Navigating New England Real Estate: Insights You Can’t Afford to Miss

Dylan Silver (00:00.6)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show we have the Lumberjack Landlord. Welcome to the show.

Lumberjack Landlord (00:10.65)
man, I’m super pumped to be here. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. That’s the one thing I know how to do. So let’s make sure that we have a lot of fun.

Dylan Silver (00:17.89)
Before we hopped on, I said, we’ll throw in some real estate, but we’re also gonna have a good time, some humor. And so you have actually ties to where I’m hosting this podcast out of in Denton, Texas. I said there’s farm animals in the background, so you may hear a rooster, a goat, or a cow, or maybe some dogs, I don’t know. But you’re in New England right now, is that right?

Lumberjack Landlord (00:22.616)
Yeah, for sure.

Lumberjack Landlord (00:38.862)
I am I’m in New Hampshire. I’m a New Hampshire guy

Dylan Silver (00:43.35)
Okay, grew up there?

Lumberjack Landlord (00:45.186)
Yeah, grew up here. you know, the, the age old story, you grow up, you drop out of the ninth grade and try and find your way and you work a bunch of different jobs and learn a bunch of stuff. And found my niche in high tech in the early two thousands and, just retired from that job. last year after 27 years in tech, I did both jobs. I worked kind of 80 to a hundred hours a week for all that time. And, I just liked to work and I made it.

We made it part of our life and part of our family life. So our kids were around it all the time. And, yeah, and now, and now I’m on an amazing podcast with Dylan silver and we’re talking about real estate and having fun. So I don’t know that it gets any better.

Dylan Silver (01:24.11)
Thank you for the edification there. appreciate it. The name’s getting out there. So tech, were you on the sales side or were you on the development side? Okay, so sales side. I know a lot of people and then also selfishly, I’m also outside of this in a, I guess you would call it a software engineering boot camp. Just selfishly and then also curiosity-wise, I’m seeing that a lot of people that are going into tech,

Lumberjack Landlord (01:26.178)
Yeah, have a deal.

Lumberjack Landlord (01:33.944)
Sales side,

Dylan Silver (01:52.246)
are now using these boot camps as a way to get in. Maybe as much, in my opinion, even more so than a traditional, but I’m just one person. What’s your opinion of going the traditional route, four year school degree versus going boot camp, or maybe a mix of both?

Lumberjack Landlord (02:07.384)
You’re talking to a ninth grade dropout that makes more money than all of his friends do. So you can guess what my feelings are on, on, on college. think that I think college is important. I think it’s important in a few different regards. Obviously I, you know, I want my doctors going to college. You know, I prefer that my, attorneys go to college, you know, I, know, so there’s, there’s certain, certain degrees, I think certainly merit it.

Dylan Silver (02:12.706)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Lumberjack Landlord (02:34.818)
but then for the most part, think that, you know, you know, my kids, I hope they finished high school. I don’t want them dropping out in the ninth grade. That will have a conversation about, cause you know, that made my life a little bit more difficult, but still it was the right thing for me to do. and, but as far as college goes, I think, you know, too often we’re giving kids the biggest financial decision in their life at 18 years old. And it’s like, Hey, make a great decision.

Dylan Silver (02:58.466)
lives. Yeah.

Lumberjack Landlord (03:02.914)
Well, I really want to go to that campus because you saw like three good looking girls on campus. Like that’s a problem. Like we’re not going to spend a quarter of a million dollars or, you know, we’re not spending a quarter million bucks on that. And so I think too often I see, you know, people get out of college, riddled and saddled with debt that is largely, you know, larger than their rent payment and keeps them from buying a house until their late twenties or early thirties. You know, the numbers say mid thirties now.

Dylan Silver (03:07.416)
Right. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (03:13.23)
Yeah.

Lumberjack Landlord (03:32.914)
and that just means you’re that much further behind on the curve. If you can find a way to get into a house, I house hacked, a house hack nine different homes in 13 years. And that’s how I was able to afford houses that I couldn’t afford with just my income. is you just have to do what it takes to get there.

Dylan Silver (03:48.76)
You know, to your point there with this idea of having this massive student debt, know, so I come up from a family of people who are educated, love education, that’s their jam. I’m not that way because what I experienced and saw from other people and in myself is that back when they went to school, it wasn’t a guarantee.

but there was a whole lot more certainty and a whole lot more people were finishing school. What we’re now seeing on every level is, especially in the private schools, is fewer and fewer people are finishing. I want to say it’s like, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but it’s something like 40 to 60 % are finishing, which means that somewhere around one in two people who are taking on this massive debt are not finishing. And then on top of that,

you know, when you’re graduating with these degrees, it’s like the first five years out of the degree at minimum, you’re really scaling your career and you probably won’t be able to make enough money to survive. And so my perspective is like, look, it’s not for everybody. Some people are gonna love it. Some people are gonna swear by it. But for those people who say, you know what, I’m going a different path, there are now so many ways. I love the trades personally. I love the trades.

Lumberjack Landlord (05:05.09)
Yeah. Me too. Me too. Absolutely agree. It’s trades. There are too many people retiring from the trades. I know a lot of guys in the trades that make six figures. So if that’s the impediment, like I can’t get rich doing the trades. Really? Really? I paid my plumber 150 grand last year and I promise he had a lot more than me for a customer. You know?

Dylan Silver (05:27.766)
And on top of that, they’re talking about, this sounds maybe shocking to people who aren’t familiar with this, but private equity is looking at a lot of these trades companies and they’re looking at it, well, know, they’ve built this entity. How can we acquire, let’s say, multiple plumbers, multiple HVAC? How can we scale this and put these companies together and create something where it wasn’t previously there? And honestly, that space is ripe for innovation because

Lumberjack Landlord (05:36.6)
Very much. Very much.

Lumberjack Landlord (05:56.737)
for sure.

Dylan Silver (05:57.442)
How do people go, I don’t know in all areas of the country, but I know out here, it’s not like you just open up an Uber type application and go find a plumber. Most of the time it’s through referral, through somebody that you know, or through Googling. It’s just, there’s so much opportunity there. But I digress. Let’s talk about your real estate journey. So, tech sales and real estate, I’ve seen this a handful of times, but it’s always interesting because…

You got to be a problem solver in order to do real estate. That’s just the name of the game. While you’re scaling in your tech career, you mentioned house hacking. So you’re doing both concurrently. How did that go for you? Was it a natural progression for you? Or was there a time period where you were like, hey, I’m doing something very unique here with my real estate portfolio. Let’s see how far I can take this.

Lumberjack Landlord (06:35.8)
Yes.

Lumberjack Landlord (06:46.892)
Yeah. So I think it was necessity. You know, it was, I wanted to live in a nice place. I’d rather live in a nice place with some roommates than live in a, the place I could afford. the bigger thing was, is I knew that a lot of them were just like, yeah, you know, I’ll be there for a couple of years and then I’ll split. They really had no tie to it. And so for me, it was just understanding, Hey, this is actually a thing I need to, you know, first couple that I did were, a condo and a single family house.

And then I was like, yeah, you know, I don’t love having roommates like that kind of, you know, got old at, you know, 24, 25, but I worked all the time. So who cares? but what’s really interesting is, is that as I got through that process, you know, I said, you know, duplexes seem like the thing to be and to do. So I started looking at duplexes, tries and quads. the reason I liked the duplex so much was because I could get residential debt. You know, I could do a 5 % down owner occupied loan.

so it gave me a lot of freedom and we all know in the real estate game, it’s really mostly about the debt that you’re buying these assets with is the biggest, most important thing. You know, yes, I’m getting a great asset. You know, what is, what is the income stream look like, but what’s my debt? And if I’m buying it as an owner, rock, I’m buying it with 5 % down Fanny, Freddie just approved 5 % down for, for three units and four units. If they’re owner.

So owner occupied. So I don’t know why that’s not the absolute best strategy on the market, especially if you’re trying to get into a place sooner than later and start the journey. This is the Warren Buffett effect. It is get in there and let that compound. That’s the key to this story. And that’s what just enough people don’t know about. think.

Dylan Silver (08:32.472)
Let’s do a bit of a dive into debt and what is good debt in the real estate space. So I’m in DFW. I’ve spoken with people that are in Boston. Of course, that’s not New Hampshire, but I’m sure you have a sense of the area in DFW for specifically fix and flip strategy, single family residential. I’ve spoken with a number of people. I’m not a flipper myself, but I’ve worked on jobs where the flippers are present. The margins are getting slimmer.

Lumberjack Landlord (08:43.692)
Yeah, sure.

Dylan Silver (08:58.922)
Some people will say it’s not a profitable strategy any longer in DFW. Some people will say it is. You just have to buy the deal right. Other people are saying, well, that’s a risk because how do you know exit strategy, days on market, holding costs, know, over budget, so on and so forth. Would you take on debt to do a fix and flip in New England, really anywhere in New England for a single family residential?

Lumberjack Landlord (09:23.058)
Me, yes, but I’ve got 24 years experience and I’m going to absolutely bury the guy who thinks he’s going to keep up with me. Right. So from that perspective, it’s a win for me. I will ease. mean, I, I’m, I’m doing a fix and flip right now, but it’s because it came through an agent that knows I close came through a wholesaler that was like, yeah, I think I found this property. I think it’s a pretty good deal. And you know, it was an

unbelievable opportunity to look at it and just go this is what makes sense so I was able to buy it because I had connections I was able to buy it for the lowest price because they knew that I could stroke a check and close so they didn’t have to worry about that they didn’t have to worry about the well I’m gonna have to do some inspections first I do my own inspections why because I’ve done this for 23 years and I bought a hundred buildings and when I say a hundred buildings I mean mostly dupes duplexes triplexes and quads that’s mostly what I bought

So I buy some of bigger stuff, but my focus remains the smaller stuff because it’s very, very, very liquid. You know, in a down economy, you can still sell a duplex, triplex or a quadplex. The bigger stuff becomes more challenging in many cases because it’s a smaller pool of buyers and what you’re going to get for the place is based on how many units you have rented and what you’re getting for rent. On the residential side, on a two, three or four unit, it’s really based about the comps and what the last thing sold for.

And then a buyer is looking at it saying, I’m really concerned mostly about what my return on my capital is going to be. I call it the rock. So what’s my return on capital going to be? And that means that if I’m buying it for a little bit lower of a price, my rock is that much higher because I’m getting that much more rent than the numbers say that I should. So I think that there’s a lot of pieces to that that really lend itself. Well, I think people that are jumping in and trying to be flippers in this market that have never done it before, I think they’re insane.

Dylan Silver (11:04.577)
Right.

Dylan Silver (11:15.63)
Yeah, you’re gonna lose your shirt.

Lumberjack Landlord (11:16.942)
Well, I mean at the end of the day if you bought it, guess what? 10 guys like me said no. Now you’re gonna take all of your non-skill, all of your non-contacts, and you’re gonna try and make this work. Meanwhile, I’m actually doing a video, so you know on the Lumberjack Landlord channel, we’re doing a video where I actually show that we’re gonna have about 17 hours of my time making phone calls and text messages. 17 hours into one of my flips that I’ll make six figures of.

No newbies doing that and you make your money on the buy side, but you also need to be able to sell it. I don’t have debt. I stroke. I was able to stroke strike a check for this thing. So I think that’s where a lot of the newbie investors, I think that slow and steady wins the race. think too often people say, well, we we’ve finally earned a single family house. We want to live in a single family house. Take a little bit more pain for a year or two. Buy a duplex, buy a triplex, buy a quadplex, live there for a year.

and then move out and buy the next one and keep that and then get that thing rented out. That’s how you build an inexpensive. That’s how you inexpensively with low risk build a pretty decent size portfolio.

Dylan Silver (12:28.098)
How do you feel about people who are getting deals off the MLS, know, ready to take renters in, they’re getting a traditional mortgage? I’ve spoken with a couple people who have done that. To me, as a wholesaler with a wholesaler mentality, I’m like, why are they doing that? But I also see, apparently it’s working for them, even if it’s not cash flowing, it’ll sell it for a profit. What’s your general thought on it?

Lumberjack Landlord (12:54.808)
Yeah. So let me torch you a little bit on that. So it’s working. What’s working. You’re not making any money. Would you go to work every single day to not make any money? And just because like it’s okay. I’m learning the craft. And so just learning the craft is enough for me. No one would ever say that. No one goes to work for free for two years in hopes and expectation that they will have proven enough to their boss that they’re going to get promoted in two years. Why are we doing that with houses?

Dylan Silver (13:10.904)
Yeah.

Lumberjack Landlord (13:21.516)
Why is that a good idea? Why are we signing up for assets that we write a check every single month for to keep? So to me, that’s just the silliest notion I’ve ever heard. That’s just crazy to me. I do deals based on cashflow. That’s why I don’t have to worry about all these extenuating marketing and market circumstances. I do deals based on cashflow. That’s what I do. And that’s why my business thrives in bad times. I do just fine. In good times, it explodes and we reach another level.

Dylan Silver (13:49.848)
Let’s talk about acquisitions. Are you finding these deals on market, off market, mixed up both? I heard you mention wholesaler.

Lumberjack Landlord (13:56.862)
I will do everything short of illegal to get a deal, to find a deal. So we will buy through wholesalers. One of the things that we talk a lot about is your network being your net worth. I can pick up the phone right now and I can call 10 plumbers if I have an emergency. I can pick up the phone right now and I could say, hey, I need to buy something. I spent the afternoon one time. had a deal that was only a few days away from having supposed to be closing. It was a 1031.

And we had to name the property. People can find out all that stuff if they, you know, check me out, LumberjackLionLord, but on YouTube. But as they look at the deal, the deal fell apart and I had to replace the deal. All I did was spend the next six or seven hours on the phone calling every person that I knew going, hey, what do you have for me? Hey, what do you have for me? Hey, what do you, and guess what? I found a replacement deal. It wasn’t as good of a deal as the one I replaced, but it was still good enough.

And so if you look at what we always track is our last five deals and our last five deals right now are a couple of through a wholesaler. One of them that was on market and then one that was a pocket listing and then one that was a put up for sale by us, a city, you know, it was a, was an asset that the city was selling off. So we look at the key to getting regular traffic across your desk when it comes to deal flow.

is having a number of relationships and a number of different parts of the market where you’re consistently getting people that produce opportunity. You know, the guy goes, man, I only hit one home run this year. How many at bats did you get? Five. Well, that’s a really good number, but you’re not going to hit 20 home runs if you get five at bats. So for me, it’s just about at bats. I want as many at bats as I possibly can. And then through that process, you find, is this an opportunity that’s going to work?

Dylan Silver (15:54.574)
And you know, being the lumberjack landlord, you’re living rent-free in people’s heads. I have a mentor who’s doing this himself with his brand, right? And it really made me realize that the absurd or the outlandish is what people remember. And so that is like branding, in my mind, perfection. how many lumberjack landlords are there in the world? You know what I mean?

Lumberjack Landlord (15:57.006)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lumberjack Landlord (16:17.24)
Thank you.

Lumberjack Landlord (16:21.858)
I don’t know. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (16:23.214)
And you know, my mentor has a similar deal with his branding and it made me recognize, well, what can I do with my branding? So I have my personal brand and I imagine people see you, they see your logo, they see your look, they hear about you. And when they’re thinking about who do I send this deal to, they might forget the handful of contacts that they spoke with. But they remember they stored someone in their phone, Lumberjack Landlord, LL, they look it up, boom. And before you know it, and over a period of years,

You have people hitting you up that you don’t know who these people are, you don’t know how you met them, but they’re sending you deals, and now it’s like you don’t have to do any prospecting.

Lumberjack Landlord (16:59.822)
Nothing. mean, and that’s the thing is, it’s really relationship maintenance, you know, and these are people that I think the big thing is authenticity. You know, I’m not, I’m not in a, you know, $4,000 suit. Not that’s not how I dress. I dress like this flannel. I wear it until it gets too hot. So it is, know, and, and, you know, whether I need to or not, I’ll spend 500 bucks every three years on clothes. It’s easy. It’s an easy life, but I’m, I’m authentic.

Dylan Silver (17:11.288)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (17:27.66)
That’s it. Lumberjack Landlord, baby.

Lumberjack Landlord (17:30.028)
Yeah, I’m just authentic. I’m a landlord and the nickname came from working in tech and living in New Hampshire. Everyone’s and I came in and plaid one day and everyone’s like, what are you a lumberjack? And then that stuck. And so I just use that nickname. And then I was like, so they, you know, people would say, what’s going on? I was like, I’m like, I’m like, yeah, I, at least I can change the oil in my car, pal. You know, and.

Dylan Silver (17:51.714)
Yeah, that’s right, bud.

Lumberjack Landlord (17:53.162)
And so, that’s where, you know, that’s where the brand kind of came from. And, and for me, I was working a corporate America job and I couldn’t have them using any of the AI out there to see my face in a thumbnail somewhere. Right. Cause all those algorithms with people that you’re friends with on Facebook or things like that, like I was going to pop up in somebody’s feet eventually. Well, now I don’t because I was the lumberjack landlord and I had a cartoon avatar. That’s why I did it.

was because it was unsearchable and it wasn’t going to be a conversation I needed to have with the ownership that I worked with.

Dylan Silver (18:27.212)
Let’s pivot a bit here. Talking about New England real estate. So I’ve had a couple of investors on. You’re actually the first one that I’ve had in New England area who does single family residential fix and flips and is still doing that strategy. I’ve spoken with another gentleman based out of the Boston area who’s done that but has found that it’s hit and miss. And based on what I’m hearing you saying and I completely agree you have to buy it right.

If you’re not cash flowing, you know, or if you don’t have potentially multiple exit strategies, then this is what are we talking about here? It’s on a hope and a prayer that it’s just going to appreciate. Like, what are we talking about here? And so in your business and for your money’s worth, of course, no one has a crystal ball, right? But for your business and for your money’s worth, where do you see the future of the geographic landscape in America from, hey, this area is going to be

Lumberjack Landlord (18:57.134)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:25.09)
heavy fix and flip. This area is going to be heavy commercial. I’m in Texas. I’m in Denton. Right. So lots of development going on out here. We like to think that we’re the capital of, you know, real estate investing in the country for what that’s worth. And I don’t know if it’s true or not, but you have Florida saying Florida come here. You have Texas saying Texas come here. And frankly, originally from New Jersey, you have a lot of people in the East Coast who are saying like this is really expensive. And so just curious what your perspective is on all this.

Lumberjack Landlord (19:53.294)
Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, as time develops, you know, whether, when you look at, you know, Austin 25 or 30 years ago, it was like, keep Boston weird, keep it unique. And it was very, very, very tiny. Right. And, but then as people recognize how inexpensive it was, what did they do? Expand it out, expand it out. Like that urban sprawl. Um, I think that largely speaking, some of the rules for me being in New Hampshire, I had the chance to invest in Massachusetts and Maine as well.

Quite frankly, I hated the politics of the state from the perspective that every single swing, the state was against landlords. They wanted to make it difficult to evict people. They wanted to make it difficult to really get anything done. so, you know, lots of programs, so high taxes. So, you know, Maine has an income tax of seven and a half percent and Mass is right around there too. And New Hampshire has zero.

Maine has a big sales tax. Mass has a big sales tax. New Hampshire is zero. So what do we make up for it? We make up for it in property taxes. Well, what does that mean? That means I’m aligned with the state because what does the state want to make sure happens? That they get their property taxes. How do they know they’re going to get their paid their property taxes? Because they’re going to help me enforce rules and laws that ensure that my lease gets lived up to and that people pay their rent. And so I have the opportunity in my state to evict somebody in under 30 days. And that’s a pretty hard thing to find.

Dylan Silver (21:11.65)
aid.

Lumberjack Landlord (21:20.8)
Now, the state is aligned with me. Now, it doesn’t mean that I have any advantage other than I don’t have the state working against me. Right? And so when it comes down to it, what we’re trying to do is making sure that we can afford, you know, give people affordable housing. You can’t do that if you have 7 % not paying. can’t. And when a lot of times with a lot of landlords, you know, they’re after expenses.

Dylan Silver (21:39.596)
You can.

Lumberjack Landlord (21:45.806)
They’re making under 10 % anyway, if they give it to a property manager, I got bad news. Your property manager is making more from your property than you are. That’s the type of stuff that I stopped because, you know, people kept on coming at me and coming at me because I didn’t, I didn’t, it wasn’t a social media guy. wasn’t anything I did. got into it because of COVID and I was bored and my daughter had cancer. And so I had to have something else fill my time when my wife was at the hospital. And so, you know, going through that journey.

was something where I found people that I could share those experiences with. And so I started doing the lumberjack landlord thing, but you know, fast forward, you obviously don’t need to do a YouTube channel. You don’t need to become a lumberjack landlord or whatever you want to become. What you need to do is really, you know, trying to learn a craft. and when you’re trying to learn the investing craft, there’s a ton of voices out there that you can watch. And then based on what their success is and based on how they teach and if that’s the way that you learn.

That’s where you start to link up with them. We have a ton of stuff that we just put out for free. There’s certainly the stuff where people say, I want to accelerate my, I want to accelerate my journey. Okay, fine. We have that too. But a lot of people literally just watch for free and they just come and ask questions. do a live stream every week. It’s something I committed to, give back where we spend 90 minutes just answering people’s questions on the market. Um, and, and you know, Hey, I’m stuck on this or Hey, had a tenant say that, or Hey, I’ve got a project. Then what do I do here? And Hey, my, there, you know, the plumber saying this about my house.

Dylan Silver (23:02.126)
Wow.

Lumberjack Landlord (23:12.302)
And so we just answer every single question because at 23 years, we’ve got it all done. But I think there’s something systemically wrong in a system where a property manager makes more money than the owner of the asset. I think that’s a problem. right. So what we’ve done is we’ve demystified all the things where, you know, not saying that all property managers are not necessarily on the up and up, but a lot of them, a lot of them, complain about their property manager.

Dylan Silver (23:26.274)
Huge problem.

Dylan Silver (23:36.91)
Ha ha.

Lumberjack Landlord (23:41.016)
And they’re like, dear God, another month I made no money because this, that or the other had to be fixed or repaired. You know who consistently gets rich? The property manager. They consistently get rich and they’re making more money on your asset than you are. So we spend our time teaching people. There’s a billion people out there teaching. Here’s how you buy. Here’s how you buy. Here’s how you buy. What we spend our time on is here is how you manage your business. So many, 90 % of businesses go out of business. Well, this is why we teach.

Dylan Silver (24:03.502)
Mm.

Lumberjack Landlord (24:09.582)
Here’s how to run your real estate investment business. Here’s all the steps.

Dylan Silver (24:12.354)
And to your point, you know, it is a business, right? So when people are looking at it like, I’m in real estate, like it’s like a watch, you know, we talked about, you know, non-cash flowing. I’m in complete agreement with you. I’ve had people disagree with me on this, so I never know what type of guess I’m gonna have, so I tend to tread lightly, but I do understand, like, exactly your thought process, because it’s mine as well. If I’m losing money on a rental, what are we doing?

Lumberjack Landlord (24:15.681)
It is!

Lumberjack Landlord (24:40.716)
What are we doing here? I can literally do nothing and make more money. Why are we here?

Dylan Silver (24:40.77)
What are we doing? are we doing? Yeah, I mean, this idea that we’re going to guarantee that property values go up, like, we’re seeing it right now. That’s not a guarantee. And it’s just not.

Lumberjack Landlord (24:55.982)
They, can’t make that guarantee. Yeah. You can’t make that guarantee in a short period of time, right? Over time, rents always go up over time. Property values always go up over time. That’s what happens. But if you’re trying to say in the next six months, housing is going to go up. You don’t know that in the next 12 months, rents are going to go up. You don’t know that you have no idea. You no idea. So

Dylan Silver (25:18.882)
Year and a half. Yeah.

Lumberjack Landlord (25:22.386)
The longer you bring the time horizon out, the more reliability and predictability you can have in a forecast. And so for us, that’s why when we buy, we only buy cash flowing deals. Period. We only buy cash flowing deals. We like to do value add. So we like to make repairs and updates and do the things that need to be done to get to get, you know, affordable, make it an affordable rent, a rental, but also when it’s profitable. Cause that is the game.

And if you want to see your bank not lend to you on your second deal, make your first one unprofitable.

Dylan Silver (25:55.63)
Preach.

Lumberjack Landlord (25:55.648)
You need you need the bank’s money and the only way that me as a bank is going to give you money is if I know that you know what you’re supposed to do with that money, which is you’re supposed to send out those dollars and they’re supposed to bring back their friends. And if you’ve proven to me that you can’t do that and you’re just like, well, we’re an appreciation play. Well, I’m not listening to you anymore. Play because you you know.

Dylan Silver (26:10.307)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (26:17.816)
Yeah, banks are not in the business of owning real estate. They’re in the business of owning people, if you will.

Lumberjack Landlord (26:23.362)
Yes, they want to own, they want to know that the money that they give you has a high, has a high chance of being paid back because they don’t even want the asset. They just want to get paid back. They don’t want it. Correct. Correct.

Dylan Silver (26:32.152)
Yeah. They do not want the asset. They want your commitment. That is what they want. So when people talk about collateral, this is a whole other podcast. And I think that we should have you back to talk about this idea. When people talk about collateral as like this great thing to have, it is great, right? But the bank doesn’t want it. They do not want it. In fact, they…

Lumberjack Landlord (26:45.646)
Happy to.

Lumberjack Landlord (26:56.739)
No!

How much of a loss do they typically take? 40 %? They get killed.

Dylan Silver (27:01.046)
a huge loss. Right. And so, you know, most banks and I’m not a banker, but I know very few banks that have a real estate investing. Like I’ve never heard of you don’t go in a brick and mortar bank and see real estate investing branch. No, you don’t see that. So, you know, when when you’re taking on this debt and it’s like. You better be cash flowing, you better have an exit strategy, you better have a couple, you better know what you’re doing.

And if you don’t, you can go get the next one. But I would still say, for my money’s worth, you want to partner with people on that first deal. You want that first deal to have a good taste in your mouth. You don’t just want it to be a learning experience.

Lumberjack Landlord (27:43.15)
Yeah, I mean, I think the mistake that people make is, they’ll spend 20,000 bucks going off, trying to learn something. I’d rather see you spend the 20 grand in the actual asset and having spent a ton of your time getting as much free knowledge as possible. And if you find somebody that you really like, it’s like, okay, fine. Like the, do what we do for very little money because we want them putting it in the asset. I can run my entire 153 units and 53 buildings. can run the entire thing from my phone.

That’s what we teach people how to do because if you can do it with that low amount of drag, guess what? You can grow very quickly. The idea is we want steady, stable growth. We want people creating relationships with local banks because local banks charter is in the community of the community for the community. They’re there to help you. If you’re calling up some big national bank or a broker, they don’t give two rips about you. They’re looking at the deal. And if you’re not experienced,

They don’t give two rips about your deal. So I want to create relationship at the local bank level and local credit union level. I want to do owner rocks in the first few because I want to cut my teeth and I want to see the things that can go wrong that helped me better, learn and handicap what might occur in the future. and it can be a nice, reasonable, steady pace at the end of the day, everybody needs a place to live. So if you have to have a place to live, why not house act?

You might have roommates for a little bit, but who cares? You’re moving, you move from your parents’ house into a college dorm. You had roommates at your parents’ house, you have roommates at your college dorm. You then get out of college and just keep the rent low. What do you do? You either move home or you’re renting out with roommates. Why not stick with it a little bit longer, have saved up a little bit of money, just a few thousand dollars. When somebody says, housing’s so expensive, I can’t afford it. I just, helped a kid who was 24 years old.

24 years old he bought his first his first quadplex and At 24 years old bought his first quadplex moved in eight thousand eight hundred and fifty four dollars is what his down payment was If you can’t put eighty nine hundred bucks together. I’m sorry. You’re not ready to own a property You’re not but he did

Dylan Silver (30:00.718)
What do you think about if someone had $4,400 and they go in with a buddy and do $50, $50 on it and they both live there?

Lumberjack Landlord (30:08.322)
I think you can possibly do that. Me, me in particular, my personality, as you can probably imagine, doesn’t do great with partners. You know, because yeah, some people might, some people might, you know, see that yin and yang, right? They might say, Hey, this is the guy who’s really going to run the numbers, but this is the guy who’s really going to do the work. I didn’t mind being both. And so for me, it was, I didn’t have the only risk in the business then was me.

Dylan Silver (30:14.318)
But some people might, yeah.

Lumberjack Landlord (30:34.686)
I was the risk. So if I was still willing to work as hard as I could work, still get it done, then the likelihood of success was very high. And I didn’t have to depend on somebody else to live up to their end of the bargain. So most real estate relationships that I see that partner on deals at when you’re really big, that’s a different thing. But when you’re really small, you know, a lot of times those partnerships fizzle within a few years and

then you’re undoing all of the ties to each other. And that can be painful.

Dylan Silver (31:08.298)
It certainly can be. I’ve seen it more than a handful of times in the short time that I’ve been in the real estate space. We are coming up on time here though. Thank you so much for giving our listeners some value and some insight into your business. Where can folks go to get a hold of you?

Lumberjack Landlord (31:15.438)
Sure. Yeah.

Lumberjack Landlord (31:23.854)
So you can go right to Lumberjack Landlord on YouTube or on Instagram. We post stuff on Instagram. All my silly shenanigans out there in the field and stupid things that I do. Thursday nights, every single Thursday, 9 PM on the YouTube, we spend time for 90 minutes just answering people’s questions. Free of charge. We don’t charge anything. We just want you to come and hang out with us, answer your questions, have you feel part of the community. No one ever in my chats ever.

talks down to anybody because they remember what it was like to be there and that’s the most important thing to me is it’s a respectful community everybody’s pulling for everybody everybody celebrates each other’s deals and it’s awesome and so you know we’ve got about 11,000 subscribers and a couple hundred thousand views a month that we get to be a part of other people’s journey and that’s what’s that’s what gets me going now because I don’t know how many more deals I’m gonna do I still do great deals when they come by but great deals are tough to find and so

I do the great deals, but I spend a lot of time just helping people trying to get across and get there first.

Dylan Silver (32:26.946)
Lumberjack Landlord, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Lumberjack Landlord (32:30.114)
Happy to be here, my man.