The Hard Money Truth Most Investors Learn Too Late | Robby Rydinski, Anchor Loans

Mike Hambright (00:33)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my buddy, Robby Rydinski. We’re gonna be talking about all that is hard money, right? There’s kind of what’s going on today, what he’s seen. We’ll talk about the progression, how to choose the right hard money lender. There’s a lot of lenders out there as well. And Robby’s on around $3 billion in loans, so he knows what he’s talking about here. So Robby, thanks for being here. Welcome to the show, buddy.

Robby Rydinski (00:54)
Mike, I appreciate you. for having me. I’m looking forward to having some nice conversations and hopefully shedding some light on my, just giving some of my expertise with how many reps I’ve had.

Mike Hambright (01:04)
Yeah, think, know, so I’ve been in the business for about 18 years and I would say in my early years, like I kind of saw my lenders as like a necessary evil.

You know, but it, it, once you, as you, as you kind of talked about right before we started here, like having reps, like once you start to do this, it’s like, these are my partners. Like I, I have a lending partner. I used to like, even my contractor contractors, like I usually, you know, try to beat them up or I want to feel like I won the negotiation. It’s like, yeah, but I’m trying to build something over a long period of time here. So everybody needs to win. And it’s some of it’s just like business wisdom, right? But, but I think finding a great lender and a great lending partner is key to the business for sure.

Robby Rydinski (01:14)
That’s true, that’s true.

Mike Hambright (01:43)
know you’re going to share some of that today, some more insights on that in your perspective, having worked with just a ton of real estate investors and done a ton of loans. hey, before we jump into that, tell us a little bit about your background.

Robby Rydinski (01:54)
Yeah, I mean, my background actually been in this industry, specifically lending institutional hard money for about 10 years, but my background’s been in lending ever since I got out of college. I actually worked at a peer to peer lender called Lending Club, ⁓ first of its kind, kind of institutionalized.

someone on the backend wanting to invest in a loan, someone on the front end wanting to consolidate credit cards and that marketplace. So analyzing risks there, analyzing operational capacity, helping that business scale. ⁓ That one actually went IPO. And then I just kind of graduated into more of the real estate sector. A couple of buddies went into that sector. I got referred in and kind of the rest is history. Just done a lot. I was over at

industry leader for about eight years, Kiavi, aka Lending Home. Lending Home is when I joined about 10 years ago. I started there and kind of got the feet wet all on one floor, San Francisco, helped build that company to what it is today, originated, like I said, probably about…

billion dollars, two and a half billion dollars over there. Had a great time, great people over there. And then, yeah, within the last actually the last two years, I’ve been over at Anchor now as a managing director over there kind of playing a GM role, running a team, being a great mentor to the people that are on my team and just helping them level up and navigate the industry and look at it, how it should be looked at. It’s it’s very, a very transactional industry, but

The real winners are the people that position themselves as partners and try to solve problems rather than just originate alone.

Mike Hambright (03:30)
Yeah, talk about that a little bit because I think people are, we kind of discussed this a little bit upfront, they’re so focused on rate, right? Like what is the current rate, rate in points or terms or whatever. And the truth is, is there’s way more to the story.

than that, and then of course there’s a lot of people that promote low rates only to find out that there’s all sorts of fees and drama associated with it. So it’s an industry that probably a lot of people would say is commoditized, like, you know, it’s a race to the bottom with rates, but I think you and I both, know you live this, but I know that the relationship and to work with somebody that has your back, because there’s so much.

Robby Rydinski (03:54)
It is though, yeah.

Mike Hambright (04:06)
⁓ from draws to getting a loan finalized to all the drama associated with that or potential drama, right? Those are all things that are very important that are oftentimes worth way more than a half point that you’re saving or paying or whatever. So just talk about how do you choose the right lender and what are things that investors that are working with hard money lenders should be looking at?

Robby Rydinski (04:28)
Yeah, I mean, let’s let’s be real, to be honest, like lenders are a necessary evil, if you want to say that, but they don’t have to be looked at as that either. They are a function of I need to borrow money from this person to help complete this transaction and make myself money. So there is a bottom line component that needs to be taken out, but

The reality is that investor couldn’t do this deal without the lender either. So it’s a two way street, right? The lender has to make money and the investor has to make money. Now I think it’s smart for investors to negotiate and, you know, compare, along the way, cause that’s, that’s how you ultimately get yourself a better deal. That’s

It’s just negotiation 101 every good salesperson does that. But it comes to a point where I always encourage everyone that I work with and whenever I go to masterminds and you know here on this show to like it’s very overlooked to

You got interview these lenders, right? There’s a lot in the space. And like I was telling you, this product of like a fix and flip loan or a ground up construction loan, single asset or a DSCR loan, like all this stuff is easy. It’s very easy. Everyone’s figured out how to do it. There are

lot more things though to consider rather than rate and like I said, you need to interview your lender. How does it fit in with your structure? Do you have multiple partners, multiple signers? Do you guys have issues getting out of the loans? Are you guys gonna ever extend loans? How are your draws? Do you guys do two draws? Do you guys do ten draws? Like there’s so much more than just that upfront origination and rate, which is extremely important. Like don’t discount that. But

more to it of operational efficiency for fitting within your business. If you do not have a transaction coordinator on your team, it’s Mike just running the show and you’re going to have to communicate with the lender a lot and try to try to work through Scopal work line items and insurance stuff and just even onboarding the loan to the lender. That’s something to consider of like, OK, I’m a one man show. Like, how does this fit with my time? Right. Your time is money.

And if your lender can provide a solution for that, he obviously has done a great job with technology of doing that. And we’ve done a great job at Anchor of doing that through just the relationship itself. Like, how do you work? Send me over. I’ve got one guy that just sends me his purchase contract. That’s all he sends me and the escrow contact. And we onboard the loan for him. We get the loan originated for him. And it’s off to the racist. We’ve built up a track record of understanding and how each other works.

and what they normally do on a deal, but I’m just giving that as an example of like, that’s what works for him. So your business, every investor’s business is not the same and they need to understand the roadblocks and their…

whatever their ⁓ competitive advantage is too. If your competitive advantage is construction, lean on that and then someone like me to help you scale the financing, right? Understand what that means when you go to scale and what questions to ask. Like some folks don’t even know what questions to ask. That’s why it’s important to kind of take a step back and look at your own business and be like, this is something that is important,

Mike Hambright (07:26)
Mm-hmm.

tell us a little bit more about what questions people should ask. Like how do they know how to compare? Because I think a lot of people just assume, you know, if they’re just looking for rates, I think that’s a newbie mistake, right? But as people kind of like start to scale their business, like what are some questions that they should be asking to know how to compare lenders?

Robby Rydinski (08:07)
Yeah, think a very important one is how you intake loans. How is my loan going to be handled? Do I have a dedicated team? Do I have the same processor on every single loan? How do you guys…

handle draws, what’s draw turn time, what’s fees associated with draws on servicing on the back end? Do you guys charge fees to extend it? How many extensions can you do? What’s the cost of that? Like I can’t tell you how many times like some of my elite investors that I work with.

we got into trouble a couple years ago with some of the deals not being able to get sold on the backend. And that was hard from a pricing standpoint because some of those loans got charged.

multiple rounds of extension fees and that ate into their profits significantly. And it came to a point where you couldn’t extend it anymore. It was just a capital markets restraint and it ate away all the profits and some of them had to go deed and loo. And that was a hard, hard time. But if you if you position yourself on the front end of like, hey, you only can have two extensions. And this this one is like, we’ll give you more than two. But like, we need you out of the loan. Like,

you’re going to run into problem loans. That’s inevitable. If you’re a scaling real estate investor, you’re going to have to break even on some. There’s going to be a problem tenant. There’s going to be something with the foundation. But understanding that upfront and like not having that one be the biggest loser to put your business to a spot where you’re restarting completely. That’s important from an investor standpoint to understand that. So I think every facet of

A lender what a lender contributes to your business model is important to ask about like I said that is draws that is servicing that is upfront intake. That’s you know.

Standard pricing of like are we gonna change pricing every single time we do alone? I think those are kind of the main ones. I do have actually a list that I wrote out I might be able to give you Mike after the show and we can you know, maybe put that attached to the podcast ⁓ but yeah, I’ve I’ve written that out many times just because I think it’s Important for people to ask that of their lenders

Mike Hambright (10:21)
Yeah, yeah. When I was coming up, so 2008, there were a lot of banks that were just like, so first off, institutional hard money really wasn’t.

a thing at that point. was more local, maybe some regional folks, right? But the institutional folks weren’t involved yet. But I do know a lot of people that like the bank called and they called like loans due, like rental properties. They basically just said, hey, we got to shut you down, or not shut you down. Like we can’t lend anymore right now or what a real estate investors are evil or whatever, all those things, right? And so I think people that kind of went through that time know this. I’m kind of curious what your take is, is like the importance of having multiple lending relationships.

Robby Rydinski (10:48)
All right. Yep.

Mike Hambright (10:59)
in case one of them isn’t there. I know, not you guys, but I know of a large national lender, certainly one of the top five, that as soon as COVID hit, they just stopped lending for like two months. They were just like gone, right? And anybody that was relying on those loans, I mean, it was a disruptive period. And we all hope there’s not major issues like that in the future. But I mean, there probably will be something. There’s gonna be something, right? ⁓

Robby Rydinski (11:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, listen to

not not have your all your eggs in one basket, I feel like is is something that is is common knowledge, but it’s not at the same time, because if you got a good thing going with someone, it’s

It’s pretty easy to just keep it going like clockwork. think always having a backup or a third option for someone who wants to lend you money. It’s a funny thing. Like if you actually step back and take a look at it. When I got two sales guys directly on my team and you know kind of the opening pitch.

to some of the investors that we talk to is like, look, we’re not actually, we don’t need to originate this loan for you today, but I do think it’s a really good idea for you to get set up with us, at least to have like a custom offering, let’s work on some pricing, and when the time comes, we’ll be a great backup option for you. Like that in itself is like, we are someone who wants to lend you money, and having people that want to lend you money is, it’s hard. From a credible source, it’s hard to conceptualize.

that is a bad thing, you know? I know it takes time. I know it takes time to get set up and have another conversation, but think about how that could affect your business down the road. Like if this person, we can spread the wealth with this one and they’re a really good capital partner of they’re not gonna disappear or when the going gets tough, they’re going to be a really good servicing partner for you and help you get out of these rather than like…

our capital structure is strapped and our loan docs are iron cloud. We can’t extend it anymore. Like that’s that’s all part of being a partner, right? Like that’s.

That’s a good thing for you to have of multiple. wouldn’t I wouldn’t suggest having like six. That’s probably not. That’s probably too much when people rate shop and they send their deal to six different lenders almost acting as their own broker that gets away from you and that causes too much time. You’re not going to you save a half a half a percentage or maybe a quarter point on something where it took you a week to determine who you’re going to send the loan to is like.

It’s just almost bad business. That’s operational inefficiency. But if you have a couple in your arsenal that you really like and that speak your language, they understand your business, that’s important. That’s extremely important to have multiple in there.

Mike Hambright (13:41)
Yeah, I think…

You know, one of things that I realized along the way, whether it’s contractors or lenders, it’s important that both sides are important to each other. Like if you spread things out, like if I go work with, just use contractors as an example. If I work with like 10 different GCs instead of like two, then I’m not significantly important to them. And so when I need something, they’re like, you’re just one of my many customers instead of like, my team relies on you. Like we need each other, right? And I think that’s a good position to be in is like, you don’t want to be, again, you don’t want just

Robby Rydinski (13:48)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (14:12)
one of anything because things happen, right? But to have a couple of really solid, meaningful relationships is good because if people are just doing one loan here and there with you, are you gonna bend over backwards when something goes south and they need your help? You’re like, I feel bad for you, but you’re gonna have hotter fires burning somewhere else to deal with,

Robby Rydinski (14:28)
Yeah.

It’s a really good point

and call out because like we at anchor, we actually have a loyalty program. We literally say if you bring us five million a year, we cut your pricing this much. If you bring us 10 million a year, we cut your pricing this much. 20 million a year, we cut your pricing this much. So we have incentive base.

⁓ pricing for volume, but what that does is it gets you into like, this is our one of our anchor legend clients. Like when it’s talked about from a credit perspective or it comes up in company executive calls or stuff like that, that’s actually important. Maybe the investor doesn’t really see that as important, but

Having having your your partner not only your like either your loan origin or your account manager or whoever But having like the company have eyes on like wow this guy’s sending volume and like he’s been a really good customer for us He or she has been a really good customer for us. That’s that’s that’s invaluable because At least us we we go we’ll dabble in the gray I know a lot of other lenders can’t really get creative our capital structure is very flexible to

where we can do deals that others can’t. Like I was saying to you before the meeting, like our average loan sizes are 900K and above. do heavy construction, luxury products, all that type of stuff. That’s stuff that is a little harder for people to do. Anything under three million is pretty easy, but you know, that’s big, you know?

Mike Hambright (16:01)
Yeah, for folks that want to scale, we’re talking about having multiple relationships. But for those investors that are scaling up, and we have a lot of those inside of Investor Fuel, we’ve had a lot of people that come in doing a certain number of deals and they’ve double, triple, three, five exit over the next couple of years.

Mike Hambright (16:15)
I think a lot of investors like growth kind of happens to them and they just react as things are going on. But what can they do to proactively prepare for growth in regarding their lender relationships?

Robby Rydinski (16:27)
Yeah, that’s that’s another part of like asking good questions up front. If you’re prepared to send a lender 20 million dollars in business, is that lender prepared to originate 20 million dollars in business for you? And what does that take? If they are, that’s that’s great. But if they aren’t like you need to know that, too. A very important question to ask your lender. So. My experience.

And what I know to be industry standard is everyone usually has a standard exposure limit per tier, right? You get tiered as X customer within the framework of the credit policy. It’s usually leaning on a FICO. It’s usually leaning on how many results.

how many residential transactions you’ve held title on flips, ground ups, all that type of stuff. Once you fit in there, standard exposure limit. Once you need to go over that exposure limit, some people don’t have the ability to some people are gonna be like, this is all we can do. Other folks like ourselves, I’ve got guys with $70 million exposure limits with us, they have scaled tremendously with us, but that wasn’t that wasn’t like a you’re on board and you have it. It’s it’s more of like, once you hit that

Maybe it’s a $10 million point.

There’s a checkpoint of like, hey, we’re actually positioned to help you. We can give you a lot more capital because we have a lot more of it, but we need to kind of take a deeper dive into the business. And you and I talked about this pre show, but like making yourself bankable as an investor is extremely important. When I say making yourself bankable, that means making sure your financials are in order, making sure you got, you know, two most recent bank statements with the liquidity shown in there.

having your profit and loss dialed in. This is for the scaling real estate investor, mind you. This isn’t for someone who needs to, you know, borrow three million or something like that. But when you get to those scaling and everyone invest your fuel, everyone has those ideas of wanting to get bigger. having your profit and losses dialed in, having balance sheets, cash flows dialed in, having the ability to paint the picture to a lender,

to show a clear picture of like this is us right. If you want to put together a little narrative of like here’s our headcount we have two acquisition guys we’ve got we’ve got two general contractors that we send all of our business they’re exclusive to us. Here’s our here’s our P &L from last year here’s our balance sheet here’s the current inventory that we own that gives the credit team the ability to be like wow this is like we don’t even have to really talk about anything I don’t even.

Mike Hambright (18:58)
Yeah, that’s

great.

Robby Rydinski (18:58)
I

don’t even want to get on a call. Like maybe the lenders want to get on a call and you know, the credit guys will ask a few questions. But if you’re already prepared, you’re like, I’m going to get to this point. So let’s start tracking this stuff and preparing it. So when we are ready, we can provide it. It’ll be seamless. We’re not going to have to jumble loans that are in the pipeline, maybe delay some, some closings. That’s happened a lot. I’ve run into that quite a few times where guys don’t have their financials in order. We got some loans in the pipeline.

where we’re delaying a couple days, their closing dates, just because we want to make sure from a policy standpoint, we’re not overextending the money to someone who can’t handle it. We’re always wanting to lend more.

Mike Hambright (19:39)
Mm-hmm.

Robby Rydinski (19:41)
but there is a check and balance of making sure that we can, they can effectively handle it. Everyone always wants to do more, right? But, ⁓ are you equipped to, to handle that?

Mike Hambright (19:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s great. It makes me think about, there was a point in my career where I needed to just start preparing. This is usually on the commercial side. They would ask for quarterly personal financial statements. And it’s complicated. I’ve got retirement accounts, I’ve got rental portfolios, I’ve got multifamily, I’ve got, there’s coffee cans of money in different yards. mean, I’ve got stuff going on, right? And I think when I was going through that process, it was such a burden the first few times I created.

Robby Rydinski (20:16)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (20:21)
And then I was like, I just need to create a process for like how this is updated, right? And it’s like, hey, at the end of a quarter, I’m going to pull together these bank statements, or maybe I can have an admin team help with that. that’s what that made me think about is just building a process to have a snapshot of your business. And maybe it’s updated on a quarterly basis so that when you hand it to a lender, that it has everything that they could possibly need, probably, and then some. But it just makes you look so much back to be kind of being bankable. It’s so polished and professional.

Robby Rydinski (20:24)
Exactly.

Mike Hambright (20:50)
that it could only be a good thing for you.

Robby Rydinski (20:51)
Yeah.

Yeah,

and it’s hard. It’s hard to like, weighs the pros and cons of that ROI time investment while you’re a scaling real estate investor, right? You see the dollar signs of managing your contractors well and the lenders are one piece of the equation that is one piece of you got a source and then you got to manage contractors. You got to use the lender. You got to communicate with realtors for disposition or however your disposition team is set up. like understandable that it gets neglected, but

Mike Hambright (21:01)
Right.

Robby Rydinski (21:21)
It’s 100 % necessary if you want to scale. There’s no other way around it.

Banks don’t touch this business, right? Like it’s normally a business that banks don’t really want to scale with real estate investors. But the ones who do, the institutional hard money lenders, they do. And what they’re going to require is this. Maybe your buddy in South Florida who’s done this for X amount of years doesn’t need that, but he’s not going to give you $20 million, right? Like that’s not, that’s not reality. He’s going to be tapped after 10, maybe even five.

Mike Hambright (21:54)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, that’s great. let’s talk about this kind of professional progression of a real estate investor. So some start off, and I think this has happened a lot over the past few years in this downturn, as people started to shift. Like a lot of rehabbers started building, do a new construction, and many of them are like, wow, this is way easier than flipping houses, right? And there’s this kind of progression that happens. And not everybody follows that same path. But just, I think, also the importance of having had certain experiences, maybe from a lender perspective.

Robby Rydinski (22:16)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (22:26)
that maybe share your thoughts on that. ⁓

Robby Rydinski (22:28)
Yeah, like

I’ve worked with so many real estate investors. Like I said, I’ve done tons of volume. was doing 1100 loans a year for, for multiple years in a row. It’s, and that’s throughout the country, right? And a common theme that you see across the country is that over time, people continue to graduate tiers and what a tier necessarily is as a real estate investor of like most people start as a whole.

You’re figuring out how to source deals and how important that is. I mean, you know better than anyone how important it is to make your money on the front end and make it on the back end. And what I mean by the front end is like learn how to source deals that fit your buy box and that are it’s a non emotional like if this is at 350, we’re buying it right like it’s it’s figuring out your numbers, your ARVs and figuring out how to go sell or direct effectively or if

that’s

just if this is just building a real estate agent network and being able to have those agents send you deals and then you have a wholesale network of investors that you’re sending those to. But naturally it starts at sourcing, which is the ground floor of making money on the front end. And then people kind of graduate into that like, hey, we’re we’ve done so many wholesale deals and we know how to source them up front. We don’t really have a contractor network. We know one of our guys wants to do it and like he wants to do it with us. We know him pretty well.

We need to take down a flip. want to we want to start, you know building this business into like some wholesale and some flips but people do that then they go into flips and Learn the ins and outs of like well We’re not gonna take on these extensive projects because we’ve run into trouble with the foundation a lot and like you start learning that but then that natural progression Starts getting into why are we even dealing with these old houses, right? Like these old houses are harder to deal with than us actually just build

building a house from scratch. And now that we have our contractor network built up and now that we’ve figured out how to source deals on the front end, like we’re well equipped to handle this effectively. Maybe they’re not the construction experts, but they have someone who is and they’ve done it with them. Breaking into that is tough because most lenders will require some sort of ground up construction experience and navigating that is like

You know, do you know people that have done it and will your GC sign on to the loan with you for the first few? I know we’ll consider it, especially if they’ve done spec homes themselves, but breaking into that is kind of that next graduation tier. And then maybe breaking into luxury and what it takes for luxury. Everyone sees price tags for luxury and the dollar signs, but everyone.

everyone doesn’t realize how intricate that sale and that build is. There’s so many things of like, if you’re here, does that require a wellness package in the house? And does that require having like, do you have a big yard as opposed to some of the other ones? There’s so many little things. You can’t just pick up a luxury property and hope to sell it. Maybe if you’re getting it for dirt cheap and there was a weird deal, but everyone is out there to make money. So those

those

you can’t bank on those if you want to scale a luxury business you need to dial that in too so anyways there’s just it’s just fun to see the natural progression of these and does your like reverting back to like

what I can help with and what lenders can help with. Can they help you scale through those progressions? Are they going to be a good partner for you? If you build credibility with them, if we go back to like a loyalty program, this guy has done a shitload of flips with us and he’s executed. He’s paid off 25 flips, 50 flips, whatever it is. He wants to dab his feet into ground up. He’s got this contractor that actually has done all of these flips. We’re comfortable doing this loan with them, but like

you wouldn’t be able to do that if you didn’t have the relationship with the lender. So lenders are relationship based at this level, at this institutional hard money level. At a Bank of America level, it’s a little bit harder, right? Or a Wells Fargo, that’s just a transaction. That’s not like, sorry, like our fine print can’t do anything. Like we can’t do this, but we can. Like that’s the point of continuing to do business with a couple of different lenders.

Mike Hambright (26:43)
Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because not everybody, not every lender even does new construction and definitely not every lender does luxury type stuff. I know you guys do. So and quite frankly, even on the contractor side, I mean, I have never done luxury, but I’ve done, you know, like double the median price point in my area type houses before. And it generally is not the same contractors. Like if you’re doing a lot of entry level houses and then you move to something higher, like, you know, what you can get away with with grout lines on one level is totally different

then on the next level. And you just kind of see it. You get in here like, man, like these guys are not quite polished enough for this level, you know.

Robby Rydinski (27:24)
Yeah, and think about that. Like if you if you progress from that wholesaler to flipper to ground up construction to like luxury operator and

There it just takes one of those luxuries to to ruin everything that you built. Like those are very, very important to get right. There’s a lot of dollars. There’s a lot of a lot of interest payments that need to be made on those ones. And if you haven’t, we’ll wrap in our interest payments on loans for those. So like that’s that’s one of the things for ground up construction flips and luxury builds. It’s like think about your cash flow management on those things. Will your lender allow you?

Mike Hambright (27:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robby Rydinski (28:02)
to wrap in your monthly payments so you can just focus on the construction and shut out your money for money on the street and get that drawback and just keep recycling that that money from a cash flow perspective or you’re have to pay, you know, 1520 K a month for that for that deal. And that’s going to be another piece of overhead that like you need to account for it. If you don’t wrap it into the loan like we’ll do how are you going to manage that from a cash flow standpoint, especially if

you’re like dude we might have 10 % of overages that always happens.

Mike Hambright (28:34)
Yeah,

yeah. Robby, if you had your ear to the ground a little bit of what’s going to happen for the balance of the year here, balance 2026, where do you see the market headed from a lending perspective, from a, you know, ⁓ I guess, from an overall real estate perspective of things kind of, you know, moving a little more smoothly than maybe they have in the past year? Like, where do see things going?

Robby Rydinski (28:55)
I would say things are things. think things are going to get continuously better. It’s not going to be rapidly better. It’s going to be kind of that upward momentum, not just like the volatility pie chart. I think what real estate investors need to remember to not to get too scared. Do what you’re good at and do do your local markets well, because that’s where you’re going to win. It doesn’t matter the cycles of real estate if we’re in a down

market or an up market or whatever the guys who win they they stay in what they know best and they’ll take their losses they’ll take the L’s they’ll take the break even ones and then they’ll recalculate their formulas of like hey guys we had to take this our car cops are coming in a lot lower and continuing to keep your head to the ground of

Knowing that local market if you’re going outside your local markets and that’s always good to try to expand out there But if you don’t have either a boots on the ground or someone like that Really monitoring how that’s working and you’re continuing to take break even properties out there. It’s it’s hard when you’re not there Physically, it’s doable and it can be done. But I think

from a conservative approach, people get a little bit scared. They’re always asking, what’s gonna happen with the market? What are we gonna do? And like, should I continue to invest in real estate? The answer is yes. If you are confident in yourself and you’re good at what you do, and you look at every avenue of what real estate investing takes, every function of like, where’s my lender fitting in with rates? Where am I getting these?

these deals on the front end. What’s my disposition looking like? What are my contractors charging? Having your having your ear to the ground on every single one of those is what puts apart the, you know, kind of junior or standard real estate investors to the pros. The pros always will figure out a way through it. And that’s you shouldn’t bank on what I say the market’s going to do or what a lender shows data of be aware of it be informed.

also just be really good at what you do as a business operator because that’s what’s going to win.

Mike Hambright (31:04)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah. mean, as entrepreneur, I’m always amazed with how

problems pop up and entrepreneurs just solve them. Like sometimes there’ll be some huge roadblock that’s put in place. This just happened recently. I can’t think of what it was, but something in the marketplace, like a huge roadblock and then investors or entrepreneurs just like they literally just, all right, here’s how we’re going to do it now. We’re just going to kind of get around this, right? So you have to, but you have to have that problem, that problem solving ability. And so there’s always, as long as there’s people, like people need housing, there’s always going to be an opportunity for us, but you just, you’re going to have to pivot a few times and solve problems that didn’t exist before.

Robby Rydinski (31:13)
Exactly.

Yeah.

always.

Mike Hambright (31:39)
for

Robby Rydinski (31:40)
Yeah, yeah. And just

continuing to be like a great figure in that that local market that you operate in. I think communities help each other to and your and your lenders will help you to if you build the right relationship. So like if you can build those strong relationships with contractors, lenders, realtors, that’s your family. That’s your family that helps you build your business and take it to the next level. And when you’re kind of loyal to none and you don’t kind of invest the

time into any. That’s that hurts sometimes when the going gets tough. Right. You don’t have anyone to lean on and you’re scrambling and you’re back to getting six quotes from a lender, six quotes from a contractor. And, you know, your realtors are like, hey, will you take this one for one percent commission? Like, and how much time are you wasting then? You know, it’s it’s just not scalable. And positioning yourself as a scalable real estate investor is different. It’s not for everyone. But if you are

Mike Hambright (32:20)
Yep.

Robby Rydinski (32:36)
A lot of things to consider.

Mike Hambright (32:37)
So Robby,

folks want to connect with you in any way, where can they go?

Robby Rydinski (32:40)
Yeah, I, ⁓

I actually got a landing page on Anchor Loans. So if you just type in on Google Anchor Loans and then Robby Rydinski, R-O-B-B-Y-R-Y-D-I-N-S-K-I, you’ll see my landing page at the top of that. You can also connect with me on Instagram. My handle on Instagram is the thethehardmoneyplug. If you want to connect there or feel free to shoot me a text.

My number actually my business direct line number, which is probably the best way to text that one’s going to be 925-744-5183 too. So I’m always available. I’m always down to talk shop and and just help navigate the industry. I talked to you about this before we had the call. This isn’t about me doing your deal. I’m not a transactional partner here. I’m more of a how can I provide value to your operation and

And can we fit as maybe a good secondary? That’s what I’m interested in because once we do people deals together, once you realize that I understand your business just as well as you do and it means something to me, that’s kind of when we take off and that’s when it’s beneficial for both parties.

Mike Hambright (33:50)
Yeah.

Yeah,

that’s great. Robby, thanks for joining us today. Yeah. Great to see you.

Robby Rydinski (33:56)
Yeah, Mike, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Yes, sir.

Mike Hambright (33:59)
Guys, hope

you got some good vibe. This is like kind hard money lending 101, right? a lot of things you need to do to make yourself bankable, to make sure you’re building relationships with people so you don’t have to think about the lending side of your business or where you’re to get capital from. That’s one of the worst things that happens to a real estate investor is if they, it’s like the proverbial dog that catches the bus and you don’t know what to do with it. It’s like, if you get a great deal or you’re in the business of you keep finding great deals and you don’t know how you’re going to fund them, like that is, that is, that’s not good, not good. So make sure you’re working with great.

lending partners like Robby. We’re going to put some links down in the show notes before. Appreciate you guys for joining us. See you next time.