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From Dozer to Developer: Josh McGlawn on Affordable Housing & Legacy Building

By November 6, 2025Real Estate Pros Show

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Josh McGlawn, a seasoned realtor and developer from Oxford, Mississippi. Josh shares his journey in real estate, focusing on affordable housing and the unique market dynamics in his area. He discusses the importance of family legacy in his business, the strategies that keep his operations running smoothly, and the significance of discipline and wisdom in decision-making. The conversation also highlights the power of relationships in business and the future goals for Josh’s development projects.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Josh McGlawn (00:00)
    When I go, I also speak, because when we get knowledge and experience, it’s not for us. We have to pass it on to others. ⁓ The fruit that we produce is not for us to take part in. So we have to pass the fruit on to others. And you’re not wrong about the assumptions. ⁓ When kids ask me, you know, how do you get here and what’s success and all that.

    And I’m like, man, once I stopped trying to do it my way and I stopped trying to be so smart and you know, God gave me these gifts and skills for a purpose, but it’s not on my own doing. So I have to, you know, give credit where it’s due, give glory to God. I do any chance I get, you know, I tell the kids like, man, you got to get a relationship with your creator.

    Quentin (02:24)
    Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And if you follow me, you know what I’m gonna say. I’m excited to be here today. Excited about my guests. We gonna be the yin and the yang. All right? Like I’ll probably be real, real high energy at times, but this dude is cool. If y’all know story, Scott, I’m gonna give a little shout out to him. May he rest in peace. This dude is as smooth as the other side of the pillow.

    but this do you know what he doing? You may not know it by looking at him, but there’s 50 years of experience on this guy’s side. And I’m gonna let him tell you more about how that factors in, but this guy is a jack of all trades, realtor, investor, builder, mastering in affordable housing. Guy got an MBA, listen, I can just go on and on about this guy, but I want y’all to get to know him from his words. And so I just want to introduce you guys.

    to Mr. McGlawn Mr. Josh, how you doing today,

    Josh McGlawn (03:23)
    Man, doing great. Appreciate that honorable intro, Q. Appreciate that. I’m gonna hire you as a hype man.

    Quentin (03:28)
    Absolutely.

    You ain’t listen, bro. You ain’t say nothing of the word. No, let’s go cause you’re probably like a chicken box, maybe some ribs. You know what saying? It ain’t gonna be nothing. You feed me good. I’ll be your hype man all day. But no, man, you’re so worth it. love what I do because I get the opportunity to meet people like you. And I’m hyping you up, but I’m being very, very serious because

    Josh McGlawn (03:40)
    I get hell in that. I get it.

    Quentin (03:55)
    There are so many unsung heroes. There’s so many people that we may not know that do just so many incredible things. Right. And so what you’re going to do today, you want to deposit nuggets, plant seeds that people can take and go back and plant and make their business better. And so I love when I get the chance to just pick people’s, pick people’s brains, see things from their perspective. And Josh, that’s what I want to do, man. I want you to take us into your world. I want you to tell us what your main focus is these days.

    If you want to tell us little bit about how you got started, we love origin story. So if you want to do that, that’s cool. And then also tell us what markets you’re operating in. So Josh, man, you got the floor, sir.

    Josh McGlawn (05:22)
    Okay, all right, that’s a long list of start. don’t know how long we got, but first of all, man, appreciate you having me also. I am located in Oxford, Mississippi, hotty-totty town, Ole Miss. If anybody knows anything about Oxford, Mississippi, the real estate environment is ridiculous here. It’s not any other place like in Mississippi. If you go to anywhere else in Mississippi, there’s nowhere else like it. It’s a…

    Quentin (05:28)
    You

    Josh McGlawn (05:47)
    It’s kind of a cosmopolitan. You got a lot of transients, people that come from all over the place. ⁓ Got kids coming to university here and they’ve found something here that they love and they start buying up the real estate. And since then the prices, you know, the values have gone up, which also increased the prices, which leaves an opportunity, a huge gap for affordability.

    I mean, the gap between affordability in Oxford, Oxford and Lafayette County, we say Lafayette here, it’s pronounced Lafayette to educated people, but Lafayette in Mississippi. So the gap between usually $250,000 a house, you should be able to make $87,000 to pay for that. That’s the median income here, the AMI here.

    the median home price is 450,000. So $200,000 more than what the average income should be able to, or the median income should be able to afford. So there’s a huge opportunity there, anywhere from 250,000 up to 300,000 or so to build or, you know, resell flip or whatever, but the prices of the properties are so high. So, I mean, you could go.

    Quentin (07:03)
    Hmm.

    Josh McGlawn (07:05)
    If you’re looking into city limits, it’s not happening. I mean, you talking about some people, some people want 20, 50, half a million dollars an acre for just depending on where you are. You have to go further out in the county to get something that’s halfway decent priced. So we started traveling down south. So we went further south, about 20 minutes south of us, Water Valley, Mississippi is a cute little town. It has a main street. ⁓ Used to be old railroad.

    that went through there. So it was booming at one point and when the railroad stopped, town kind of died down. And since then, some people have left and houses been dilapidated. So there’s an opportunity for us to buy and flip houses, buy old houses, vacant properties, tear down houses and rebuild. So we went down one day and purchased a piece of property. was about an acre, little over an acre, had a house on it, but it happened to be in a

    situated in a great place, you know, just walking distance from downtown and we were able to cut eight lots out of it. I mean, just a little over an acre, sell the original house and we built a couple of houses on it so far. But what we underestimated was the surrounding areas where houses were falling down. So since then, over the last couple of years, we’ve started tearing some of those houses down.

    Quentin (08:20)
    Hmm.

    Josh McGlawn (08:26)
    You know paid either paid by the owner actually purchased the property Excuse me. We’ve got one that we’re actually in contract to purchase now Went in and looked at it to see what it looks like and it’s it’s probably gonna need to be taken down to be honest because they just let it it actually stopped some of our sales from one of the houses like it people who was like Yeah, I like this and that of the neighborhood, but you know that house right there or across the street or whatever

    Quentin (08:41)
    Yeah.

    Josh McGlawn (08:53)
    So we’re starting to take more control and it’s a welcome by the city and the community, you know, the majority. And, you know, we’re, that’s what we’re working on. But before that, if you go back 50 years, 50 plus years, my dad and my grandfather started, actually it wasn’t even trying to start a business. My grandfather was a farmer and my dad was like, Hey, we need to do some work, you know, on a

    on the property and family property and stuff, let’s buy a dump truck and a dozer. And from there, people started calling them to get some work done. And now he’s built, my dad has built this empire. Obviously I’m not 50 years old, but I’ve got, I’ve tried to pull off most of, most of his, you know, knowledge since then. My grandfather has been long past. But my dad has just passed so much knowledge onto me and I’m soaked it up one way or another. And

    Quentin (09:33)
    I’m out of

    Josh McGlawn (09:50)
    over the last several years, know, site work has turned into, yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. My dad won’t turn it out. No money. He’s like, can you do this? Sure. can’t. If not even knowing that, you know, that’s not something that we do. And, you know, eventually turned into something.

    Quentin (09:58)
    Yeah, sure.

    Josh McGlawn (10:41)
    Now we’re this full service developer. They can take it from the trees to the keys. You get a vacant piece of property, trees grown up or whatever it is, house. We can tear down the house. can.

    lay the trees down, build you a house. We’re also licensed realtors. My dad and I are licensed realtors and he’s been in the real estate business since before I was born. I bought my first property in 1960 something, and, and I gave, was like, that’s cool. You know, it’s 20, 25 and it’ll be 26 now. Things have changed, but we, we learn from each other. You know, we, we learn things from each other. Never too young to teach and never too old to learn. So.

    Quentin (11:05)
    Hehehehehe

    Yeah

    Josh McGlawn (11:21)
    That’s kind of what we live by. We bump heads sometimes, but at the end of the day, we get it done. And I love it, man.

    Quentin (11:28)
    Man, I love it, man. Thank you for the succinct journey ⁓ from a family legacy to where you are, to what you do. That was so well done, man. And the more I listen to you, the more I’m interested, what are some of you guys’ key strategies? Like, what keeps the machine kind of running smoothly?

    Josh McGlawn (11:47)
    It’s got to be balanced. So if you paint a picture, my dad and I are probably more alike than my mother. And I have some traits of hers, but you know, we were on a mom and pop operation. My mom is pretty much the business manager. She’s got a record. She got a, she’s got a degree in records management. So she keeps, you know, records to the T. And she’s the one that kind of keeps us in check when we’re like,

    We saw this piece of property and she was like, okay, where’s the money coming from? And what does it look like on the back end? So I focus on running the numbers and doing pro forma and stuff like that to see, you know, if this, I’ve got a formula, man. If it punched his property in, it doesn’t work on the back end. You know, we don’t go for it. Cause you can’t make business decisions emotionally. ⁓ You know, there are some times where we bought stuff, you know, on a gut feeling.

    Quentin (12:13)
    Yeah.

    Josh McGlawn (12:39)
    and it worked out, sometimes it didn’t. But you got to use the balance of the guts, you know, whatever’s in your spirit or your gut or whatever you want to call it. And, you know, the numbers, what are the numbers tell you? You got to be realistic about it. So my mom kind of helps us helps keeps us balanced in those areas. And then my wife and I have an investment company as well on the side. So we we kind of buy and sell stuff for buy buy.

    build run of properties and things. And she’s like definitely my yang. ⁓ She keeps me, you know, when I’m living in the clouds, she’s like, okay, let’s come back down to reality for a second. And sometimes I have to make those decisions, you know, business, because she’s a nurse. She doesn’t understand ⁓ the real estate part of it, but she’s also a woman. There’s a lot of wisdom to what she does.

    Quentin (13:10)
    Yeah. ⁓

    Josh McGlawn (13:34)
    And I respect it.

    Quentin (13:35)
    Nah, absolutely. I wasn’t trying to cut you off, but when you talked about so much wisdom coming from your wife, man, some people don’t talk like that, but those that know, they know, They are packed full of wisdom. And I’ll borrow it from Kev once. Yeah. No, go ahead, please. Go ahead, man.

    Josh McGlawn (13:48)
    Man, you… Yep.

    If you’re married and you want to stay married, you better keep it that way with the wife. We’ve been married 10 years this year and it’s like, appreciate it. And I’m still learning to bridle that tongue and listen twice as much as I talk, but man, it’s tough. Shout out to all the wives out there to put up with people like me.

    Quentin (14:11)
    See man, shout out. Bro,

    my wife is in the other room. Shout out to you baby for sure, man. And you’re saying things like, bridle the tongue. Like you’re saying little cold words that lets me know you have a unique way that you look through the world. You look through a lens. There I say that you have an anchor and I can kind of hear it coming out. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like I hear that anchor coming out of you, man.

    When you started talking about discipline, I’ve quoted a scripture on this podcast before, and I’m just going to say it here again, because the scripture says no discipline feels good at the time, but once it’s finished, once you’re trained by it, it brings you a life of peace and righteousness, right? And so when you talked about not making decisions emotionally, that discipline keeps you actually walking in peace further down the line, like.

    You may look at the property and like, I want this. But when you want the numbers and it don’t work, you’re to have peace on the other end because of that discipline. And so I love, man, that you talk about discipline, wisdom coming from your mouth, your wife, talking about writing in your tongue. Like when you start talking like that, it gives me a real clear perspective of how you see things. And I love to hear it, man. I just had to mention and bring it out. Hopefully that wasn’t offensive, but I just hear it, brother. I hear it coming out.

    Josh McGlawn (16:14)
    And you ain’t wrong. ⁓

    When I go, I also speak, because when we get knowledge and experience, it’s not for us. We have to pass it on to others. ⁓ The fruit that we produce is not for us to take part in. So we have to pass the fruit on to others. And you’re not wrong about the assumptions. ⁓ When kids ask me, you know, how do you get here and what’s success and all that.

    And I’m like, man, once I stopped trying to do it my way and I stopped trying to be so smart and you know, God gave me these gifts and skills for a purpose, but it’s not on my own doing. So I have to, you know, give credit where it’s due, give glory to God. I do any chance I get, you know, I tell the kids like, man, you got to get a relationship with your creator.

    And, you know, I

    I’m with you. You know, we try not to be offensive to people because everybody’s got their, you know, entitled to their own opinions and spiritual beliefs and such. But I grew up in a church and, you know, it didn’t depart from me, even though I departed from it, you know, a few times. But it’s what keeps me going, man. It keeps me rolling when things get hard. And it’s that foundation of faith that

    Quentin (17:26)
    Yeah, bro.

    Josh McGlawn (17:37)
    that doesn’t leave for me when things get crazy. Good or bad, you

    Quentin (17:42)
    Yeah, yeah.

    That part, good or bad, that part. And man, that’s why for me it’s so rich to hear you talking about your dad, walking closely, working closely with your dad. I’m writing a book with my dad just to cement his legacy, to make sure his name is never forgotten. And one of the things that my dad say is, you ever seen a tree eat his own fruit? And the first time he said it, I looked at him like, what?

    Josh McGlawn (17:58)
    well.

    Quentin (18:06)
    He said, have you ever seen a tree eat its own fruit? And I said, no. And he said, that’s right. He said, the tree is supposed to bear the fruit for other people to pick it. And so when I hear you talk about fruit, we are supposed to bear fruit for other people to pick from. And it don’t always feel easy, but that’s what you bear the fruit for. It’s for other people to eat the fruit that you give. And so when you said that, man, you’re ringing so many bells. And I think this is all good.

    Business sense too, like when you grow something when you are in the when you serve your client or serve the people who you are Selling, you know, we’re selling them right but we’re serving at the same time Any sustainable business I believe at the root is servitude. And so when I hear you talk I hear a servant’s heart that’s coming out I hear you know your dad planning season you have servitude and I love to hear I love hearing your perspective

    I love hearing your mindset. And so I’m going to ask you this and we’re going to keep weaving in all our life, all our life lessons with while we talk about this business stuff. But I do want to ask you, what are, what are you focused on scaling or solving next? Like what’s the next real goal for you?

    Josh McGlawn (19:19)
    ⁓ I think the biggest hurdle, the biggest goal for us is to, as we transition back to our development areas, we have so much property that we can develop when we know it has potential, but we have to put the horse in front of the cart because we kind of went the opposite way at the beginning and spin.

    a good bit more time, strategy and planning. Cause my dad, he always tells everybody he’s on the uphill side. If he’s on the downhill and I’m on the uphill. So I’m still, you know, barely just getting started tracking along and he’s, you know, he’s past retirement age and still working. He loves to work and he’s going to keep working. But, you know, my siblings and I are like, let’s, ⁓ let’s start slowing down. Let’s, I understand you need to work and you want to work.

    Quentin (19:56)
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    Josh McGlawn (20:15)
    but let’s get into that position where we starting to slow down and I’m starting to pick up stuff and he’s starting to slowly drop things and not work as hard. But with us knowing that we have a lot of property that we can develop ⁓ is just being careful with the planning and the marketing and get out in front of all of this. Because the last thing we want to do is start building a bunch of houses that people aren’t buying.

    people aren’t moving into or we don’t know how to get to them and don’t know about it. We have multifamily development that we’re going to start on. Got Board of Aldermen going up tomorrow to discuss, you know, push it through finally to get the last stamp of approval. So after that, we, you know, we’ll get into pre-leasing and because it’ll be rentals pre-leasing and get into really developing this thing out because

    Quentin (21:05)
    Yeah.

    Josh McGlawn (21:10)
    My dad and I are doers. Like if we see something that we know is going to work, running numbers and all that, let’s do it. But at the same time, it’s no such thing as over planning. Like you can over plan and get everything laid out to the T. Cause I do most of the, I wouldn’t just call it specifically brain work, but I’m boots on the ground sometimes, but he’s pretty much boots on the ground 100 % of the time.

    Quentin (21:16)
    Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

    Josh McGlawn (21:39)
    And I split time between ⁓ office time and the field. But I’ve got to put on myself, put on all the hats that I wear. Let me do everything that I can to make sure that we’re setting ourselves up for success in the best way. I use my friend, ChatGPT, all the time to help me lay out another buzzword. ding. ⁓

    Quentin (22:01)
    you

    Mm-mm.

    Josh McGlawn (22:07)
    Chad GPT, man,

    like the time is so valuable. And if you have an apparatus or a person or an assistant or something that you can use to do things that I’m capable of doing, but it saves me 30 minutes to even 10 minutes, days is worth it. Time is money, Time is money. You hear it all the time, but it is. ⁓

    Quentin (22:20)
    Yeah.

    Yeah.

    There you go. Yeah.

    Yeah. Yeah. Now, you said it, man. Listen, we’re coming close to time, but I got to ask you this about relationships, because you seem like you have a wonderful relationship with your dad, wonderful relationship with your mom. You just started mentioning your siblings. I know we were talking earlier, and you’re building even kind of like your own group, your own sphere. And so I just want to get your views on.

    relationships and how important they are or if they’re not important to you. guess, you know, it depends on, you you. But when it comes to relationships, like in growing your network, like what’s made the biggest difference for you.

    Josh McGlawn (23:05)
    Man, it’s huge. Relationships and everything. I don’t care what kind of business you’re in or what you do in life. You know, if you’re a loner or if you’re traveling the world by yourself, relationships are key. You know, got a buddy that backpacks all over the world and he’s had people that he’s met in the past that have some place for him to stay when he goes somewhere. So you never know what’s going to come of a relationship that you make with somebody, you know.

    you know, 10, 20 years ago. Cause I’ve got, I got friends from high school, college teammates, from ball that today, you know, could be one step between, you know, whatever it is that I want. It could be the connection to whatever it is that I’m trying to accomplish. And they don’t underestimate any person that you meet, you know, always. And I tell the kids and stuff all the time, always like,

    carry yourself as if you’re on live 100 % of the time. Now if everybody is watching, because the most important one is watching, but also everybody else is watching, at some point, you’re not gonna be the one that’s watching them, people is gonna watch you. So I have to be careful with everything that I do, every step that I take, and don’t burn bridges behind you. If you leave a job or if you part ways with even a

    you know, a loved one or a significant other. You part ways, don’t burn that bridge. You never know what’s going happen, man. You never know if that person may be the connection between whatever it is that you need on the other side and even vice versa. It might be something that you need to do for them because that’s what we’re here for in life to help people. And it’s not all for ourselves. But, yeah, our relationships, man, it’s a huge anchor to everything in life.

    Quentin (24:57)
    Josh, man. Thank you, man. Thank you for that. I couldn’t agree more. Relationships is everything. And I love how you talked about business relationships. I think you said, underestimate the person that you meet. You can’t judge a book by its cover. You got to read the pages. And so please never underestimate the person that you meet because of the outer exterior or what you think you know. Not until you actually build that relationship relating to them will you know really the wealth that they have deep inside of them.

    Josh McGlawn (25:14)
    Thank

    Quentin (25:26)
    Listen, man, I thank you, brother. Listen, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, man, how can they reach out to you?

    How can people get in contact with you,

    Josh McGlawn (25:37)
    Man, you said the books and all that. I got so many books I’m sitting on. ⁓ I can’t, I can’t, ⁓ I don’t, I don’t know. I can’t release anything yet because I don’t have it. If I did have something, you know, I could promote that. But I’ve got the Hustle Lab coming out soon. It’s a specializing entrepreneurs and hustlers. ⁓ People did leaving their jobs to go follow their dreams or still working their jobs and hustling. ⁓ The Hustle Lab, the hustle lab dot podcast on Instagram.

    Quentin (25:41)
    I know it, I know it.

    Josh McGlawn (26:07)
    at realtalk.studios on YouTube and everywhere else. That’s where the hub is for all of my media and podcasts and films. I also do film work on the side. So there’s a lot of things that I juggle. from mcglawnhomes.com, you can find all of our projects at mcglawnhomes, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. At the Josh McGlawn on all my social media handles.

    What else? ⁓ [email protected], The Josh McGlawn. Yeah. [email protected]. It’s a lot of things I got to remember. [email protected] is my email. ⁓ You can reach me at all those places.

    Quentin (26:42)
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    at you.

    Love it, Yeah, man, bro, I got to say, man, I thank you so much for your perspective. Number one, for your perspective. I love your perspective. I love the way your mind works. I love the way you see the world, the way you see business. So thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your story. Definitely thank you for your time, man. This has been an episode that’s packed full of nuggets. And so thank you for coming through, Josh. I appreciate you,

    Josh McGlawn (27:16)
    Appreciate you, my brother.

    Quentin (27:17)
    Absolutely. So listen, y’all know y’all got the value. You’re heard, Josh. Listen, and I keep saying it over and over. We’re going to continue to bring you just amazing people. People are amazing. You are amazing. And so who knows? I’ll probably be talking to you talking to you soon. So what I want you to do is subscribe. That way you can come back and continue to get this amazing content. And so Josh, man, I thank you again, and listen to everyone else. We’re going to see you on the next time.

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