How to Survive Real Estate Investing When Everything Goes Wrong

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In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Micah Johnson interviews George McCleary, a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. George shares his journey from starting in house hacking to becoming a multifamily developer and creating a software company focused on title fraud protection. The conversation delves into the importance of resilience in real estate, the necessity of having multiple exit strategies for investments, and the value of networking within the industry. George also discusses the dangers of title fraud and how his new venture, Title Fraud Defender, aims to protect property owners from this growing issue.

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George McCleary (00:00)
Boy, it’s constantly showing up, Micah. It’s getting punched in the gut and continuing to get up and keep going. And a lot of times do the exact same thing that resulted in that gut punch. I like to describe my trajectory in the real estate business as a very noisy graph. Like it’s got, if you zoom out enough, the graph goes upwards and I’ve done fine, done quite well. And

But if you look at certain projects, certain moments, certain things that have happened, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been punching a pillow or just punching the air being like, I can’t believe it.

Micah Johnson (01:58)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I am joined by George McCleary, who’s been making waves in the single-family residential space for about 20 years now and has expanded into some others. George, glad to have you, man. Welcome in.

George McCleary (02:14)
What’s up Micah, feeling great.

Micah Johnson (02:16)
⁓ I’m excited for our talk today and our pre-call record, or before we record it, we’re just listening to your story. think some of our listeners are really gonna take value away from one, just the breadth of experience for doing it, how long you’ve been doing it, and then the way that you focus on how to get deals done to make sure that you’re doing it the right way, not getting stuck in one or the other. I’m pumped to dive in. So for people who may not know you yet, what’s your main focus right now and what markets are you in?

George McCleary (02:31)
Mm-hmm.

So I’m George McCleary. I do business in the state of Oregon, primarily in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been at it, like you say, for about 20 years. I do apartment construction and flex industrial development right now. But through the years, I’ve done a little bit of everything. Micah started off like everybody else doing house hacking before it even had a name. I had Craigslist roommates doing cocaine off my coffee table, ⁓ weird roommates.

that I don’t even want to describe what they did. And working on houses myself all the way up through getting into single family flips and then as we call it a side quest into the marijuana industry for a minute and then back into building and developing and ultimately getting a portfolio of multifamily assets, single family assets, some seller finance, some not. I’ve been a little bit all over the place. But then recently,

Micah Johnson (03:12)
Hahaha

George McCleary (03:36)
I went viral with a video about squatting. And that led me down another side quest, which led to going on cable news, getting tens of millions of hits on social media and becoming somewhat of a guru in the squatting and title fraud area. So Google me and squatting, you get a lot of results these days because I pretended to be a squatter in this video. And a lot of people didn’t get the joke. So I got the whole death threat thing for a while.

but ultimately ends up starting a company that helps protect investors and property owners from deed fraud, that’s Title Fraud Defender. And these days just focusing on development and growing my software business.

Micah Johnson (04:17)
You’ve done the route, man. You’ve gone through a lot of things. Let’s take a step back to 21 years ago, just real quick. What was it that led you to real estate? What got you into the industry to begin with?

George McCleary (05:15)
Good question, Micah. So in business school and college, it was really banking or banking or banking. That’s how you made money. And I went to school at Emory University down in Atlanta, and that sort of was the program in there. So I went to work for a bank called Bear Stearns, which ended up going under in the financial crisis. But I knew very quickly that banking was not for me. So I packed up and moved to another country and read a big stack of books.

all about real estate consulting, all the different careers because I was like, all right, what the heck am I going to do with my life now? And like so many other people, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, and then a couple other books like Creating Wealth and other books all about real estate and just made the decision that I was going to get back and I was going to start investing in real estate. you know, I was 22 years old and had read a couple of books. So of course, like what could possibly go wrong, right? So came home.

and announced to my family that I was going to buy a duplex. And so I found one out in the hood. It was nicknamed the Hood House by my parents. And yeah, there was a shooting nearby after I moved in. My buddy’s car got stolen out in front of the place, but it was well located within the city and that area ended up improving substantially. so, and I learned how to drywall, I learned how to paint, I learned how to do cabinets. It was just sort of a crash course.

So that was my first project and I actually have a podcast on it where I talk all the way through just what a nightmare that project was, but it made me strong and it made me want another one. So did that first one and just kind of went from there, Micah.

Micah Johnson (06:55)
Yeah, you dove into the deep end for sure. And that’s where a lot of the successful folks you meet that get into real estate early. That’s exactly how they did it. They made sure they learned the process, right? Education in this business is a major factor because you get yourself in a little bit of trouble pretty quick wandering too far into what you don’t know you don’t even know.

George McCleary (07:15)
yeah, I learned real quick that certain things are easy and other things are really hard, like drywalling, for example. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried drywalling, but it’s impossible to do well on your very first try. And for me, my 150th try was also not good. so after I realized that was really difficult, it’s like, all right, so that’s why drywallers cost what they do. And you know there’s plenty of other trades that are exactly like that.

Micah Johnson (07:27)
That was my experience.

Hahaha!

I think that’s powerful to understand too, because as you’re getting into it and you’re seeing what things cost and you start thinking to yourself, I can save money here and I can save money there. And a lot of folks run into the issue where they know how much money they’re saving, but they have no idea how much money they’re losing by doing it that way.

George McCleary (07:59)
Exactly, exactly. You you could make so much more on your single family flip if you did every single ounce of work yourself. But how much time do you have in this earthly realm? You know, there’s only so much time you got to figure out when to sub out and when not to. But even now at 46 years of age, I actually went out to one of my rentals the other day and I worked on the roof because the bids that I was getting were just so insane. I was like, all right, I know enough to know that this is

an air repair that’s going to take this amount of hours, I can do it myself. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be making about $600 per hour by doing it myself. And it ended up being even more than that. So I went went and did it. And still to this day, that math comes into the equation. And if I’m making some ungodly sum per hour, then yes, I will be the guy on the roof.

Micah Johnson (08:38)
⁓ Right.

Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense. And it’s a good way to break it down to especially for business owners. You can get yourself into doing things that are ten and twelve dollars an hour tasks that are sucking up your time, where if you focus on it, OK, what actually does make me money or in this case, looking at OK, I can hire them out. But if that does really only take this amount of hours and it’ll be six hundred bucks an hour. OK, I will block off some time to get that done.

George McCleary (09:51)
Absolutely, Micah And to take it one step further on that concept, it’s no longer a $12 an hour thing because in the world of VAs, you’re paying for a competent VA about five bucks an hour or less sometimes. And if you pay him eight or 10, they think you walk on water. And so all those admin tasks that you’re messing around with, get do yourself a favor, get a VA. And that just makes the calculus just that much more pronounced. It’s like, OK, right now I’m doing

$4 per hour work. What am I doing? Give it to somebody else.

Micah Johnson (10:23)
Right?

It’s a great way to look at it. A lot of folks don’t like giving over that part, but when you realize, hey, if someone can just do this 80 % as good as I can do it, that’s a win. Get it off my plate and let me go do the thing that I’m really good at.

George McCleary (10:38)
Exactly. Couldn’t agree more.

Micah Johnson (10:41)
So you’ve been doing a great job in this industry for quite some time now. What’s been the key to making that work consistently for you?

George McCleary (10:49)
Boy, it’s constantly showing up, Micah. It’s getting punched in the gut and continuing to get up and keep going. And a lot of times do the exact same thing that resulted in that gut punch. I like to describe my trajectory in the real estate business as a very noisy graph. Like it’s got, if you zoom out enough, the graph goes upwards and I’ve done fine, done quite well. And

But if you look at certain projects, certain moments, certain things that have happened, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been punching a pillow or just punching the air being like, I can’t believe it.

Like this is a perfect story of things like, you know, the sewer pipe burst, you know, a tenant is suing me. This is that this going wrong. That’s going wrong. Why am I? Why am I even doing this? And the thing is, over time, it just it just makes you stronger. It’s it hardens you.

It makes it so that when these bad things happen, it’s just, it’s just part of a long series of ups and downs that ultimately are going to lead you to the promised land if you’re strong enough to make it. But so many people tap out because it doesn’t feel good. It feels like shit, man. Like getting terrible news, getting sued, having a pipe explode, having insurance go wrong. It’s, it’s a lot of work. And so I can’t tell you the number of times micro I thought to myself, man,

why don’t I just take the money I’ve earned, throw it in the S &P and just earn a historical average of like, what is it? 8 % or something. But the thing is like, if you’re a real estate investor, that’s how you put food on the table. It’s investing, but really like it’s a job. And you wanna get passive income, but really, I always say this, there’s no such thing as completely passive income in real estate. It’s passive, sort of.

Micah Johnson (12:19)
Mm-mm.

Mm-hmm.

George McCleary (12:42)
edged almost towards completely passive, but it’s never completely passive. It involves mental real estate in your mind that is being occupied. So yeah, to answer your original question, keep showing up.

Micah Johnson (12:56)
I think that’s a powerful thing to say too, because hard is always around the corner. And it’s always surprising how hard hard feels when it hits. And it seems to be proportional to just your growth cycle. What I noticed in my own life, it kind of felt the same. My just situations were getting bigger and bigger. And that’s what was making it feel heavier and heavier. But I think it’s a Jim Rohn quote that says, I’m going to butcher it, but.

George McCleary (13:05)
yeah.

Yes, sir.

Micah Johnson (13:21)
Don’t wish for times to be easier, wish for the wisdom to know what to do, to learn how to get through it. Because that’s just it. No matter what, no matter what industry you get into, just being a human, you signed up for hard. Actually, you didn’t even sign up. You didn’t even have to be here. You just woke up here one day. And it’s part of the experience.

George McCleary (13:28)
That’s it.

It’s

part of the deal, man. And if your life is not hard, then you don’t have a full life. You’re not doing enough. There’s no such thing. Your problems never go away. They just change.

Micah Johnson (13:49)
No,

no, that’s why I have a 10 and a 12 year old. One thing I try to teach him, hard is good. It’s okay. Don’t get upset that it’s hard. If anything, get a little bit excited. Because if you figure that out, you’ve done something. When you’re done with it, there’s a level of pride you have in yourself, a level of confidence you have in life that when that next storm does hit, you take it much differently. It doesn’t shake you as bad. You see things you didn’t see before.

Once you start just live, you’re 46. How many cycles have you been through where the hard showed up and now you keep seeing the benefit of those early hards, right? They pay off forever.

George McCleary (14:27)
Absolutely, sir. Yeah. And so with our kids, I also have a very similarly aged kids within that range and hard doesn’t find them the same way that it found us when we were growing up or the generation before that or the generation before that. And the thing that you really have to instill is exactly what you’re telling your child, which is, you know, the struggle is the gift. Like life, the life is, is the struggle. And if you don’t, if you don’t have that, then it’s a puff of wind.

is going to take you away and it’s going to ruin you. those puffs of winds, they’re going to come in one form or another. There’s been black swan event after black swan event and they’re not going to stop.

Micah Johnson (15:09)
We know they’re coming, we just don’t know what they are. And it’s about every seven to 12 years, they’re gonna show up, right? Like as consistent as it gets. it’s one of my mentors says, we know exactly what’s gonna happen. We just don’t know when it’s gonna happen and what’s gonna cause it. And it’s like, good call. That’s good to know. Cause it’s, you know, it’s on the way. And I like how you view that. It is.

George McCleary (15:14)
Yes, sir.

Exactly. That’s about right.

Micah Johnson (16:13)
It is, it is, it’s what creates a good life. When you hear somebody sharing their story, like you were sharing earlier, you didn’t just talk about how much money you made on your duplex. It’s the story of the duplex. That’s what gives it that value is how hard it was to get through it. And the fact that you made it, that’s what, that’s what we all shift to. We don’t just say it’s not a one sentence story because the shorter the story, the less interesting.

George McCleary (16:35)
yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, it’s an interesting story. And I think my best stories are about the times when I’ve lost money. Never had anything that really like took me out, but I’ve also had, I’ve also got some great stories about times I made money, but you know, I feel like people don’t talk enough about the losses because there’s a lot of pride and a lot of ego in the real estate industry. And there’s not a whole lot of guys that are willing to open up and be like, yeah, man, this absolutely just sucked.

I lost this much, here’s where I zigged and should have zagged. And not just admitting when things go wrong, but then taking ownership and being like, yeah, this happened because I failed to X, Y, and Z. And they’ve got investors, they’ve got kids and family that all look up to them as you know experts. The fact of the matter is that no matter how much experience you have in real estate, you’re sometimes gonna make the wrong move and that’s just how it is.

Micah Johnson (17:31)
I couldn’t agree with you more. what I hope people start to see is to admit that is strength, not weakness. One of the best things your kids can even see you do is admit that you messed up and show them that, you’re going to mess up forever. Failure is not a bad thing. You don’t have to get not something you just get in trouble for. It’s not bad. It’s going to happen. What’d you learn? And that’s the part sharing. What did you learn from it? Because if you didn’t learn anything, that’s real failure. Because normal failure, if you were that

George McCleary (17:37)
Mm, yeah.

Micah Johnson (18:01)
upset about it, you wouldn’t have learned to walk, right? Like, I watched my kids fall hundreds of times before they figured it out. If they were really upset about failing, they wouldn’t have kept going. And so that really hit me of, wow, okay, the real failure is not learning. It’s repeating the same thing over and over and wonder what the heck is going on. But being open about it to even share with the people around you, I think that’s powerful.

George McCleary (18:11)
yeah.

It is powerful, Mikey. Yeah, very well said.

Micah Johnson (18:26)
Okay, let’s jump topics here real quick. So some of you did say pre-call, I found that was really interesting. And it’s about the way you approach deals now, not with just a single mindset. There’s a way you’re going into whatever you’re gonna buy that keeps your mind open to make sure that you capitalize. Take us through that. How’s that look for you?

George McCleary (18:44)
So whenever I buy a deal, I never have like a singular focus. I’ve always maintained over the years that the guys who only do one thing, like buying things with the purpose of Airbnb in them, I’ve always said like, hey man, that sounds kind of risky because if it doesn’t work with that one thing, then you’re completely hosed. And however, a lot of times it’s like a luxury property and good luck trying to cash flow a luxury property.

on a month to month or a year lease basis, right? So every single deal, I’ve got multiple exit strategies, number one. And then number two, I’m always willing to sell. There’s been times when I get a heck of a deal on a place and I start sizing things up and I think like, you know what? I could flip it and make X amounts or I could just send it up the wholesale river and do Y or I can like divide the lot, add a duplex, add an ADU. ⁓

Micah Johnson (19:13)
Yeah.

George McCleary (19:40)
sell the land, flip the house, build an ADU in the basement, do everything just six ways from Sunday from this place and it would look like this. It would be two and a half years later and I would have this chunk of change or I could just sell it to Micah tomorrow and put 60K in my bank accounts within four days. It’s like, all right, yeah, let’s just do that. Because that’s a certainty. All of these things I just described take time. Time.

Micah Johnson (20:02)
Yeah.

George McCleary (20:08)
makes everything change. Everybody got harpooned by interest rates when they went up in 22 and then kind of sat on the sidelines in 23 and 24 and survived till 25. But then things are still pretty much the same in interest rate country. They’ve come down a little bit, but still multiple exit strategies and the flexibility to take the burden hand and put that money in your bank account and be done with it. Move on to the next.

Micah Johnson (20:36)
Yeah, don’t get stuck. And we were talking about this a little bit beforehand. What I loved about the way that you approach it is, like we said, I’m a sports guy and it’s not just taking the same thing and the same players and running the same offense over and over. It’s seeing, okay, what players do I actually have or what house do I have and what offense runs best? What will this one do for me in the way I want it to do it? And even if you’re early in your career and you don’t have all the options,

then don’t make that option just fit. If you only got one, then only work with the one that it’ll work with. Be willing to say no upfront so that later as you learn them, then you can deploy them because that is where I see a lot of people get stuck. They’re square pegging around whole and it just isn’t gonna work.

George McCleary (21:19)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, you need to, like you’re saying, you know, design the plays to your players, not just as a static form that you apply to everything. And that absolutely applies to real estate and so many other things for that matter.

Micah Johnson (21:33)
Absolutely, man. So question for you, for listeners who are earlier in their career trying to level up, what’s made the biggest difference for you when it comes to building relationships and growing your network in real estate?

George McCleary (21:46)
single biggest thing that I’ve done is just, again, with the forcing yourself to show up, is to show up to all of your local networking events, small, big. If you just keep showing your face around these places, you’re going to meet more and more people and just walk up to them and shake hands. The best thing I love about these meetups is that everybody is always open to meeting anybody. And so I remember at the point in my career,

when I would show up to these things and I was the guy that was, you know, hungry for knowledge and learning things. And now I’m the guy that, you know, the younger guys will walk up to and say like, oh, hey, you know, I saw your video on social media. Sounds like you’re doing stuff. I love what you do. What advice would you give to somebody like me who just got out of college or just bought their first house? And, you know, I’ve got a little prepared response for both these things. So a little spiel. so and then when people, you know, when people say, you know, hey,

you know, can I pick your brain? Can I do this or that? You know, I always do the exact same thing. Like I’m never, I don’t charge a consulting fee. I just charge a sandwich. All you gotta do is take me out to lunch, buy me a sandwich and you will get all the real estate knowledge you’ve ever wanted in your entire life. All I need is a Pastrami Reuben, Micah. That’s all it takes.

Micah Johnson (23:02)
That’s

the secret. Pastrami Reuben is the secret. All right. Yeah.

George McCleary (23:04)
The secret is a Pastrami Reuben. Walk

up to one of the old heads, be like, hey man, I’ll buy you a sandwich. Tell me everything you know. Gotta be like, hmm, yeah, I like sandwiches, let’s do this.

Micah Johnson (23:16)
That’s good to know. It’s good to know. it’s you tap on something that I’ve really enjoyed about the real estate industry as well. The folks that are successful at it are typically willing to share their story. There’s an abundance mindset that exists where no one’s trying to protect their secret or do that. Not the real ones. They have this this mindset where I’ve gone through it. I know it. I can see what you can’t see. Here’s what happens. Here’s what you can avoid. Here’s how you be successful.

And that energy through the industry is one of the things that keeps me tapped into it for sure.

George McCleary (23:48)
yeah, the closest thing I think to a secret in the real estate industry is knowing ⁓ about certain development code changes that have been implemented that impact the value of dirt or property. ⁓ For a while in Portland, there was a new law called the Better Housing By Design implementation. And basically what that did is it took pieces of land that were zoned for like, you know, maybe a few units and made it so you could get like,

like 10 or 20 units on those same parcels. And it felt for a while like I was the only guy who knew about this. And I was like, hey, well, you could do this. And people are like, really? And so that caused the price of land to go up. But now it’s coming back down because these things go up and then they come back down.

Micah Johnson (24:19)
Mmm.

They run that cycle. Okay, so I’m going to tap back into that viral video for a second because that actually led besides the cable, besides those other things, you said it led you to finding something more scary than squatting. So take me into that. What was more scary than the thing that went viral?

George McCleary (24:50)
Yeah.

Right, right. So the viral video, I stole a house. It got tens of millions of views all over social media. It blew up my life for a good solid month going on cable news, flew down to Texas to be on Dr. Phil. And what happened after I went viral was very interesting. I got dozens of from people nationwide telling me about these terrible things that had happened to them with squatting and that I learned about what deed fraud was. And essentially all of deed fraud is

is somebody forging a deed for your house or for one of your properties, filing it with the county, and then either selling the place and keeping the money or taking out loans against the property. And so when someone’s squatting, someone’s just breaking into an apartment or a house and sticking around and that’s a whole thing. I got pretty good at figuring out how to get rid of those. But then with title fraud,

Micah Johnson (25:36)
Mm.

George McCleary (25:51)
It was a much more heinous crime because you’re stealing the home equity, stealing the occupancy of a property is one thing, but when you’re stealing the equity in a property, I read somewhere that there’s like $33 trillion in home equity in America. That’s the single biggest source of wealth. And to be able to steal that in the same way that you can stick up somebody ⁓ on the street, a Robbo liquor store, to be able to steal that to me is

Micah Johnson (26:07)
Wow.

George McCleary (26:20)
Absolutely terrifying. So I started title fraud defender and that helps protect people from deed fraud by essentially just monitoring their title always making sure that there’s somebody checking and making sure that nobody has transferred their title. Cause if you know right away, then you can fix it real quick. But if you don’t know right away, really terrible things happen.

Micah Johnson (26:40)
take a long time. That reminds me, it sounds like the old different version, but the folks that monitor your social security number for you, right? To make sure that nobody’s messing with identity fraud. This is in the end, this one has tremendous implications to it. Because like you said, there’s a lot of equity in people’s homes. I’ve gotten into some deals just in my career where we found out in title, wait a second, something’s off right here. This person that’s saying they’re trying to sell this and do this, this ain’t real. There’s

George McCleary (26:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

yeah.

Micah Johnson (27:10)
This could react in a very poor way and you start to see like, whoa, this is life altering, especially if it’s late. Folks that didn’t know it was happening for a long time, they get put on the hook for things that are big. Didn’t even know it was happening.

George McCleary (27:27)
yeah, absolutely. investors are targeted specifically because they have large portfolios that they’re not watching very closely. Like, I don’t know how often you go out and see your rentals on the street or check their titles, but probably not very often. Them and elderly people. Those are the two biggest groups of people that we see subscribing at Title Fraud Defender because they’re the biggest targets. They’re the most vulnerable.

and elderly people have a lot of home equity, so do investors, and investors have a lot of properties. So unlike a lot of our competitors, why we do a lot of volume subscriptions for not just one property, but for like 20 properties. And so people can get protected, but not have to turn their pocketbooks upside down.

Micah Johnson (28:09)
That’s a powerful tool, man. Thanks for creating it. Honestly, that saved over time, that’s going to save people more than they can imagine just in heartache, mental anxiety, besides the money that it costs. that’s cool. George, man, I really appreciate your time and your story and just your overall arch through real estate. I love, I love meeting people like yourself that go through just the run of it, that actually talk about the hard, that are willing to share, Hey, this is where it sucks.

George McCleary (28:21)
yeah, the mental anxiety.

Micah Johnson (28:38)
and this is what you can do to get through it. And then tying again into Title Fraud Defender, you’ve created this really cool loop. So if someone wanted to reach out to you, touch base on Title Defender, what’s the best way to find you and get ahold of you?

George McCleary (28:51)
So I’m active on social media. You can find me at MRD Portland and that’s McCleary Realty and Development Portland, MRD underscore Portland on Instagram. That’s the one I probably check the most. I’m on Facebook, just under George McCleary, TikTok, a little bit on X, but yeah, just shoot me a DM. I respond to them. I see all of them. I’m not so famous that I get so many that I need somebody sorting through them myself. It’s just me.

and if you’re interested in title fraud defender, got subscription, coupon for your listeners. It’s TFD 20 gets you a 20 % off whatever you order at title fraud defender.com. So yeah, I’d say reach out, hit me up. I’m happy to help. And, I’m also, I’d always love to hear about deals. I like partnerships. I like hearing from wholesalers. I like hearing from everybody.

Micah Johnson (29:38)
And one of the beautiful things about Real Estate Network, you can get deals and everything from all over the place when you take the time to build it. So thanks for sharing that. Thanks for providing that value to our listeners. So you’ll be able to find those links and the code in the show notes for today’s show. Again, George, thank you for being here. I enjoyed our time together. For those listening, if you got value from today’s episode, please like this episode, share it, subscribe to our podcast. We’ve got more operators coming up for conversations just like George.

who are out there creating real businesses, providing real help and creating the life they want. So again, great to see you, George. We’ll see everybody on the next episode.

George McCleary (30:17)
Thanks, Micah.

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How to Survive Real Estate Investing When Everything Goes Wrong

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