How to Thrive in Real Estate: Terah Bromley’s Transformative Story

Dylan Silver (00:01.016)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today on the show we have a seasoned real estate investor, broker, business strategist, portfolio spanning US and Canada, and helps investors grow and also has courses available as well in property management and business development. We have Terah Bromley on the show here today. Terah, welcome to the show.

Terah (00:27.483)
Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m super happy to be here.

Dylan Silver (00:31.19)
It’s great to have you on here, Tira, and I always like to start off at the top by asking folks how they got into the real estate space.

Terah (00:39.285)
Yeah, so I lived overseas for many, years. I’ve always, of course, had my own primary home, but never actually became an investor until I realized I needed to kind of look towards a retirement plan. We were a family of six traveling from country to country, and my husband’s job was just a really, really stressful job. So I realized I needed to start kind of planning that out.

You know, I just had someone do some construction on one of our, I guess, anchor homes, is what you would call it, and asked him if he had any opportunities. And he just happened to come to me with one, and I rolled the dice and did it, and I was like, wow, this is really great. I love this. And so it really started the ball rolling of me becoming passionate for real estate investing.

Dylan Silver (01:32.44)
So you got into investing through working with a contractor who is working on one of your homes.

Terah (01:39.219)
Exactly. Yeah, he just mentioned, hey, if you’re interested, you know, and I knew that he would of course come to me with wholesale properties, looking for opportunities to renovate them. And I thought, hey, this works great. So he did. But what I did notice is that there were a lot of pieces that I still wasn’t overly familiar with. Obviously, because I was overseas, I didn’t have a property manager. I didn’t really know how to hold the property.

I didn’t know necessarily about capital improvements and basically what I put into the property, is it gonna come back through the rent? And so there was just a lot of things that I felt a little bit lost on, but he was at least able to help me with that construction side of things and getting them up and running.

Dylan Silver (02:25.76)
Now, at that point in time, did you have a real estate license? Was all this new to you? Or did you know a lot of people that were involved in the space?

Terah (02:34.241)
brand new to me. I actually had a master’s in communications. I was a professional trainer and so business trainer. I really, it was all brand new, but I did have a passion for it always. My husband and I, we would purchase even our primary homes were kind of, know, fixer uppers and he was very handy. And so we would spend our time doing that and realized, wow, this could be really profitable.

And we just found a lot of love for it. I love interior design. So for me, it was really fun to just kind of get on that bandwagon. And then over time, you know, there were other aspects of it. So for instance, we bought a old turn of the century home that was obviously in disrepair. And we just took it on as a passion project. And for the first time, this was 15 years ago, I did an Airbnb.

So it was just kind of a fun thing to do. Something, because I had done so much, so many travels, I just ended up going, hey, I wonder if I could do this, you know, after staying in these vacation homes. So yeah, it just kind of snowballed from there. And that’s when I realized I should get my license. And it just, it just kept kind of compiling on itself at that point.

Dylan Silver (03:45.23)
So you’re working with the contractor, you may be looking at off-market deals, you mentioned wholesale. I’m a wholesaler, that’s what I’m passionate about. I also have a real estate license, but eventually you decide, I’m gonna get the license. Did you think, hey, I’m gonna list a bunch of homes, or were you thinking, I like the investment angle, but I also wanna be licensed so that I have some more foot in the game, or credibility, or what have you?

Terah (04:10.037)
To be honest, I don’t find myself to fit into that traditional realtor space. I definitely see that there’s a very big difference between being an investor-friendly realtor as opposed to a realtor who’s helping John and Sally purchase their first home. And so for me, it was all about the numbers. It was all about having it make sense.

So yeah, I definitely fell into that. I’m also a realtor in Utah as well as in Alberta, Canada. So I just find that, you I find opportunities to just, you know, sell my own properties and purchase my own properties and it just kind of works out.

Dylan Silver (04:53.58)
That’s why I became a real estate agent was because I was a wholesaler and I felt like I just need to understand what everyone’s doing with these contracts in Texas because there’s 12 pages long and they never want to talk with wholesalers, don’t want to look at creative deals, what’s going on here. And I just kind of came to the similar conclusion that you did where it’s really two separate worlds. Like most real estate agents are not really interfacing with

investors on a day to day and that’s not their avatar of who they’re looking to talk with. And then you have folks like me, folks like you who all I want to do is talk about, you know, underwriting deals and let me take a look at this deal and you know, the rehab estimate and then oh, well that that home is pre 1950s. So it’s going to have different type of foundation, you know, have to look out for these issues. You mentioned a home turn of the century Airbnb that had to be an interesting one.

Terah (05:46.183)
It certainly was. It was amazing actually. We loved it. was like, you know, was on this old citrus grove. It’s probably one of the older homes in the area. And it was amazing to own and just bring back to life. I think that was just so satisfying, including the fact that what for me, short-term rentals are really, really fun. I mean, they’re a headache, but…

they can be really fun because you know that people are building memories in a place that you’ve created. So there were weddings there. I mean, it was just really a fun place, but we finally did, finally did sell it just because the upkeep, it was almost on an acre. was, it was a lot, especially since we were absentee owners, but it was, it was really fun to own.

Dylan Silver (06:26.092)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (06:31.342)
How did property management come into play?

Terah (06:34.455)
Yeah, so I felt like when I was doing all this investing over many years, I did a lot of trial and error. I made a lot of mistakes. And there were aspects of property management that I realized I knew nothing about, or I wanted to learn more about. And so

And the other thing is I also realized how important it was for an investor. Property management to me is kind of the foundation and the fundamental piece of the real estate investing. So as I was doing that, we actually had a home in Utah that we were going to sell. It had appreciated a significant amount. And I had actually not worked in the US pretty much since I was in my early 20s. And so I decided

I was just gonna learn more about this franchise in Utah called PMI, Property Management Inc. And so I just threw out my resume there just for kicks. I had a weird resume as you can imagine. All different countries. had, you know, again, worked in the oil and gas industry as a trainer for many, many years. And so luckily someone there took a chance on me and decided that I would be, you know, potentially a good.

a coach for some of the new franchisees who were coming in in property management. So it was baptism by fire because I learned everything that there was to do with property management, including scaling up their businesses. And that’s really where it all came from. So I found a great passion for that as well as being able to look through the lens of the ultimate customer, the person who owns a great number of doors is

who my people were looking for. And I was like, that’s me, I’m the person. So I helped them a lot with their sales and with their growth.

Dylan Silver (08:30.55)
Now with Property Management Inc. as the name of the company, right? Were they and are they primarily focused on like commercial residential? Are they looking at a lot of mom and pop? So what’s their avatar of client?

Terah (08:43.639)
Excellent question. They are actually, we call them pillars. So they are residential. We are quite residential heavy. We do also do short-term rentals. actually property manage HOAs as well as commercial, as well as multifamily. So as far as the realm of property management, we, I think, spans quite far. We have about 400 franchisees throughout the US.

and a couple that are overseas. And so I was able to help a lot of those franchisees scale up.

Dylan Silver (09:17.622)
And so folks who have Airbnb’s or folks that have multi-family or folks that have single family homes, maybe a long-term rental, all of those would come into play and they could reach out to you for those types of services.

Terah (09:32.369)
Exactly. Yeah. And I was one of those people who even if I didn’t have a property and didn’t have that experience, I would go buy it. So, you know, like if it was commercial, I’d be like, hey, I need to learn more about the commercial real estate side. So I would go and purchase that. Or for instance, if I was going to do a 1031 and I wanted to learn more about the 1031, I just I did it. I sold a property and tried to find ways to

So I really learned by doing and I felt like it would be the best for my franchisees to just dive in and be part of it.

Dylan Silver (10:09.678)
That’s super impressive. mean, to say, I want to understand on a first person level commercial real estate investing. So let me go take down a commercial deal. What was that like?

Terah (10:22.869)
Well, actually I ended up taking a course through Wharton University, which was about commercial investing. So that was really good. Before that, I was kind of fumbling my way through it. But once I took that, and of course with my experience, it all just kind of came together. So I felt pretty confident in doing that. And I had a mentor, Randall Henderson, who’s been in commercial real estate for a long time.

he was able to help me as well. So yeah, it was great. And as you know, each one of those forms of investing are very, different. But it was fun for me, because especially since I was working with a franchise, I was able to see it in vast amounts of positive, negatives, and learning from a lot of our franchisees.

Dylan Silver (11:02.2)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (11:14.222)
Do you remember that first commercial deal?

Terah (11:17.703)
Yeah, scary. Scary as anything. Yeah, absolutely.

Dylan Silver (11:22.392)
What was that like? Where’d you find it? What area of the world was this in?

Terah (11:27.381)
Yeah, so this was in Florida also, and it was again, it was a mixed use. So in that situation, again, I had a comfort level of understanding the residential side of things. But this commercial side was a little bit more daunting and trying to figure out like, okay, storefront, how does this work? And so yeah, it was just really good. I asked a lot of questions. I ran a lot of numbers. I really tried to try to get my hands dirty.

in figuring it out. And as you know, like I do have a couple of multi-families as well. So it was like, are two very different things as well. it was just, it’s, yeah, it’s been a learning experience for me for sure.

Dylan Silver (12:10.092)
I want to pivot here, Tira, and ask you about the courses that you have for folks in property management and then also business development. How did those come about and where did you decide, hey, I’m going to make some courses for people in this space?

Terah (12:25.815)
Absolutely. Yeah. So as I was doing all that I did at PMI or was doing as a coach, I noticed two things. One is our sales. That was a struggle because a lot of our property managers, the more successful they were, the more that they got pulled into that operational aspect. And so the sales piece was really, really a difficulty. was a struggle for them. At the same time, I felt as though

Working with investors was probably, of course, because I was looking through the lens of my own eyes, but also just the fact that, of course, working with investors tends to be a little bit better than that accidental landlord. And so I decided two things. One, I was going to create a course to be

like an advisor, have our property managers kind of fit this profile of saying, hey, I have a lot of really valuable information for you as an investor, knowing about a number of properties, knowing even who the tenant is in a property that may be for sale. And so by trial and error and working with my own property manager, I realized, my goodness, he has so much valuable information.

I have an entire network of people here at PMI who could do the same thing. And so basically, I created a four-day course alongside with Morgan Cole, who is the creator of RISCOVER, which is an analysis tool that is incredible. And we offered this.

this form of training for them to be able to work with investors, to speak the language of investors, to understand what investors are looking for, to optimize the asset and not just take care of those toilets and leaks and all those things, but instead be able to look at it as a long-term investment. So I did that, but at the same time,

Terah (14:30.583)
So I had that one course. the same time, I was able to help build the sales team for our property managers to hire a business development manager, helping them with compensation, figuring out how do I pay this person? How can I afford this person? And then also training them and giving them all the tools that they need in order to be successful in selling property management services as well as

being able to really work with investors. And I tend to find that the ones who work the best with investors, who actually go to my other course and learn about being a true asset manager, tend to do very, very well. So they are most successful ones for sure.

Dylan Silver (15:21.055)
Tero Tero we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to? Learn more about your business or maybe to learn more about the the courses or get in contact with you

Terah (15:31.499)
Yeah, so absolutely feel free to call me 352-988-4156 or feel free to email me as well. And it’s just t-e-r-a-h-r-e-u at gmail.com. So I would love to help out in any aspect I can.

Dylan Silver (15:53.518)
Tira, thanks so much for coming on the show here today.

Terah (15:56.775)
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.