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Show Summary
In this conversation, Wyatt Simon shares his journey in real estate, detailing his experiences from his first fix and flip to navigating market challenges and pivoting strategies. He discusses the importance of adaptability in the real estate market, the significance of mentorship, and the evolution of his investment strategies over time. Wyatt emphasizes the need for persistence and innovation in the face of changing market conditions, ultimately leading to his success in the industry.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Wyatt Simon (00:00)
Like we’re set for 10 years from now, but like right now I’m like, we’re, coming to a cash crunch where we’re going to end up at zero. And so, um, thank God I didn’t. Um, I actually went and I applied for a company that I quit my job in 2021. And, um, and thank God they didn’t get back to me because I was like, you know what? The single family thing worked pretty well for us. So then we started marketing again for single family. And last year we, you know, last year we did 650,000 in revenue for single family.Dylan Silver (00:13)
Yeah.Wyatt Simon (00:27)
This year we’re on track, we’ll do just about double that.Dylan Silver (02:02)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is an investor across several different asset classes, single, small multifamily, larger multifamily in Nebraska. Please welcome Wyatt Simon. Wyatt, welcome to the show.Wyatt Simon (02:17)
Dylan, thanks for having me here. Excited to be here.Dylan Silver (02:19)
It’s great to have you on here. I always like to start off at the top of the show by asking guests how they got into the real estate space.Wyatt Simon (02:27)
So, my story is unique. would say I ⁓ grew up in Colorado, went to a super small college in Nebraska where I played college basketball called Doane College. That’s where 5’11 white guys go to play basketball. It’s N.E.I.A.D. II, so it’s like the lowest level that still gives out scholarships, but I got my college paid for, so there you go. After I didn’t make it to the NBA, which was my number one dream, all I wanted to do was make it to the NBA. ⁓Dylan Silver (02:48)
There you go.Wyatt Simon (02:56)
Well, my dreams got crushed and then I pivoted and I was like, okay, well, what do I wanna do with my life? And I just knew that I didn’t wanna be broke. I remember watching Shark Tank and seeing Mark Cuban on there and I was just like, man, I wanna do that. But I had no idea what I was doing. So eventually I ended up taking a sales gig in Colorado where I was from and my first job out of college was I worked for a home buying company, the largest home buying company in Colorado and I started running their leads for them.Dylan Silver (03:06)
Yeah.Wyatt Simon (03:23)
And that was my introduction to real estate where it was like, my gosh, these guys are making so much money. Like this is how this works. ⁓ The problem was for me at the time, I had no sales experience. And so they gave me a bunch of leads and I bought three houses in nine months for them, which did not cut it. was, ⁓ to give you context, I was literally negative net worth. I was so broke. I was renting a house with ⁓ three other dudes at the, sorry, two other dudes at the time.Dylan Silver (03:41)
yeah.Wyatt Simon (03:51)
and I literally threw my rented room up on Airbnb and slept on the couch just so I could afford to go to concerts with my friends. Like it was, it was, ⁓ I was batching it. It was not good. ⁓Dylan Silver (04:02)
Give me an idea.What year is this that you got started with this acquisitions company?
Wyatt Simon (04:56)
Yeah, so this was 2017.Dylan Silver (04:59)
SoI wasn’t active then. I certainly wasn’t active in Colorado, but I have an idea of what the market was like. Lot of fix and flip, lot of wholesale happening, but it’s still not to the point where it’s inundated, where you had a little bit later on, where it felt like everyone was a flip or everyone was a wholesale. It was a good time to be involved, right?
Wyatt Simon (05:20)
It was a good time. mean, there was, you know, there was four other guys at the company that were making money for sales guys, right? And then there was me who was not. I was, I was skimping by, but I knew that I wanted to buy real estate. read Rich Dad Poor Dad, right? And it was just like, oh man, this is what I want. Problem is I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have a consistent job. Like didn’t have income to get a loan. And I was, I was broke, dude. Like it was just not good. And so eventually I ended up.taking a job in Omaha, Nebraska, where my girlfriend, now wife at the time was, and ⁓ that job allowed me to go get loans for properties. So I bought my first house hack, this is in 2018, bought my first house hack and eventually got going on that. ⁓ Eventually I stumbled across the BRRRR strategy and that BRRRR strategy allowed me to be able to use money out of thin air to buy real estate to improve the value to refi it back out.
Dylan Silver (06:04)
Yeah.Wyatt Simon (06:14)
Essentially I could buy real estate with no money. And when I learned that light bulb, was like, dude, this is it. So then I just started burring. you know, I’ve, I’ve burned over 65 properties, single family, multifamily office, you name it at this point. So I’ve really exploited that strategy in my journey to now, to now, but yeah.Dylan Silver (06:36)
I want to ask you about theburst strategy, I also want to ask you about that first deal. let’s pocket the burst strategy for a minute. I want to come back to that, but I want to ask you about that first deal. So you’re in Nebraska, you’re in a new area. I imagine other than you’re now wife, you didn’t know too many people in Nebraska, but you got involved, it sounds like in maybe the lending space. So you saw another way. Okay, here’s how I can potentially gain access to capital. I know people now.
How did the first deal come about? Where did you find it? Was it on market, off market? Walk me through that first deal.
Wyatt Simon (07:09)
Yeah, so that first deal, I’ll preface this. So I got a job, I got okay at my job, and then I got qualified for a mortgage and I bought a duplex. So that was like, I house hacked, right? So that was like, I got a place and I did that. All the while, I asked my parents who were not rich by any means, they were very middle to lower class, but they had enough that they had me very late in life, they had their house paid off in cash. And I asked them, would you guys take a line of credit on your house to let me use it to do this birthing?Dylan Silver (07:33)
Yeah.Wyatt Simon (07:37)
And they said, absolutely not. I was like, all right. And so anyways, fast forward nine months later, I had bought a duplex, I had gotten a better job and I started house hacking and I’d gone to all the events. I was reading all the books. Eventually I convinced them. said, okay, we’ll try one. So then I scoured the market and literally Dylan, I got fired by four real estate agents. I put out 42 offers and on that 42nd offer,they still said no, but two weeks later they said yes. And so finally I got one six months later after putting out offers, going to work during the day, putting out offers during the night, getting fired by four agents that didn’t want to take a 22 year old out on a showing, right? And finally I got one and then it was a value add, right? So it needed all the cosmetics and Dylan, I am not a handy guy, like at all. And so I didn’t know any contractors, I didn’t know how to do the things and so.
Dylan Silver (08:06)
Wow.Yeah.
Wyatt Simon (08:31)
Thankfully, ⁓ the center on my basketball team grew up on a farm and he was pretty close. So I called him up and I was like, Nate, will you help me rehab this house? And he’s just like, well, I don’t know. And I was just like, dude, I’ll pay you 25 bucks an hour. I’ll get you a new tool set and then I’ll just work under you. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. So then literally every day after work for the next six months, again, I go to the property, we basically eat Chick-fil-A and there’s a Lowe’s right next to it. And that’s pretty much what we do for six days, six months straight.every weekday and then weekends. I threw my back out at the property, but long story short, all the things happened and it ended up appraising. I bought it for 100, I put 22 into it, and then it appraised at 150. And so the bank gave me a loan for 120 when I was all set and done. And so basically I bought that house for $2,000. If you can do the math, I was all in at 122, it appraised at 150, bank gave me loan for 120. So $2,000 is what I ended up buying that house for.
And cash flows, I still have it to this day, it’s gone up over 100,000 in equity since. yeah, that was kind of proof of concept.
Dylan Silver (09:33)
Wow.So, I wasn’t expecting all the moving pieces there. That was kind of, I would say, an arduous undertaking, right? You went for a fix and hold, right? You didn’t know where the help was gonna come from. had to call your center on the basketball team and say, hey, you’re gonna help me? Funny you mentioned Chick-fil-A. I feel like Chick-fil-A and Lowe’s or Home Depot is a common theme. There’s a lot of, I’ve done this before myself when working on flips.
You’ll go and you’ll say, hey, we’re just gonna get Chick-fil-A for everybody. Everybody loves Chick-fil-A, so that’s a good motivator. It can certainly make up if you’re not exactly sure of how things are gonna go. That deal was an on-market deal, so did you have in your mind, hey, I’m looking for a buy and hold, that’s ultimately what it became, but were you very fixed on that, or were you maybe a little agnostic to exit strategy? What was your thought process then?
Wyatt Simon (11:02)
Yeah, I wanted to buy and hold real estate. That’s what I thought was gonna be my ticket to being wealthy and rich and, you know, living the dream life that I wanted. And so that’s what I did. I did burrs and I did the first burr. It worked out. I then continued to do burrs for the next, you know, four years while the market was doing what it was doing until, you know, 2023, 24 is when burring got pretty difficult. And that’s when I slowed down on the burr strategy, you know, I…To give you context, I was doing like 20 plus burs a year with a full-time job. Like just, know, humming, right? And I skipped through part of the journey here where, you know, I lost $68,000 on my next house and then I hired a coach and then I plugged in the coaches systems and then everything took off the next year I bought 22 properties and then every year after that I bought 20 plus properties. ⁓ And so anyways, that really changed my life and then the market changed, right? And so now ⁓ the bur strategy kind of went.
Dylan Silver (11:34)
Whoa.Brian.
Wyatt Simon (11:58)
extinct or very more difficult to do and so then pivoted to fix and flipping slash wholesaling and you know at this point I do have a you know we make we gross over a million a year in our our flipping company ⁓ and then I’ve also got the hard money lending so I help other flippers fund their deals in our market ⁓ and extending out to other markets where a hard money fund is ⁓ getting launched here in a couple weeks for across the board here but yeah.Dylan Silver (12:25)
Couple waysI wanna go with this, Wyatt. So first is the burst strategy. I got in, you mentioned 2023, 2024. I got into real estate in 2023. I started wholesaling in 2023, which it was the time to get in in a sense because things were changing. So if you could find a niche, it was good. But at the same point in time, some of these more traditional, like the burst strategy, it was more challenging. It was harder in some ways.
for people to find deals on the MLS and just say, hey, I’m gonna put some money into this and it’ll appraise for more and then here we go. It wasn’t necessarily working like that. I wanna point out too that you had the ability to pivot. You had this strategy that was working, 20 deals a year for multiple years, burning out of them, hired a coach. So you’re thinking like, okay, this is gonna be good for a while and then within five years you have to pivot or about that timeframe you have to pivot. Was there any…
internal dialogue like man I just got to make this work I got to figure out how how to do these deals better or did you see like hey this has run its course the market has shifted I’ve got to kind of keep my knees bent and pivot here
Wyatt Simon (14:15)
You know, I think that’s a great question. I was just out with my Mastermind members and I was just telling them on the same subject here, the person, it’s often not the smartest person that wins. It’s the person that sticks with the problem the longest.And so I got a 19 on my ACT. I am by no means smarter than most people, like most people in general. ⁓ But what I have done is I’ve stuck with the problem the longest because what’ll happen is the market will shift. And what we haven’t covered is I went into multifamily pretty heavily in 2021, 2022. So I actually pivoted from single family to multifamily. Multifamily then became extremely difficult. I’ve done syndications, I’ve done seven multifamily deals myself. ⁓
I’ve been the GP on everything that I’ve done. ⁓ But then multifamily got extremely difficult. And by the way, I’m vertically integrated. So I’ve got the full management team. Like it’s all my employees doing the work, right? And so it got extremely difficult to do and make numbers work when property taxes, insurance went up, labor went up, ⁓ and then prices didn’t adjust accordingly and interest rates went up. And so was just, it was very difficult to make things work. And ⁓ one of the biggest pivots that ever happened to me was,
Dylan, just being real real with you, in 2024, okay, so what is that? Last year, last January, ⁓ I am literally sitting in my living room with my wife. We are multi-millionaires in equity, but our cash is going to zero. Because of all the operating costs, I’m all in on multifamily, right? And multifamily is not working. The cash flow I thought I had was getting chewed up. And so I’m sitting in the living room with my wife in tears because I think, I literally tell her, I’m gonna have to go get a job.
Dylan Silver (15:47)
Yeah.Wyatt Simon (15:55)
Like we’re set for 10 years from now, but like right now I’m like, we’re, coming to a cash crunch where we’re going to end up at zero. And so, um, thank God I didn’t. Um, I actually went and I applied for a company that I quit my job in 2021. And, um, and thank God they didn’t get back to me because I was like, you know what? The single family thing worked pretty well for us. So then we started marketing again for single family. And last year we, you know, last year we did 650,000 in revenue for single family.Dylan Silver (16:08)
Yeah.Wyatt Simon (16:22)
This year we’re on track, we’ll do just about double that.⁓ And that’s all cash, single family, flicks and flips and wholesales in addition to the burs that we’re doing. ⁓ yeah, pivots, you have to pivot when the market adjusts and speed and pivoting is really speed of implementation to market. Once you start to see the factors, that’s what allows people to innovate and win, in my opinion.
Dylan Silver (16:29)
Yeah.Yes. ⁓
So many different rabbit holes that I could go down here and asking you about pivoting into single family, also scaling a fix and flip business, also which markets that you’re involved in and looking at deals. the takeaway for me talking to you here Wyatt is having that ability to pivot, also being able to be proficient in different asset classes so that when necessary you have that ability. It’s not some totally foreign skill set.
And then also the vertical integration, title company, management, imagine, acquisitions. But we are coming up on time here though. Where can folks go if maybe they’re in the Nebraska area and they have a deal they’d like you to take a look at or if they’d like to reach out to you and get some feedback maybe on their own journey?
Wyatt Simon (17:36)
Yeah, great question. Well, I feel like we just got to the tip of the iceberg here. ⁓ if those of you, if you guys enjoyed this podcast, you wanna learn a lot more about me, I’d say go follow me on my YouTube channel, ⁓ V Wyatt Simon, W-Y-A-T-T-S-I-M-O-N. ⁓ You can find out, literally you’ll see walkthrough videos of me doing the brrr strategy where I run through all the numbers in detail so you can see what I’m doing.You’ll see me doing flips, know, you’ll see multiple flips that I’ve done this year and the actual numbers how I found them all those things So if you guys want to learn how to do these things check out the YouTube channel and ⁓ I’ll see you there
Dylan Silver (18:11)
Wyatt, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.Wyatt Simon (18:14)
Thanks for having me, Dylan.
