Subscribe via:
Show Summary
In this conversation, Jason Smith, a seasoned realtor and investor in Miami, shares his journey in the real estate industry, discussing the evolution of Miami’s market, the challenges of short sales, and the importance of networking. He emphasizes the dual role of being both an agent and an investor, offering insights on how to balance these responsibilities. Jason also highlights the significance of teaching and mentoring new investors, sharing valuable lessons from his experiences and the mindset required for successful investing.
Resources and Links from this show:
-
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (00:00)
The first 120 pages is all about mindset of an investor.nothing to do with mechanics. It’s what separates an investor from a non-investor. It’s overcoming the fear. It’s taking that next step. And I heard someone say yesterday at this investment seminar, I’ve heard them say, do it scared. Don’t wait, just do it. Some advice that I’m sure you could, you would support. Just do it, right? Just do it. What else? Money lives on the other side of fear.
Dylan Silver (02:00)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Jason Smith with Showcase Miami is a Miami basedfor 26 years who’s bought and sold five million in investment properties. He’s also a paid trainer for Raquel Williams and teaches a one day course to KW agents around the country based on the best selling book, Millionaire Real Estate Investor. You can also find him on Instagram at Jason Smith Showcase. Jason, thanks for taking the time today.
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (02:30)
and honored to be here. Thanks for having me.Dylan Silver (02:32)
Thanks for coming on the show today. And I always like to start off at the top by asking folks really how they got started in real estate. But Miami real estate is another beast entirely. you lifelong Floridian and from Miami?Jason Smith – Miami, FL (02:47)
was actually born in England and I came here as a wee lad when I was six years old back in 74.Dylan Silver (02:53)
Okay, came to South Florida?Jason Smith – Miami, FL (02:56)
Yup, came to South Florida. My parents uprooted themselves from England and they came over here to Miami. Yup.Dylan Silver (03:01)
Okay,so I gotta ask him some questions about Miami at that point in time. What was it like down there in Miami back then? I can’t imagine it was what it is today.
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (03:12)
You know, I didn’t have the perspective necessarily as a six year old coming here, but what I do remember is a lot of snakes on the street, dead snakes that had been run over by cars, rat snakes in particular back then, ⁓ which you don’t see anymore. You’d see a lot of, let’s see, not a lot of high buildings, our downtown has transformed compared to what it was in the past, right? It’s just amazing. And then,as you go west in Miami, you’d get into the farmland pretty quick. There’s Daedland Mall. yeah, Daedland Mall, all kinds of citrus groves, mango, avocado groves that just became developed, right? And just what you look now, which is as a center of town used to be the Western boundaries of Miami, if you will.
Dylan Silver (03:45)
Really?No kidding,
I think a lot of people are surprised to hear that. There was farms right outside Miami.
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (04:04)
Absolutely. Strawberry fields, all kinds of stuff. As you just went a little bit three, four, five, six miles west of here. Yeah.Dylan Silver (04:10)
Do you know if at that point in time this concept of snowbirding was a thing back then in South Florida?Jason Smith – Miami, FL (04:17)
It was, mean, like my grandparents used to come here from Chicago. They lived in Chicago. They would come and they would visit here. They’d visit Havana, Cuba and stuff like that back in the 50s. They would come to Miami and they would, Miami Beach in particular is where they would vacation.Dylan Silver (04:33)
Now, when we when we talk about over the years, right, of course, I think of Miami right now, South Florida being like one of the premier cities in the world. And it’s one of my favorite places. And I’ve said this before that if I could swing it, I would love to be over there. I love so much of Florida. But but specifically when we talk about investor agents or agents who deal with investors.and you’re in South Florida. That’s one of the most competitive markets to be in.
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (05:53)
as an investor or as an agent.Dylan Silver (05:55)
Both, I would think, right?Jason Smith – Miami, FL (05:58)
Yeah, guess, yeah it is. I agree, I would agree.Dylan Silver (06:03)
Now, when we talk about your career path and from where you started until you are now, were you always thinking like an investor and working with investors or was that over time something that came about organically?Jason Smith – Miami, FL (06:19)
Well, as you and I mentioned before the show, I used to do a lot of short sales as a listing agent back in 2008, 2009, I survived as a realtor off of short sales, right? Pre-foreclosures, a third of the MLS back then was pre-foreclosure, a third was bank owned foreclosure, and a third were traditional where the sellers had equity. So it was hard as a seller who had no equity. ⁓ Basically, if you wanted to sell,you had to be pre foreclosure because you were competing against all the other pre foreclosures and all the REO properties that were out there. So you had to be very competitive in the price and I couldn’t, I had to go to where the money was, where the sellers that could sell in that environment were doing it. And it was only pretty much the pre foreclosures that were selling at that time.
Dylan Silver (07:10)
Yeah, I mean, that was that was the absolute peak of chaos in the real estate space. Right. And so one of the hallmarks of a real estate operator, whether you’re an agent, an investor, a lender, know, even someone in the trades. Right. You have to be able to make these pivots with time and, you know, going into that short sale space. Did you have mentors? Did you have people that were doing that? Or was the attitude like, hey, if I don’t do this, you know, there’s not going to be anything to sell.Jason Smith – Miami, FL (07:40)
Really good point. Well, I knew how to get in communication with sellers because I prospect every day. I’ve done it for 26 years, two hours every morning. I’m looking for sellers, right? So it was no different back then. The only difference back then is that the sellers were more motivated because they had to sell, right? Because they had an adjustable, an armed mortgage and their rate was about to go up. They had to sell and they didn’t have equity type of thing. So I had to pivot because I didn’t know about how to negotiate with the banks.Dylan Silver (08:10)
Yeah.Jason Smith – Miami, FL (08:10)
Right?I needed to partner myself. I could get the leads, the sellers, but I had to give part of my commission or get a title company to someone who would spend their time on the phone, two phones at a time with the different banks negotiating with them to get them to take less than what they were owed. And with the deals that I saw back then, one example was a $750,000 townhouse, Coconut Grove, one or two years old. That one, my listing, sold, what price would you guess?
two years old townhouse in a beautiful part of Miami.
Dylan Silver (08:40)
Oh, man, I feel like it’s gonna be something less than 700,000. But I would traditionally think two years later in Miami, you would be have appreciated to some extent, I’m gonna throw out 600.Jason Smith – Miami, FL (08:54)
He bought it for 750, my seller. We ended up selling it because it had Chinese drywall and he was only two years old. We did a short sale for 150.Dylan Silver (09:04)
Unbelievable.Jason Smith – Miami, FL (09:06)
Today, that townhouse is worth 1.8.Dylan Silver (09:11)
Do know who bought that? It had to be an investor, right?Jason Smith – Miami, FL (09:13)
It wasan investor. It was an investor who could deal with the Chinese drywall. The smell of eggs around that Chinese drywall would bring at that time was very prevalent at that era, like 2005, 2006 construction. That was one deal. Another deal. was a yeah, there’s so many of those deals that I’ve seen as a realtor for sellers over the past couple of decades. That’s what prompted me to see why there’s so much opportunity here. Yes, I can be an agent. I want to help people as agents, but I also want to be a principal.
taking advantage of some of these opportunities as well that present themselves when you’re prospecting day in and day out.
Dylan Silver (09:48)
When we talk about investing, especially as an agent, a lot of times people divvy up these two worlds and they say, okay, here’s the investing world here and I’m an agent, I’m not going to touch that investing world.But I part of me feels like, you know, what are you in this game to do if you’re not investing in real estate? And I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been licensed, then I’ve been unlicensed, then I see people who just deal with, you retail, and I see people who just invest.
What would be your advice or feedback to let’s say newer agents who would like to get started investing at some point in time?
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (10:59)
Great question. I would say as I teach in my classes for this book, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor written by Gary Keller, the founder of Keller Williams who I work for, there’s the realtor hat that you and I wear, you being a realtor as well as an investor. There’s a realtor hat, but there’s also the investor hat. And the challenge is as a realtor, as an agent, you’ve got so many deals that you’re working with clients, requests, type of thing. You sometimes forget to put on your investor hat.The only way that I’ve been able to figure out how to, to, it’s a time block. Like on a Saturday, I’m not wearing my realtor hat in the morning for four hours. That’s when I have my investor hat on. That’s when I’m making offers. I’m looking to see which properties out there would cashflow with a certain amount down to have some upside. That’s my criteria, my buy box, if you will. Those, that’s Jason’s time as an investor. It’s not realtor time. I think that’s one way I’ve been able to do it is just time block. If you’re an agent,
a certain portion of your week for several, three or four hours. See properties that you like, make offers at terms that work for you, and then put them into some type of ⁓ program where you can see, plug in the insurance, the taxes, the 25 % down, whatever it might be, and see if they cashflow, what’s a net operating income, that type of thing. ⁓ But really, I’m making offers like say 70 to 80%. I feel like I’m inching up ⁓ closer to asking price these days because
It’s super competitive in the duplex, let’s say in Miami, you know, it’s multiple offers and they don’t really budge versus condos. Right now there’s 150, there’s 300 condos in Miami beach, South beach between 150 and 400. So a complete buyer’s market there. So the, the, um, contrarian is making offers there, even though you’ve got the assessments, et cetera, but just make, I’ve learned from one of my mentors, just keep on making offers. The offer means nothing.
Dylan Silver (12:30)
Yeah.Jason Smith – Miami, FL (12:56)
find out who the motivated sellers are and just keep doing it.Dylan Silver (13:01)
That’s a great point. know, people can overlook what you said and then the significance and the impact there. But you’re making the offer to find the motivation, right? That’s the opening door, right? So you can kind of stack credibility. Hey, I’m an investor. I’m a realtor. Here’s the offer, right? Let’s let’s find you might have to make a couple of them. I’ve worked with investors and we’ve made, you know, 100 offers over the course of a couple of months before one get it gets accepted. ButSometimes you have to just keep putting up shots like that. I do wanna pivot a bit here though, Jason, and talk about the importance of networking. when, especially if you’re a newer agent and you’re trying to get into the investment side of things, it’s really a different sphere, right? So one is retail, another is investors and creating that network for yourself. Talk to us a little bit about your feedback on.
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (13:54)
Great, so again, we come across deals, off-market deals as agents that are pounding the pavement looking for listings, A real trap. So we came across one of our contacts said, hey, I have a sister, I’m sorry, I have a friend and this friend and her sister wanna sell their property in West Miami because the family member just passed, they wanna sell it as is. And that one sold for 410 and it ended up…they flipped it, they assigned it as a wholesaler for $150,000 without doing any work to it. And then their assignment fee. So here’s the thing, Jason had the opportunity to do that, but I didn’t have the network to your point that I, cause he, this person who got it under contract, got control of it. They had maybe five, five or six investors from their investor club that were willing to do the work and flip it, come by.
Dylan Silver (14:32)
That was their assignment fee? my gosh.Jason Smith – Miami, FL (14:53)
four or five of them passed, but once I, okay, I’ll do it. I’ll pay you $150,000 premium so that we can flip it and sell it forARV, right? After repair value. So there’s these sisters that they didn’t want to, here’s the thing. We didn’t, they didn’t want to list it with us. They didn’t want to list it. I maintain as an agent, as I always do, increased demand. Sure. There’s a commission involved, but put it on the open market.
have people compete for it, right? I focus on helping sellers get full retail. That’s my model. They said, no, no, we don’t want to do it. We just bring us a buyer. We’ll pay you a couple percent. So we brought them a buyer. Was it a great offer at 410? No. Could we have gotten them more? I think we probably could have gotten them in the mid fives if we put it on the open market, just as they did, right? To get somebody, maybe even higher, maybe even 600. So I guess that’s the thing. That’s a pet peeve as a realtor who also is,
an investor, have a couple of single families. I truly believe that the agent does, if they know what they’re doing there and their focus is on helping the seller get the most and get competition for the property. The market speaks, it’s putting it on the open market with great images at a price that’s not too high because you’re too high, then you have to end up settling later, the listing gets stale, that type of thing.
Dylan Silver (16:56)
Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s so much to unpack there. We could talk about photos. We could talk about, you know, identifying the right price. We could talk about on market, off market. I’ve dealt with all of those. And as someone who’s also scoured for listings that are stale listings and looked for signs of, hey, would this person be open to something creative? You know, would they take a cash offer? Right. One of the first things that I look forIt’s just bad photos. And I’m like, this is a good property. I’ve seen this property. I know I’ve driven by there. What’s up with these photos? And sometimes it’s a flat fee listing. It could be any number of things, you know, and that something like that. This happens all the time, right? And people are probably shocked. And some sometimes they might be reasonably good photos, just no staging. Right. And so you have someone that has staging and you are able to facilitate that.
That can be the difference in the world, right?
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (17:58)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of the expired listings that we get were simply because the images didn’t convey how beautiful the property was.Dylan Silver (18:07)
Yeah, mean, I mean, it’s it’s shocking that that that happens time and time again. I guess people are trying to, you know, save a few dollars here and there. So they may justify it. But ultimately, if your property is sitting for, you know, 200 days and you don’t have anything close to where you’re trying to be at, that that can make you motivated relatively relatively quickly, quicker than some other some other strategies. I do want to pivot a bit here, though, Jason, before we wrap and ask you specifically about what it’s like teaching other agents.⁓ to become investors themselves and also how this has ⁓ benefited you in your business as well.
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (18:44)
Great question. Great question, Dylan. Well, I started to teach this material because I, you know, I wanted to become a master of the material, right? I wanted to really, if you teach something, you become really much better at it. So that was my focus seven years ago when I first started teaching this course. And it’s, it’s definitely, it makes me, if you teach it, you have to know your material. So that’s been very helpful to me. I would say about the book, if I may,first 120 pages is all about mindset of an investor.
nothing to do with mechanics. It’s what separates an investor from a non-investor. It’s overcoming the fear. It’s taking that next step. And I heard someone say yesterday at this investment seminar, I’ve heard them say, do it scared. Don’t wait, just do it. Some advice that I’m sure you could, you would support. Just do it, right? Just do it. What else? Money lives on the other side of fear.
There’s the myth understandings on page 39 of the book.
myth understandings. I can read that to you for a second if you like. It basically says not misunderstandings, but myth like mythology understandings and they are this three personal myths. don’t need to be an investor. My job will take care of my financial wealth. The truth. Yes, you do need to be investor. Your job is not your financial wealth. Myth number two. I do not need or want to be financially wealthy. I’m happy with what I have. Truth. You need to open your eyes.
You do need and want to be financially wealthy. Number three myth. It doesn’t matter if I want it or need it. I just can’t do it. Truth. You cannot predict what you can or cannot do until you try. The investing myth. Myth number one. Investing is complicated. Truth. Investing is only as complicated as you make it. Myth number two. The best investments require knowledge most people do not have. Truth. The best investments, your best investments will always be in areas you can or already understand.
Myth number three, investing is risky. I’ll lose my money. Truth, investing by definition is not risky. Speculation is risky, but not investing. Investing, you know your buy box, you know your criteria. You don’t have to look at the MLS or Zillow to see if something is a good value or not. You know already, okay, that’s a good value. Myth number four, successful investors are able to time the market. Truth, in successful investing, the timing finds you.
The idea from Gary Keller, founder of Keller Williams is always don’t wait to buy real estate, instead buy real estate and wait. And then finally, he says myth, all the good investments are taken, which I’m sure we’ve heard that one a lot. Truth, every market has its share of good investments.
Dylan Silver (21:18)
Yeah.Amen to that. Amen to
that. You got to get started. Do it scared, right? Do it scared. ⁓ Jason, we are coming up on time. Any new projects that you’re working on or how can our audience reach out to you or your team? How can folks get in contact with you?
Jason Smith – Miami, FL (21:34)
Exactly.Thanks Dylan. Well, you can follow us on social media at Instagram. It’s at Jason Smith showcase. You’ll see a lot of our listings over there. Some of our team members, what we’re doing again is at Jason Smith showcase. And you can call me, text me 786-326-8115. 786-326-8115. And finally, our website is showcasemiami.com. Showcasemiami.com.
or you can reach us at short sales help.net short sales help.net.
Dylan Silver (22:23)
Jason, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for coming on the show.Jason Smith – Miami, FL (22:26)
Dylan, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
