Atlanta Realtor Shares First-Time Homebuyer Secrets

Charles (00:00)
You can definitely do that. ⁓ That’s a quicker way to build generational wealth. You can buy like a two-plus, live in one, and rent out the other. Buy a quad or four-plus, because those still qualify under conventional loans. So you can still get those. You have to live in those for a third minimum of at least a year. But you can definitely do that. And the beauty of those is that it’s one loan, but you’ll be able to generate cash flow.

Dylan Silver (01:57)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest leads homeownership workshops and helps home buyers get into their first home with a special focus on helping people through every phase of the process. In the greater Atlanta area, please welcome Charles Powell. Charles, welcome to the show.

Charles (02:20)
Welcome Matt, thanks for having me on. So like I said, my name is Charles Powell with Chinti’s District Property and I am the local realtor in the metropolitan area of Atlanta and surrounding areas.

Dylan Silver (02:31)
It’s great to have you on the show here, Charles. And we were talking before hopping on here about really just how needed it is for folks who may be navigating this space and almost feel like, where do I start? Or aren’t having success in other areas? I mean, you come across these people all the time.

Charles (02:47)
Definitely, definitely. One of the things that I learned when I got into this business that a lot of people want to become homeowners, they just don’t know the path. So what I did was one of my team leaders kind of challenged me to start hosting workshops. I wanted my workshops to be a little bit different from the average workshop. So I wanted my workshops to be able to get my clients from the beginning stages of home ownership all the way to becoming a homeowner. So what I do is I educate my clients on the benefits of homeowners.

I still am off our panel where they can go and talk to tax professionals, mortgage professionals, and even a debt eliminator who can help them get their DTI under control. So the goal for them is to come to the workshop as a laid back environment. They’re able to ask everybody on the panel these questions so they can find out how they can get from point A to the closing table where we put keys in their hands and celebrate their success.

Dylan Silver (03:41)
ask it about where the major, I would say, obstacles are for most people who are looking at this. I can speak for myself as someone who’s encountered many of these obstacles on a personal note, and I can say the lending is very difficult, and then also I may be looking at the wrong types of properties or in the wrong area. And when I say types, I may be thinking, well, I’m going to live in this home for 30 years. It’s got to be something that I’m happy to be in for a very long period of time.

And I think in some cases, and I don’t know, I’m curious to get your perspective, it may be more effective to look at this term, well, this is gonna be my home, let’s call it for 15 years, but this doesn’t have to be my home for 30 and 50 years. What’s your perspective on folks who may be looking at getting their first house?

Charles (04:24)
So there’s a couple of ways to do it. At my workshop, we teach them a little bit more about equity. So your first house doesn’t have to necessarily be your main home. It doesn’t have to be your forever home. What a lot of people do is they buy their first house, ⁓ entry-level house, it up a little bit. And then after a couple of years, they sell that house and get equity. And then they can use their equity to buy their dream home. So that’s one path to home ownership. The second path is

You want to just kind of educate yourself on lenders and what you need to do to qualify for. A lot of times you get a good agent, they can kind of walk you through that process. So those are the two ways that you can do it. And just kind of talk to your lenders to find out, you know what saying? So they can kind of help you eliminate some of the misconceptions. Like we was talking about earlier, it’s not necessarily, in some cases you don’t have to put down 20 % to become a homeowner.

With conventional FHA, ⁓

Sometimes you only have to put down 3.5 or 3 percent. It just depends. So you just have to speak to your mortgage officer. Kind of find out what’s the best route to go.

Dylan Silver (06:18)
I just came across this today and I really agree with it. So it’s funny we’re having this conversation which is this idea of everything really is predicated on getting qualified. As a realtor I feel this way but then as a home buyer I also feel this way. And then as someone who interfaces a lot with people who are first time home buyers is there any general guidance that you give folks when they are ⁓ trying to find the right lender.

Charles (06:47)
Yeah, so you are with anything you want to shop and find out, you know, and figure out which Linda is best for you. You also want to vent. You also want to Linda who kind of you have a good relationship, a good report with your Linda is a very key, very key portion of you becoming an agile homeowner, because your real estate agent and your Linda will have to be on the same page in order to get you to the closing table. So you definitely want to shop around, but you definitely want to have a good report with whichever lending you choose to go with.

and do a little of your own research as well.

Dylan Silver (07:19)
I want to pivot a bit here, Charles, and ask you about the greater Atlanta area in general. I’m a licensed agent in Texas. I was raised in New Jersey, so I kind of have a perspective of how real estate, how regional it is. I know it be a lot harder for me to qualify for a home in northern New Jersey than it would be for a home in Texas. What’s the market out there like in Atlanta and…

Are there a lot of first time home buyers who are getting into homes or is that maybe more challenging in Atlanta than it is in some other markets?

Charles (07:52)
No, it’s in certain parts of Atlanta, it’s a little bit challenging, but you can find a nice home. I recently had one of my attendees who came to the workshop. She closed on a home a couple of months ago, became a first time home owner and she was able to qualify. So the ranges in Atlanta is from like 250 to like 450. So that’s a nice little swing.

So you should be able to qualify for something in Atlanta. It just depends on that. You may not be able to get something in the heart of Atlanta, so it may be on the outer skirts of Atlanta, but you should be able to qualify for a nice home in Atlanta.

Dylan Silver (08:16)
Yeah.

I want to get a little bit granular and ask you about some of the strategies that I’ve heard some investors specifically, investor agents and first time home buyers talk to me about for how they kind of house hacked and got into a home this way. People talking about, know, buying a quadplex and renting out the three units and that it may be even easier for them to house hack than it might be for them to qualify for a single family home without a rent roll. I’m curious to get your take on that.

Charles (08:59)
Well,

you can definitely do that. ⁓ That’s a quicker way to build generational wealth. You can buy like a two-plus, live in one, and rent out the other. Buy a quad or four-plus, because those still qualify under conventional loans. So you can still get those. You have to live in those for a third minimum of at least a year. But you can definitely do that. And the beauty of those is that it’s one loan, but you’ll be able to generate cash flow

because you’ll be able to rent out the second, third, and fourth unit.

So we’re the second and third.

Dylan Silver (09:30)
It’s a big deal.

I tell people this. I would love to see if this would actually work. But for folks who are even like going to school. Right. And sometimes people think about this and they say well 18 19 years old. If you’re going to be living in some place for four potentially five years a year after graduation right looking for jobs and so on and so forth. That’s enough time to potentially build up some equity specifically in a college town. Right.

I mean, if there’s a good time to be looking at homes, I tell people this, should start, especially if you’ve got support from parents, you should start when you’re going to school and maybe say, hey, is it even possible? Because we’re going to be paying rent from 18 to 23 or 18, know, graduate school, 26, wherever it is, 24, 26. And so how can we make it so that at the end of this journey, our rent is working for us instead of paying rent, you’re paying down a mortgage and putting up equity in a property.

Do you have any people who are looking at that, really young people, and maybe thinking about, you know, I don’t necessarily have a big six finger income, but how can I qualify for a home?

Charles (11:11)
Well, there are a couple of people just looking at it, but it’s definitely the way to go. Most of the homeowners that I’ve worked with, they’ve been looking for their family. So I haven’t read across anybody who wants to do that, but we teach that in a workshop. It’s a good way to do it if you don’t have a family, especially because then you can just live there for one year and then move out and rent it. And that’s a quick way for you to build generational wealth. You do that for about two or three years.

Dylan Silver (11:40)
Yeah.

Charles (11:41)
You have a couple of properties with equity and then you got cash flow. It made sense to me.

Dylan Silver (11:47)
want to pivot a bit here and ask you really about getting into the real estate space. When I got into real estate ⁓ as a wholesaler initially, I had no exposure to real estate, no one in my family, no friends. I didn’t network with realtors. It was kind of a leap of faith. Honestly, I think a lot of people can relate to this. I Google searched, you know, how to build wealth and real estate was one of the things that came up. I’m curious how you got into the real estate space.

Charles (12:13)
So it was a little bit similar to you. It kind of like a leap of faith. I was having a conversation with one of my friends who was in sales and she had recently got her real estate license. She encouraged me to do it. And then I did it. And then my first sale was to one of my nephews and it was his first time coming to home on it. And that kind of sparked the passion, know, seeing how happy he was to get to the closing table, putting keys in his hand. That kind of sparked the passion for him.

Dylan Silver (12:43)
I actually have an interesting take on this. don’t know if our audience will necessarily agree and maybe a lot of the realtors won’t either, but I think because we are so many people who are wanting to get into homeownership, and I think we were talking before the show here, like the average age of homeownership is in the 50s now, something like 56. There’s gonna be this burgeoning demand for young people to get into homes, but oftentimes that’s kind of like the less, I don’t, you know.

less aspirational, less passionate area for realtors. A lot of people say, I don’t want to necessarily work with first time home buyers and it seems like it’s more arduous. But I think that there’s a real niche there and a real way that you could build a scalable business all around the country where there are ever many million people are now in their late 20s, 30s and are still struggling to purchase a home. I think that there’s a lot there.

Charles (13:39)
It’s definitely a lot there, but you will need a certain level of patience. First time homeowners are very, they’re very nervous because it’s something that they have never did before. And in most cases it’s their largest purchase. So you want to have a level of patience with them and be able to coach them through it. But yeah, it’s definitely a need for like homeownership in the US alone is at an all time low. And now it’s getting even crazy. I don’t know if you’ve seen this in,

and Texas are where you are, but in certain parts of Atlanta, they’re building land now just to rent. Like they’re building new construction and they’re leasing it. They’re not even selling it. And a lot of those areas that they’re doing it in are primed for first-time home buyers. So, know, they’re buying new construction and putting a whole bunch of people in there leasing it. And, you know, that kind of helps them control the rent. And rent is like crazy right now.

But the amount you’re paying for rent, can easily practice it on your own.

Dylan Silver (14:39)
I mean, you’re talking about the people who are basically building out subdivisions and then renting out the units. It’s amazing. And you got to have some deep pockets to do that because people may not be aware of this. But when you’re building out the roads and the utilities and everything, the builder pays for everything. typically, builders need to

Charles (14:46)
the entire store division. It’s crazy, man, it’s crazy. Brand new construction.

Dylan Silver (15:07)
quickly see a return on that because they just put all this money into it, investors and so on and so forth. But now they’re seeing that the rents aren’t going down. You mentioned Atlanta, I am Texas licensed, so I lived in San Antonio, lived in greater Dallas area, but I also frequently went to Austin. I love the Houston area, and it’s not like you’re seeing rents go down pretty much anywhere. So you have investors coming in and just building out subdivisions and then renting

Charles (15:32)
Right.

Dylan Silver (15:36)
them out. I mean, it’s a totally new wave. I do want to get your perspective Charles on newer realtors who may be wanting to help first time home buyers and how to guide them through the process. Is there specific courses that you would recommend them taking or maybe ⁓ if they’re specifically in the greater Atlanta area, would it be beneficial for realtors to get involved in your course specifically?

Charles (16:01)
Well, I would say that the best way to do it would be to hold workshops, know, something similar to what I’m doing. I don’t really have a course, but I just do the workshop. So I would say to just ⁓ figure out a way to have a home ownership workshop and kind of figure out what you want your client to get out of that workshop. You don’t want to just have a workshop. You want them to be able to come away with that workshop with some type of knowledge of how to further their education on becoming a home.

Dylan Silver (16:32)
I want to ask you a really granular question. Maybe give away some of the gold, but not all of the gold bar, so to speak. I think a lot of people when they’re looking at ⁓ first time homeownership, it’s overwhelming. You’re dealing with realtors. Maybe you haven’t worked with realtors before. Most people, I would say first time home buyers have not, right? You’re looking at homes, you’re trying to get qualified. Maybe you’re getting turned down. Maybe you’re seeing, well, what’s this area like? So many different things.

One of the ways that I’ve seen, at least in Texas, that people have been getting qualified is in new construction, which is almost counterintuitive, right? Because you’re thinking, well, I’m a first time home buyer. I need to get something that’s maybe less costly because that way I’m more likely to be qualified. But I’ve been seeing ⁓ lenders kind of partner with new construction and being very aggressive with this. And I’ve seen this as a trend, at least in Texas. Is that something that you’ve seen in the greater Atlanta area as well?

Charles (17:26)
Yeah, so, and it’s in my opinion that sometimes the new construction may be the route to go because the reason why I say that is that because new construction gives you so many benefits. Like they really help you with your down payment and then they can actually help you. You sometimes because they have a relationship with the lenders, they can give you a ⁓ nice array or they can buy down the rate, which will make it a little bit more affordable. And if you get new construction, if you get in at the ground level,

your equity a little bit quicker because it’ll pay its higher a little bit later. So that’s definitely an option for you.

Dylan Silver (18:03)
I think the new builds, it’s interesting. I worked as a wholesaler with a lot of flippers and even the flippers were saying, hey, we got to pivot away from flips because the margins are getting slimmer. We’re going to go into new construction. So I had to pivot my wholesale business from, I’m finding, you know, distressed properties or people going through foreclosure or, you know, hardships economically or emotionally where they might be parting ways with the home to, hey, I got to find infill lots. I got to find vacant land.

Charles (18:16)
Yum.

Dylan Silver (18:32)
I gotta figure out how to get areas rezoned and what I need to do to connect with developers and this type of thing. So the new builds definitely seem fascinating to me. But we are coming up on time here, Charles. Where can folks go if they’re in the greater Atlanta area and maybe they have some questions for you? How they can get qualified ⁓ for a home or what their steps would look like if they are in the first time home ownership process?

Charles (19:01)
Yeah, so to connect with me, I’m at jimmsdesignatureproperties.com or you can connect with me at luxurybycharlesatgmail.com or you can get

Give me a phone call at 678-457-3718. I do have a workshop coming up in the near future. It’s in Madonna, Georgia. You can shoot me an email at luxurybycharles.gmail.com. I give you more information on that. If you’re in the Greater Atlanta area or the Madonna area, I would love for you to come out and attend the workshop. And we’re the only workshops with receipts, man. Most of our attendees have to come home owners, and that’s the goal.

Dylan Silver (19:35)
Amazing. Charles, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Charles (19:39)
Thank you for having me.