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Show Summary
In this conversation, Wade Taatjes shares his extensive experience in the real estate industry, discussing his journey from wholesaling to becoming an investor and agent. He emphasizes the importance of adaptability in real estate strategies, the challenges of burnout, and the lessons learned from the 2008 market crash. Wade provides insights into the wholesaling process and the significance of managing rental properties effectively.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Wade Taatjes (00:00)
And so you get into rentals or multifamily rentals. And as has been established, I’ve done this for a long time. I’m selling my last multifamily rentals right now. I’ve reached the retirement age. ⁓ But when I was working with investors and they would get into that. My best advice.for anybody that has real estate experience or doesn’t have real estate experience and they want to buy a multifamily or even a single family or a vacation rental. had multiple vacation rentals at one point. ⁓
If, and I’ve said this to several people, if you fix a property as a multifamily or as a single family and you get the wrong renter, you will reach retirement age in five months or three months.
Dylan Silver (02:30)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Wade Taatjes has been active as an investor agent and wholesaler since the mid 90s. He’s been involved in over 1,000 real estate transactions. He’s done hundreds of flips and helps others to avoid the mistakes and challenges he’s had to overcome in that time. You can find him at safeharborhomesus.com. Wade, thanks for taking the time today.Wade Taatjes (02:55)
Thankyou.
Dylan Silver (02:58)
Now, when we talk specifically about staying power in real estate, whether it’s 10 years, 15 years, or you’ve been active since the 90s, the thing that I’ve seen most from this show and then from talking with people outside is you have to be able to pivot, right? You can’t just be so locked into one strategy that that’s it. So where was your entry point into the real estate space? Walk me through how you got started in real estate.Wade Taatjes (03:27)
Yeah, so after college, went to college for four years,When I was in college, I kind of didn’t know what I wanted to do. My older brother and younger brother had the chemistry gene or something and they were there. Probably little or no deviation. But me, just, I didn’t know what I was going to do. In fact, so much so that after four years of college, I said to myself, I’m not ready to be an adult yet. So I went in for a fifth year, which sort of afforded me the ability to have a
a major or double minor in both sociology and business. So but then I my uncle, who was a builder, said one day, will you work for us? And I thought that was a good opportunity to really know anything about housing or any anything at all. And a few months after that, me and a couple of roommates, I had one roommate that was sort of
in construction, not really in construction. And then ⁓ my other friend who ended up being a writer. ⁓ But I looked for a house. We bought a house, we bought a duplex and ⁓ sort of my passion for real estate started there. And that was in the early 90s. So that was quite a while ago.
Dylan Silver (04:50)
Where was your uncle developing homes? Which state?Wade Taatjes (04:55)
Yeah, so Grand Rapids, Michigan.Dylan Silver (04:58)
At that point in time, in the development space, was there a ton of new construction happening? I think right now we’re seeing a lot of new construction happening. you your uncle being a developer, was there a lot of expansion, you know, if we just look at Michigan for instance, was there a lot of ⁓ subdivisions and single-family homes being put up in Michigan?Wade Taatjes (06:07)
Yeah, so Grand Rapids is a still a pretty interesting market. But this again goes back quite a bit of time and he had just some pockets of land which they developed into subdivisions. ⁓ But as as I started, they hired me for marketing and I never really got it. OK, I didn’t. So I didn’t last real, real long on that job. But my.My interest in real estate got started sort of unexpectedly like that. And when we bought the first property, we bought a four unit. Couple years after that. then, you know, ⁓ from there, just started to just kind of figure out my own way. And I think it’s really important to mention I became licensed. ⁓ I’m no longer licensed.
real estate agent as of about a year ago. But I think really important when I first got in and was licensed in 1998.
You know this too, being a real estate agent, there are a lot of agents that are all things to all people. They will get the cold call and say, yeah, I can list your $100 doghouse that you have for sale. And then they get a call five minutes later and yeah, I can list your $100 million property in Malibu. And I just thought that that was.
Dylan Silver (07:28)
YeahWade Taatjes (07:40)
No, you’re not. can’t be the best at doing both. with the little bit of real estate investment property history that I had, I thought to myself, I’m going to be better than anyone else at being the first call to the new listings, ⁓ being the first showing, being the first offer, being the first, being the fastest, and just saying, this is what I’m good at. I’m not going to take your $100 million listing in Malibu because I can’t service you best doing that.And I grew naturally and normally because I had a passion, very significant passion for being better than anyone else. And I felt like I was.
Dylan Silver (08:22)
Now, when we talk specifically about, you know, working with investors, one of the things that I know from from going through real estate school, being a newer agent is it almost seems like there’s two different worlds. If you’re a realtor, it’s hey, you’re going to work with, you know, single family homeowners and you might start out working with first time buyers, you know, you’re going to work with investors. That’s another world. And then I would also say, you know, people who are doing commercial, that seems like an entirely other, you know, world toWade Taatjes (08:39)
ThankDylan Silver (08:51)
to be playing it. Did you feel any of that as well or did you feel like, you know, I can help people in both spaces?Wade Taatjes (08:58)
I felt good or bad. I felt like I didn’t want to be all things to all people. so I like I said, I wanted to be I felt better than anyone else. wanted to know more about my space than anyone anyone else did. And there were investors that that came to me due to that fact. But to answer your question, ⁓You’re right. And now, in the last handful of years, there have been more sort of compartments of real estate where you’re working as a buyer’s agent or you’re working as part of a team and you do you fulfill a specific role. So I think I think you’re right about that. ⁓ But my my as as I mentioned earlier, my experience as a real estate agent is now is now over.
gone a different direction. ⁓ So I guess I think I answered your question.
Dylan Silver (10:31)
Now I do want to pivot a bit here Wade and ask you about the wholesale space because I feel like I cut my teeth as a wholesaler before being a realtor. That was the world that I was really getting trained in and had all my experience in was working with distressed sellers, people facing foreclosure or divorce or death in the family or financial distress or the property is distressed. I can keep going, elderly people and so forth.But this was also right at the time where I feel like wholesale was at the absolute peak. Like if you were just scrolling through, you know, your social media feed or Facebook and you were ⁓ someone not involved in real estate, you might see buy cash for keys or, you know, you know, get started in real estate with, you know, no little or no money down. And so I was in, I feel like at the peak mayhem of what it is to be a wholesaler.
When did you get into this space? then also too, was there this knowledge ⁓ of what a wholesaler was at the
Wade Taatjes (11:34)
Well, again, so the space between I bought my first house in 1998 when I was licensed, I sort of ⁓ was in that space where I was looking for opportunities and ⁓ finding opportunities similar to what you had mentioned. And then it made sense that after a certain point, maybe seems like maybe you’re the same where it becamebeneficial for me to get my real estate license. But yeah, had, but I would say my own opinion, there are probably a thousand or ten thousand opinions. My own opinion when I first got going in the 90s that there wasn’t really this wholesaler thing. I mean, you know, or the word flip. I don’t know when when that actually became popularized, but I think it was after I started for sure. So I think it gains traction. And again,
I’m giving my opinion and my experience from the 90s. It started to gain traction. Then you get into the into the 2000s and all that stuff that I was doing then really was, you know, in in the spotlight. So I kind of I feel like I kind of grew with that. And you probably started later than I did. So where you’re saying where you were at that time was probably right when
It was glamorized, I guess, which is unfortunately a word for that.
Dylan Silver (13:00)
That’s right.Yeah, I got in in 2023. And so ⁓ I would even say that this was maybe even beyond the peak of wholesale to where there were other strategies that made more sense for folks than wholesale specifically. I do want to ask you about building a business as an agent, being a fellow agent myself, and then for other folks who are listening. One of the things that I’ve seen working with ⁓
Wade Taatjes (13:11)
Agreed.So, to ahead get started.
Dylan Silver (13:32)
other realtors and then also working with investors as well is that sometimes realtors will scale to a certain point and they may have an incredible business but they may also deal with some fair level of burnout. Either it’s because hey I’m just tired of dealing with clients or it’s that hey I’d like to do something which is a little bit more hands off and maybe difficult the transactional nature. When you were ramping up your business as ⁓and agents working with investors, did you ever
deal with any of that or were you just so, know, jazzed up and passionate about the business that that was never thought, you know, being burnt out?
Wade Taatjes (14:11)
I think part of it was just, and I think in several areas of life, luck or good fortune or right place, right time is part of the formula for success. And I think when I started, I had just enough experience doing it on my own. So when I became a real estate agent, started to get to knowGrand Rapids is much bigger than it was in the late 90s. ⁓ But when I first got started, I kind of got known in the small circle at that point ⁓ for being good at that. So I had a few people come and reach out to me. I was working with one investor specifically that had just sold ⁓ a auto glass business, windshield business. He sold his part of it and came into some money and he was a
hustler and got into real estate. So he and I, he was my main investor for a few years and he would buy a lot of the houses and I’d give him my, at that point,
little advice on how to do it. And ⁓ we became good friends and then that developed into other people. And ⁓ at a certain point I saw…
finding these properties, I’d done it a little bit on my own, but never really had a lot of money. So I was finding these properties for investors and I saw the checks that they were walking with at closing and I was like, maybe I should take more control and just start to do this on my own. that’s, you have your own challenges that just compound doing the whole thing on your own. I could talk to you till,
Friday about.
Dylan Silver (16:38)
Yeah.I think a lot of times people have to break it into a couple different buckets, right? And there’s no right answer, but you might look at, what’s working right now? How long is this gonna work for? Or is there anything that’s potentially could be on the horizon, which could change how things are gonna look, right? You don’t always know, but sometimes you have an idea. ⁓ And then also as well, what’s my appetite for continuing to do this? Sometimes people say, you know what, I’d like to…
you know, back out of this or delegate some of this. I do want to pivot here though and ask you about, you know, going into some of these other segments, right? So from, you know, being a wholesaler to then being an investor, friendly agent to then being an investor yourself, you know, and for folks who are thinking about making those types of of pivots and their own journey, do you have any feedback for them? When’s the right time to do it? And then also, you know, what
Wade Taatjes (17:30)
⁓Dylan Silver (17:35)
maybe should they be looking at right now if they’re looking at getting started in real estate.Wade Taatjes (17:44)
I would start with if you get into the sort of a natural thing when you start maybe as a wholesaler, you think to yourself, wow, ⁓ I want some long-term income.And so you get into rentals or multifamily rentals. And as has been established, I’ve done this for a long time. I’m selling my last multifamily rentals right now. I’ve reached the retirement age. ⁓ But when I was working with investors and they would get into that. My best advice.
for anybody that has real estate experience or doesn’t have real estate experience and they want to buy a multifamily or even a single family or a vacation rental. had multiple vacation rentals at one point. ⁓
If, and I’ve said this to several people, if you fix a property as a multifamily or as a single family and you get the wrong renter, you will reach retirement age in five months or three months. And I will, it’s a joke, but it’s not a joke. A tenant can cause $25,000 worth of damage in 10
Dylan Silver (19:04)
Yeah.Wade Taatjes (19:08)
and they can.I’ve been around long enough and helped enough people to just realize, and I’m the one person that didn’t take this advice. know, where we live now is a smaller community, and ⁓ when I had rentals here, you’d run into the person that, you know, at the grocery store would be like, ⁓ my friend just lost their place. They’re looking for a place to live.
and can you help them out? And almost invariably I did that.
It’s nice to be nice, but I think that’s worked out zero out of 60 times. it’s just, if you don’t have the backbone, the backbone to say I’m running this as a business, and I’ve met several people that run it as a business and they do well.
Dylan Silver (19:59)
Yeah.Yeah, I mean, you can run it into the ground with empathy. I think that that’s a real thing that happens in real estate, not just in one segment of real estate, but in a variety. And you could start to, one tenant could be late regularly, and then now their new normal is, hang on, 15 days late. And then what happens from there? And so it does become tricky for folks because you got to decide, hey, am I going to?
professionally manage these properties, you where’s the boundary for me? And that can be challenging for folks, for sure. We are coming up on time here though, Wade. Any new projects that you’re working on and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to reach out to you or your team?
Wade Taatjes (20:53)
You you said at the beginning that this would fly by and it certainly did. There’s one thing that as we started, and I’ll be brief, but I think it’s really important. I went through that crash in 2006, 2007 and 2008. And it may never happen again to that level. I want to give some advice on that is to just even in a market now where it’sreasonably brisk and I don’t know that’s true nationwide, but just be careful because and that hit us that hit us like it seemed like overnight everything was different. So ⁓ I just wanted to say that I went through that night several of my friends and investors went through it and we’re still it’s still the back of your mind. So you learn from experience and from that.
that I just think it’s valuable to bring that up because you starting in 2023, you had no perspective on that and it was bad.
Dylan Silver (21:58)
can imagine. I can imagine. ⁓ Wade, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for taking the time.
