How Julie Hoffman Built a Real Estate Empire

Julie Hoffman (00:00)
She said, well, here’s the thing, you can’t qualify for the financing. And I’m like, awesome. And she said, what? She said, you have to buy it through an agreement for sale. And that’s kind of like subject to down in America. I said, awesome, I know how to do that. She said, you do? I said, yeah, I’ve bought a whole bunch of properties that way.

Scott Bursey (01:55)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And on today’s show, we are focusing on effective coaching frameworks and strategic growth from real estate entrepreneurs. We’re joined by Julie Hoffman of Street Smart Diva Real Estate Coaching, who brings deep expertise from years of successfully guiding and growing top producing agents and teams across various market segments. Julie, thanks for being here.

Julie Hoffman (02:23)
My pleasure, Scott. Thank you for having me.

Scott Bursey (02:25)
It’s wonderful to have you here and for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, could you please tell us how your career began and what your focus is now?

Julie Hoffman (02:34)
Absolutely. So it is, it starts like everybody started. Most people go to school, they try to get good grades, they go to college, they get a good education, and they go out and they get a job. And that’s what I did. I was raised by parents that wanted that from me. And so it’s, that was my journey. went to college, I went to, ⁓ I went to graduate school, I became a physical therapist. And

I, in that time, also met my future husband when I was in graduate school in Mexico, of all places, and he is a Canadian. So a lot of Canadians go down to Mexico for winter for obvious reasons. He is from a very cold place called Alberta. And he asked me to marry him, and so I moved in 1999 to Alberta.

Scott Bursey (03:22)
yes.

Julie Hoffman (03:32)
And I was working as a physical therapist and I got pregnant pretty soon after it, after we got married. And so I was about six months pregnant and, um, working as a physical therapist, my husband calls me one night. I, had gone to a seminar, a real estate investment seminar, and he called me and he said, we need to invest in real estate. And my first thought was, okay, now I want to, I want to really,

pause here because not every spouse is on board like that. So let me explain.

I was raised by a real estate investor and my dad is still a real estate investor. He owns farms in South Dakota and Kansas and he’s part owner of a commercial warehouse in ⁓ the Denver metro area. And I remember him being able to at a moment’s notice come and pick me up from school.

⁓ My best friend and kitchen class, home ec partner, we always forgot our guest on cooking days. So I could always call him and he’d be there in five minutes and it was 50 % of our grade to have guest. So he was always our guest. And I just have really fond memories of my dad being an entrepreneur. And he also went through struggles. And I watched him handle those struggles with extreme grace.

And so when my husband said we should invest in real estate, that was an easy yes for me. And I, like I said, I acknowledge it’s not necessarily easy. Yes, for everyone and the spouse ⁓ that said it can be done. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it done over and over and over again. I do acknowledge though that I had an unfair advantage. So we started investing in real estate and before we knew it, we had three properties and then I gave birth to my daughter. Now before that,

I always thought I would go back to work. In Canada, some of you may not know this, we have this beautiful thing called maternity leave, where you can take a year off and make 50 % of your income, 55 % of your income. I made a pretty decent income, but that was very helpful. So I got to take a whole year off. ⁓ And when she was born,

So here’s the thing, always thought I’d go back early. I never thought I’d take the full maternity leave because I went to school forever. I went to graduate school. I have a doctorate in physical therapy, right? I was scared of what my parents would think. And then that was all erased when my daughter was born. I took one look at her, fell in love with her, just like every parent does. And I knew that moment I wanted to be with her as much as I possibly could.

Scott Bursey (06:51)
You

Julie Hoffman (07:11)
and I knew that real estate would help me to do that. So we already owned three after she was born. Shortly thereafter, I got pregnant again with my second. We ended up having five children between 2002 and 2008. That first year she was born, with the help of the maternity leave, we bought 12 more properties. And we did it all with a line of credit on our house as the down payments. You could do that back then.

And so that’s how we started. So before you knew it, we had 15 properties within a little over a year, two little kids under two. My husband worked in a full-time job. That was our safety net. He was a business owner. He owned a home hardware, which is like an ACE hardware, okay, family-run business, even though it’s a franchise.

I had the luxury of being able to ⁓ find properties, go get them. And I took a lot of seminars and I took a lot of coaching and I belonged to networking groups. That was all really crucial in my journey. So anyway, we built up by between 2002 and 2006. By 2006, we had three little kids and I was pregnant with my fourth and we had accumulated 35 houses.

and townhomes and condos in three different cities in Alberta. And in that time, the economy boomed, the real estate market boomed, most of what we bought either doubled or tripled in value. And I wanted to start a buy an apartment buildings. So I called this big high, you know, the girl, the most successful real commercial realtor. said, I want to buy apartment buildings. And she’s like, Yes, sure you do. Sure you do, sweetheart.

Scott Bursey (09:07)
You

Julie Hoffman (09:08)
And I said, I do though. And she’s like, okay, I’ll keep you in mind. but I, but she kind of brushed me off. And, you know, as things happen, about a week later, she called me and she said, I’ve got this building, I thought of you, I just, put it in front of this couple, they don’t understand what they need to do to get it. But it’s a 15 unit building. And I said, awesome. And she’s like, wait, you’re not intimidated by that? I was like, no, that’s, that seems pretty manageable.

She said, well, here’s the thing, you can’t qualify for the financing. And I’m like, awesome. And she said, what? She said, you have to buy it through an agreement for sale. And that’s kind of like subject to down in America. I said, awesome, I know how to do that. She said, you do? I said, yeah, I’ve bought a whole bunch of properties that way.

And she said, what do you mean? I said, well, we have about 35 properties that we’ve bought since 2002. So she suddenly.

that kind of, she went silent because she thought I was just kind of a poser, you know what I mean? Poser, I haven’t said that since the nineties, but anyway, here we are. So we got into apartment buildings. We bought this great little 15 unit apartment building and we didn’t have to qualify for financing. And I got all the down payment from a line of credit on like three of my properties. It was super exciting.

Scott Bursey (10:51)
You

Julie Hoffman (11:11)
And then she introduced me to condo conversion, which is where you buy a building and then you go to the city and you chop it up into individual condos or individual apartments. However, the language is for people watching, you know, you take a 20 unit building and now you got 20 individual different properties. And she said, let’s do that. I’ll help you buy it. And my brother will sell all the condos. He’s got a, he’s got a huge list of buyers. And I’m like, okay.

What am I gonna, what kind of money am I gonna make? She said you’re gonna, she showed me $300,000 on this deal. That was more money than I ever dreamt of in my whole entire life. And she, and I said, well, okay. I did the same thing. We pulled equity out of a bunch more houses, did a building. She sold it in less than, her brother sold it in less than a month.

I took possession a month later, it was sold out. That’s how hot this market is. So markets can be red hot and that’s what I was dealing with. And so we did that again and again and again. And we became multimillionaires. So by 2008, we were multimillionaires heading into, rather 2007, multimillionaires and the recession starts. It started for developers like me.

And I was holding onto five bad properties in bad areas that suddenly nobody wanted to buy. Nobody even wanted to buy a single unit. Values dropped. Credit dried up. It’s to an extent. And I was holding onto five buildings with basically credit card money, very expensive money. And then I had another baby. had my fifth baby in 2008. And it took two years.

We refinanced each individual door. So we took it from credit card money to like prime, like 4%. And on paper, they should have cash flowed. But as I said, they were in bad areas. Rough tenant demographic, rough tenant profile. And then on top of that, we had a partnership dispute and our and my partner had some problems that we weren’t aware of. I didn’t handle it well, you know, it takes two to tango and every I’m not blaming this guy.

but there was some major stuff going on. And took four years, we fought hard. We fought real hard. We went down swinging, but we went down. And so having refinanced all of those doors, though we had a hundred doors and we refinanced 95 of them successfully. The only reason we couldn’t refinance the other five is they were 290 square feet.

and no bank would touch them. So that helped me. That was such a blessing because it helped me learn so much about financing and amortizations and debt pay down and rates and terms. And ⁓ boy, it was just a magical time. It was also, you know, obviously stressful with all these little kids. My husband and I, had a very strained relationship. This partner that we struggled with was his best friend.

He knew him longer than he knew me. ⁓ So, you know, we managed, like I said, to hang on, but there were moments where I literally did not want to live. And, ⁓ you know, my kids, my kids, when you’re a mother, and I know, and also a father, but when you’re a mother, you just do whatever you, you do whatever you need to do to survive, because you’ve got little ones to take care of, and that’s what happened with me. So.

Eventually though, it was just clear that there was no end to this, no good end. And I made the very painful decision to go into bankruptcy protection. And then my husband did a few months later. And yeah, it was just a really dark time, a really, really dark time.

I will point out that in 2006, before things really fell apart, I left the church. I was raised Catholic. We became non-denominational Christian and we ⁓ left Jesus. I don’t think he ever really left us, but we kind of kicked him out of our lives. And that was a big mistake looking back because I think that there were some demonic things that ended up happening.

especially with our finances. so fast forward, we were able to take a lot of those lessons and start moving forward. And I got a job, we relocated. As I said, my husband’s from a very cold place called Alberta, where you go one province over, then you’re next to the ocean. That’s where Vancouver is. We live in a mountain, a high valley.

It’s a high desert valley in the mountains of the Canadian Rockies called the Okanagan. And it’s like Napa Valley. It’s absolutely gorgeous. We would come and visit here in our heyday when we were multimillionaires with our shiny Cadillac and our shiny boat and, you know, show off all of our money. ⁓ And we were blessed to move out here and start over. so

That’s interesting because you know, all the, all the real estate investment experience when we came out, I got a job, I got this job. Like suddenly I had a job again. I’m very unemployable person, but this guy saw something in me and he sent me out here to be a site, a site manager. And I said, can I move out in here? And he said, absolutely. And so we came out and this, our market was dead.

the house that we ended up finding was in foreclosure and it was owned by the bank. And since I had so much real estate and creative real estate investments experience because, you know, staying alive, it gets your creative juices flowing. ⁓ We figured out a way to buy the house with partners. So they bought it for us and we rent to own it back. So we were able to move out, not have to qualify for financing.

got we got settled. My five kids are settled. We’re in a beautiful place starting over. And I kept sharing my story about what happened and how much I had learned.

There was a lady who thought she needed to declare bankruptcy and you know, it turned out her husband had kind of kicked her to the curb, kept the house, managed to box her out of all the money, all the property. And she’s taking care of her elderly mom who is dying of cancer, just so happened to be dying of the same cancer my mom had just passed away from. God bless her soul, God rest her soul. And ⁓ you know, I just said to her, look,

You don’t need to declare bankruptcy. You just need to find a way to help your mom so that you don’t get too behind on your bills. Turns out her mom was very wealthy and her mom had no problem helping her keep up with just like her minimum monthly payments. Now this lady was in denial, you know, her mom was in hospice. Just like my mom, I took care of my mom in the last 10 days of her life. kind of, I had a feeling of what was coming, but

You know, this poor woman still had hope. So I just said, give it six months. Let your mom help you financially, temporarily. She gets better. You go back to work. And if she goes to heaven, then then it sounds like you might have an estate waiting for you because she was only child and she had this. Her mother was a very wealthy woman. So I reached out to her 30 days later just to check in and her mom had died.

And she said, thank goodness I didn’t declare bankruptcy. Thank goodness I talked to you because that would have been a mess, you know? And you’re already in so much turmoil. I really, I understand now better than ever why I had to go through that so I can help people that are in trouble and prevent them from going through the same mistakes I did. I bought,

Scott Bursey (20:20)
you

Julie Hoffman (20:43)
junkie properties in junkie areas. And I was pretty, I was a pretty new investor, even though I had 35 houses. It’s different than a 25 unit apartment building in a war zone in a bad area. ⁓ So, you know, people think they have to have a hundred doors in order to be successful in real estate. You’d have five by one a year every two years.

Hold on to them for 25 years, there’s your retirement. You know, it doesn’t have to be a hundred doors. So, yeah, I like to help people ⁓ with, you know, whether they’re starting out, starting over, or if they need help getting out of a jam. I’m very blessed to say that I’ve been able to help dozens of people avoid bankruptcy, avoid foreclosure. Yeah.

Scott Bursey (21:39)
That is awesome. And could you tell us just what, what a incredible, incredible journey. And could you tell us about your coaching as it stands today, Julie, your mentorship.

Julie Hoffman (21:41)
So that’s awesome. ⁓

Yeah, for

sure. do. I do performance based coaching. Okay, so I’m going to just give you a couple of examples. I had a girl that a woman she’s a woman and she thought she had to declare bankruptcy. She thought just this partner of hers stole a bunch of money from her and ran off and she just thought that was her only option. So she hired me. looked well, I looked at the numbers first and I said, let’s work together and fix this. Okay, so what happens is

If I see, know, pretty much anything can be fixed within reason. And so it’s performance-based. So she paid me an upfront fee, kind of like a lawyer charges a retainer. And once we fixed the deal, then the other half was due. And so what happened with her is she just needed to refinance the property, get enough money out, and there was equity to do that, to finish the renovations that were needed on the property.

And then she had this awesome cash flowing short term rental slash. She lived upstairs with her husband. And so it really salvaged her. There was no reason she needed to go into bankruptcy. She just didn’t know what she didn’t know. So that’s an example. And then just recently I worked with this amazing lady named Allie. And ⁓ I’ve worked with men too, by the way. But ⁓ Allie was

was thinking she had to sell her house in order to get into an investment property. And so just in talking to her, running the numbers, we discovered that she had a fair amount of equity in the house that she lived in. what she ended up being able to do was get a line of credit on her existing house, use that line of credit as a down payment on another house. She moved into it. It has a basement suite and she rented her old house. So she’s got

a tenant paying off this mortgage and a tenant paying off the house that she lives in’s mortgage as well. It pays for about 50 % of her mortgage every month. And so that was just, you know, just kind of blew her mind, didn’t even know that that was possible. And so, yeah, this is just the same deal. I think I can work with somebody, and I always know I can work with anybody, it’s performance-based. There are a lot of programs out there that

you you pay a hundred grand upfront and maybe something will happen and that just, ⁓ and maybe Scott, maybe that’s what you do. And I don’t mean to insult anybody. I just, ⁓ the way that I prefer to do it is, you know, if we do the best that we can together, I know I’ll give 150%, but some people get a little ways through the journey and decides not, you know, this isn’t for me.

That’s never happened with with saving a deal. ⁓ that’s always gone through When when somebody’s in trouble or near bankruptcy, that’s that’s ⁓ that’s always been a success but you know, some people get into real estate and Or they get into coaching and they discover This is not for me. I don’t think I’m ever gonna like this and And in a lot of cases I’ve had people say thank goodness. I didn’t put

$250,000 down on that house, then discover it, right? So that is where, is, that’s the description of my coaching. Does it make sense?

Scott Bursey (25:28)
absolutely. Perfect sense.

Julie Hoffman (25:30)
⁓

I should add, have a, I have a, a big online library and I use it as a resource. So most times I’m meeting with somebody once or twice a week, depending on the need and depending on whether or not a deal is cooking. When, when a deal is cooking, we’re talking once or twice, sometimes three times a daily till the deal is done. But I use my, what I love about my library is that I can send people there rather than repeating things over and over again and just say, go to the.

go to the Rent to Own course, session three, it goes through all of that. Review it once it’s done, schedule with me, we’ll pick up where we left off. ⁓ I’ve found, my students have found that that’s a, ⁓ it’s a good, it’s a great way to, you know, have people be more active in their education. And it’s a great resource. Not to brag, but I think it’s awesome.

Scott Bursey (26:15)
Yes.

F.

Absolutely.

And what do you feel is the biggest opportunity right now, as far as your coaching and mentorship goes?

Julie Hoffman (26:34)
people that don’t think that they can get into the market. That’s one, because we’re encountering the biggest wealth transfer with the baby boomers and even people ⁓ shortly behind them, because a lot of them have a tremendous amount of equity in their homes. And so they are actually able to help their kids get into home ownership. And you can come up with some really creative business.

Scott Bursey (26:40)
Yeah.

Julie Hoffman (27:04)
strategic ways to go to your parents and say, hey, this is a business opportunity. You helped me buy my house and this is what’s gonna, you this is what it’s gonna mean for you. I’ve helped so many people be able to buy houses for their children or children propose to their parents to help them get in because there are a lot of motivated sellers out there depending on the market because there’s a lot of turmoil and with turmoil always comes opportunity. And then the second

way for my coaching is if you think you need to give up call me first because chances are you don’t. The only time you really… there is a point of no return but if we can talk before then it might save you money, headache, time, stress, can’t put a price tag on stress. Yeah. So I hope that…

Scott Bursey (28:01)
Absolutely.

And it’s wonderful that you extend that imitation to people where they can feel that that’s an outlet, a viable outlet. That’s tremendous. Let me ask you this, any challenges you’re watching closely as far as market risk or competition or anything of that nature?

Julie Hoffman (28:03)
I hope that’s clear.

yeah.

things are really unaffordable.

I don’t know how I think it’s like that down there too, just with inflation and everything that happened as a result of the of the big shutdown that happened for a couple years. ⁓ And so you have to find a way you still have to find a way to afford it. And sometimes that can mean teaming up with people having multiple different people in a property, you know, split splitting up the pie, making it more doable, ⁓ or perhaps even

putting more down as the down payment so that a property can cash flow.

Of course, wars that are going on are influencing things, making people ⁓ stressed. And at the same time, I’m telling you, God can handle all of that. It’s way more productive to pray and put a lot of things in God’s hands, but still take action. Okay, let me be clear, don’t just sit there. And I don’t recommend you watch the news.

Because sometimes you just need to stay in your lane, keep moving forward, put some blinders on, and you’ll get to where you want to go. There’s so much distraction out there. And one thing I am very excited about is AI. I’m incorporating that into my business, especially the digital side of my business, my online library. I know that that’s a big part of the future, and I’m 52 years old. I’m a grandma.

I didn’t even get to tell you about that. was amazing. I got to be there for my grandson being born. Another perk of being an entrepreneur. I’m learning AI. Maybe somebody’s listening that needs to learn real estate. I have a huge I have a whole 10

module course for free for anybody who’s interested on real estate investment tools and business tools that anybody is welcome to have access to Scott, I’ll get you that link if your people are interested. And it can get anybody started and I’ve had multiple people get deals, join venture partners, opportunities in front of them that they might not have otherwise had ⁓ just with those tools. ⁓ It’s not too late. It’s just

I don’t believe it’s ever too late. I don’t know if that was that a was that a winding twisty turny ⁓ answer Scott?

Scott Bursey (30:41)
and

Great one a great one Absolutely, we want to capitalize on what’s out there and AI is certainly in a big big realm for For real estate investors. No question about that. What’s what’s the strategy that you have for the next 12 to 18 months?

Julie Hoffman (31:01)
Yeah.

I am pursuing, because our market here is very flat right now, I’m pursuing low risk, high return opportunities. I’ll give you an example right now, I’m working with a developer who built a beautiful building and he’s just got four units of product left and he’s giving me a 50 % VTB on the purchase price. And he’s even going in second.

And so all I have to do is get the financing for 50 % loan of value, which will make cash flow. And it’s an easy way to get going. there are lots of motivated people out there. And again, it’s creating a win-win because with the way that we’re doing this together, he’s going to end up with some big chunks of cash. 50 % of something is always better.

Scott Bursey (31:31)
Wow.

Julie Hoffman (32:00)
than 100 % of nothing. And ⁓ again, it just goes back to the win-win and you really can create those in fast markets, especially in slow markets, you can. Yeah.

Scott Bursey (32:14)
This has been a master class in coaching and mentorship. Julie, what’s a piece of advice that you would like to leave with our listeners today?

Julie Hoffman (32:25)
little on how I left the church in 2006. And I returned in 2024. And ever since my life has been better, my business has been better, my health has been better, all of my relationships have been better. And life is easier with God in it. And I love being a Christian. I love.

reading the Bible every day. started, I started what, what to help me, you know, back like an on-ramp, I’d call it an on-ramp back onto Christianity was listening to the Bible in a year podcast with Mike Schmitz, Father Mike Schmitz. And it helps me, it has helped me understand the word. I’ve referred it to lots of others and it’s done the same thing. So I encourage you, if you’re feeling lost,

⁓

to open a Bible, open, get that, you can listen to the podcast for free on YouTube. And it gives, it’s given me and those I know a tremendous amount of peace to know that God, that I’m not alone and that I’m loved. Everybody is so loved. And God wants us all to succeed by the way too. He made us for that.

Scott Bursey (33:48)
So uplifting. Great words. Julie, we love fostering connections here at Real Estate Pros. For the listeners who want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out?

Julie Hoffman (34:01)
The best way is to get the free tools. That will keep you on my email list. that lets, I do 95 % content. promote things here and there. I do what’s called creative real estate investment sprints. So there are these eight week ⁓ programs and they’re amazing. You don’t need to spend a dollar. You just get the free tools, get access to that, stay in touch with me.

I hope you learn something from the content that I put out. You might be anywhere in the world. You’ll get information about my upcoming Okanagan Real Estate Investment Group events that happen. You can also follow me on Instagram at streetsmartdiva.com. I’m on Facebook. I’ll get you Scott all the links. I’m on LinkedIn. I need to get on TikTok, so I’m getting on TikTok.

I don’t know where when you’re watching it, search, search street smart diva or something to that effect on TikTok and I’ll be there or Julie Hoffman. That might be what I need to name myself, but I’m pretty easy to find.

Scott Bursey (35:05)
Julie, you’re amazing. And thank you so much for being on the show today.

Julie Hoffman (35:11)
Scott, it’s my absolute pleasure. God bless you.

Scott Bursey (35:14)
And for our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value out of today’s episode, please subscribe. We have more conversations coming up with exceptional people just like Julie. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.