How to Find Better Real Estate Deals Through Relationships, Networking, and Value-Add Investing

Jordan Bennett (00:00)
Regardless though, doing your first deal is scary, it takes capital. So one thing is spend less than you earn and avoid income creep. So don’t keep spending as much as you’re making so that you have the ability to build some capital for that first investment. ⁓ Network and get to know people because it’s all about the people and learn as much as you can.

Michelle Kesil (01:57)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Jordan Bennett, who is a real estate broker and investor in the Orange County, California area. So excited to have you here today, Jordan.

Jordan Bennett (02:14)
Thanks Michelle, excited to be here.

Michelle Kesil (02:17)
Awesome, let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is?

Jordan Bennett (02:25)
Yeah, our main focus, I would say our main focus is twofold, which I know that distracts from the word main focus, but it’s real estate brokers that’s helping people buy, sell, and invest in real estate here in Orange County, California, really with the goal of building long-term wealth. I believe real estate is the clearest path to building generational wealth. And the second prong of my business is investments. So we do flipping, short-term rentals, and long-term rentals.

Michelle Kesil (02:56)
Awesome. And how did you get started as an investor?

Jordan Bennett (03:01)
That’s a really great question. So it actually started.

I love the expression that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And my business started as a real estate agent. And a couple years into my real estate business, I got in at the bottom of the market, a lot of short sales and foreclosures back in 2009, 10, 11, it kind of when the bottom had fallen out. And I actually met a young guy who was introduced to me through a client that I had sold a home to. And she said, hey, this colleague of mine, they’re building a flipping fund. And believe it or not, this guy, two guys in their,

late

20s amassed a 10 million dollar portfolio in like two years with the goal of buying and flipping properties and so I started helping these guys identify opportunities and I think watching them flip maybe four different opportunities I had brought them watching the contractors visiting the site doing a lot of analysis and then doing the math I think it kind of clicked and I realized hey I think I can do this and so it was shortly thereafter that I found my first deal went in with a good friend of mine

and have done maybe 50 to 60 projects since that time. That was maybe 2012 was my first deal.

Michelle Kesil (04:12)
Awesome. And what do you feel have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to grow and run successfully?

Jordan Bennett (04:21)
Great question. Some things that have helped my business to run successfully. mean one is the client experience, right? And that translates into the investment side too. You know, the client experience. mean making sure that you’re providing a good product, right? Having clear expectations.

Constantly you need to readjust sometimes so when things don’t go as planned Being able I’m not someone who’s super flexible but learning how to be more flexible and adjust as necessary Has been huge ⁓

always leveraging. So always looking for ways to do more with less is huge. So in other words, you know, I think it’s easy to get hung up on. I mean, I have a lot of investors I work with. They insist on doing their own property management, right? Like they spend their time going and doing $15 an hour tasks when their time might be worth 100, 200, $300 an hour. That’s something I learned very early that if you want to grow, you have to learn how to leverage.

you

Michelle Kesil (06:18)
Yeah, absolutely. And what would you say have been some of the biggest obstacles or challenges that you’ve had to overcome in this career?

Jordan Bennett (06:32)
Hmm

coming up against things that are not anticipated. So learning how to adapt, learning how to course correct, that could be, you come across, you’re working on a project on a rehab and it turns out that there’s something a lot bigger that you didn’t anticipate and needing to find ways to allocate costs and still make the deal work.

looking for multiple exit strategies, you know, not always having. So sometimes that means that maybe the goal is to, you know, let’s say on a flip project to go in, fix it up and sell it. I always would have in the back of my mind, what’s my worst case scenario if I have to go the plan B route, which might be keeping the property and renting it. ⁓ Maybe it’s dividing it into two units and turning into, like just thinking of creative strategies. And I think the other challenge you run up against is rejection and disappointment.

And one thing I learned early is, and it’s not always easy, but looking at every no as just one step closer to your next yes.

Michelle Kesil (07:46)
Yeah, absolutely. And what type of investment strategies do you work with?

Jordan Bennett (07:57)
⁓ My favorite strategy is a good deal. I mean, I’m a Costco shopper, like everybody. I like a good deal. So for me, the flipping is probably my favorite area. One way that I’ve grown in that is I started flipping really small properties, condos, moved into entry-level single-family homes, and I guess got onto bigger and bigger projects. What I learned is that

The bigger the project doesn’t necessarily require all that much more scope. A lot of times, like, a kitchen is a kitchen, bathrooms are bathrooms, there’s just maybe more of them, or like, instead of a small kitchen, it’s a big kitchen. You might be dealing with more landscape and exterior remodeling. But ultimately, I’ve moved more into the luxury market, so I was really excited this last 18 months. I did two higher-end, multi-million dollar flips that were really exciting.

because it was just again taking all that knowledge I had learned and then executing it but at a higher level.

Michelle Kesil (09:07)
Yeah and what does that look like when you’re doing a more luxury flip? Is like the house is already luxury and then you just make them more nice?

Jordan Bennett (09:16)
Yeah, good question. So luxury is that when I say luxury home, it’s like more more so like the price point, the size and the area than it is the finishes, right? So you could have like a pretty I mean, like the two projects I did were pretty rough on the inside, like super early 90s. I mean, one of them was like a lot of deferred maintenance. The other big project I did was it was actually in decent shape. It was just very early 90s, you know, dark woods and gold fixtures and oak cabinets and stuff that just

Michelle Kesil (09:21)
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bennett (09:46)
people aren’t, it’s not gonna sell for top dollar in this market. So yeah, it’s just taking, ⁓ you know, taking something and bringing it up to current. The biggest difference I would say between like a luxury high-end flip and a more cookie cutter like entry-level home is on the cookie cutter you can kind of just go with like the standard, I mean you could literally just rinse repeat white shaker cabinets, the same color cores, the same color floors, the same baseboards, the same bathtub. It’s really

like just it’s just yeah copy paste with the higher end stuff I would actually hire a designer and really focus on like some unique material choices to really bring it to that next level.

Michelle Kesil (11:03)
Awesome. And are all of your investments centered around these types of flips?

Jordan Bennett (11:12)
You know, even with our short-term and long-term rentals, I still have that value-add approach. So I’ve never been one to just buy something that is kind of a trophy or like a kind of a cookie cutter property. So even if like if I’m gonna buy, you know, a small multifamily, which is kind of the space that I’ve been playing in more lately, it’s gonna be something where either the rents are way below market, the building’s been mismanaged, or the building, you

major systems are failing, it’s in need of like a full rehab. But the only difference is instead of selling it at the end of all that, I’m bringing rents to market, maxing out the value of that building, and then just adding it to the portfolio.

Michelle Kesil (12:00)
Awesome, and so what are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

Jordan Bennett (12:07)
That’s a good question. ⁓ think that… one of the…

biggest challenge in, one of my challenges in being involved in different areas of real estate, we do obviously brokerages, my bread and butter. ⁓ We also do the flipping, do the short term and long term rentals. Now we start doing property management once we start growing our own portfolio and then we would have clients, especially investor clients ask us, hey, can you help us with the management? So we started doing that as well. The biggest challenge is finding what’s the, continually reevaluating

evaluating

what’s the highest and best use of my time, where to spend my time, and not just doing that by default. So sometimes it just gets so stuck in doing all of the things and not taking the time to step back, look at really strategy and figuring out, hey, where, you get to start, you get to start asking the question, like when you’re starting out and you’re grinding and you’re building something, you don’t have the luxury, or at least,

I didn’t give myself permission to answer the question, what am I really passionate about? What do I want to be doing? It was just, what’s the next step? What’s the next thing that I ought to do to get to where I want to be? I’m more at a place now where I can start to ask that question of, what is my passion? Where do I want to spend more time? And that’s a question that I’m still working on answering.

Michelle Kesil (13:38)
Yeah, absolutely. What have been some of the biggest lessons or growth experiences in this career?

Jordan Bennett (13:50)
I think one is that you can only control what you can control.

So sometimes things have gone. had something recently. We got a call on one of our buildings from the fire department because a fire alarm was going off and we had also heard of like a fire in the area recently. And so I got a call from someone on the team and they were literally concerned that my building was on fire and I was strangely unconcerned. Like really? Are you sure about that? And it was kind of like, let’s just get the

Information before I react to it and I think that was me in a state of having learned If my building is on fire, I actually can’t control that right? I know that sounds crazy now realistically like the building wasn’t on fire, right? But the point is just learning that like you can only I can only control the things that I can control and if it’s outside of my control Don’t let it bug me too much

Michelle Kesil (14:54)
Absolutely. Do you have any exciting opportunities or goals for this year?

Jordan Bennett (15:41)
My goal is to, one thing that I’ve moved into, which has been kind of the most recent, I guess, adaptation and evolution in my business is,

partnering with other investors to take down even bigger deals. So this last year, we got into ⁓ with two other general partners and about 60 limited partners. We got into a syndication. My first syndication deal as a general partner where we took down a 36 unit building ⁓ for about $12 million that we’re adding eight additional units to. We’ll remodel all of those units, stabilize everything,

and then probably resell that building ⁓ or keep it in the portfolio in the next three to five years. ⁓ The goal is to do more projects like that where we go after bigger deals, involve more people, and that’s something I’m really excited about and has been a lot of fun.

Michelle Kesil (16:44)
Yeah. Are you looking to expand into more of those type of opportunities moving forward?

Jordan Bennett (16:50)
Yeah, yeah, I want to…

You know, I want to move, continue to move forward and continue to grow. Growth is one of my core values. So it’s doing, doing the next thing and not, only necessarily doing something that’s a bigger scale, but also just something different. I’m really passionate about learning. always reading books, listening to podcasts, you know, trying to mastermind with people that are smarter and have done more than I have, which is not hard to find those people and, just look into.

⁓ you know, I guess advance my sphere of what’s comfortable and what’s known. So yeah, I guess that’s I’m just looking to continue to figure out and I don’t know right now what that next opportunity is, but one of the biggest things I’m focused on right now is getting more deal flow. So just looking at more deals, seeing more opportunities to have, you know, more of an opportunity to step into that next exciting thing.

Michelle Kesil (17:49)
Yeah, how do you find the right deals for you? Is there a certain like lead gen strategy that you use?

Jordan Bennett (17:57)
I think that I’ve realized more and more it’s all about the people. So it’s about fostering more relationships, ⁓ more powerful relationships, going deeper with people. ⁓

Yeah, in fact that the syndication opportunity that I ended up getting involved with as a general partner, one of my partners invited me to be a partner. I met her on a mastermind group where we were both on a real estate panel. I mean, something like this, right? You get asked to do a podcast, you get asked to be on a panel, to go teach a class, you meet people. So I think it’s just really continuing to grow the network of relationships.

Michelle Kesil (18:41)
Yeah, are there certain like networking strategies or groups that you are focusing on?

Jordan Bennett (18:49)
Yeah, yeah, I’m a part of an entrepreneur’s group with folks from all different paths and businesses. That’s kind of more of a focus on business in general. I’ve been a part of GoBundance in the past. Yeah, and that’s a space that I’m actually kind of in the works right now, figuring out where else can I kind of put legs out and invest my time.

Michelle Kesil (19:18)
Awesome. And as far as the brokerage business, what are you kind of looking to scale in that arena?

Jordan Bennett (19:29)
Yeah, so we’re looking at some different paths there. One is continuing to grow the online presence, of course, with PPC and SEO and just continuing to expand that organically. Another piece for us, for our business, is building more relationships with attorneys and power partners and folks that are in a position to send us more listings. And really just growing the listing inventory is the game right now.

get more homes in the portfolio to sell. And I think the more inventory we have, the more we can also grow the team and bring more opportunities for other agents to join us.

Michelle Kesil (20:11)
Yeah, and is that the Orange County area?

Jordan Bennett (20:15)
Yeah, yeah. You know, I know there’s a lot of agents that right now are involved with kind of the expansion movement of starting teams in different states, different parts of the country. That’s not something that I’m necessarily super passionate about. I feel super, super blessed to sell in a beautiful area with great people and also really good sales prices. And it’s a market that I just

love and you know I’m one I guess I feel like I’m so far from mastering the market that I’m already in that I don’t feel the need necessarily to expand beyond that at this point.

Michelle Kesil (20:58)
Yeah, that makes sense and an exciting opportunity to continue to grow where you are now.

Jordan Bennett (21:05)
Yeah.

Michelle Kesil (21:08)
Is there any advice you’d give to someone looking to get started in real estate?

Jordan Bennett (21:13)
Yeah, you mean as a real estate agent or as an investor?

Michelle Kesil (21:17)
You can give a piece for both.

Jordan Bennett (21:20)
Yeah, I think as a real estate agent, if you’re newer…

I would say keep it simple. Everyone in the real estate industry is always trying to sell you the next shiny object and it can be distracting and expensive. So I would say one thing is stick with one or two things. Keep it simple and do it with consistency. And the second thing I would say is have a really good mentor, accountability partner, team leader. Make sure that you have other people in your life that are

close to you that are helping you to move forward. We generally will do more for others than we will do for ourselves, which is why accountability works. So I think that’s what would be kind of my, I guess, two pieces of advice for a new real estate agent. For a real estate investor, for someone who wants to get into investing, depending on the market you’re in, and our market is a high-priced market, our average sale price is, you know, 1.3, 1.4 million for an entry-level home. In other parts of the country, that’s, you know, just

absolutely on a whole other level.

Regardless though, doing your first deal is scary, it takes capital. So one thing is spend less than you earn and avoid income creep. So don’t keep spending as much as you’re making so that you have the ability to build some capital for that first investment. ⁓ Network and get to know people because it’s all about the people and learn as much as you can. But I guess the last

piece would be don’t just learn. Listen to podcasts, read books, mastermind, but then set a date by which you’re going to take some kind of action. Don’t just be a ⁓ consumer of knowledge. Go and do something. Take that first action so that you can do that first deal and really start the journey.

Michelle Kesil (23:15)
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing. And before we wrap up here, someone wants to reach out, come back to learn more. Where can people find you?

Jordan Bennett (23:25)
Good question. Yeah, can text me. My cell phone’s 949-829-7484. You can email me at jordanbennettonline.com. You can find me on our Instagram channel, jordanbennett4homes. Those would probably be the top ways.

Michelle Kesil (23:48)
Perfect. Well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Jordan Bennett (23:51)
Thanks Michelle, appreciate you.

Michelle Kesil (23:54)
And for those tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Jordan who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.