How to Buy Rental Properties With Private Money | BRRRR & Seller Financing

Will & Veronica Pritchett (00:00)
Yeah. And when I say a long time for rentals, I don’t mean a thirty year career before you can retire. For us, it was like eight years before we were financially, you know, financially free where we, where Will could comfortably exit his career early and take an early retirement. So I say a long time, right? ‘Cause when you’re in it, you’re like, my gosh, this is gonna take forever. We need so many rentals.

Well, looking back at it, it was eight, ten years, you know, to be able to achieve financial freedom. So, it’s a grind for a little while.

Dylan Silver (02:00)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Will and Veronica Pritchett, who are investors and lenders focused on the San Antonio Metro, talking to us today from Colorado, where they’ve moved recently.

Folks, thanks for joining us here today.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (02:16)
Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Dylan Silver (02:18)
These days, what types of deals are coming across your desk and and are you looking at these days? Man, anything from single family to small multis is our focus, stuff that we can buy and hold.

Dylan Silver (02:29)
Few deals in 2026. It’s it was a much better year than 24 and 25 for us. Yeah, just kind of working class B and C class rentals in the San Antonio metropolitan area. Let’s talk about acquisitions, right? Because this is what everyone

seems to focus on, especially when they’re building their their portfolio. They’re they’re looking for deals, they also want to make sure they’re buying the right deal. And depending on their strategy, that can vary, right? You might be more aggressive or less aggressive depending on your exit timeline. So what’s been your acquisition strategy over the years?

Will & Veronica Pritchett (02:59)
I think that’s a great question. And then I think it changes throughout our investing career, I guess you could say. So at the beginning we were hyper focused on cash flow. But we stayed in the single sma—in the single family space at the beginning because that was—we were using the BRRRR strategy. And so it was just the easiest pro—and guess I should—I explain the BRRRR strategy or we—I don’t

Dylan Silver (03:20)
We we can go into it, right? But it’s it’s buy, rent, rehab, other thing and repeat, right? Yeah.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (03:25)
So that was a way to get in and with very little capital because as a firefighter and educator, we didn’t have a lot of capital to begin with. So we started in the single family space, but then it was it was very slow. So we switched into the small multifamily space to increase the cash flow. And so it changed a little bit. And then, but now that we have enough cash flow to sustain our lifestyle, you know, we want to

go back to focusing on that that single family space. So while we’ll still buy small multi, but we’re talking like really small, like duplex and triplex, fourplex maybe, but we really enjoy that small family space. But at the beginning we would buy small multi that cash flowed really well. And now we’re looking at maybe more of a B plus property that’s going to be in a a stronger appreciation. So we’re 1031 into

properties that maybe would appreciate more. And maybe it could be cash flow neutral or it could, you know, maybe not increase cash flow. We’re okay with that. But we’re just starting to trade our our real estate portfolio into, I guess, a better quality property. So, but it changes, right? It just depends where we’re at, what the needs that are. So at the beginning it was super hyper focused with cash flow.

Now we’re we’re we’ve I think also we learned the importance of net worth. At the beginning, we didn’t even calculate net worth. We didn’t even really understand what it was. But now we understand how the power of that appreciation of that equity that grew over the years. And so now we have a strong appreciation for that net worth. So we’re looking at properties that are gonna be strong, that we’re gonna hold for a long time,

and that are have a good potential for appreciation.

Dylan Silver (05:02)
And

as far as where we find them, it’s oftentimes everything from MLS,

personal networking, and a lot of wholesalers. We buy from a lot of wholesalers. So though those are kind of the big three where we tend to find our deals, and then funded almost entirely with private money that wasn’t ours because we were living on one firefighter salary trying to raise kids, and you can only frugal so far. And, you know, we found that

private money was the key, the key to growth for us. Let’s talk about that financing component of it, right? So you have let’s say multiple rentals and you’re looking at scaling and you’re looking at well, how am I going to do this? I traditionally I’m capped out. What was your journey when you were looking into alternative ways to finance these properties? Yeah, we had heard of private lending, but we were didn’t really know how it worked.

But we were tapped out. Veronica’s always had this philosophy that if you find a good deal, you’ll find the money. She didn’t say where you’re gonna find it, she said you’ll find the money. And she was right. It has held true. We find good deals, we will find the money. Of that was letting people know we did. Always tell people who are looking to raise money, speak with with enthusiasm. We weren’t saying, we hate these rentals. We were talking about how great our business was. We were buying rentals with great tenants and you know, people got kind of attracted to that idea and they said, Hey, we’d like to invest with you. Well

We don’t really take partners per se, but we could do a debt partnership. You could be our debt partner and people love that. And soon we had more deals than money, so we had to develop new lenders. It was really game changer. And the real game changer was when we realized that we were offering them a unique opportunity to get a high yield with collateral. And they said, Go get that, go do that again. As soon as we pay one off, go do that again. They love the return. Instead of thinking we’re begging you for something or asking you for something, we could

turned the tables and started realize we’re offering them an opportunity. This is pretty unique. So let me, you know, give away some of the gold here, but maybe not the whole gold bar here. So you were going to folks and you know, you didn’t ha—bring them on as partners, but you mentioned debt partners, right? And so were were these real estate investors themselves, were they familiar with this idea? What did that look like?

Will & Veronica Pritchett (07:51)
That’s a great question. And actually, as he was saying that, I wanted to add that I often think that the—I don’t want to say the best, because we have really good private lenders that are in the real estate space, but the ones that have really stuck by us and you know we can just call up and they just wire the money over are not in the real estate space. They—there are our high W-2 earners. They were our first were from church.

We were just excited talking about what we were doing. And they were friends from church and they’re like, Hey, we want to get into real estate, but we’re attorneys. We have no time for that. Like, we’re in it. We have the time. That’s what we’re doing. So they had the money. So they were able to fund it. So it’s been attorneys, it’s been business owners, you know, that are not in real estate. IRAs have been powerful, people that have a lot of wealth tied up in

IRAs, so learning about self-directed IRAs has been also really real—it’s been really great to see the people that had so much money, I want to say stuck in IRAs, you know, that they can’t access it. And for them to be able to have a much higher return with the self-directed IRA and fund a real estate deal, we’re thrilled. So it was really cool to see that, you know, that we—we were opening up a new

way for them to invest and they were just so excited to have this new opportunity. It’s been exciting all the way around. Everyone—we always said we want it to be a win-win for everyone in the—in this—in this process in order for it to be fun.

Dylan Silver (09:24)
Now each deal is different, but but is there a general structure that you like to to follow for a single family deal or is it so different across the board it’s tough to say? As far as the lending structure? Yeah. Yeah. So we—we when we started, we were kind of nervous about borrowing the money. So we borrowed less than probably sixty percent loan-to-value based on the ARV and we brought a lot of capital. So we reduced their risk by giving them a low loan amount

as opposed to the value of the property. After that first one that they became encouraged. They were like, We’ll—we’ll fund the whole thing. We’ll fund the purchase and the rehab. Now I don’t recommend that new investors do that or new lenders do that. There are ways to safeguard yourself. But it became a trust issue. They knew that we—we would miss our own mortgage payment before we would miss the payment to them. Were that high. I mean our business has been built on private investors. We can’t afford to—to mess up that relationship. So

each deal’s typically around a seventy percent loan-to-value based on ARV. And we’ve borrowed as high as thirteen percent and as low as about six and a half percent from private lenders. We’ve actually gotten zero percent from some of our private lenders that were seller financing. So it’s—it’s kind of the w—the world is wide open when you get into creative structures and private lending and seller financing and you just really break the mold of the bank parameters, which I think is a good thing.

So yeah, we—we’d rather pay a friend or family member money interest every month than a anonymous corporation if we can, and we enrich their retirement accounts or their savings and and they help us get a deal done and we, you know, we fill different roles for each other. So yeah, and they’re in the real estate game at that point. They can say, you know, we’re involved and as lenders. And it’s an interesting thing because I think as someone myself, a Texas Realtor, but also with a wholesale background,

the—the saying goes, right, you know, you might be in a room full of investors and everyone’s the top dog until the lender walks in, right? So when the lender does walk in, that does change the dynamic and they can kind of start there, right? And it’s a great way to—to—to be in real estate, to be involved. I want to pivot here though and ask you about your sphere, right? Because you’ve really maximized your sphere and who can partake in these deals, but also how you’re i—interacting with those around you. We were talking in the green room.

You have a Skool community and I just learned now about how you’re able to, you know, make a deal happen at a—at church. When you’re approaching who is in your real estate sphere, so to speak, is this like a way of life or—or is this something that happened, you know, naturally with time and you realized more and more people were interested in what you were doing? Yeah, it’s funny, I—like I said earlier, I was a firefighter for twenty one years. Veronica was an educator, but most of the time in our marriage we were on one income, one salary.

So we—we found that a lot of people felt like they were falling behind. And you—you hear about the K-shaped economy, you know, some people are getting ahead and some people are falling behind. And so as I was leaving my career much earlier than most, people asked me, How are you doing that? And we—sometimes they’d be asking me that question because they knew I was leaving the job and we’d have like the highway blocked for a traffic accident, you know, and the patients are being carted off. I’m like, Well, we’ll talk about it, let’s clear the highway first.

And so I started a small group for firefighters only to help them learn these things that aren’t taught in school. I had a bachelor’s in business, didn’t know anything about personal finance, felt completely unprepared for building wealth. We got married in our early 30s, we didn’t know what net worth was, it was close to zero. So real estate’s a passion because it gave us freedom. And so we wanted to share it.

And then the firefighters were interested, but then more people in our community were interested. So we opened it up to everyone. We started calling—instead of firefighters investing in real estate, we called it Friends Investing in Real Estate. And we would—we would have like a hundred people show up to these monthly meetups to learn about this topic. And it was all free. It was great. We expanded that to our school community, Friends Investing in Real Estate. And it’s been awesome because we have lenders and we—now we have people in California and people in different states.

And they’re able to work together and build those relationships that our mentors use the term allies. They’re your allies in building wealth. They’re—some of them want to lend money and they’re enriched. Some of them want to do the projects and the sweat equity and they’re enriched. And if we work together, we can all raise our standard of living, raise our financial literacy, raise our financial freedom. Yeah, it’s changed our life. So yeah, we’re passionate about it. And it just seems to keep attracting people

of a like mind. And it’s been awesome. What were those first couple of meetings like with the—the firefighters, right? Were they coming to you with questions? Did they—did they already have experience, you know, investing in real estate? I imagine they own homes. What were those first meetings like? Yeah, most of them didn’t have r—real estate experience. A couple might have had a rental here or there. But one guy, he came up, it was during COVID, masks on and everything. He’s like, Hey, I want to learn about real estate. And well, I’ve heard that from a lot of people.

And—and most don’t follow through. And this is Brad. I said, Yeah, man, we’re looking at a property today at two. You want to see it? And he’s, Yeah. And I thought, He won’t show up. Well, he showed up early. And since then, he bought—he house hacked, he house hacked a fourplex, he house hacked a triplex, his girlfriend at the time house hacked. Now they’re married, they’re living on one income, they’re—I mean, they’ve built a portfolio of rentals. They are exactly what our goal was, was to set people off where

maybe mom can stay home with a baby and she couldn’t before. I mean, whatever your value is, I tell people, you pick your Lamborghini. Ours wasn’t cars, ours was freedom of time. It would be with our kids. Ours was taking adventures and traveling. It’s sitting here in our new house in Durango, Colorado. That’s financial freedom to us. But it might be a Lamborghini, but everyone has to pick what their value is. And for Brad and his wife, it was that they wanted her to be able to raise their b—be home with the baby. And he still liked his job and wanted to do that for several more years.

But they’re set for life. And it was a few years of h—hustle that got them there. And it’s so inspiring to me. Yeah, I mean, it’s the few years, right? I—and really is that. Like if you can lock in for, you know, five to seven years, what is that gonna do for the—the rest of your life? But you’re—you’re an investor who’s focused on San Antonio. I—we were talking in the green room. I’ve spent some time in San Antonio, lived in San Antonio, various places. When you were stacking up your portfolio,

were there certain, you know, even markets within San Antonio that you would look for deals in? Would it—would it vary based on, you know, which side of San Antonio you were looking at? Walk me through how you would underwrite these deals.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (16:51)
That’s a great question. So at the beginning, we just bought on the Northwest Side of town of San Antonio because that’s where we lived. That’s what we knew. That’s what we felt comfortable with. So when a deal would pop up in that area, the cool thing about that is when a deal would pop up, we could move quickly and good deals go quickly. So we were able to make an offer and move quickly. But then I think we stayed there a little too long. Once we ventured out

out of our safety little area. And then we—so we ventured out into other parts of San Antonio. We quickly fell in love with lots of areas of San Antonio. It has, you know, we—we learned there’s lots of neighborhoods, like pretty much all of San Antonio. And then we started going south. We went to Lytle and Devine and Moore as far as more Texas. Now I think we just, you know, we want to stay in San Antonio in the San Antonio area.

But it was fun. It was—it was scary as it always is to venture out of your safety zone. But I think more than so we learned, right, to study the demographics. We went to one neighborhood that we love on the South Side near Harlandale. It’s gr—make—they make great rentals there. And we bought it what we felt was a really good deal, and then we quickly realized that the demographics, the median

income did not support the rent we had based our numbers on because it was kind of a bigger home for the neighborhood. That was a new learning curve, right? So then we learned to research the median income. Like, yeah, this is a great house, but can this demographic support the rent that we’re penciling our numbers by? Because that’s—we can pencil our numbers and we—if we think we’re gonna get, you know, the comp said we would get this rent, but it was because of the square feet,

then we learn we gotta, you know, the income’s not there. So that was—so I think more than anything, it’s as far as like where in San Antonio, it’s learning the demographics, you know, the income level. And then we also are very particular, like we don’t like to go bigger than two thousand square feet because of the capital expenditures. We don’t like to go really old. We don’t do any historic homes. We—the oldest we’ll go is 1950.

So if it meets those—that criteria, then we look a little further. But as far as like where in San Antonio, I guess I’m lucky too, right? That a retired firefighter—firefighters know this city so well, which is great, which was another reason to start this fire group. They have so many skills for this business. You know, they know the city, they know how to help people, they’ve seen people at their worst time.

Dylan Silver (19:32)
Swing a hammer.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (19:33)
Yeah. They are very handy. So, so that I’m lucky in that sense that Will—because San Antonio can change drastically from one street to the next. Sure. So he—he was very pro-city. Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (19:46)
Managing these properties, you know, it’s—it’s one thing if you have one or two, but then you got more than a handful, you get more than a dozen, it becomes a—a different undertaking. Self-manage, did you hire out property managers? Did it change with time?

Will & Veronica Pritchett (20:01)
That was me.

Well,

Dylan Silver (20:03)
So,

Will & Veronica Pritchett (20:03)
I think that—so I had a career in education and—here, I’ll scoot this way. I see I’m sw—moving the camera around. And that I loved, but when the kids—after our daughter was born, now we’re two kids, and Will’s a firefighter at the time, so he was away t—for twenty four hours at a time and I was working a lot of hours. So anyway, we decided at that point we had like seven or eight

rentals and we thought we need to hire a property manager because we’re both working two full time jobs. We have two little kids. And so I, you know, we—but it was so real—I—we—I—we didn’t feel comfortable with it. It was hard finding a property management company. And then I said, wait a minute, what if I become a property manager? And so we s—decided that I would leave my career in education

and I would manage the properties, which did not—seven, eight rentals did not replace my income at the time I was an assistant principal. But it was a leap of faith. And then that allowed me the space to be able to focus on finding more deals. By then we had learned strategies, creative strategies, and we’re still learning. And so we started

really buying properties. So I was still self-managing. So about twenty properties is when it got really heavy. It was hard to continue to grow and manage the properties. So it was about creating systems. So I—that’s my strength. Will’s superpower is being a connector as you can see with all, you know, he’s connecting to room California in the Northeast and making all these deals happen.

For me, I love puzzles and I love creating systems. So we created these systems and so that worked. But then we grew. So then we hired a VA that helps us. She’s incredible. She handles everything. And then we also have an outstanding crew of contractors that we’ve worked with now for years. And we keep it simple, right? We have the same flooring, the same paint, the same, you know, everything. Like we don’t

go HGTV. We have nice rentals. We try to keep up with the trends. They’re good, safe, clean homes. But, you know, there’s nothing like designer, you know. It’s—so we keep it simple, so that keeps it easy for the rehabs and for the repairs. Anything—any way we can simplify the process by creating systems. So now we’re able to manage all of these properties from—

Dylan Silver (22:37)
And that was one of the reasons we started the Skool group was that she taught her property management systems as a course on our Skool group. We taught a BRRRR course. So they all live there for the members to watch at their convenience. I tell people like, join for a month and watch the classes and leave, but we want you there as part of our community, you know, and to do deals together. That’s the real value of community in this investing space. And so that was—that was really cool.

You know, you mentioned creative deals and seller finance, you mentioned as well. When we look at seller finance, the challenging thing oftentimes is people have the—almost this conception like, you know, why would they say yes to this? Whereas in actuality it’s great for sellers. There’s—there’s limited risk, right? What’s—what’s your approach to, you know, had that conversation and having a seller finance dialogue with someone who may not be familiar with what it is?

That’s a—that’s a great question. And I can talk about a specific deal we closed literally yesterday, so this is timely. Don’t use the word seller financed, don’t use complicated terminology. We like to offer kind of an array of solutions. So in this case it was someone we knew in our personal network who inherited a property and there was five heirs. And they asked for my advice. And when I do something like that, I go and my intention is to help them, period. Help them, not myself.

So I looked through about five options that I saw. Maybe three of those involved us and two didn’t. One had to do with them fixing it up and selling it on owner finance. They had a need for a—a family trust to support a disabled child. And I said, if you sold this, you could create a—an—an income for your trust that could be really advantageous for maybe thirty years. The other was they could fix it up as a family and flip it and make a pretty good profit.

But through the conversation, I also will offer a cash price usually, which is typically the lowest price. And then if they’re willing to accept payments is kind of how I talk about it. If I could pay you over time, maybe I could pay you a little bit more, maybe closer to maybe your asking price. And so that all opens the conversation. And then we can get deeper into whether there’s a tax advantage for them. If it’s their primary residence, there’s probably not a huge tax advantage to selling on terms

or selling owner finance. But if it’s a second home, an inherited home, a rental home, there probably is a tax benefit to deferring their capital gains over time. So this case was a really unique case because they sold the house to us and they actually financed the purchase from themselves and the other four heirs, and they financed us the renovation budget because through that conversation, they realized, I think I’d like to become a private lender. This is a great chance to start. And

so they’re loaning on the purchase of the house we’re buying from them. They’re loaning the renovation budget and they’re getting to dip their toe into—into this. And then on top of it, they’re using a technique through credit cards where they’re basically funding it through a third source so they get all these airline points. And so that’s on their end, but it’s gonna benefit them in that way. They’re gonna get a high yield. They have great collateral that they’re familiar with. Yeah. And trust in us. And so it’s just a really cool win-win-win

deal that I’m very excited about. These creative deals always spark a lot of interest because, you know, y—you d—you talk about one deal like this and then peop—people are like, I—now I want to go, you know, try my hand at that. And for what I’ve seen, you know, the reality, we were talking about this in the green room as well is, you know, yeah, these are great strategies. And then also too, and also you want to talk about low and slow. Like not every deal is going to, you know, be tied up in a bow so perfectly, but when it happens, it—it—it’s awesome.

How have you, let’s say, you know, avoided that shiny object syndrome of always chasing the next thing, whether it’s short term rentals or fix and flip or, you know, buying mobile home parks, what have you?

Will & Veronica Pritchett (26:30)
That’s such a good question. Because early on we were going to every single meetup event possible in all of San Antonio. We were going to multiple meetups a month and they are presenting all these outstanding strategies and we could really increase our cash flow. I think what really helped us is that we both really loved our careers. You know, I had left my career in education while he was still a firefighter. So we thought

all of these other strategies to me, to us, it sounded like a full-blown business, right? And any business is going to require a lot of time to grow it. All of the strategies. And we were in this for the long haul. We wanted—we were—we wanted at first it was to replace to—to substitute not replace, to substitute retirement. And then we just fell in love with the strategy we saw. We saw it as growing a business.

But we thought—I think everyone, unless you’re a trust fund baby, everyone needs an active income, right? That’s how we—we can put food on the table. And rentals are not that for a very long time. So I think that because if we—so our active income was our jobs and we liked our jobs. Now had we wanted to replace our jobs,

then yeah, I think Airbnb, all of the other strategies, would have been an option, right? In that same real estate space. But I think we all need active—active income until we can truly start living off of that passive income.

Dylan Silver (28:03)
Yeah, and—and we did. We fell into it. We got into syndication deals. We were limited partners. We were almost general partners. And some of those succeeded and some of them didn’t succeed. And so we kind of got back to our lane of what we’re really good at and have been good at for a while and has worked for us. And so why change it if it’s working? We’re just getting into that period where we’re really reaping the rewards of those years of work. But I’ve been out of my career for four years now. And the freedom, I mean

it might sound like hyperbole, but like my cholesterol’s better. My body weight is better. I sleep better at night. She thinks I’m way more handsome. No, I’m just kidding. No, but my life is better because I got this freedom to live the life on my terms. I got time with my kids, which is what was so important. We have a kid in college now. I got to be there for his entire high school career. I never missed a game. I was there for everything he did.

And that freedom is why we do these groups. We don’t need more rentals. We don’t need more loans. We need more people to see that the American Dream is still alive. And that’s what we’re here for. That’s what we’re about. That’s why we came on this call, is that it—it still exists and real estate’s the way that we know to make it happen. And it’s—it is low and slow, as you mentioned earlier. But it’s the only way I know that blue-collar people that wear steel-toe boots can become millionaires.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (29:24)
Yeah. And when I say a long time for rentals, I don’t mean a thirty year career before you can retire. For us, it was like eight years before we were financially, you know, financially free where we, where Will could comfortably exit his career early and take an early retirement. So I say a long time, right? ‘Cause when you’re in it, you’re like, my gosh, this is gonna take forever. We need so many rentals.

Well, looking back at it, it was like eight, ten years, you know, to be able to achieve financial freedom. So, it’s a grind for a little while,

you know, but just keeping our—I think just keeping true to our values, why we were doing this to begin with, helped us stay focused and—and not go for that shiny object, because they are very tempting.

Dylan Silver (30:07)
Very

tempting. You—you’ve built a brand, right? And a sphere of people around you who view you as, you know, really an—an authority in—in this space. There’s a lot of folks on all sides of the real estate game, whether they’re lenders, investors, brokers, service providers, right? Trades workers who are trying to build that brand and that authority and that—that trust. Any feedback for those folks? Yeah, I think—I mean, I’ll

I think being genuine, being constantly visible, you know, I don’t have a good marketing strategy other than that. I post quite a bit on social media and some of it’s silly. Some of it’s our travels. That’s something I’m proud of. But most of it is about real estate. Maybe it’s something I learned, something I must—made a mistake on. But I’m there. And people I think think of Will and Veronica when they think of a house they inherited because they probably see it as

once a week or so when they’re scrolling their feed and say, remember they, you know, in the back of their head they know we’d buy ugly houses. We’d buy houses that need work. We do creative structures. And so I think being present, I think being authentic and real, I think putting your investors first always is critical. Letting them know, you know, that they are always going to be taken care of. We always would say we’ll be living in a tent eating rice and beans before we miss a payment to our private lenders, and

and so Veronica was like, Well, we kinda like backpacking. I’m a Mexican. We make rice and beans every night anyway. So maybe that’s not the best analogy because those are things we like. But the point was that we’re not gonna miss a payment to a private lender and—and be real, you know. I—we’re not here to show you fancy cars. We don’t own fancy cars, so we can’t do that, right? But the life we live is good and—and authentic and honestly earned, and so I think being present and being real is

to me, I’m just much more attracted to people who are real than the people that are flashing their Lambos personally. That’s just my style.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (32:02)
And I think remaining consistent, just always showing up, because people get busy and you come up with the property and you—we—if we’re—if we’re not consistent, we’re not top of mind. So I think it’s always remain—whatever the marketing strategy is, it’s remaining consistent.

Dylan Silver (32:20)
Yeah, the—the difficult portion of it, right, for many folks is whether it’s an ad funnel that they have or a new marketing strategy or posting a certain—they’re like, Well, I’ve been doing it for thirty days and I don’t see the results. You—you have to do it for quite some time, right? And you have to be going to the same type of groups or even attending the same church, right? This isn’t something that happens overnight. And you really don’t know where the next deal is always gonna come from. And then sometimes you have a great month in one area and say, Hey, we should put more time and energy here.

Mm-hmm.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (32:51)
Absolutely. That’s a very good point.

Dylan Silver (32:53)
Sometimes being the expert in real estate in a different circle can be beneficial. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t tell anyone to go to church to raise money. That’s not the point. But the point is that we do know that a woman who joined a—a yacht club, she didn’t own a yacht, but she liked yachts. She liked, you know, being around boats and the people there, and she did know they had money. And so in that circle, she became the investor. We have another friend who’s a Realtor. He’s in a bunch of car clubs. That’s him and his wife’s passion.

And in that circle, they’re the real estate experts. So I would say don’t—don’t just focus on the real estate industry. Look at other things you’re interested in, but make sure that people know what you’re doing. If no one knows what you need, no one can help you. And so if you tell them what you’re looking for, and it doesn’t have to all be send me your leads, it—give them education, give them stories. Every once in a while mention what you’re looking for in your posts or whatever methods you’re taking

or that you’re utilizing. But ours has been very organic, and just kind of being consistent, you know? You also mentioned a year. I—I believe Veronica, you had mentioned nineteen fifty. You know, you don’t look at homes older than nineteen fifty. Is there rhyme or reason to that specifically? Was there maybe a deal that was challenging in nineteen forties, or is this a year that you notice, you know, the build quality overall improves?

Will & Veronica Pritchett (34:13)
Yeah, I think for us it was just drawing that hard line because it’s to be able to move quickly on deals. So many deals come across through email or text or whatever. It was a way to just be able to filter quickly. We have—we bought houses that were built in the fifties that are so solid, solid foundations, built really solid. So we’ve had really good—what luck with them. We knew we wanted to stay out of the historic district, just because of the extra work that

is involved. We want to hold—whenever we buy a property, we plan to hold it for ten years. We don’t always hold it for ten years, depending on, you know, the situation. But when we buy it, that’s the goal. So—so we just didn’t want anything that was just, you know. So it was just—it was just picking a number. We’ve bought houses. We bought one in

Dylan Silver (35:01)
It was a nineteen nineteen build, I think. It was probably our best flip. And I almost passed it because it was outside of that filter, but it was a referral. It was someone that we trusted. And so we went and looked and it was—it was uniquely maintained. Yeah. You know, that’s the problem is most of what we buy is not well maintained. And so when you get into an all-wood pier and beam house, the problems can get pretty deep. On a slab nineteen fifties ranch, we’ve done so many of those that we know what it’ll cost to rewire it.

We know in certain areas the slab’s probably good. We know we’re gonna put a sewer line, etc. So it’s kind of rinse and repeat. You go to a hundred year old house, that’s not our specialty. We happened to accidentally—we bought this one for a rental. We ended up selling and it—our—our best accidental flip to date. We’re not really flippers, but that—that day we were like, Man, maybe we should be flippers. That was a good payday. It was mainly accidental, but you know, you—you gotta get in there and take some swings to have those

surprise wins every once in a while. Where was that deal, by the way? Nineteen early nineteen hundreds. Where was that deal in San Antonio? Yeah, since you know San Antonio, think of kind of Five Points, West Ashby Street and Fredericksburg. Yeah. It’s—it’s sort of an area that’s trans—in transition. It’s not quite as cool as Monte Vista, but I—Beacon Hill would be the neighborhood. Beautiful

Will & Veronica Pritchett (36:21)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (36:22)
home with a—a casita. The only reason it didn’t work as a rental was the

parking. There was a school zone and it made difficult parking for two sets of residents and there wasn’t enough room to enlarge the driveway. So we said let’s see what it’ll bring. And it was a six-figure flip. It was just pure dumb luck. I mean, it was—we bought right and it just worked out, you know. And it was a beautiful home. It really was. But it was a light rehab and flipped it. God bless. Those are the kind of deals that people always talk about, right? We—we are coming up on time here, folks.

Any new projects or—or activities that you’re working on? Also, anything you’d like to mention directly to our audience? You know, we like to private lend, and but I’m not gonna promote that. We—we still buy rentals. We’ll probably buy rentals forever. Good, solid rentals in San Antonio and maybe in Colorado soon. I just want to promote the idea that the American Dream is still alive. It really is. Veronica’s family moved here when she was eight from another country. They moved here with very little and they started over.

They had a hunger, a drive, and they did it. They accomplished it. And it’s—it’s something to be—I mean, I—I applaud her parents, her family, and she has that work ethic. I wouldn’t be anywhere without my wife. But it still exists. It still exists for blue-collar people, for working-class people. That’s my message. It still exists. And it may not—you can join our group, our group if you’re interested. This is not a sales pitch, it’s like twenty bucks. It’s Friends Investing in Real Estate on the Skool platform.

But my main thing is I want people to believe that it exists. Because if you don’t believe it, you know, it’s not gonna exist for you. You have to believe it. You have to study, learn your niche. And that could be a different niche than ours, but you have to take action and move forward. We would see the people that come to the REIA for year after year and never do anything. They got addicted to the learning. I want to encourage people to do what my wife did when I was reading all the books and she said, You’ve read enough books. We gotta take action. And that’s the critical key point, right?

And so get around some group of people that encourages you, that builds you up, that wants to see you succeed, and stay close to people that are—and stay far away from people that discourage you. There’s enough self-doubt in our brains. We don’t need any more of that. We need people that give us encouragement and build us up. So find your people, your tribe, stay close to them and run like hell because it’s—it’s worth it. Will and Veronica, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for your time.

Will & Veronica Pritchett (38:46)
Thank you.