Creative Strategies for Real Estate Success: Insights from Jennifer Fawcett

Dylan Silver (00:00.702)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show I have Jennifer Fawcett in Iowa, real estate entrepreneur. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Fawcett (00:12.174)
Thank you so much, Dylan. I am happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dylan Silver (00:15.624)
We’re happy to have you. Let’s start at the top. A lot of people will see the success. They’ll see the rental portfolio. They’ll see the fix and flips. But they won’t see the beginning. Right. What was the entry point for you like into the real estate space.

Jennifer Fawcett (00:30.994)
well, I have five children. I waited until they were a little bit older before I started looking into some real estate properties. I’ve stayed home with my kids. So it wasn’t until I had my last one and he was a couple of years old that we said, hey, we’ve got some equity or we’ve got some money built up in our bank accounts. Where do we put this? Where do we invest? And we chose the alternative asset route. And so I started looking just on Zillow for some properties, got in touch with a realtor, put in some offers.

Didn’t get those offers that was pretty discouraging but a couple months later The realtor got back to us and said hey this this owner they’ve they’ve dropped the price They like your original price. Let’s let’s do this. So we actually partnered with the realtor He bought one of the duplexes we bought the the adjacent duplex and we we just jumped in

Dylan Silver (01:19.69)
That’s a good realtor. You’re doing deals with the realtor. He’s doing deals. I like that. Jennifer, how many offers did you have to make? You mentioned making a bunch of offers. How many did you have to make?

Jennifer Fawcett (01:30.146)
Well, when I say offer, we analyzed probably over 50 deals. Offers, we probably put in about 20 real offers. So, you know, I looked at so many different properties and analyzed, and it takes a long time. We were using bigger pockets analyzer tool at the time. So we analyzed so many different properties and tried not to fall in love with them, tried not to get too attached when we put in an offer. And I’ve learned that the hard way now having.

put many offers in, but yeah, it was probably around 20, maybe 30 offers.

Dylan Silver (02:02.163)
So without giving away all the gold, I’ll actually tell you a little bit about what some of the people that I was working with and I’m going to be doing here shortly. So we were making offers earlier this year at about 70 percent of ARV minus repairs, which is just a pretty standard formula on like everything that we could on the MLS in our area. So we put in like 120 offers in two months and we had to get accepted. And I now have spoken with investors in Chicago and they were like, you were doing 70 percent

Jennifer Fawcett (02:25.217)
Mm. Mm.

Dylan Silver (02:32.188)
of ARV minershipers, we’re doing 50. So if you can imagine the kind of huge, huge number of volume and offers you have to make, so 20 doesn’t sound too bad to me.

Jennifer Fawcett (02:43.862)
No, it’s not too bad. And I think that’s because we were working with our realtor friend who was kind of helping guide us and hold our hand through the process to know that we weren’t throwing too many low ball offers out there.

Dylan Silver (02:55.604)
Jennifer, what were the next steps like for you after that first deal?

Jennifer Fawcett (03:00.076)
Yeah, so that was a burr. you’re familiar with that, many of your listeners probably are. We bought the property using a home equity line of credit. We had some equity built up in our home. We flipped it. We brought all of our kids on site, had them swing a hammer, pull nails out of the floor, taught them along the way. It was a grueling process, but they learned a lot. We learned a lot, rented it out, refinanced, and we’re ready to repeat that. And then we did that a couple of years. Each year, we added on a new single family home in the process.

We just kept building, kept adding, kept bringing the kids alongside and just building our portfolio.

Dylan Silver (03:35.306)
What year was that first deal? So you did about a home a year for 9, 10 years, so you’ve got…

Jennifer Fawcett (03:37.134)
2016.

Jennifer Fawcett (03:44.47)
So no, we actually, only did five of them. And so we now in 2021, we decided to pivot to multifamily. We realized that the duplex was cash flowing a whole lot better than the single family homes were. And so we decided to see how many doors can we put under one roof because that seems to be the way to go. And once we started…

Dylan Silver (03:48.458)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (03:55.497)
Okay.

Jennifer Fawcett (04:08.75)
analyzing and actually I pivoted. started, I was listening to mainly just strictly single family home podcasts and I decided I need to start listening to podcasts and reading books about asset management of multifamily properties, large apartment buildings and how do I do this? And then I, quickly realized we needed a mentor, somebody that was gonna coach us through this process when we’re dealing with investor capital and things like that. So we did hire a mentor through our program.

Dylan Silver (04:33.108)
That’s the way to do it. tell people this. tell them, you want the fastest, quickest way to shortcut learning curve or to shortcut time?

The quickest, fastest way is put yourself in a room. And sometimes you’ve got to pay to be in those rooms, or in your case, a mentor. And so you saw this opportunity in the multifamily space. You said, well, we’re doing one a year here, and that’s great. But we see this duplex. That’s really cash flowing like crazy. How do we get more involved in that? You hired the mentor. And from the point in time that you hired the mentor, when was the next time or when was the next deal that you did in the multifamily space?

Jennifer Fawcett (05:07.65)
Yes, so it was nine months after we hired a mentor and the mentorship program was a year long program intensive where we took classes, we learned how to underwrite, we used a tool that most syndicators who are just people that put large apartment deals together use and we learned how to underwrite these deals, how to talk to lenders, how to talk to brokers and acquire these larger properties. But between the time we started the mentorship program and we worked.

with our mentor and we closed on a large department was nine months, but we stayed in the program for a couple more months to finish out the courses.

Dylan Silver (05:42.634)
That’s a pretty good turnaround. So you have this now, you have your rental portfolio, you have the multifamily deal. How many doors was in that multifamily deal? So you go from single family to then 136. That’s a huge jump.

Jennifer Fawcett (05:44.536)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Fawcett (05:51.246)
136.

Jennifer Fawcett (05:57.27)
Yes. Yes, it was a huge jump. And I should be very clear that we are on the active side of that. are a GP, a general partner in that deal. However, we are a small partner in that deal. We have a mentor who is the lead sponsor. So we are a co-sponsor in that deal. But we are on all of the property management calls. learning about how to run a property like this of this size. yeah, so it was pretty exciting. And we’ve just been off to the races ever since.

Dylan Silver (06:23.796)
How many people are in that syndication?

Jennifer Fawcett (06:26.594)
So there’s, are you talking about active GP or LP investors as well?

Dylan Silver (06:32.01)
Who invested? Yeah, anybody who’s invested in 136 doors. Yeah, it’s gotta be a lot, right?

Jennifer Fawcett (06:35.042)
There’s over 20 people, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, when you’re talking about a $50,000 minimum, usually, typically, and it can take a lot of people to come up with a $10.9 million purchase price. So plus the, I mean the loan on the bank. yeah, yeah.

Dylan Silver (06:49.492)
Sure, you know, I’m very familiar with this. think syndications are an awesome way for…

all people to get involved in real estate, whether you’re gonna be more active like yourself or whether you wanna be active in some capacity without having to swing a hammer, so to speak. I’ve actually had another podcast guest on the show here who was talking about a real estate syndication that she runs out of Houston. It just got me thinking, what a great way for people to get more involved or involved in some capacity in the real estate space.

Jennifer Fawcett (07:22.626)
Yes, it’s a fantastic way. And that’s actually something I’m really passionate about is I’m a stay at home mom. I knew that I was gonna need to build some income and I love real estate. I’m passionate about it. But when we started sort of burring these properties and rehabbing them, a lot of people were kind of watching. And I was trying to get my friends excited about this.

You can do this, can flip properties, you can wholesale, you can do all these things. And they’re looking at my Facebook page and they’re looking at my newsletters and they’re saying, I don’t wanna do this. This is not something I want to do. So when I tell them about syndications and what we do now, I love telling my stay at home mom friends, I love telling my friends that have young kids and they’re just super busy, they don’t have time, but they have the resources. Let’s say they both have solid W-2 jobs or maybe they just have one.

Dylan Silver (07:49.416)
Yes.

Jennifer Fawcett (08:15.68)
a spouse that has a W-2 job, say, know what? You can park 50,000 into a syndication and be hands off as an unlimited partner and just reap the benefits of having real estate in your investment portfolio. I’m very passionate about that. I want people to know about that, that they don’t have to be active investors. They can be passive investors and enjoy the benefits, the tax benefits of owning real estate.

Dylan Silver (08:30.462)
Meeting.

Dylan Silver (08:39.326)
Are we gonna see a Jennifer Fawcett syndication fun coming up sometime soon maybe?

Jennifer Fawcett (08:43.406)
you know, I just was talking to somebody about the fund structure and right now we’re just doing single asset structure. But you know, it’s an interesting thing to think about. I think there’s advantages and disadvantages. We’re not there yet. We’re just taking it a single asset at a time.

Dylan Silver (09:01.3)
Sure, you know, when I think about talking about communicating with your friends about real estate, I was working for Nissan in San Antonio. I’m in Dallas right now. And I was super stoked about my buddies, hey, let’s go look at wholesale deals. You know, we can look at fix and flips. You know, let’s figure out this whole real estate thing. You can do cash for cash. I had no limited idea of what anything in real estate was. All I knew was that

At the time I was 27, 28 years old and it was super expensive to buy homes and it still is. And I was like, well, I don’t know how I’m going to afford to be able to do that. But what I do know is I might as well figure it out because I’d rather be on the appreciation side of it than the inflation.

And what I saw, Jennifer, was just a total distancing. People were like, nah, you’re crazy. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to do this. And so when I made the jump two years ago into wholesaling and started to get my feet wet, I really started to see that some people just, it’s not going to be for them. And you can’t convince, I’d say you can’t convince most people. So when I talk to someone like yourself who,

stay at home mom in in the real estate investment space i think we need five hundred more people like jennifer faucet because i want every american not just myself to be able to take advantage of what i think is the greatest life-transforming financial tool owning real estate

Jennifer Fawcett (10:27.394)
Yeah, absolutely. And we’re passionate about that too. We want as many people, friends of ours, to own real estate and to own it at the capacity that they can handle it. So we’re trying to just get the word out there to our friends and family. And now, you know, there’s in the syndication world, you are able to market to friends and family and also beyond that, depending upon how you structure the deal. And so we’ve told a lot of our friends and family, some are interested, some are not interested.

And now we’re trying to really build our sort of behind the scenes platform so that we can get to people that aren’t friends and family necessarily, but still make a connection with us, whether they like the Midwest because that’s where we’re investing or the states that we’re investing into, or they like our story. I try to get our story out there. We have five kids. We’ve taught them about real estate. We’ve taught them about business. I actually homeschool them. So they’ve been on site on these projects. They do some of the tours with me and things like that.

Sometimes people resonate with your story and so they’re more apt to invest with you. So we’re just trying to get the word out to as many people as possible.

Dylan Silver (11:26.408)
Yeah, I think when it comes down to investing in something as large as a real estate asset, it can be scary. I’m sure you can empathize with that. But now they even have fractional investing. Have you heard of this?

Jennifer Fawcett (11:38.678)
I haven’t, but maybe it’s worded a little differently. Maybe I do know, help me understand.

Dylan Silver (11:44.584)
So it’s basically people can invest partially without taking on massive amounts of financial burden. So you can invest in a real estate project for $2,000 $5,000, depending on which of these services that you go through. I know there’s a couple not affiliated with us, fractional.app.

There was another one that we had actually on the show here. I’m trying to remember the name of it, but this person had actually allowed their members to invest in luxury real estate in Los Angeles through fractional investing. Kind of like if you would go into like a cash app or a Robinhood or some of the brokerages like SoFi, you can do fractional investing, know, instead of buying…

Berkshire Hathaway stock for however many thousands of dollars it is, you can do a fractional investment. And so people aren’t aware of this because it sounds so radically different that you could like fractionally buy real estate, but it’s out there and it’s another tool that people can use.

Jennifer Fawcett (12:46.434)
Yeah, and that’s great because you do kind of, will, a $50,000 minimum isn’t gonna work for some people, but a $10,000 minimum might, you know? So that is an interesting concept. I’m not familiar with that, but I wrote it down because I’m gonna look into it. Yes.

Dylan Silver (12:56.446)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (13:01.802)
Yeah, fractional investing. had that 136 doors. What year was that in that you did that deal?

Jennifer Fawcett (13:10.222)
2022. So we did a year. Yep.

Dylan Silver (13:11.562)
2022. now we’re three years from now. It’s 2025. Catch us up. What was the growth like from 2022 to today?

Jennifer Fawcett (13:22.062)
Yes, so that one, like I said, we are co-sponsor on that one. And then a year later in 2023, we closed on a 48 unit. And that one, my husband and I, with two different partners, are lead sponsors. So we are the lead asset manager. We’re on the call with the property manager weekly. any sort of, and then investor relations, we’re sending all that out to the investors. We raise the capital.

We have some other co-GPs in that, we are the lead code. We are the lead GP. And then a year after that, we with different partners. So you can see the power of partnerships in the multifamily space. Partnerships are everything. But then we closed on just in 2024. Last year we closed on 113 unit, new townhome community in.

Dylan Silver (13:59.966)
Huge.

Jennifer Fawcett (14:15.466)
Brentlinger Townhomes in Louisville, Kentucky. And then with those same partners that we closed at 113, we just closed this year on 99 units in Champlain, Minnesota. And that’s a heavy value add property, but those are with different partners. So we have our core sort of group of partners that we’ve consistently partnered with since the 48 unit and then the 113 and the 99. So we’re going to continue sticking with them as lead sponsor or as co-sponsors with them. And then the…

the 99 unit and 113 unit are with a new lead sponsor. we’re really, so that was kind of confusing, we’re, are GPs, we’re general partners, we’re active partners in all of those properties. However, we’re the lead sponsor on the 48 unit.

Dylan Silver (14:58.602)
It sounds like 250 plus doors, 300 doors.

Jennifer Fawcett (15:01.324)
Yes, yes it is. Yep. Plus our personal. Yes, and then actually an interesting thing is we closed on a commercial, our first commercial property. We live right now, we’re renovating an old farmhouse in West Branch since we moved back to this family farm just recently. We bought a commercial building. It’s an old bank building. It was built in 1908. We didn’t want to rent a property while we were waiting for this farmhouse to be renovated because we’re real estate investors and we don’t rent. So we bought.

Dylan Silver (15:04.029)
in the span of five years.

Jennifer Fawcett (15:28.844)
This building, it’s an old bank. We’re looking for a tenant in the ground, the floor level space. And then we are flipping the upstairs to an Airbnb. So it’s kind of like doing a live and flip right now, doing an Airbnb. And then there’s a hair salon that we also own. So that’s another commercial building we bought just this year.

Dylan Silver (15:45.012)
Did I hear this correctly? You’re living in a bank to simplify things.

Jennifer Fawcett (15:49.132)
We are living in a bank and that’s what I would highlight too as real estate investors. As real estate investors, it’s exciting. As entrepreneurs, it’s always exciting. We are always as a family looking to add value. How can we add value? We’re looking at how to use our farm to add value. So, you know, I think it’s such an important lesson to as entrepreneurs, you have to get creative.

Dylan Silver (15:51.774)
I love this.

Jennifer Fawcett (16:10.646)
And so when we decided to move here, rather than renting, we decided to buy something, buy another asset. I like the, I’ve never done a short-term rental. I’m ready to try to do an Airbnb. It helps with a tax strategy that we use. I’m a real estate professional, so I’m able to, that’s a whole other story. But so some of these hours will help just some tax strategies that my husband and I use. But you’re always, we’re always looking to create value and we’re never,

We’re always looking for creative ways to do that. So yes, we live in an old bank.

Dylan Silver (16:41.386)
Yeah, I know someone who’s doing mini cost seg on their single family homes. So even the home that he lives in, he’s like, no, you need to be doing mini. I just got off podcast. I’m like, this is a great idea. Mini cost. I’m like, how do I even find a guy that’s going to do that? He’s like, well, you just ask him, do you do real estate tax? Are you familiar with accelerated depreciation in single family homes? you do mini cost seg. I’m like, you know what? You’re right. Those Buds words would get me if I didn’t know what you were talking about.

Jennifer Fawcett (16:47.32)
Yeah.

Jennifer Fawcett (16:53.688)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Fawcett (17:08.526)
Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot to it. There’s a lot to learn, but anybody can learn it. And my strategy to start learning about real estate was to get ahead of the, or to find the time of day that is your like power hour. And for me, it’s before the kids wake up every single morning, I’m up two hours working on real estate. So find that power hour and work on your entrepreneurial, you know, whatever that.

that sort of passion is to create value and real estate’s a great place to do it.

Dylan Silver (17:38.762)
So you’re doing like 5 till 7am is power hours.

Jennifer Fawcett (17:42.496)
It used to be 450, like that was when I needed to get up, but now it’s more like 430. I just needed a little bit more time. My kids are waking up earlier, so 430 to seven really is when I’m up working on real estate.

Dylan Silver (17:56.372)
So walk us through that, because I’m a big habits, routine, lifestyle person. believe that the power, just like you actually, the power of your network and the people that you have in your life, that’s exactly what your life’s going to be. I can tell you my morning routine, but I’m curious to hear what yours is like.

Jennifer Fawcett (18:11.906)
Yeah, so I get up, I actually, I’m a woman of faith, so I do read my Bible. I think that’s really important. I pray, I spend time with God who created me and gave me this wonderful life. So I spend time with him first. And then I actually Sunday night before I go to bed, I write a list of all the things. It’s like a brain dump. I’ve heard people coin it that way. It’s a brain dump. write everything out that I need to do for the week. And then Monday morning comes and I just start going through.

know, towards the end of the month, it’s a newsletter, it’s investor relations towards the beginning of the month. It’s different things like I’m writing grants right now for this building and for some of my single family homes. It’s just a number of different things, but I know, but I’m not sitting there on Monday morning wondering what to do because I’ve done a brain dump over the weekend. So I know exactly what I need to be working on. I just go through the list and whatever doesn’t make it through that list just goes through my notebook on the next page for the next week. So I do that.

I believe in working out. I have a home gym. I work out with really heavy weights and I have a sweat session that’s really powerful. I get that done, have a glass of water, and then my kids are waking up. So that’s pretty much my morning routine.

Dylan Silver (19:20.426)
I’m trying to get the home, Jim. I’m trying to get the home, Jim Jennifer. said, got to get the home, Jim. I don’t know. I have to get the home, Jim. The hang up is I don’t own the real estate that I’m living at. I’m renting. So I live on this ranch and I’m trying to get to your level. trying to… I’m two years deep, but give me some time. And I will. I will. I’ve done 20 wholesale deals. We’re going to get our first fix and flip here in the next, let’s call it six months. And then I’ll have you back on. We’ll have a different conversation here.

Jennifer Fawcett (19:22.509)
Yeah.

Jennifer Fawcett (19:27.67)
What’s your hang up you think?

Jennifer Fawcett (19:33.419)
Okay.

Jennifer Fawcett (19:37.006)
Okay.

Nice.

Jennifer Fawcett (19:45.976)
Nice.

That’d be wonderful.

Dylan Silver (19:50.632)
Yeah, and then I’ll be investing in the Jennifer Fawcett syndication right out there in Iowa. You’ll be showing me the ropes, but I will say that there’s just something about I would say that that time period like five till 7 a.m. I call it because.

Jennifer Fawcett (19:53.838)
That’d be great. That’d be fantastic. Yes. That’d be great.

Jennifer Fawcett (20:05.678)
you

Dylan Silver (20:07.508)
Things come up during the day. Like if I want to go, I’m in school, also I’m in a software engineering school, and I’m not doing that because I want to go be a software engineer. I’m doing that because I see that there’s so much opportunity in the real estate space involving technology, CRMs, AI, calendar booking tools, text tools. I’m like, I want to…

Jennifer Fawcett (20:24.344)
Mm. Mm.

Dylan Silver (20:26.612)
take all these passions that I have and mold them into one thing. And so I found like I just become way too busy during the day and in the evening if I want to have any type of social anything, I have to carve out that time. So my mornings probably similar you can relate to this. If it doesn’t get done in that morning time, it’s probably not going to get done.

Jennifer Fawcett (20:44.59)
Yeah, that’s very, very true. I think that it’s a very powerful time and you have to know, you have to have a plan whether you block schedule that time. Sometimes I’ve done that in the past too, where I’ve blocked scheduled Mondays, I’m gonna work on asset management, Tuesdays I’m gonna work on writing that grant, Wednesdays I’m gonna look over my insurance policy. mean, just different, you might need to block out what you need to work on because if you don’t have it written down, if it’s not there and if it’s not a larger, if it’s not…

part of a larger goal that you have, then it’s, I think you’ll just sit there and there won’t be anything to do because as entrepreneurs we have to create value. There’s gotta be things to do. So that’s why I do it the week before, that’s why I do it the weekend before. I have that list so I’m not sitting down just, know, brainwashed of how to spend my time.

Dylan Silver (21:30.376)
I think I might have to change my time blocks here, because now that I’m hearing you talk about it, I’m realizing I’ll have like a 15 minute, 20 minute, 30 minute time block in the morning. And I’m like, you know what? I need to do what she’s doing. I got to have one morning where I’m going to time block to engineering work, the next morning where I’m time blocking to writing offers, the next morning, because otherwise I might not be getting enough done here.

Jennifer Fawcett (21:51.136)
Yeah, and I think too, you just start going through your email for that morning and you’ll just get so sidetracked unless you know exactly how that morning is supposed to be spent. One morning should be dedicated to cleaning your inbox, maybe, if that’s what you wanna spend time on. But it shouldn’t be that you start there because that will take you any number of directions. So you have to have a designated time to work on the things that are going to create value and are going to get you ahead to where you wanna be in the next three, five, 10 years.

Dylan Silver (22:19.046)
Amen to that. Jennifer, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Jennifer Fawcett (22:24.302)
So hop on over to our website, that’s www.vcpiwa.com. And on there you can sign up for our newsletter. I send out a quarterly newsletter where I talk about a personal update of our family. I also send out a market update in the markets that we invest in. You can hear about what we’re seeing in the markets, where we’re looking to invest. We like to bring one to two quality deals to limited partners, to investors who are looking for a place to put their money that

is competitive with the stock market returns, historically better than stock market returns. So if you’re interested in that, head over to our website. You can reach out to me, jennifer at vcpiowa.com. I would be happy if you want to send me an email and you want to get in touch, set up a call. I would be happy to talk with anybody. That’s exactly how I really got started was listening to podcasts. And when people would come on podcasts and they leave their information, I would just call them up. I would just reach out to them and I would just talk to them and just

hopefully provide value to them, but also pick their brain a little bit, which I know is kind of frowned upon, but I just didn’t really, know, they were, people are just willing, so willing. I am so willing to share what I’ve learned for free and it’s available. And I’d love to be available to people who have questions and would like to get started.

Dylan Silver (23:40.37)
Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the show here.

Jennifer Fawcett (23:43.79)
Yes, well thank you Dylan for having me. It was, I had a blast.