Wisdom from 2,400 deals

Mike: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is one you don’t wanna miss. It’s gonna be an amazing show today. I’ve got my buddy Mike Lima here. Mike Lima is the godfather of wholesaling, as far as I’m concerned. Done over 2,400 transactions. Uh, been an investor since 1992. That’s when I graduated from high school.

Mike: By the way, Mike, and I’m not, I’m no young. I’m no young bird either. But hey, I, what I’m most excited about is obviously spending time with Mike, cuz we’ve become great friends over the years. But to find out that, uh, Mike is, uh, you know, he’s not all over social media. He posts some stuff, mostly of him climbing mountains and stuff like that.

Mike: Uh, a lot of running. But here’s what I just found out. I had no idea. I know that, you know, he’s kind of shied away from social media and stuff. This is his very first podcast interview and I’m super honored and excited to, to be that guy, Mike. So, thank you so much for being here.

Mike: Professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. In fact, real estate is just a vehicle of freedom. A group of over a hundred of a nation’s leading real estate investors from across the country meet several times a year at the Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also to come together as friends.

Mike: And build more fulfilling lives for all of those around us on today’s show, we’re gonna continue our conversation of fueling our businesses and fueling our lives. I’m glad you’re here.

Mike Lima: Absolutely Mike, and then, you know, you’re that guy for a reason. You know, I’ve, uh, turned down a number of requests over the years to be on other people’s shows, and I’ve, uh, just kind of way I wanted, you know, find, you know, to, to, I wanted to develop my own brand at some point. But yeah, in the meanwhile, you know, from when I come on and do it, I’m, uh, I’d rather work with someone like you and, and, you know, kind of give my information, give my.

Mike Lima: My info to you because, you know, you’ve just been a, a great inspiration. You do things the right way. You know, you, it’s not all about the show boating, it’s about the, the sharing and the information and helping people. And so that’s really

Mike: Yeah, I’m honored. And thank you for the kind words, Mike. That’s amazing.

Mike: And, and honestly, you know, um, What I love about guys like you, uh, and there’s, there’s not a lot of them, is you just, you just have your head down in the trenches just doing deals. Like you don’t, you, you’re not, you’re way less worried about being flashy or showing off. And, uh, that’s why, you know, people know you from coast to coast.

Mike: But in the Phoenix market, everybody, everybody knows you’re the godfather out there. So excited to have you here though, my friend.

Mike Lima: Thank you.

Mike: It’s been good. Yeah. So, hey, tell us a little bit about your, your background. I just kind of alluded to, it’s a very rich background, been a long time, a lot of deal flow, over 2,400 deals, but maybe just, just give it a little more context than that.

Mike Lima: Well, yeah, it started in the corporate world like, like you did. Um, uh, so right outta school course, I got outta high school a little bit earlier than you went to college, uh, at pi, uh, university of Pittsburgh. And then, uh, so I corporate immediately became a cpa, became a C F O at the age of 26. So, I’m sorry, corporate control at the age of 26 C C F O at the age of 31.

Mike Lima: So I was kind of on that fast track and all I knew was, you know, To have a job and the, and the work your butt off and, and, you know, uh, climb a corporate ladder. And so I did that and traveled extensively overseas, uh, with those positions. And, uh, was just outta town, you know, four to six weeks at a time, just never around.

Mike Lima: And when we finally started, Think about, okay, let’s settle down and have a family and have kids. And when finally I got pregnant, I was literally overseas, constantly in between Africa and um, and York primarily. And so I, um, at that point, some guy in Portugal, an engineer in Portugal I was meeting with, I said, Hey, you gotta read this book.

Mike Lima: And it was Rich Dad, poor Dad, it was Portuguese, you know. And so, um, I came back to States and he had shipped me a copy of it in English. And so I read that. Over the Christmas holiday and a few months later I quit my corporate job and, um, just started doing real estate. Wow, that’s awesome. So that was the beginning of the full-time gig, you know, and yeah, I’d been doing it part-time for a while, but then this jumped me in full-time in real estate and just started figuring out from lease options is, is initially where I got started, which I hardly ever do anymore by the way.

Mike Lima: And then just progressing up from lease options to fix and flip and then really wholesaling just became something to do once I. Realized that my deal flow was so strong, I couldn’t fix it, flip everything. So I just started wholesale off everything that was, that was left over. And, uh, we’ve had some just really, you know, magical years, some great years.

Mike Lima: So worked with a lot of good people. I’ve had a lot of great folks come through my shop who are now extremely successful and, and much more successful and social media than I am because they really put themselves out there and they’re wonderful. People and, uh, and so I’m just, uh, you know, kind of proud and blessed to have been a part of their journey along the way as well.

Mike Lima: And so, uh, you know, now fast forward to two, 2023. I, I’ve done, you know, a little bit of everything. I’ve done hundreds of fix and flip and, and buy and hold, uh, portfolio rentals. Um, On vacation rentals, of course, thousands of wholesale deals and, uh, you know, every asset class, you know, you could think of between commercial and industrial, multifamily, single family, all that stuff, you know?

Mike Lima: Yep. So, yep. And I, I enjoy stellar financing and, you know, kind of just, uh, creative deal. I’m big about, uh, deal structure. I think deal structure is as important as, as price as getting the right price on a property, you know, structuring that deal to be a win-win.

Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I think part of that is, um, your wisdom from having done it for a long time.

Mike: Part of it is you have a financial background like me. Like you just think it’s, it’s a, it’s a, you know, like you said, the deal structure is really important. There’s a lot of ways to skin that cat. And I know part of it probably is, is just being in a market like Phoenix that’s, that’s had amazing highs and amazing lows.

Mike: You have to get creative, uh, sometimes, right? And so you just build up these skills that you just kind of tuck away in your, in your proverbial tool belt and use ’em whenever you need ’em, right.

Mike Lima: You know, that’s true. And, and the other thing with Phoenix, uh, Arizona in general, it’s just highly competitive market, you know?

Mike Lima: Sure. Uh, there’s, there’s other, uh, other states and cities around the country that aren’t nearly as competitive as we are, but we’ve got a, a lot of, you know, so, so-called gurus. We’ve got a lot of guys of a lot of great knowledge here in Arizona, you know, as you guys do in Dallas area too. Um, but you know, so you gotta be sharp on your game.

Mike Lima: You gotta be thinking about what’s coming down, how do you separate yourself, differentiate yourself from the other guys, you know? Yeah. Which is part of game.

Mike: Yeah, and I know you won’t do it, and I’m not asking you to do it, but if you can make a whole list of all those gurus or all the rock stars that have come out of Phoenix, there’s a lot of amazing people there.

Mike: And maybe a couple that, that are on the shithead side too, I’ll say. But uh, every market has that, right? But honestly, uh, most of these guys, if you were to show a laundry list of people you’ve impacted or whether you’ve. Coached or mentor them directly or had an impact, I bet it’s a laundry list that, uh, that would be very impressive.

Mike: So I won’t even ask you to Yeah. Put one out there, but that’s great. Much it wouldn’t be

Mike Lima: fair. Yeah. But they, yeah, there a lot of great people and they, they know who they’re, yeah. Yeah,

Mike: yeah. So, um, let’s talk a little bit about, um, Um, you know, maximizing deal profit, cuz that’s one of the things that, you know, just to be honest, for folks that are listening, every guest I have on, we always, I always have the question of what do you wanna talk about today?

Mike: And like, let’s come up with something that makes sense, uh, that you’re passionate about and something that

Mike Lima: would make sense for, well, baseball might work cuz you know, the Diamondbacks and arrangers are both kicking butt this year for a change. Should

Mike: we just, we might have to do that. That might have to be the second episode, Mike.

Mike: Uh, so, but, um, we’re gonna talk about kind of maximizing deal profits and, you know, I think where we are in this market, you, you have to do with everything you can to maximize the deal flow. Cuz for a lot of people deal flow is down and if they’re playing it right, profits might be up per deal. But let’s kind of dive into, you know, maybe just kind of to lay the groundwork.

Mike: Talk about the, aside from the obvious stuff, the importance of maximizing the profit on every

Mike Lima: deal. Well, yeah, you know, I’m, I’m lucky, I’ve been in Phoenix for a long time and, and people kind of know me here, so I get a, probably a larger percentage of referral business than, than most folks do in a procrastination.

Mike Lima: And it’s just, cuz I’ve been, I’m old, I’ve been doing this a long time, you know, that type of thing. Um, but still, you know, I, I still go out and I still pay for leads as well. You know, it’s not all referral. I wish I could, I. I’d be, you know, in Fat City. But, so, but I still, uh, get, uh, uh, do my fair share of marketing spend and on the, on those deals, you know, I appreciate that, you know, when you, it takes a lot of work to get a deal to a deal, you know, lead all the way through the system to a real deal, you know?

Mike Lima: Yeah. And I know that, you know, uh, from talking to the investor fuel folks, you know, that, you know, most folks are in that range of, you know, Uh, the, the, the cost of the, the marketing spend for a lead to get all the way through to a successful deal, a closed deal is somewhere in a range of five to $9,000 per deal.

Mike Lima: And that’s kind of been consistent, uh, lately. So, um, which is quite high, you know, so when we get one of those deals and, and we’ve invested all that effort into getting it that far, getting a, a seller to agree to your price and, and getting it to the closing table, you know, why not at that point? Make sure.

Mike Lima: That we’ve optimized that, that and squeeze as much juice outta that puppy as we can, right? Because that’s a pretty big investment. And, and as soon as that deal’s over, guess what happens? We gotta go and we gotta go start that engine again and work that next, the next lead all the way through the system, right?

Mike Lima: So, and you have to have these things all stacked up, but if you can get more out of each one that you’re already working on, just. Obviously makes a lot of sense, you know, and you’re not taxing the rest of your organization normally. I mean, you know, typically on a, on a standard deal, you’ve got, you know, your acquisition side getting all the way through, but then you’ve got your tc, your dispo, everything else that takes place.

Mike Lima: Once you’ve got that deal, if you can tag onto that deal with a couple extra services or more profit you can use, do that without even, yeah. Touching without paying one dime more in TC or in dispo because you already have your buyer, you already have the tc, everything’s been done. So this is purely incremental profit drop into the bottom line.

Mike: So sometimes people do that by choosing a different exit strategy. They might whole tail it instead of sign it, for example. Well, let’s come back to X different strategies, but you just said something interesting. You talked about tagging on an extra service. What do you mean

Mike Lima: by that? Well, I mean, I guess what I’m saying is that, you know, Mo, most of us out here have done more than just one service or one exit strategy in the real estate world, right?

Mike Lima: Sure. You know, um, there’s, there are folks that are primarily fix and flip guys, right? Guys that are primarily rental guys. And within rental, it could be long-term rentals, it could be short-term rentals, right? Um, there’s guys that do that, do coaching, you know, you’ve done a lot of coaching. Uh, um, I haven’t done a lot of coaching.

Mike Lima: I’ve do, uh, I do mentoring where I, I’ll mentor someone. And then, um, and we’ll work together on live deals. And when the live deal hits, I’ll take a percentage of profit at that point as opposed to taking ’em upfront. But, you know, coaching, mentoring, um, there, there’s, uh, private lending, you know, um, financing.

Mike Lima: So there’s so many ways, whole tailing as you mentioned earlier, there’s so way many ways to monetize what you’re doing, right. And so what I’m saying here is, but there’s an opportunity to take a few of these things and stack ’em on top of each other in certain deals, you know? Yeah. So instead of just taking a wholesale deal and closing it out and making your 15, $20,000 whole, uh, assignment profit, there might be an opportunity for you to tag onto that thing and get some additional profits downstream.

Mike Lima: Yeah. With that same exact deal, that same buyer that you already found. So give, give an exam, give a,

Mike: give a specific example if you don’t mind, of, um, How you make some money upfront and then maybe make some money. Because you just mentioned an example of, you know, maybe you finance it to the wholesaler and you get a piece of the profit on the backender.

Mike: You have a couple examples like that are, that you would say are kind of common that folks listening to this might say, you know, a lot of times the ideas we hear are simple enough. Like, gosh, I never thought about that, but that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Like what are some things that you do like that, that you see other guys probably missing out on that um, you think is just like bread and butter, this is how you

Mike Lima: should do it.

Mike Lima: Well, I think the simplest one, let’s start with it, the simple ones. I, the simplest one is, um, you, you know, everyone on this call is probably either wholesaling or fix and flipping. So in one, in one way or another, you, you, you’ve got a product that you’ve now found a buyer for and you’re getting ready to close esco, right?

Mike Lima: And a typical thing that happens is, you know, you get towards the closing table and the buyer can’t come up with all the funds, or at the last minute he is trying to do a price reduction on you, right? And so you can either go ahead and. Kill the deal and start with pro, find another buyer, which is painful, right?

Mike Lima: Or you can find a way to make it work. You know, I almost look for those opportunities. It’s like, um, just like I love seller financing. I every deal, I talk to someone on my seller financing hats on. Even if it’s not where they’re going, I’m gonna somehow figure out is there a seller financing play on it?

Mike Lima: Same thing here. I’m gonna look for how do I monetize this deal? How do I make a little better deal out of it than it was a few minutes ago when we first struck the deal? You know? And so if. If you’re wholesaling or you’re fixed and flipping that property, you’ve got your buyer. And then you could always even just offer to the buyer, Hey, hey, would you want me to carry a second mortgage for you back?

Mike Lima: I can carry back 10 15 grand for you. Oftentimes they’re gonna need that. I mean, we’ve seen so many deals that almost blow up because some at the last minute is one short on cash up. They thought they had this much money, but you know, something happened or. They went out test driving cars this weekend.

Mike Lima: Now the FICO score just dropped and now they can’t get the, the full LTV that they had. You know, I had one this last summer that was a, um, it was actually a commercial property. A commercial plaza. Like a strip mall. And, um, It was, um, I, I was about to make $175,000. Well get all my equity outta this property, right?

Mike Lima: And, uh, the, the rates were changing last summer. Things were a little bit different than they are now. Uh, lenders were getting scared. Rates were creeping up and lenders started cutting LTVs. So it cut my buyer’s LTV by just over 10%. So it left him about $80,000 short of the cash I was getting. About half of.

Mike Lima: The cash I was gonna get back. So I could have gone back and I could have gone and found another buyer, right? And spent all that time marketing all that stuff. Or I could have doubled down and made more money with the buyer I had. So what I said is, Hey look, I’ll give you a second of $84,000 at 15% interest.

Mike Lima: I’ll give you a whole year to pay me off. You know, I, and, and he said, wow, great. Let’s do it. We signed and we closed it the next day instead of having to go back to the drawing board and do all that stuff. Right. So what’d that do for me? I, I got $91,000 of cash right up front, that at closing the next day, and I carried back the 84,000, which I.

Mike Lima: Um, I charged them 15% interest, which is a really, a fair interest rate for a second position, right? Yeah. But it’s a property that I already knew. I knew the property, I knew the tenants. I’d put the tenants in there. So even if I had to take that property back, one, I had the ability to take the property back if he, if he defaulted two, if I took it back, I already knew all the players involved in the deal, and they’d be, they’d been happy to have me as the landlord again.

Mike Lima: So I wasn’t concerned at all. So in the meanwhile, I charged the. Buyer three, basically three points or three percentage points on the deal. $3,000 on the deal. And, um, and then packaged it up with a 15% loan, which he then made monthly payments on that loan. Um, started out with a 20% apr, essentially attached to it, but he paid it off in less than half of the year, so it ended up being like a 26%.

Mike Lima: Apr, uh, to me. So I made an extra $16,000 of interest slash loan fees on that one deal. And so when I, instead of getting 84 back at the end of that period of time, I got a hundred thousand back. So, yeah, that’s awesome. Um, and instead of, so, instead of making, you know, 175,000, ended up making 191,000 on that deal.

Mike Lima: And so really that extra 16,000 cost me just about nothing to do. I mean, I, I delayed my gratification of that, of that, of that. Right. Cash for a little while, right? But I basically created another little mini wholesale deal, a $16,000 profitable deal. I would’ve had to go out and work and work through other leads and figure out, you know, what deal I could get squeezed 16,000 out of, or $26,000 if there’s a, a $10,000 cost per deal in there, right?

Mike Lima: It’s a 26. I’d have to go find a $26,000 deal to make that same 16,000 back again. In this case, I made 16,000 clean and easy without having to go and do anything else. That’s awesome,

Mike: Mike. Now you just said a com, you just said a phrase and I say it all the time and the the importance of it, and you’ve been doing this for a long time.

Mike: I want you to share a little of your wisdom on what you just said. Delayed gratification, because yeah, there’s a lot of real estate investors that they, they’re either the business isn’t big enough to afford delayed gratification, like they have to do a deal now to survive or to pay the bills or whatever.

Mike: You’ve been doing this for a long time, and obviously it helps when your deal flow is higher because. You’re kind of making money that you need to cover your costs, and then you can effectively play with the house’s money a little bit and afford to push that out if the deals are sweeter. But just share your thoughts on, I know we’re cut from the same cloth here.

Mike: Share your thoughts on the importance as a real estate investor of delaying gratification.

Mike Lima: Right. I, I, you know, I don’t think it can be understated. I think delayed gratification is one of the biggest reasons that the successful folks are successful in life. And why fo and why other folks are not successful in life.

Mike Lima: You know, um, if you, um, if you’re cut from the cloth where, you know, you feel like everything you make, You have you ready to have it spent, and you go ahead and, and you know, you live your life that way. Well, guess what? You, you know, typically you’re not then building the wealth, you’re not building the things.

Mike Lima: You might have a lot of assets, a lot of stuff, but you don’t really have wealth. Right? The wealth is really the, the what’s behind the scenes. What, what you’re able to. Put in park for the future, right? And so that’s, I’ve always been that way. Even my corporate days, I always, you know, work my butt off and, and just always delay gratification through.

Mike Lima: I’ll work, put the time in. Now I’ll climb the corporate ladder. I’ll, I’ll make my money later. And it’s worked out well for me in real estate. I think it’s super important to do that as well. Now some, not everyone’s in that position to do that. If you’re just getting started, maybe you just quit your job and you just need to, you need income, you need to put.

Mike Lima: You know, food on the table, you’re in a different position and I get that, you know, you gotta go deal to deal to deal to deal. But as soon as you have a little bit of leeway there, I just implore folks to really delay that gratification, take that money and all. All I did when another way is positioning it, I said delay gratification.

Mike Lima: But I could have also said, I basically chose to take my equity, some of my equity outta that deal and make money on my equity. So that’s another way of looking at it. You know, take that equity. I don’t need, I don’t need all 175 right now. I took 91 right now, that other 84, I’m gonna leaving in there and let that keep earning more interest for me.

Mike Lima: You’re 15%, or as it turned out, 26% apr, right? It’s amazing. Who can, who gets 26% on the money. You know that, that easily on a deal that you already knew and put together. You know,

Mike: so, yep. Yeah. If you think about like the wealthiest people in the world, like, you know, they talk about the Elon Musk, the Jeff Bezos, all those guys.

Mike: The truth is, is most of that is. It, it’s, it’s in stock in their companies, which, you know, means there, there’s a story, and I’m gonna screw this up, but there’s a story of like, there was a third founder of Apple and he sold his shares at like $800 or something. Like real early on. Early on. Like tens of billions of dollars now or something.

Mike: Right? And, and it’s exactly that, like, The Steve Jobs of the world, the Elon Musk of the world, uh, all those guys, they delayed that gratification. They could have sold their stock at any point, and of course, they’re selling small amounts along the line. The way they got that wealthy is by keeping, plowing it all back in and letting it roll forward and just grow, grow, grow.

Mike: Right.

Mike Lima: Uh, you know, whi which is also the compounding interest type of effect, right? It’s the, it’s the, uh, Berkshire Hathaway, uh, you know, yeah. Uh, type of, uh, thinking Warren Buffet, right? If you just stay in the game, as long as you can compound and compound and compound, keep your money working for you as long as you can without a major reset, without getting wiped out.

Mike Lima: That’s how you do it. I mean, he’s not the most successful investor year over year, ever. But what he’s been done a great job is, is been about 83 years, or 82 years. He’s been investing since he was like nine years old. He, he, for all these years, he just never took a, a major hit, never got, had to hit the restart button, you know?

Mike Lima: Yeah. And that’s why he’s been so successful. Yep.

Mike: Mike, one of the ways that you’ve been successful is just, uh, relationships. You, you plow a lot into people. I know there’s a lot of things that you do, uh, that are, might maybe unique from the average real estate investment. Maybe just share your thoughts on just the power of, of relationships and, and having a long-term vision for what those relationships can be like and not being so transactional maybe.

Mike Lima: Yeah, I, well, yeah, exactly. That’s kind of ties in with the delayed gratification thing too, right? Right. If you do the right things for the right reasons, um, it eventually, Yields monetary benefits as well. But there’s other things that, that come out of it as well. And that’s, that’s the strong relationships, right?

Mike Lima: The referrals come from strong relationships, from PE people, uh, treating people correctly over the years, right? And so when you do that, it doesn’t always happen in that one, that first deal, but it come, it pays dividends over time. And so it’s really important. I do a lot of JV agreements, you know, a lot of joint venture arrangements where I work with folks that I know and trust and they know and trust me, and we work together combined efforts to, again, Do better on, on future deals.

Mike Lima: And, and that’s another way, um, when we talk about maximizing deals, where what you can do, you know, on another deal I did recently, uh, this is just this year, I, um, found the deal. I was mentoring a, a, a younger folk, uh, guy who was, uh, wanted to get into real estate and wanted to start doing like real deals.

Mike Lima: And so I was mentoring him already. He was looking for a deal to get started on, on a kind of a cosmetic fix and flip. So found a deal from a free lead of mine, a free lead from a referral partner that I’ve just known for years, and, and I would just split deals. I, I chased the lead down, get all, get all done, and we’ll split deals.

Mike Lima: So I paid nothing for the lead itself. Uh, and I turned around. We, we made a $44,000 wholesale fee on the property. Sold it to my mentoree, and then I jvd I the mentoree, let me back up the mentoree. He, um, was looking for a hard money loan, but. He was gonna pay 11, 12% interest rate and a, a point or two cuz he was a new, a newbie in the business.

Mike Lima: And so, um, I stepped in and said, look, we’ll, I’ll loan you the money, I’ll loan you $300,000 at 9%. So I stepped in and became his lender too. So I already made a wholesale fee. 44,000. Yep. And became a 9%. My lender on a project that I knew and knew I was safe with. And then I also did a JV agreement with him by saying, look, I’m gonna help you guide you through this as part of our mentoring agreement.

Mike Lima: Anyway, I’m gonna guide you through this particular project. It was project specific. I’ll help you with any context if you need some handyman for this or that. Uh, give you my thoughts and what you should improve, what you shouldn’t improve, some things you get your money out of, some things don’t make good sense to get your money out of, and then I’ll help you market it and get it sold.

Mike Lima: You know, I have a flat fee MLS guy. I have a huge database of cash buyers. We’ll put it out and I’ll. And so that’s what we did. We market got sold, and then as part of that JV agreement, um, I gave him what I, I gave him the first 10 K of profits, um, that would come out of it after all costs were paid. And then we’d do a 50 50 split above that.

Mike Lima: So basically I set up where I had three, three, uh, income levels or stacks on top of that one deal. The initial wholesale revenue of 44 grand, the the 9% loan, uh, which ended up being. I think about another 18 grand or something like that. And then the, um, the JV split, right? So three different ways to, to win on one single deal, you know?

Mike Lima: And that’s just by kind of using relationships, like you said? Yeah. And then just thinking about how do I stack, how do I optimize this one deal to be the best it could be? And again, this is a deal I had. I spent zero money on to, to, to get and nurture that deal. So that’s how, you know, that’s how you’re just thinking.

Mike Lima: You know, that’s how you can use your relationships, use your past experiences, and then your core competencies. Like I said, and I think, you know, what, what I’d love to see folks do is kind of make a list of what are they good at in the real estate world, right? You know, most, most of most of us are better or are good at more than just one thing.

Mike Lima: So fix or flip. Buy and hold short term rentals. Um, jv, JV deals, if they just know people and know how to put connections together. Private lending, you know, there’s so many different whole tailing, like you said. Um, Coaching and mentoring. Um, some people have a knack for buying businesses. They just understand what a business is and how to turn around a business.

Mike Lima: That’s another great way of, of, of, um, getting multiple streams of income on one deal. If you buy a business that also owns real estate, you have basically double whammy there. You can uncouple them or, or put, combine ’em in a different way to create value. So, You know, take an inventory of what those items are that you’re good at, and then start thinking about how can I combine and do two or three of those items on a particular deal, you know?

Mike Lima: So the easy one is, is when you go to sell something, think about financing it on the back end to your buyer. So in one shape, way, shape or form could just be five grand, 10 grand doesn’t have to be a lot, but just think about getting that in place and setting that up. And then what does that do? And then once you successfully do one of those, then think about what else could you do?

Mike Lima: How else could you add your services on top of there and benefit for it? And while at the same time, you’re helping the buyer in this case too. Yeah. That’s awesome. Awesome, Mike.

Mike: So, uh, I want to ask, because you’ve been around for a long time, if you can get your crystal ball out a little bit and just some wisdom, like there’s a lot of people that haven’t been through a market cycle change before.

Mike: You’ve, you’ve been through several. Um, and do you feel, feel like this is just a normal cycle or is there something, cuz I think a lot of people think, well this time it’s different. Of course. I think every cycle everybody thinks this time it’s different, right. But, uh, With all you’ve seen, is it different this time or is this just a normal cycle and we’re gonna be right back to the new, whatever the new normal is?

Mike: I’m not saying that things don’t have an impact, uh, like long term, but um, you know, obviously real estate investing’s not going away, uh, in any means, but is it different this time or is this just a normal cycle that everybody kind of brands at

Mike Lima: is different? I think it’s a normal cycle. Absolutely. A normal cycle.

Mike Lima: And, um, and you know, we’re, we’re doing here talking 2 20 23. I think if we talk in 2020, if we, we play this in 20 24, 20 25, it’s gonna be the same, the same thing. Um, there’s, it’s not that often that we hit really huge inflection points in real estate. You know, the last one was 2008 to 2010 or so, you know, and, um, I’m not.

Mike Lima: Too proud to admit that, you know, that I did have to hit the restart button and, and to, for the most part, back in that time. And that did pause a lot of the wealth building, right? So you have to kind of restart from there. Um, I don’t see the, what we’re in right now being anywhere close to that. Um, it’s, I see the volume is down.

Mike Lima: Um, but it’s mainly just because of the volatile interest, interest rates. Uh, as soon as interest rates start to drop, which may not be this year, maybe this year, may, maybe next year. Uh, but as soon as that comes down or becomes the new norm, And in people’s heads as to what they should expect to pay for a mortgage, then the activity will come back and there’s pent up demand that’ll come out with it.

Mike Lima: Um, I, I know Arizona numbers a lot better than I know across the country, uh, but in many ways, as you said, Arizona kind of is a leading and lead, you know. Uh, it’s, the highers high is higher and a low is lower than the rest of the country. And, um, I think that in Arizona we’re ready on, on a, we’re rebuilding our, our price per square foot is already coming up from December where it was at its lowest.

Mike Lima: Um, the, we’re basically in sellers market right now in almost every city within. The core Phoenix metro area. And so I think that’s probably a pretty accurate roadmap for most rest of the country too, where it’s, things are not quite as bad as we think they are, and there’s leading indicators that are already out there showing us that it’s better than the public thinks it is right now.

Mike Lima: And that’s a great opportunity for us, as in real estate investors, to be able to buy and start taking advantage of those opportunities before the sellers realize that. Oh crap. The market’s coming back up. Right, right. Yeah. You know, it took all this time for the, the sellers to finally, finally realize that last May is over.

Mike Lima: Right? It took from, from June till pretty much March, April, may of this year, for ’em to realize that no, it’s not, you know, not a massive seller’s market anymore. We’ve had to educate them. The media’s had to educate them. They finally are getting that message. The last thing we wanna do is tell them, Hey, it’s, we’re back.

Mike Lima: You know it, it’s back. You can demand ridiculous retail prices again. Right. But there’s this period of time. These next few months are it where we have the opportunity that we know that it’s getting better. The leading indicators all show us that. Um, but the sellers have not quite caught on because those closings, those contracts haven’t closed yet.

Mike Lima: And so there’s a great opportunity for us in that. That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing

Mike: that with that. Uh, so Mike, uh, I, I’m, I’m proud to not only be the first podcast that you agree to be on in all these years and all these deals, also proud to have you as a member of Investor Fuel. Um, would you mind sharing just your thoughts on, uh, investor fuel and

Mike Lima: why you’re a member?

Mike Lima: Uh, Well, yeah, I, so I’m a, I’m a retread. I guess I should qualify that. For those that don’t know, I, I was, uh, one of the earlier members back in 2018, and then, uh, before around Covid time, I, um, I, I stopped being a member as just was kind of trying to figure out what was all going on with, not that was my business, but, you know, the, uh, national economy.

Mike Lima: And then, um, and then I’m back and, uh, I came back in 2023. Um, Because of, you know, because of you. Got you, Mike, and cause of what Investor fuel offers, uh, the type of people you guys are. Um, it’s a incredibly sharing environment. All the things I said earlier. Very much true. You know, it’s, uh, you guys, you know, think about sharing first.

Mike Lima: It’s not about egos, it’s about information. It’s about helping each other out. Um, it’s a very humble group and to me that is much more, um, Palatable, or you know, much more attractive to me than a bunch of people. Just, you know, sharing how many Facebook, uh, you, you, uh, Facebook friends, they have, you know, to me, okay, that’s nice to have.

Mike Lima: And I know you have a lot, but you don’t go bragging about it. It just, it’s just is what it is, you know? And that’s fine, you know, of course, be successful. We’re successful, but we don’t have to go and tell everyone how amazingly successful we are, you know? And so that’s what I love about your group and everyone, you know, that that type of person will continue to gravitate to you and to investor fuel because that’s what you guys offer and deliver on.

Mike Lima: That’s great. I appreciate

Mike: that Mike. And I think, uh, you know, um, a guy like you, there’s probably sometimes people are like, what could you possibly gain out of being around a lot of other people? You’ve done so much and, and I know there’s an, not everybody understands this, but when you’ve gotten to a certain point, You kind of need it in your heart and your soul to give back, right?

Mike: To help other people. But I think you would agree, uh, you still get a lot of value being in a group like ours as

Mike Lima: well, right? Yeah, I, I do. And my, my first thought when, when you start that sentence is, I think the main thing I get is the give. I mean, I, what I get is I enjoy giving and I enjoy, um, helping others and instructing.

Mike Lima: So there is a definitely a component of that, which is cool, you know, and I, and um, I think I was lucky enough to get the, to, to get one of the biggest givers awards at the, that’s right. Yeah. The first, uh, one back, you know, which is nice cuz you know, I think that is part of it. And that’s why, you know, we shouldn’t sign up.

Mike Lima: We shouldn’t be part of these groups if we’re not gonna participate, if we’re not gonna. If we’re not gonna share what we’ve got, especially if you’ve been around and you’ve done a lot of deals, I mean, that’s what it’s about. Um, but still, of course I do pick up new, new tips, new ideas, um, uh, things, you know, not everything originates in Phoenix unless sometimes you think that as we sit here in Phoenix, but we know there’s great ideas all around the country.

Mike Lima: Right. And there’s some just, you know, super smart people everywhere. And, uh, it’s been great having relationships on with folks on the East Coast that we’ve gotten to know through the investor fuel meetings. I can’t wait to see them again at the next meetings, you know, it’s just, it’s just. That kind of thing, and they do become friends and you, you enjoy, you can’t wait.

Mike Lima: The, you know, the, the meetings are good, but the, the lunches, the dinners, the, you know, after hours activities are fantastic too. Just to get to know people and, and to collaborate on ideas. Yeah,

Mike: we’ve got, we’ve got a great group and I’m glad you’re a part of the mic. So, um, if folks wanted to connect with you in any way, if, if they’d not already connected with you out in Phoenix, what, and, and again, I know you’re not, you don’t have a, um, you know, spend a ton of time on social media cuz you’re actually in the weeds doing the business.

Mike: How do people connect with you if they wanna learn more? About what you’ve got going on?

Mike Lima: Yeah, so, um, they could hit me [email protected], which is one of my websites. Uh, so Mikelima.com, or, um, I have my inventory site or you know, basically my, uh, site that where I do the, the dispo from is true freedom achievers.

Mike Lima: Com true freedom achievers.com. Um, and I also, I’m also on Facebook. I don’t know my handle. I, uh, so I’ll ask you guys to help me out with that because I’m not on it that much, but I’m, I am endeavoring to, uh, be on there posting more. I’ve got a, a couple cool projects going on right now and I’ve been trying to post on them and kind of let some, uh, Some viewers get some tips on what I’m doing out there.

Mike Lima: Cool.

Mike: Well, we’ll put, uh, we’ll put links for all this in the show notes here. So Mike, thanks, thanks again for spending so much time. I, I, I feel honored to have had you here today and I think everybody got a lot of value, so thank you.

Mike Lima: Pleasure, Mike. You guys are doing great stuff, man. I’ll look forward to seeing you again soon.

Mike: Yeah. I appreciate you and everybody. Hope you got some great, uh, nuggets here. A lot of wisdom sharing here. I think the best part about real estate investing or honestly, anything that you would do is playing the long game because you just, you always gain so much wisdom. As time goes by, you learn a lot of what not to do, and you learn a lot of how to do it differently and maximize the profits.

Mike: So whatever you do, you wanna do it well, and you wanna do it for a long enough period to where you can weather the storm and know how to, how to basically, uh, play in any market. Right? There’s opportunity for us as real estate investors in up and down markets, just the, like, you just need to have the wisdom and the tools to weather those storms, right?

Mike: So appreciate everybody for joining us today. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Take care. Are you an active real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate investors. All committed to building stronger businesses and living richer, fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us. To learn more about investor fuel, simply visit investor fuel.com to get

Mike Lima: started.