Buy and Hold Strategy: Your Path to Lasting Wealth in Real Estate

John Harcar (00:01.436)
All right. Hey, guys. Welcome back to our show. I’m John Harcar, your host. And I’m here today with Jennifer Ruelens. Hope I said that right. And we’re going to talk about, besides her journey in business and in real estate, we’re going to talk a little about how she educates the buy and hold investor. Guys, remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 5X your business. We provide tools and resources to grow the business that you want to grow.

And in turn helps you live that life that you’ve always dreamed of. Jennifer, welcome to our show. Yeah, I’m excited to talk about educating the buy and hold investor as a buy and hold investor myself. I’m curious. Curious to see what you say. But before we talk about all that, tell our audience about you, right? Your background in business and real estate and kind of what got you to today.

Jennifer Ruelens (00:36.462)
Thanks so much, John.

Jennifer Ruelens (00:57.486)
Totally. Well today I am Hold It With PM Jen and I’m the broker and owner of One Focus Property Management, the largest property management company in North Central Pennsylvania. And I’ve been doing that for about 12 years. But 22 years ago I got into this business, I got out of college, had a business that failed pretty quickly. Terrific experience, but I could always sell things. And so I needed a job. I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and I got a job leasing apartments at an apartment community. And it was a troubled community for various reasons, but they

John Harcar (01:15.42)
Mmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (01:27.44)
me as the leasing agent and within it was like 88 % occupied 300 doors I got it to a hundred percent in ten months uh-huh and they got it I got it to a hundred percent occupied in ten months and they were like you you’re real tall and bold and 22 and tons of energy you get to manage the place now so I was a 22 year old property manager in Harrisburg and just every I always say you know

John Harcar (01:32.966)
Wow, 300, okay.

Jennifer Ruelens (01:53.314)
When God was giving out things, they were like, hey, everything a property manager needs, let’s put it in this call one and see what happens.

John Harcar (01:56.988)
Right.

Jennifer Ruelens (01:59.502)
And it really, took to it like a duck to water. I did really well there. The housing crisis hit and like all great careers in real estate when we have those big corrections in the market, we pivot. I pivoted myself right into a full ride to do an MBA at Penn State. So I made out at Penn State for two years, studied finance and real estate, came out and like all the good single ladies, met a man here in Williamsport where there was not anything going on for a real estate MBA. What would I do without even an appointment?

John Harcar (02:15.067)
Wow.

John Harcar (02:27.515)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (02:29.455)
apartment community hardly in town. So I reached out on LinkedIn to anyone who was anyone in real estate. I was like, hey, I love property management. I’m a buy and hold girly. I’d love to know what’s going on here. Will you talk to me? By the way, I don’t sell houses because of course I have a license to do this work in Pennsylvania. You need that. But I’m not going to be your your remax agent. Right. So anyway, one very good enterprising local broker said, hey, what was going on in my region here? If you’ve heard of fracking like natural gas, a lot of that activity

John Harcar (02:57.403)
Yeah,

Jennifer Ruelens (02:59.375)
was happening back in 2010, 2012. And so that created a lot of real estate turmoil. The local market leader said, hey, we’re getting a lot of requests for this. Like we’re getting people who want to be in this business or they’re finding it challenging now with all the out of town people. Anyway, I said, well, good news. I will build that company with you. And so years later, I bought that partner out. It’s called One Focus Property Management. we, I work now, what I used to do, all those policies, how I learned how to run 300 to 500 doors at a time, I bring

John Harcar (03:27.92)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (03:29.315)
that to you who might own one door in my market, two doors in my market, I’ve got clients who own 50 doors. So you can’t get access to this kind of education expertise and processes like my company represents very easily. And what I love so much, what I’m so jazzed about my company and what we offer is that small town rural America housing is…

John Harcar (03:32.795)
Mmm.

John Harcar (03:42.949)
Right?

Jennifer Ruelens (03:55.342)
It’s unsexy. It’s not sexy. But the returns, my man, the average cap rate on MLS listed multifamilies in my market last year was 11%. Eleven. Now, here’s the truth of the matter. Not a lot of highly skilled professional people here doing work for maybe you, the out of town investor, and our housing’s in rough condition. Where are you located, John?

John Harcar (04:09.499)
Yeah.

John Harcar (04:21.595)
Boise. Yes.

Jennifer Ruelens (04:22.475)
Boise. So I don’t know how it is in Boise, but I imagine the real estate’s a little bit newer. Your buildings are a little bit newer. Here in the Northeast, hardly anything in my portfolio is less than 90 years old.

John Harcar (04:33.527)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys have a lot of more historical properties and all that type of stuff. Yeah.

Jennifer Ruelens (04:37.877)
Yeah, so it’s old housing. Imagine Victorian mansions that have been split up into apartments and resplit in the quality of that work that happens over the years. so.

John Harcar (04:46.971)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (04:48.309)
It’s inexpensive real estate. There’s low barriers to entry, but there’s high barriers to holding it. It’s a bit complex that way. But I tell you, once you figure it out, it’s really not that hard. Figuring out a market like this isn’t hard. We’ve got 12 years in it and a great reputation. So my passion is bringing this expertise to make it possible for the nurse who wants to hold onto that house with a 3 % interest rate when she upgrades her house to the new big house. But she’s scared of tenancy. She’s scared of the risk.

John Harcar (05:02.714)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (05:18.725)
let me reduce the risk, let you make the returns. Yeah.

John Harcar (05:22.811)
Awesome. Okay, cool. If you’ve ever watched any of my podcasts, I go backwards. I start backwards. I love the backstory because I think the backstory tells a lot about, you know, and relates a lot to a lot of people. So before you got into being a 300, that’s a pretty cool gig. Did you have any influence in real estate in your life? Did you have any people that were agents, that were builders, that were flippers, that were anything?

Jennifer Ruelens (05:49.998)
There are two, so I come from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. So everybody had a family farm. So to that end, we understood like you didn’t rent. I knew two things about real estate. In my family, we don’t deal with realtors. We thought they were all crooks. That’s how I was raised. And now I’m a broker, right?

John Harcar (05:53.307)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:58.032)
Great.

John Harcar (06:04.027)
Exclamation point a disclaimer that is not the view of investor fuel.

Jennifer Ruelens (06:10.241)
R-

Right, it’s not the fuel of investor fuel, but I’m also not a realtor because I don’t buy and sell real estate, so right? The other one, and this always amuses people, like I said, everybody had a family farm and we drove by one time in Lancaster a small garden apartment community and I said to my mother, hey, what are those? And she said, those are apartments. That’s where divorced people live. So I swear to you, I didn’t know an apartment until I went to college and I knew student housing and then I came out of college and I was working at an apartment community. I had never lived at one.

John Harcar (06:14.447)
There, right, right, right.

John Harcar (06:30.842)
Wow.

Jennifer Ruelens (06:40.591)
I had never been at one, but it’s just business. And I’d worked in hotels, and it really was kind of like you just extend the hospitality a little bit.

John Harcar (06:44.047)
Yeah.

John Harcar (06:49.539)
Right. your first introduction was when you were that leasing agent, kind of. That was kind of like your first sort of getting your feet wet in there. OK. So then after you went back and you studied finance and real estate and you get out into the, you know, starting your business, I mean, what were some of the struggles that you started and you ran through in the beginning?

Jennifer Ruelens (06:53.453)
Really.

Jennifer Ruelens (07:06.433)
Yeah, the

First one that was immediate was I had when I worked at different multifamily communities. I had done repositioning. I had gotten them out of different things, right? I knew how to problem solve that. I didn’t imagine that like a regular consumer, like a DIY investor bringing me four doors. I didn’t anticipate them to be in as rough a shape as they were. I didn’t imagine somebody would come to me with four doors, two, two occupied, one performing, one not right? And then two completely in

They need to be renovated. wasn’t I thought we’d have smaller problems to fix but it makes total sense If your property is sending you a check every month and it’s not giving you an ulcer You’re not calling a property manager So I really am sometimes if I’m not being called before you get into it I’m usually being called at a point of crisis and I like to say my my gentleman investors will lose about $20,000 before they’ll call me that they’re willing to admit to and my female investors will call me before they ever walk a door

John Harcar (07:39.375)
Rehab, yeah.

John Harcar (08:06.171)
There you go.

Jennifer Ruelens (08:07.855)
They’ll mentally walk through it and go, I need help through this journey. And so, yeah, I didn’t expect that, that there’d be so much kind of like rehab and re-stabilizing properties. Now we have this, my whole onboarding process is built around stabilizing the property. And that is, and then maintaining that stabilized status. The other thing for those who dream of making real estate full-time, right? I’m an excellent property manager.

John Harcar (08:20.315)
That’s right.

Jennifer Ruelens (08:36.981)
I can manage a hundred doors in my sleep. And if you gave me a remote team member virtual assistant, I’d be on the beach all freaking day. I could do that. No problem.

When I wanted to scale my company and grow to like where we are now, 600 doors, 15 team members, the job is really much more that of leading a team, that of keeping the bills paid and the cash available and kind of policing our processes in the machine. And our company, I struggled for a while because so much of my job wasn’t managing properties anymore. It was managing team, selecting team, holding people accountable. Right, the people part of it.

John Harcar (09:11.717)
many people. Yeah.

Jennifer Ruelens (09:16.111)
who say, I’m going to acquire at X-Rate until I’m here at this point, and then it’s smooth sailing. And the thing I wish I could just kind of grab their collar and go, man, that’s where it gets hard.

John Harcar (09:30.319)
Yeah, that’s where that’s where it goes up a level. What are you talking about easier?

Jennifer Ruelens (09:33.565)
Exactly. And so we talk about hitting a ceiling. I’m an EOS company and we talk about hitting the ceiling. Like you just can’t get past a barrier. All those barriers for me have been internal to my leadership ability. So I’ve had to invest much more heavily in that than I ever thought I would have to. And so those were two big surprises about building this business.

John Harcar (09:54.822)
How did you get your mindset right of dealing with people versus processes? The EOS.

Jennifer Ruelens (09:59.434)
EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. can’t see it. grab this here. I keep the book.

John Harcar (10:05.219)
Yeah, we use that. We use that with our investor fuel mastermind as well. Traction. Fantastic book. Yeah.

Jennifer Ruelens (10:10.269)
Saved, saved my business, made me fall back in love with my business. There was a time I famously talk about I wanted to sell everything and bail. But I’m so young and pretty, there’s not enough equity, right? I gotta get old and wrinkly to have enough equity. You know what I mean.

John Harcar (10:22.843)
you’re crazy. All right, so another topic here. No. So what does your business look like now? know you just said a few minutes ago you got about 600 doors. Do you have any personal doors that you own? Are these all just people or properties you manage?

Jennifer Ruelens (10:40.673)
The vast majority are people I manage, but I do have a small portfolio of personal doors that I have in there, just like clients. Yep. Actually, I just got an offer accepted before this podcast. So yes, two more doors to be added here in the next two months. Thank you, thank you. It is a duplex and it’s in Jersey Shore and it’s an unsexy little two unit that I’ll own till I’m very old woman.

John Harcar (10:47.692)
Awesome. Are you looking to grow more doors?

John Harcar (10:56.697)
Congratulations, a duplex? Or is it… Okay.

John Harcar (11:05.903)
There you go. Does it need any type of work?

Jennifer Ruelens (11:08.401)
It does. It needs windows. It needs a new HVAC system, which we’ll be able to separate. It’s oil and it’s one boiler. Separate, put in natural gas, and yeah, and some windows is the big thing, but I’ve actually managed it for like eight years. So I’m buying it on my own client. I’m buying, which is one of the wonderful things about property management. So I’ll give two plugs to investors about property management. You all look down your noses.

John Harcar (11:16.039)
Okay

John Harcar (11:23.579)
okay, so you know the property already. isn’t a one. Okay, got it.

John Harcar (11:33.665)
I was going to ask him, yeah, was going to ask you what are some good tips you can give as a property manager?

Jennifer Ruelens (11:38.158)
Young investors, if you’re getting into this business and you have a view of, or you want to be in real estate sales, get a job at a multifamily housing company. Get a job turning units, leasing apartments, managing the books. There is nowhere you will get the reps in. And I really aligned to the leasing agent example. Where else will you get to do…

introductions like like the sales process 10 times a day I would do 10 tours a day that is 10 sales Inquiries closing processes and then what’s unique about housing is I have to sell sell sell Then I have to get your personal information out of you and do an underwriting process right see if you’re good enough and then bring you on so that process is just a

John Harcar (12:10.352)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (12:24.377)
Right.

Jennifer Ruelens (12:28.937)
Rentals is just a shortened abbreviated version of the home sales process So if you want to be a top realtor when this market turns up Today while the market’s slow go get your license go get a job making 40k a year plus You know $100 a lease bonus at some. I’m near State College There’s hundreds of units down there that need leasing agents go lease for one year Go learn fair housing inside now go learn underwriting. You’ll do I did I lease a hundred

John Harcar (12:50.939)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (12:59.011)
doors my first year. Okay, now you know what you’re doing. And then if you make a career in property management, deal flow baby.

John Harcar (13:08.496)
Yeah.

Jennifer Ruelens (13:09.323)
Who do you call when you have a problem with your property? So when it’s appropriate, when it’s in my market, in my buy box, I can very easily just say to somebody, hey, I buy as well. Now I have to handle it carefully, obviously, but yes, you, but in this case, the client called me and said, hey, I’m thinking about selling. I tried to talk him out of it. I always do, because he doesn’t actually have a good reason. He’s just kind of sick of it, which is fine. He’s allowed to do whatever he wants.

John Harcar (13:20.889)
Hey, I’ll take it, yeah.

John Harcar (13:33.755)
Tired landlord man. I mean, hey, that’s what they’re called. That’s why they’re called those.

Jennifer Ruelens (13:39.243)
And I said, I’d be happy to make a referral, because again, I don’t sell things to put it out on the open market. That’s the best way to get your best price, but I’ll also make you an offer before you do any of that. And he says, I like the sound of that. A lot of people like the inside deals, and there’s a lot of property managers I know around the country doing this.

John Harcar (13:49.212)
that. easy peasy. Yeah, I mean, if I was a property manager, I’d be the first thing I’d make sure that’s on my list of when I talk to people. I know, by the way, when you’re ready to sell a house or buy property, what do you contribute to your keys to success your keys to your business and your growth?

Jennifer Ruelens (14:02.869)
Right.

Jennifer Ruelens (14:12.599)
commitment to expertise and education. So I am hell-bent on having the best team in the world. So we pursue certifications, we pursue education, we are continuously improving every day. I don’t, we are way better property managers than anyone in our market. I want to stand up against the best of the best and…

John Harcar (14:33.051)
Mmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (14:33.971)
We are on that path and we’re unrelenting and I believe a rising tide lifts all ships. So I am aiming to drag my market from the depths because really it’s unsophisticated here and it treats, know, if we look at investors not making their returns on things, we have tenants being discriminated against. We have tenants not getting good housing conditions, being treated unfairly. And I truly believe if you insert professional property management between this, you

John Harcar (14:44.123)
You

John Harcar (14:57.968)
Right.

Jennifer Ruelens (15:03.875)
cat and mouse dynamic of landlord tenant, both sides get better outcomes. And if we have better outcomes in housing, we have stronger communities. And so that’s a big, huge overlook picture. But when I look at my life’s work and go, what can I do for central Pennsylvania? One vision I have is I want to teach every 17 year old in like the area school districts, a fair housing class, two hours their senior year, how to pursue housing, how to take care of your housing, to do this.

what your mom and dad should teach you. And then in 10 years, see what sort of discrimination climate’s going on. How have ads changed? How have policies changed? In my market, where it’s mostly DIY investors, very few are being run professionally, either by us or institutional owners.

John Harcar (15:50.64)
Got it. Makes sense, makes sense. let’s, let’s why we’re getting, we’re about right on a good time. Let’s talk about how you educate the buy and hold investor. Like what specific things or processes or coaching or whatever you might have to educate, you know, people looking to get into buy and hold.

Jennifer Ruelens (15:58.018)
Yeah.

Jennifer Ruelens (16:08.917)
News is I’m really new at this so I have a lot of free opportunities one day they’ll be paid but I have a lot of free ways I educate via the Hold It With PM Gen platform so hold it with PM Gens on all your socials I do a lot of video on YouTube LinkedIn and Facebook but I just on my website hold it with PM Gen comm if you’re interested in buy and hold investment in North Central PA specifically I publish I call it you’re gonna laugh you’re gonna think this is funny the 2025 no bullshit playbook for buying and holding rentals in North

John Harcar (16:37.551)
I love it.

Jennifer Ruelens (16:39.031)
PA and I give you the real skinny. Hey, I’ve been doing the ins and outs here I tell you about each sub market down to like the problematic codes guy in Bloomsburg named Tom I’ll talk about it right and well Well, I’ll help you if you want to start buying and holding here get a start be your your coach I do live events I just had one last night and yeah So I’d love to get people involved in that because this is a destination market and I can get you connected with the right people And you could make a real play here

John Harcar (16:48.795)
Mmm.

John Harcar (16:59.706)
to cool.

John Harcar (17:06.383)
Well, let’s say that they’re not in the Pennsylvania market, right? They’re not interested in

Jennifer Ruelens (17:09.933)
Well, you’re gonna love my content. You’re gonna love to connect with me on socials because you’re gonna love to hear my real actionable stories about how do you buy properties better? What do you actually say when the tenant calls and says they can’t pay you the rent? Those are the real nitty-gritty. What kind of locks do I put on my doors? These are things that I’m educating people on and trying to help them out. I do a really great series. Now, this is for Pennsylvania investors, a four-part series on YouTube exactly how to evict your tenant for non-payment. And it’s about an hour and a half.

John Harcar (17:22.491)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (17:38.715)
Hmm.

Jennifer Ruelens (17:39.947)
in total but I get emails every month from people saying you don’t know me but I use this and I was successful and I’m like thank that’s what I wanted I wanted people to know they had rights and somebody helped them

John Harcar (17:42.757)
That’s awesome.

John Harcar (17:51.738)
Yeah, no, I get that. What other resources or tools do you think you have that someone should use if they’re looking to get into property management that could help maybe kind of set them up for success or maybe what type of advice?

Jennifer Ruelens (18:04.385)
Yeah, if you’re looking to get into property management, you want to be looking at one of two organizations. So there’s two different kinds of property management. There’s where I started, which we call multifamily. That’s your apartment communities. Think about leasing agents and maintenance techs and golf carts running around, pools, fitness centers. There’s that, right? And that is, you’re going to get a lot of training. You’re going to, you’re going to, it’s more like you get a job and you can learn an industry. Then there’s single family home management, which is what I’m doing.

It’s truly single and small multifamily. So there’s two different organizations. Irem, the Institute for Real Estate Management is going to be the one to teach you the multifamily way. NARPAM, the National Association of Residential Property Managers will teach you the single-family way. And the difference of course is, you know, 600 doors, one owner, one set of policies. Here, I have 600 doors across five counties, 200 owners. It’s just a different matrix of how it works.

John Harcar (19:01.231)
Yeah.

Jennifer Ruelens (19:04.239)
I’ll tell you, just look for ads for property management. Look for ads for property management. Get in, start seeing how it works because it’s so quick and they pay you. They pay you to learn. But nobody wants to do that. People are not attracted to real estate to work hard.

John Harcar (19:16.581)
Yeah, best way.

John Harcar (19:21.751)
Yeah, right. Everybody wants to get the easy check, but they don’t know how hard it really is. Very cool. Now, let’s say if someone’s listening to this and they want to get in touch with you or maybe there’s, you know, they want to learn, they want to learn how to be to have 600 doors. I mean, what’s the best way that they’d get in touch with you?

Jennifer Ruelens (19:38.104)
Well, I hope they’ll reach out to me. Yeah, so hold it with PM Jen com is the best way to get a hold of me and my email hi WPM J at one focus p.m. Dot com and that would be and I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook I’m super easy to find and if you reach out and you’re a property manager, I will spend time talking to you I tell property managers all the time if you’re local come into my business because I do believe a rising tide lifts all ships so if I show you a local property

manager how to do it better. God bless. Do it better for these people. These consumers deserve it.

John Harcar (20:14.917)
Got it. Any last advice you want to leave our audience with?

Jennifer Ruelens (20:18.733)
Just that the number one way to build generational wealth in America is buy and hold real estate and you must buy it and hold it through several real estate cycles. So I look at a fella like you, John, and I’m going to peg you as having at least two real estate cycles left in your investing career. Meaning you’ve got two 10 to 15 year cycles. Buckle up buttercup. You bet you’re holding. You’re holding.

John Harcar (20:40.987)
Hey.

I better have a little bit more than that, at least for my daughter’s sake.

Jennifer Ruelens (20:46.657)
okay, maybe, okay, I’m sorry. Maybe I’m misreading your facial hair. But I meet people who were in their mid-50s who sold out during COVID, right? That was an exit event.

John Harcar (20:56.943)
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Ruelens (20:56.981)
Values were high that was a great exit event for people in their late 70s and 80s at the earliest and these mid 50 year old guys tell me I sold everything and I go you’re stupid you left two cycles left of appreciation cash flow depreciation all on the table because you’re lazy and And that’s okay lazy with your own money But this is how the rich get and stay rich in America is they buy and hold real estate and they use that to finance all kinds of things

John Harcar (21:13.753)
Yep. Yep. I know what mean.

Jennifer Ruelens (21:26.905)
and provide security. that’s my core message. Buy and it.

John Harcar (21:30.492)
Awesome awesome. I love it guys if you have any questions on property management this lady is the one to talk to I Appreciate you so much Jennifer for coming on and sharing all that guys I hope you enjoyed the show and took some good notes, man I I know this was one of the one of the great better episodes We’ve done in a while, and and I hope you learned a lot guys. I’ll see you on the next one Cheers