From Renting to Generational Wealth: Real Estate Leadership with Natalie Carpenter

Share via:

• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• More

Subscribe via:

Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil speaks with Natalie Carpenter, a seasoned real estate managing broker and coach. Natalie shares her journey in real estate, her current leadership role overseeing 200 agents, and her focus on empowering agents to build relationships with clients rather than being transactional. She discusses her commitment to increasing homeownership in underserved communities and the importance of generational wealth. The conversation highlights the educational initiatives she undertakes to support agents and investors, as well as her action steps to foster community development.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Natalie Carpenter on Facebook
    • Natalie Carpenter on Instagram
    • Natalie Carpenter on LinkedIn
    • Natalie Carpenter’s Email Address: [email protected] or [email protected]
    • Natalie Carpenter’s Phone no.: (773) 430-4869

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Natalie Carpenter (00:00)
  I’ve been focused on teaching people how to own their own communities and to not be so focused on renting within a community and becoming owners. As a matter of fact, there were four agents from my office that just graduated

  from the Developers Academy this summer. So have the information, the resources ⁓ to go out and actually develop within the communities that they’ve always lived in

  Home ownership and ownership in general gives any person that owns

  it just gives you more credibility

  Michelle Kesil (02:15)
  Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to connecting with, Natalie Carpenter, who has been making serious moves as a real estate managing broker and a coach for realtors. So, excited to have you on the show today, Natalie.

  Natalie Carpenter (02:39)
  Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

  Michelle Kesil (02:42)
  Yeah, absolutely. I think that our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re working with your agents and assisting them in their work with investors as well. So let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your world yet, can you share what your main focus is?

  Natalie Carpenter (02:58)
  Awesome.

  My main focus is to help agents assist their clients, to run a profitable environment, obviously, and one that’s very productive. Part of my role is to attract real estate professionals in the residential and commercial world that support the

  the communities that we serve. They sell homes, they sell properties, commercial properties as well as residential, and they sell them to and for people. I help them build their business so that they can attract business, they can attract the buyers and sellers that they need, and then also service them in the way that they need to, whether they’re someone looking for a house or shelter, or they’re someone looking for an investment.

  as

  you know, investments take on, I mean in the real estate world, they take on so many different roles. mean you can have a rental that you want to rent out and earn money from. You can fix and flip, you know, you want to fix a property up so that you can put it back on the market. There are just so many different ways you can invest. You might want to invest in having a real estate company or you might want to invest in having a property management company. But all of those things I

  agents to try to figure out first off what it is they want to do and then how to go about getting it done.

  Michelle Kesil (04:35)
  Awesome. What markets are you operating in?

  Natalie Carpenter (04:38)
  Currently I’m in Northwest Indiana and in the state of Illinois, primarily in the Chicagoland area.

  Michelle Kesil (04:44)
  Awesome.

  Natalie Carpenter (04:45)
  But

  I’ve actually supported agents in the southern southeast portion of Wisconsin, as well as northeast, or northwest, I’m sorry, or, no, that would be southwest Michigan.

  Michelle Kesil (05:01)
  Okay, cool.

  Natalie Carpenter (05:02)
  I still do support some agents in Southwest Michigan.

  Michelle Kesil (05:05)
  Yeah. How did you get started on this journey?

  Natalie Carpenter (05:57)
  Well, the leadership, I’ll just back it up. decided I wanted to get a real estate license 35 years ago because I wanted to have enough money to buy furniture. I had a different job. I was in a different industry. And I had kind of reached the ceiling in my earning potential. So I thought, OK, let me do something.

  that i can earn some additional money so i decided real estate would be my choice in less than six months i decided that i wanted to pursue my career full-time career in real estate so i quit my job just dove straight in and the rest is kind of history two years into working within the real estate arena i was invited to the leadership team

  And didn’t really know exactly what I was getting into at the time, but I knew that I liked helping people and I thought it was an intriguing thing to do. And so I did. And through the next 33 years, if you will, I’ve taken, I’ve had a lot of leadership roles within the same organization and ⁓ I’ve led agents, ⁓ I’ve led solopreneurs, I’ve led teams, I’ve led residential agents, commercial agents,

  I’ve led leaders, leadership, know, managers of real estate offices and regents. And ⁓ it’s just been very interesting. ⁓ One thing though, and I noticed this last night when I was kind of thinking about the podcast today.

  Most of my leadership roles have been from people asking me to step up. It’s never been something that I’ve just decided, okay, yeah, I think I’ll take a leadership role in this or I’ll try for this. I’ve always been asked to fill the roles.

  Michelle Kesil (07:54)
  Awesome. And what does your current leadership role entail?

  Natalie Carpenter (07:59)
  So currently I have just about 200 agents that I more or less supervise their activities. I am the one who the states recognize as their managing broker. And they’re ⁓ in Illinois, Indiana, and again there’s a few in Southwest Michigan. Basically,

  I’m responsible for their compliance to make sure that the documents that they’re using, the way in which they’re working with their clients are in alignment with what the laws require as well as the code of ethics within the real estate profession. ⁓ They come to me for strategy.

  I help them with their goals and setting their goals and then help them with business planning to make sure that they’re able to meet their goals. I serve as a coach basically to them as well as in some cases I serve as a mentor. ⁓ I’m that guide, that person they rely on if they have a question about something. If there’s a negotiation going awry, they can pick up the phone and

  me or they can stop at my office and we can kind of talk through it. I help them with their marketing strategy, how to attract buyers and sellers to them so that they’ll have people to work with and they’ll be able to sustain their business.

  Michelle Kesil (09:39)
  Yeah, amazing. What have been some of the main keys that you feel most confident and like people need the most support in during this time?

  Natalie Carpenter (10:27)
  Confidence, know right now consumer confidence, you know given everything that’s going on in the economy and in the world the consumer confidence more or less bleeds into real estate agent confidence to having the confidence to be able to connect with their clients in a relationship way is very important because you know ⁓

  coming across too transactional to people right now, especially when ⁓ prices have gone up and people are losing jobs and a lot of different things are going on in the world.

  is people aren’t looking for that. They’re looking for relationships. Real estate basically is a relationship building business. If you have a relationship, you typically don’t have other issues. You have good relationships with people. They want to do business with you. So getting agents to out of the mindset of being transactional and being more relational is, you know, that’s that’s kind of

  where I’m spending a lot of my time.

  Michelle Kesil (11:38)
  Yeah, absolutely. That’s an important distinction to have.

  What are some of the ways that you are working with investors or supporting your agents to work with investors?

  Natalie Carpenter (11:51)
  Okay, so ⁓ I’ll just share with you a few different ways that I’ve worked with investors. I mean, I’ve been an investor myself. I’ve done…

  fix and flips and identifying the best properties to purchase that are going to give me the best return on investment. So I take that and I make sure that the agents that I support know how to do that. They understand what an ARV is and an ROI and how they relate to working with an investor. We talk about different financing options that are available.

  for

  investors. And I provide them with education on that. We have a series in my office called Ask the Expert, and I will bring in experts that they need to connect with, or at least need to have information from. And it could be around financing. It could be around inspections, code violations. It could be around municipal

  codes and different things that are needed when you are working with investment clients. Typically, I would say that the average investor that most of my agents are working with is someone that’s buying a property that they’re either going to rehab and put back on the market or they want to buy it so that it can generate a monthly income for them.

  And being able to identify those properties in the marketplace and understand how to ⁓ show the sellers or show the owners what they will net as a result is key. You have a lot of agents that don’t have that background or that experience and they can end up wasting a lot of time. So that’s why I put a lot into my agents from an educational standpoint to understand what the differences are.

  and what you know an investor is really looking for you know what kind of return are they looking for what are cap rates you know if they’re trying to ⁓ you know buy a commercial property what you know what’s the difference between a four unit building that where the owner pays the heat and where the tenants pay their own heat you know how does that you know how does that differ in pricing

  You know from community to community how can you have a property two properties on the same block that look the same but be very different in value and you know, and it’s typically because of the expenses or you know the operating expenses of the of the property itself so teaching them that information helps to make them more valuable when they’re working with, you know investor clients and then you know, of course we can get into you know

  some of the larger type of investment properties like, know, maybe I have some agents that I support that sell large parcels of land and they use that land, they sell that land ultimately to builders and developers. You know, some of them are putting in subdivisions. So there’s a lot of different things you need to know about that. Like is the infrastructure in place? And then if not, what needs to happen? You know, do you have to do you need a soil test? Are there

  There are so many different things that can come into play in a particular investment situation that agents need to know how to communicate with the investor about it so that they can save time, save them money. Those are the two things, saving time and saving money and creating very little inconvenience to the clients.

  Michelle Kesil (16:24)
  Yeah, absolutely. That’s all important stuff to have discernment over when teaching people and working in the investor realm.

  So what are you most focused on solving or scaling next in your business?

  Natalie Carpenter (16:39)
  So I’m past, okay, I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m African American. I’m a black woman and I’ve been that way for a long time. And what I’ve noticed in a lot of predominantly ⁓ black communities is that a lot of the properties that are owned, the investment properties are owned by people that don’t necessarily live in the communities.

  And so I’ve, you know, I’m a part of an organization called National Association of Real Estate Brokers, which is the oldest trade organization of its kind. It’s actually some people refer to it as the black organization, but it’s not exclusively black people in the organization. there are people, you know, our entire philosophy is helping homeownership in the African American communities, increasing those numbers.

  and ⁓ being advocates for African Americans. so I right now, and I guess you could say it’s been an undercurrent of everything I’ve done, is

  I’ve been focused on teaching people how to own their own communities and to not be so focused on renting within a community and becoming owners. As a matter of fact, there were four agents from my office that just graduated

  from the Developers Academy ⁓ within NAREB this summer. So four people, four real estate agents from this office now have the information, the resources ⁓ to go out and actually develop within the communities that they’ve always lived in and that they work with so that they can become more owners and they can present more opportunities.

  Home ownership and ownership in general gives any person that owns

  it just gives you more credibility

  in the world to be honest with you. mean obviously you’re going to get tax savings so it increases your ability to have more money and more resources at your fingertips. It also helps to build sense of community. When you’re in an area where most of the property is rented and the owners are offsite, they’re not as focused

  on pride of ownership in the communities and creating a community that’s synergistic and vibrant. They’re just providing housing and that’s pretty much…

  you know what their goal is because if you’re an investor and that’s what you’re looking for that’s what you’re providing but when you own the property that you live in or you own the building that you live in and maybe there’s some other tenants that are in there with you you then have a different pride of ownership it increases the value of the community as well as it increases the educational opportunities schools perform better when their owners occupy

  the properties within that community because then they’re not as transient as renters would be. So you’re able to attract better teachers and educators and you know things it just creates a stronger economy.

  I mean even the commercial properties that come in, the retail establishments, they change when it’s a community of homeowners versus a community of renters. So I am really focused on elevating communities and underserved communities in that way so that there are more homeowners being created within the communities and building owners and investors.

  Michelle Kesil (20:31)
  Yeah, that’s an amazing mission that you have. That’s really beautiful service that you’re doing.

  Natalie Carpenter (20:36)
  I think it’s needed and it’s necessary.

  Michelle Kesil (20:38)
  Absolutely. What are some of the action steps that you have to take in order to fulfill this?

  Natalie Carpenter (20:46)
  Well basically I think aligning with organizations like National Association of Real Estate Brokers and of the larger organizations within the community, there is a Greek scene basically or what we call the Divine Nine. These are

  organizations that basically come from a college or university background and there are nine of them within the African-American community and they’re very strong. They ⁓ have a huge amount of members in there. And then most African-American communities have, they’re more faith-based. So there are a lot of churches.

  And there are a lot of people that attend the churches. reaching out to the churches, reaching out to the organizations like the sororities and the fraternities, and then any other organizations that might be in the area. ⁓ That’s where we start and we start the conversation. We have community meetings like ⁓ we invite the public out to understand what is.

  so powerful about being a homeowner? What is so powerful about ⁓ owning a building or being an investor? We show them how to do it. We align with the lenders and the municipalities that have, ⁓ you know, that help. know, there are municipalities that will help with down payment assistance and there are programs that are available. So educating myself and my agents on what resources

  are available to help community members grow and to get more familiar with being homeowners and investors is the first step. Communicating that out to the public and getting

  you know getting them used to that and then actually showing them how it’s ⁓ we do a lot of workshops we did we had a workshop last year and it was called what to do with Big Mama’s house because unfortunately in a lot of our communities people are inheriting property and then not realizing that you know there’s still some financial obligations that have to be met

  And when they find out, it’s typically so astronomical that it’s difficult for them to catch it up. And it makes it much easier to sell it to someone who doesn’t live in the community. And then it becomes on the rental rolls again. And then, so then.

  We try to teach them how to make sure that that’s protected for generations. Generational wealth is what I’m focused on right now. Helping communities and people within those communities really achieve generational wealth.

  Michelle Kesil (23:49)
  That’s amazing. I love what you’re doing. It’s very much needed. Yeah, you’re welcome. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you?

  Natalie Carpenter (23:52)
  Thank you.

  people can find me on everywhere well they can find me on facebook they can find me on instagram they even tiktok believe it or not you can find me there and i’m also on linkedin i’m natalie carpenter and i actually have a pot some hot podcasts that i’ve been

  Michelle Kesil (24:11)
  Nice.

  Natalie Carpenter (24:23)
  I have to say they’re not as consistent as they should be. They’re called Natalie’s Nuggets. So I think if you google Natalie’s Nuggets you can probably find me there. But my phone number, if anybody wants to call me, and I’m an open book. I meet with people from all different companies, all kinds of places. My callback number is 773-430-4869.

  want to email me they can email me at nataliercarpenter at yahoo.com

  Michelle Kesil (25:00)
  Perfect. Well, I appreciate your time. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

  Natalie Carpenter (25:03)
  and it ⁓ one more I

  was just gonna say and if they’re a realtor in the ⁓ northwest indiana area and you know they’re interested in learning more about what I do to support my agents they can reach out to me at natalie.carpenter at cbexchange.com that’s catboyexchange.com

  Michelle Kesil (25:30)
  Okay, perfect. Well, I really appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. Thank you for being here.

  Natalie Carpenter (25:37)
  Thank you for having me. have sincerely enjoyed the opportunity to be here. I appreciate learning all the time and I appreciate platforms that really ⁓ help people to learn more about our industry and learn more about just life. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Michelle Kesil (25:57)
  Yeah,

  of course. And for those tuning into the show, if you got value from this, make sure that you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Natalie who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.