy named John Burley and he does a really awesome training.

for really inexpensive. And so we go to this like three day training, it like 300 bucks. Of course he teaches you and then he says, well, you can learn more by going to this more thorough training. It’s a year long program. But we only went to the first training and it was really good. We got a lot of great nuggets out of it. And we thought, okay, let’s take what he’s talking about and let’s take what we know and let’s put it together and let’s see if we can.

Shiloh Lundahl (08:39.297)
really make this work really well. And so we did, we were able to take what he had, buy properties really under market value, and then kind of merge them together. And then we would sell these properties on lease options. So that was kind of how we got started. We got started with a home equity line of credit. I purchased this building. Then I started doing a few flips with that home equity line, got a buddy, we became a good partner.

And then we just started buying properties that we could buy well under market value. But then the problem became, when we went to refinance a lot of these properties, the bank would only give us like, either, what was it? They’d give us 70 % of the new ARV, after repair value, after we fixed everything up and got it reappraised, they’d give us 70 % of that value, or they would give us 80 % of what we bought it for.

plus what we rehabbed it for. So if we found a really good deal, like let’s say we found a property for, that should be worth 300,000, but we were able to get it for 200,000, but it needed like $30,000 worth of work. Well, if we bought it for 200, we put 30,000 into it and it was worth 300, the bank, rather than giving us 70 % of 300, which I think would be 210,000,

It gave us 80 % of 230, which was a lot less. I’m not doing the math in my mind right now, but it was a lot less. And so we had to leave like 30, 40, $50,000 into each purchase that we did. And our loan to value was in like between 50 and like 65%. It was just really, really low. And so yeah, we were cash flowing on some of these, but I mean, it took all of the money out of my HELOC and then we were able to…

Christian (10:26.97)
Mm-hmm.

Shiloh Lundahl (10:35.582)
We got other loans, personal loans and business loans and lines of credit and things like that. And I’d worked really, really hard with banks in order to build up these money sources. And we even used 0 % interest credit cards and everything like that. And that can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing and if you aren’t really good with money. But my wife and I had been really, really good with money. We’d budgeted ever since we got married and we knew where every dollar.

went that came into our house. And so we were really good with budgeting. We were really good at making payments on time. And so it didn’t worry me a lot to use 0 % interest credit cards because it’s like, hey, if I can use this 0 % interest card for a year and I can use that money three times during that time, then it would help pay for all of the repairs and everything. I this is great because 0 % interest, I pay 3 % upfront and then

I don’t have to pay interest the whole year. And so we used a lot of those, but we used them wisely in order to be able to build our portfolio. But then it came to a moment where it’s like, don’t have a lot of cash and we have all of these properties and they’re leveraged at like 50%. And so I went to a banker that was suggested to me by one of the teachers that one of these investor was at the education program that I went to.

I made a good friend with one of the presenters and he gave me the name of his banker. So I call his banker. I’m like, hey, so-and-so referred me to you. And so I was able to name drop and he’s like, oh, okay, well, how can I help you? He said, well, I have all these properties. have like 17 properties. I need to get them refinanced. And so he’s like, all right, well, I can do that for you. So he went and he gave me a loan for like $1.7 million on all of these properties. It was able to cash out.

and pay off all of the second position notes that we had. That’s another thing I should explain that really helped us, but basically helped us refinance a lot of these. Let me go back just a little bit to explain that second position note thing. So as we’re growing, we get to that point where we can’t really grow anymore because all of our money is just in all of these properties. I take a guy out to lunch, which is kind of what I I don’t know, become accustomed to doing is every week I would take out somebody that was investing to lunch just so I can kind of network with them and…

Christian (12:32.314)
Mm-hmm.

Christian (12:38.095)
Okay.

Shiloh Lundahl (12:56.171)
and get to know them and they can get to know me. And I told this one guy that, you know, I’m struggling growing just because, you know, lot of my money is in these properties. And he said, well, how would it be if you just like sold a note on the back end? Like you can, like a property that you have leveraged really low, you can bring somebody in in second position and then you can kind of take out some equity from that property through a note, through a second position note. So I started to do that and I was able to again, raise…

money from doing that to continue to grow. And then when I refinanced everything, everything worked out really well. We were able to refinance everything. Now, today is a different market than it was back in 2016 and 17. I totally understand that. And so, would I suggest doing this? I would suggest making sure that you have enough money in reserves. Reserves are really, really important. And so, what we did is we

We weren’t as mindful about our reserves and we were just growing and growing and growing. And we continued to do that up until COVID happened. And then what happened during COVID is they said, well, there’s going to be an eviction moratorium where you can’t evict people. And the good thing is we had a lot of our properties were lease option properties. So people had a higher like urgency or incentive to make sure that they were paying their rent on time.

so they could continue to buy the property. So that was great. But at the same time, it scared me thinking that they could just, the government could just decide, hey, you can’t evict anybody. And so people could just stop paying. We were lucky enough to where we didn’t have that happen with a lot of our properties. Again, we had mostly single family homes that had least option tenants in there, but it scared me enough to where I’m like, okay, we need to make sure that we have enough money in reserves.

to make sure we’re going to be okay. And so we slowed down some buying, we shored up some of our accounts to make sure that we had reserves so it could help us get through three or four months with people not paying. anyway, those are just some pivotal things that have kind of helped us along the way is strategic partnerships that worked out really well. Learning about second position notes helped us a lot. Being able to refinance properties helped us a lot. Learning how banks work.

Shiloh Lundahl (15:23.606)
So now I do things in such a way to where I can buy a property and when I go to refinance it, I’m able to get 70 % of the ARV without having to wait the seasoning period. And I would say that that, out of everything that we’ve done, has probably been one of the things that has helped us grow the most, has been being able to buy these properties in such a way to where we don’t have to wait for seasoning.

Christian (15:51.256)
Wow. That is, that is a journey Shiloh. That is, that is a journey. I’m interested if you can talk about too, I know you have some properties in Costa Rica. I’m curious on why Costa Rica. And I know you also, you know, host masterminds, your own retreats over there. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that as well?

Shiloh Lundahl (16:09.814)
Sure. So, you know, along my investing journey, I learned about the importance and value of mastermind groups. And so there was an investor that was, you know, ahead of me with experience and knowledge and everything. And he invited me to go to this meeting where they were going to talk about, you know, this mastermind groups that they were going to be starting up. So I went there and it was…

an awesome group. I sat there, I listened to it, and it was one of those paid mastermind groups. It was, I think, a $30,000 mastermind group for a year. And I thought about it, and I’m like, you know what? I definitely want to be around people that are doing things at a higher level than me. And at the time, I only had about 200 units, 200 properties altogether. But I thought, you know what? This would be valuable to me. So I spent the $30,000. I go into this.

mastermind meeting and, or I’m sorry, sign up for this mastermind group and it was gonna be three events over the next year, right? And they would have weekly calls and things like that where you can learn and grow and stuff. And for me it was super, super valuable because I saw how people that are doing things at a high level, how they do business with each other. And it seemed like everybody was doing business with each other in the room and I was the small fish in that room. I had 200 units.

But I was a small fish. The next person next to me had 300 units. Everybody else had, you know, well over that. There was a guy that had a net worth of $400 million in there. There was, you know, some people that were doing things at a really high level. And it was a really cool group. Anyway, in that group, I talked with a buddy and I showed him this picture of this house that I saw in Costa Rica. Now, I used to live in Costa Rica. I did some missionary work down in Costa Rica about

25 years ago and I loved it. It was beautiful. I met wonderful people and You know, there’s a piece of my heart that was always left there in Costa Rica and so I you know was always curious and would look around here and there but I saw this house was on the mountaintop and had a main house and had a guest house and I’m like, my goodness This looks beautiful whenever I show people the picture they’re like they swear that a drug lord lives in that house because it’s like in all of those movies that you see

Christian (18:30.265)
Yeah.

Shiloh Lundahl (18:38.388)
You see the drug lord’s house and it’s like, wow, it’s that beautiful. Well, it is. It’s really that beautiful. So they, they listed this house at 1.25 million, but it was right at the beginning of COVID and they shut down, traveled to Costa Rica all throughout COVID. And so they hadn’t gotten any showings for like a year and I saw it and I called up the realtor and like, Hey, I’m interested in this house. Cause actually they listed at 1.25, but they dropped it $500,000 to $750,000.

And I’m like, I’m really interested in this house. Tell me the story. Said, well, the owner is older and it’s on two and a half acres. He can’t really take care of all the grounds and his health is failing. And so he’s really just looking to downsize. So I’m like, all right. So I’m like, well, I’d like to fly out there and I’d like to take a look at it. And I also talked to him about doing maybe some seller financing and things like that. And at the beginning, they were open to seller financing.

So go out there, we take a look at it, we think, this is awesome, we should get this. But then they said, no, we’re not gonna do seller financing. So going back to the mastermind group, I show my buddy this house and I’m like, dude, I wanna, you know, this would be awesome by this house. He looked at it he’s like, dude, I’m in, I’ll do this house with you, we’ll buy it. And so I’m like, all right. So, you know, this guy, again, he’s somebody that does like between 60 and 100 flips a year and, you know, he was just doing really well at the time. And so I’m like, all right, well, yeah, let’s do it.

So we got other people that were interested in owning a property down in Costa Rica. We got all together and we pulled our money together, created a partnership, and we purchased this house down in Costa Rica. Then we went down there and we converted. There was also a shop on the property. We converted the shop to a caretaker house. And then people that I’d known as a missionary, I asked them if they wanted to come live on the property and they did. So they came, they lived on the property.

and they take care of the property. They take care of all of the guests when they come, because we put the property on Airbnb. We put the property on VRBO. It’s called Bella Vista Private Resort out in Costa Rica. Beautiful property. And then we rent it out. And this last year, we got about $150,000 worth of bookings. And so it’s worked out well. It’s paid for itself. It’s also paid the owners a little bit as well. And then I host

Christian (20:54.938)
Wow.

Shiloh Lundahl (21:02.74)
retreats out there. I host mastermind retreats for high level investors, people that have done 50 or more deals or sorry, they’ve done 50 or more deals or they have 50 or more properties, they’ve become a millionaire through real estate investing. So I’ll take them down there and we get together, it’s usually a smaller group from maybe 10 to 15 people, but we’re able to talk about how our business is going, what we’re struggling with and kind of get some information from one another and how to really, I don’t know,

just do better with what we’re doing, how to have better systems. If you have a problem, it’s likely that somebody else in that group has had that problem before and they can help you learn how to do it, right? So those are the mastermind groups that I do out there. And I actually have one coming up at the end of April of 2025. And so I’m kind of advertising that on some different platforms and reaching out to people that I know have a lot of real estate experience. But then in August, I do an investor…

retreat for people that are newer investors that want to learn how to invest in real estate. And so I’ll bring them out there. And then during the retreat, I teach them six things. So I teach them how to find properties that are under market value, how to get initial funding for the properties, how to find contractors that can help you get them all fixed up, how to find tenants, how to find, and I do a lot of lease options. So I teach people how to find lease option tenants and then how to get long-term financing.

and then how to manage it. So those are the basic six things. If you want to learn how to invest in real estate in single-family homes or in small multifamily, those are the six things that you need to know. How to find good deals, how to get them funded initially, how to get them fixed up, how to find a tenant that’s going to work out well for you, then how to get long-term financing and then how to manage it. And so if you know each of those six things really well, you’re going to do really well. But if you don’t, then you may not do really well because all of those things are necessary.

So that’s what I teach people that are new that want to go out there and have an amazing week in Costa Rica, but then also really learn how to invest. And it isn’t just like the common retreat or something you go to where the person up top is just talking, talking, talking. I say, bring your laptops. Okay, for the next two hours, I’m going to show you how to find. This is how you find. Get your laptops open. Type in this. Go here. Go there. And so it’s a working, it’s more of a workshop than a retreat. And then, okay, this is how you find hard money lenders that are going to help you.

Shiloh Lundahl (23:28.532)
and then you go here and you type in this and you know what I mean? And so it’s really great because then during that week you have the ability to even make offers on properties and we can analyze it. so one of the things that I would say is the worst thing with conferences or retreats or things like that is that you hear things and you’re like, that’s wonderful. Yeah, I should do that. But if you’re not practicing it, it’s likely that you’re not doing it when you get back.

Christian (23:48.058)
You

Shiloh Lundahl (23:58.092)
So I think for me, I’m a very hands-on learner. I say, don’t tell me how to do something, show me how to do something. So if I’m doing it and I feel, this is what it feels like to do it, it’s kind of like swimming. How do you swim? We get in the water. I can’t really teach you really well how to swim on land, but I can teach you how to swim in the water. So we throw them in the water and we say, this is how you swim. anyway, those are the mastermind retreats I do. And I have three properties out in Costa Rica. They’re absolutely awesome. One has…

Christian (24:12.73)
That’s right.

Shiloh Lundahl (24:26.763)
you know, I want to talk to you about the mountain house as three properties, a total of nine bedrooms, seven bathrooms. And then we have one up in La Fortuna, which is the rainforest, has 10 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms. Then we have one on the beach, has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms. Just these are big properties that are just beautiful. And they’re really, really fun to run retreats out of.

Christian (24:45.85)
That’s awesome. I definitely want to come now. That’s awesome Shiloh. Well how can people find you? How can people work with you? Why don’t you share some information on that.

Shiloh Lundahl (24:54.281)
Yeah, so let’s see. I go on BiggerPockets and I share some things on BiggerPockets sometimes. My website, easiest way to see all of my links and everything is just to go to meetshiloh.com. So M-E-E-T-S-H-I-L-O-H.com. And from there, you can see what I do. You can connect with my social media accounts. What else? The Costa Rica properties that I have, the cabins that I have.

So that’s probably the easiest way to connect with me.

Christian (25:27.418)
Awesome, awesome, you heard it here first guys and we will drop your descriptions as well in all of our socials. Awesome, LaShallow, thank you so much for your time today. I know I definitely learned a lot. I know the audience as well and definitely be sure to reach out to Shiloh guys. Definitely has a wealth of experience. So other than that, guys, we will see you on the next episode as always and take care everybody.

Shiloh Lundahl (25:54.538)
I do.