5 Unique Strategies for Real Estate: Adapt, Invest, and Thrive!

Michael Stansbury (00:00.142)
Hello everybody and welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Mike Stansbury, special guest to me, Chad and Christina Roy. How are you guys?

Chad Roy (00:12.424)
Great. We’re doing good. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Appreciate being here.

Michael Stansbury (00:15.181)
Yeah.

We’re excited to have you. At first, we gotta pay the bills around here, so let’s tell everybody about Investor Fuel. At Investor Fuel, we’re a mastermind that helps real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five extra businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. So guys, before we get into what you’re doing now and today and all the fun, creative things that you guys have accomplished in real estate, what is the origin story? Tell us, like, how did you begin in this business?

guys doing before you got in real estate, how did you pivot into it?

Chad Roy (00:51.112)
Yeah, well.

Great question. know, and started about 25 years ago where, and we got married 27 years ago and we were renting a house, we’re renting an apartment for a couple years after we first got married and realized that we’re just throwing all our hard earned money up the chimney as it were with renting a place. So we started looking for something that we could afford. At that time, we just starting out, we couldn’t afford an awful lot. So we were looking for a foreclosure and we found a mobile home on a two acre lot.

and they accepted $17,000 and that was the start of our real estate investment and we renovated the home and then after that we started buying apartment buildings so that’s where it started.

Michael Stansbury (01:37.999)
Okay, so you went from a mobile home to apartment buildings you just ramp it up that quick

Chad Roy (01:43.282)
Well, we were running a restoration. worked for insurance companies running a biosecurity, bio clean up, bio hazard clean up business. So, you know, we had a steady income that built with our purchase of our first property. And then we used the equity of our first property plus our income of our steady job to purchase an apartment building that had in a garage for business development. So that’s how we started building our portfolio and

Eventually that led to about 70 units and about $30 million of real estate investing over the last 25 years.

Michael Stansbury (02:23.978)
Okay, I love it. So let’s do this. Let’s fast forward 10 years from that first deal, right? What did your business look like in year 10 compared to what it looked like now? What were you doing? What was the everyday standard operating procedures? What was y’all’s relationship as far as what you were doing in the business and how has it changed?

Chad Roy (02:45.628)
Well, at that time, we had multiple units and we just kept rolling over our equity into another unit. And we realized quickly that we went from three units to five units. And that was our main focus on residential apartment buildings so that we could actually have some income to pay for unseen expenses. Because we realized that three units was difficult. So we started diversifying our portfolio.

business grew and then we ended up buying more commercial property with larger warehouse spacing and then a couple of restaurants and we ended up buying a hotel. So we were managing our day to day. Christina ran all the financials and took care of the rent rents and I did the maintenance and you know had to learn it was a lot cheaper for us to learn so 20 years ago I went to Home Depot 25 years ago Home Depot Lowe’s and you know we bought

books on how to and that’s really made sure that allowed us to save some money doing our own repairs over the years and then hired the contractors as needed. I think a big thing after the 10 years was diversifying into commercial finding that some commercial real estate was a little easier to you had a long-term

Michael Stansbury (03:56.195)
That’s great. go ahead, Christina. Yeah.

Chad Roy (04:13.51)
tenet and so it tended to be a little easier. So I think that was a big a big change in the 10-year mark.

Michael Stansbury (04:19.725)
Well…

It’s interesting, so all the guys I know, I only have one commercial property, but the guys that I know that pivoted early in the commercial, they seem to have a little skip in their step a little bit more than, and I gotta see it, they have a little less ethics than some of those guys who concentrate on getting lots of rentals and some other assets. But I’m glad you guys got that early. Now did I hear in there that, did you guys purchase restaurant buildings or were you buying restaurants?

Chad Roy (04:39.548)
Hell yeah.

Michael Stansbury (04:50.397)
as well at this point.

Chad Roy (04:52.488)
well we’re going to a lot of options and and we purchased a restaurant building and i’m a couple restaurant tours i can’t put my before the horses there and and purchase the property at auction and look for a tenant and we ended up you know with the long-term tenant well you know and and that commercial restaurant and then

Later on we bought a 22 unit motel with a restaurant attached to it at auction as well. so at that we renovated the motel and opened that as a motel and we managed that and renovated the restaurant. And we had a 200 seat restaurant and 22 beers on tap. Live music Friday and Saturday night. were.

priding a little too hard there, you know, for a real estate investment because it was a lot of fun and realized that, you know, we had to cut back. So we ended up leasing the restaurant back to my chef and turned that into an income property and got out of the restaurant business ourselves realizing that that wasn’t a place for us. We found out it’s better to own the real estate, not the business itself. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (05:41.74)
Ha ha ha!

Michael Stansbury (06:00.844)
I tell you, coming out of…

waiting tables and bartending as a young person, the hours. I mean, was, enjoyed being a part of the restaurant industry, but I, one of the things I was, I always noticed the older guys that were running the restaurants, they didn’t look like they were having that good of a time. They could, because they were, they were being worked over pretty well. Cause you know, a restaurant somewhere where you gotta be there, especially if you own it and you operated those franchises too, those, those people that manager, they’re there, they’re all, they’re tethered to it. So I knew right away,

Chad Roy (06:34.556)
Yeah, there’s much better income than real estate. Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (06:37.152)
Yeah.

So, well that’s interesting. you have, so people think real estate has just got so many different verticals in there and your diversification has allowed you to experience a lot of cool things. So what has been, and I’ll let you kind of choose your own adventure here. What has been the most creative deal you’ve ever done? Or maybe tell us about the nightmare deal that you should have never done, because I love our folks to learn from the, maybe the failures or the oopsies, as much as the successes.

Chad Roy (07:07.038)
much as the success. I’d say our failure, our nightmare was we bought a house and decided we would possibly move there so we redid it thinking that we might live there but we ended up taking it all the way down to studs you could literally see completely through the whole entire house and so once we put it all together we… I don’t remember

Michael Stansbury (07:08.496)
you

Chad Roy (07:35.934)
we lost but we didn’t make any money on that project. $50,000 we lost in that project. know, but like Chris said, we did it, we renovated it, we bought it as a flipper, we liked the location, then we renovated it, know, some marble floors, jacuzzi tubs, stuff that you’re not going to get the money back and with that particular property and that was it. So that was the biggest thing. know, probably one of the best.

Michael Stansbury (07:41.922)
Right?

Michael Stansbury (08:02.286)
Well did you guys live there? Did you guys live there for any period of time or did you decide like in the middle of it like hey actually we’re not gonna move into this?

Chad Roy (08:10.974)
No, we were doing flippers, probably two flippers a year. And this was just one of the flippers that we liked. It was in the country and the farm. so, yeah, we didn’t live there. It looked great. we cut our losses and went back to our restaurant and sat at the bar for a minute.

Michael Stansbury (08:28.142)
That’s great. Now do you guys do just business in your state or tell me are you guys in multiple states? How does the acquisitions and where the assets sit?

Chad Roy (08:41.722)
Mostly in Vermont and New Hampshire. And we had property, we have property in Kansas and you know, we bought online at auction and property. Done a couple flippers that way, purchased them online and looked for local contractors to go in. But it’s a little hard to manage that way. it’s, we like to drive by our properties if we’re going to, we kind of switch gears and kind of slow it down. We’ve sold a lot of our real estate at this point and kept our portfolio to

a manageable state where we don’t have to stress out an awful lot like we did with a lot of tenants. yeah, so that’s kind of where we’re at right now.

Michael Stansbury (09:21.878)
Okay, and we mentioned earlier before the show, right, that you’re waiting on a tax sale. Has tax sale been one of the acquisition strategies that you guys have used in the past? And tell us a little bit about that.

Chad Roy (09:33.864)
Take care.

We’ve only done one other tax sale, I believe. A couple. Yeah, I’ll elaborate on it. We’ve done a couple different tax sales. One, we’ve done a tax deed sale, which you’ve probably covered on your podcast before. you know, those that are just joining us this time is, you know, tax deed sale is the property owner lost it at tax sale to the town and they have a year to redeem it. And if they don’t redeem it in that 12 month period, then that’s

a tax deed sale so you possess that deed right there. And so we’ve done that and got a couple of properties, land properties that way, but this one was a tax lien sale so we had to wait that 12 month period. So the way that that works where in this case we bought four properties for $36,000 total. Three of them were houses and one was a five acre lot. you can, and one of the houses is lived in and the other two houses are habitable, just not lived in.

So you can see the profit margin that could be there. so it’s a risk because you’re tying up that $36,000 for that 12-month period. But the way that the tax lien sale works is that we get a return of 1 % per month interest on that $36,000. So that accrues. $36,000 or I forget what it is, $37,000, say. Then at the end of that 12-month period, we’ll get to $37,000 plus another $3,700 in interest, a little more actually because it’s based on

12%. So it’ll be about a little over $4,000 interest, so a little over 10 % return, 12 % return on your money for being tied up that time. that’s what’s happening today with us, and we’ll see whether we get, it’ll be equivalent of about $300,000 worth of property for a $37,000 or an additional $4,000 bonus check.

Michael Stansbury (11:27.178)
That’s such a terrible, terrible return on investment. So bad. So bad. That’s awesome. That is awesome. I love to hear those wins. And so that’s the thing about that. And so if you could speak to the tax sale, mean, you said you’ve done a couple of them. It’s the same thing. It’s the same thing, right? Obviously there are deals out there and then there’s some lemons as well. You just gotta make sure that the value that you’re buying, you knew when you were gonna make that 37,000.

Chad Roy (11:31.038)
Well.

Michael Stansbury (11:57.025)
$100,000 investment that that that at worst case scenario you were looking at $300,000 where the assets coming in correct

Chad Roy (12:05.534)
That’s correct and what we’ve learned over the years we’ve gone to a number of them not that we bought all of them and and tips for the trade is is in your local area call your local counties and ask them if they have tax sales coming up and And they’ll tell you whether they and then ask them specifically whether it’s a tax lien sale or it’s a tax deed sale coming up Because then you’ll be able to weed out if you find a bunch of tax deed sales You know you can go to the auction and potentially win a property for $2,000 free and clear that day

So I would start with that and then once you find out they usually have a list of the properties that are going up for auction and you’ll have to recap it about a week before but doing your due diligence a month before get the address of those properties that you’re interested in drive by take a walk around choose which ones go to the auction and then aim accordingly

Michael Stansbury (13:00.058)
Aim accordingly. Fire away when it makes sense, With that being said, so you guys, what would be, in the last 25 years, even in real estate, what’s been the best way you’ve acquired property? maybe not an easy way, maybe something that you’ve kind of developed over time that has worked for you to acquire properties that are undervalued, or maybe there’s a value add there.

Chad Roy (13:29.17)
Well, it’s complicated. We had number of properties over the years. And there’s a few processes that worked. One, obviously, the one that we just mentioned. Another one was our restoration company that we worked for insurance companies. And if you happen to be in that field, you have the opportunity to acquire properties that the homeowner wants to take the insurance check and just take at a loss and sell you the property as it sits. And so we were in a position where we had about 17 employees and some carpenters on.

on staff, so as we went in, then if the homeowner or the business opted to take the insurance check, and then we told them that we would be interested in acquiring the property as is, and then that would keep our crews busy if you’re in the construction industry during our slow periods. Then we knew that we were still gonna make money from flipping the property and keep our construction guys busy. We’re in northern Vermont, New Hampshire, so our seasons, you need to be flexible as far as what you do for work. It’s not in the city where

carpenters were busy 24-7, 365 days a year. And having these properties that we acquired that way, we were assured that we were still making payroll and we were going to make payroll.

Michael Stansbury (14:41.974)
I love this strategy.

So locally here there are some restoration companies, some good buddies with them and they always, they don’t know the skillset of flipping houses because they just concentrate on what they do. So they refer me to business when they get somebody that is saying, Hey, I may want to just walk away from this. And I’ve gotten a really couple of good deals from that. So I love that you guys added on latched onto what you were already doing with the restoration company, you know, and so, so many blue collar businesses, they see leads before,

An investor will see them, but they just don’t know what to do with them They haven’t been unlocked and so if you’re listening now, and you got a blue-collar business You know I would say that flipping properties is a skill set and once you learn the skill set you can utilize it It’s it’s easy once you know the skill set, but it takes some learning about obviously buying it right and then especially you guys had a really advantage of seeing the property, but also you

knew the labor. And so you were able to maximize probably value from your labor as well.

Chad Roy (15:50.718)
Yep, yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the head. Being an opportunist, no matter what industry you’re in, and even if you’re not in an industry, you can go to a real estate office and ask them if they have any properties that are coming up that are interesting. And that’s how we acquired this property that we’re sitting on right now, actually. And it’s literally a gold mine. you know, and…

Michael Stansbury (16:11.544)
Give me the story, let’s tell it. Don’t bury the lead there. Tell me about the origin story or the property you have now and what have you guys been doing before this podcast?

Chad Roy (16:15.059)
Yeah.

Chad Roy (16:20.22)
Yeah, so we just got out of the river. We were diving for gold. Chris tends the box and makes sure that I still have air underwater, so she keeps me alive. we’re, yeah, and we’re, yeah, it’s great stuff.

Michael Stansbury (16:35.32)
goodness. When is the YouTube channel? When are going to post the YouTube channel of this? This is hilarious. This great.

Chad Roy (16:40.222)
We’re actually, shooting for, I can’t go into details, but we were shooting for a reality show. We hooked up with an Alaska company and we’re gonna be doing some work with them and some very advanced gold recovery equipment. So it’s gonna be pretty cool. So stay tuned for that. So going back to how we acquired this property is we did some research because we were interested in prospecting and geological items when we got married.

Michael Stansbury (16:45.772)
Here we go.

Chad Roy (17:10.176)
and we started researching our area. And so we got a goal pan and researched Dartmouth and Hitchcock. You might have heard of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, maybe. so they were geologists as well and scientists. they went up the northern New Hampshire and Vermont. So we started reading their articles from the 1800s.

And I always ate Lucky Charms as a kid, and I always chased the rainbow probably like everyone else that ate Lucky Charms and looking for that pot of gold. we’re about 30 miles away from our hometown and we found this river where it actually has some gold in it. So this was years ago, mind you.

So 20 years ago, and this is where the opportunity comes in, is we stopped at a realtor and I asked them, said, any land ever comes up for sale along this river, please let us know.

So they gave us, I got a phone call in January and she said that she had some land, her friend’s selling some land. Now mind you, the realest, she was an older lady, she’s 80 years old and she said that her friend wants to sell some land on that river that I was inquiring about. And she said it was seven acres of land along the river. And I said, well, why does she want to sell it? She goes, well, she lives on the Cape and she’s afraid that somebody’s going to sue her

mining gold on the property. And so I said, wow, I said, how much does she want for it? And she wants $25,000 for it. So I said, okay, we’ll be right over. And so that was the story of how we acquired this seven acre gold mine. And it’s literally every handful of dirt on here, it’s on the backside of Mount Washington, volcanic activity, lots of gold, and we’ve been mining here ever since. So that’s one of the best stories that we have.

Michael Stansbury (18:48.366)
You

Chad Roy (19:07.52)
to a campground, you know, we were offered a quarter million dollars for it a few years ago. Not interested in selling it because we could never replace it. so yeah, it’s one of our best properties, Little Reach Tree.

Michael Stansbury (19:18.208)
Okay and you don’t you can keep us on a need-to-know basis but what is some of the value like of the gold that you have mined personally on that on the on the river?

Chad Roy (19:30.392)
and the tens of thousands on this yeah ounces of gold know we yeah Chad Roy New Hampshire Gold Rush I did a YouTube video out there a long time ago I’m not a YouTuber a TikToker but not a YouTuber and Lemonator that’s it

Michael Stansbury (19:34.156)
I love it.

Michael Stansbury (19:50.937)
That’s right. Awesome. Well, this is a fantastic story. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to kind of give us an idea of what the origin story of that house. To finish up here, what are we doing today in real estate and investments besides, obviously, paying for gold? What does your daily life look like today in the world of real estate business and investing?

Chad Roy (20:17.564)
Well, you know, we’re just maintaining what we have and we have a couple commercial properties, a couple of at least to a couple of restaurants still, a garage and a warehouse and a couple of residential, a couple of Airbnb’s. so, yeah, we, you know, our main business is, you know, that’s our real estate is kind of maintaining itself. It’s, you know, a lot of it’s paid off over the years. So it’s an income source for us at this point and an equity source and allows us to run our other

business. We’re in biosecurity and food security businesses. that’s our main line of work that still helps us to pay for any investments that we might want to endeavor on.

Michael Stansbury (20:59.712)
Awesome. So you guys kept a full-time W-2 or these businesses that you guys also ran and operated. Awesome.

Chad Roy (21:06.916)
I and operated on our biosecurity.

We’re consultants and that we, 2020 we changed the global understanding of virus transmission by making it visible. And then we were peer reviewed by Carter from Cambridge universities who use our insight. And then the US Air Force hooked up with us, biosecurity center, and they use our understanding of virus transmission and their training. They introduced us to the, you know, invisible biological force fields, which we,

work with which are pretty cool. they physically send out a little charge fighter jets and zap any biologicals as soon as they come out of the other person’s mouth. This is what the military has developed. Cool, fascinating stuff. Yeah, yeah and then…

Michael Stansbury (21:56.143)
Wow, that’s wild.

Chad Roy (21:58.622)
Yeah, and then food security, know, all that stuff led us real quick to lead to provide the world’s most nutrient dense fertilizer, organic fertilizer for crops. My business partner, our business partner is a soil scientist in Australia, Sean O’Brien, and he’s developed the 85 mineral blend that feeds the microbes, that feeds the crops. So we’re working with trials with multiple universities now, including the military food security on

providing the world’s most nutrient-dense food so that we can start making people healthy again.

Michael Stansbury (22:35.116)
Yeah, I love it.

So you’re in the agriculture business, real estate business, gold mining business. is a fascinating podcast. Chad, Christina, thank you for being on the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ll put in the show notes below the information about what they’re doing below and how to get in touch with them, the TikTok link. yes, thank you guys for being part of the Real Estate Pros. Folks, do all the things, like, comment, subscribe, and we’ll see you next time on the Real Estate Pros.

Chad Roy (22:48.008)
Thank you.

Michael Stansbury (23:06.096)
I’m Mike Stansberry, see ya!

Chad Roy (23:09.288)
Bye.