Real Estate Investing Strategies for Any Market

Brandon Jarvela (00:00)
The real estate market is just like the stock market or, you know, anything else, it ebbs and flows. What I’ve learned over the years is learn how to make money in both sides of it. So whether the market’s up or the market’s down. We have such an in-depth approach on our market analysis do this research about every 60 to 90 days and adjust our geo targeting.

Just go wherever the money’s going. Is one thing that gives us a upper hand in this business

Erika (01:56)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Brandon Jarvela, the powerhouse behind JGM Homebuyers. Brandon’s been crushing it in the real estate investing space, and I can’t wait for him to share his story. Brandon, it’s awesome to have you on the show today.

Brandon Jarvela (02:16)
Thank you. Thank you, Erika.

It’s great to be on the show.

Erika (02:21)
So

let’s dive on in.

Yeah, totally. So Brandon, give us the rundown. How did you get started in real estate? When did you know that this was going to be your lane?

Brandon Jarvela (02:36)
So when I knew this was gonna be kind of my lane was probably not until I did my first deal to be honest, but I came out of the military, I did eight years in the Navy, spent some time overseas, ⁓ about three years accumulative over in the Middle East. And while I was away, I took a bunch of books with me. One of them was on real estate, the rest of them were just about entrepreneurship in general.

And ⁓ I just thought it was really great concept, mean building wealth through real estate. But I didn’t do anything with it. It took me over a decade to decide to pull the trigger on anything. And through that process, I had matured a lot, had built a lot of different businesses, a lot of businesses that failed, a lot of businesses, just a lot of learning lessons along the way. And then my ⁓ last company that I had started, it was a lot of affiliate marketing.

While I was working as an engineer full-time, I’d already left the military. I working 60, 70 hours a week in engineering and was just kind of at a brick wall where I knew I had no time, very, you know, ⁓ little money. mean, making good money as an engineer, but I mean, it’s going, it’s all going somewhere. So, and I just needed something where I could get my time back and make more money and, you know, be able to be a real business owner.

That’s when I kinda put the brakes on with my other business after we kinda plateaued and started to fall back. I got into real estate, started looking back into that. The author of one of the books that I took with me, I reached out to him, asked me if he would take me up under his wing, and of course he said yes, and it was very fortunate that he did, because within six months he taught me how to leave the engineering job, go full time in this, and it’s just been

great ever since. So would say it took me about ⁓ five months actually doing real estate, getting my first deal to actually find out that this was what I wanted to ⁓ do and build wealth on.

Erika (04:50)
Yeah, what’s your main focus these days at JGM Homebuyers?

Brandon Jarvela (04:55)
So our main focus is really just scaling the brand out,

helping as many distressed homeowners as possible be able to move their homes. We work with lot of probates, a lot of foreclosures, people in distressed situations like probates, inherited properties, things like that. ⁓ People come to us because they don’t want to go through the traditional process of listing with the realtor on their own and dealing with the headaches of having to fix things and clean things up and…

So this is where we come in and we offer our services ⁓ and essentially help them kind of streamline that process. ⁓ We’re not agents ourselves, but we do work very closely with agents. We contract our agents and work very closely with them. And so we locate buyers. We find the perfect buyer for their home. And that’s what we do. We marry them together. So just scaling the company out.

helping as many distressed homeowners as we can and as many hungry buyers as we can as well. So we are focused on building the team out more, scaling more, so we can help more.

Erika (06:58)
interesting. You’re operating in Memphis, Tennessee, which has its own unique market. What’s one thing about that market that has been a game changer for your strategy?

Brandon Jarvela (07:09)
Well, we’re operating out of Scottsdale, Arizona.

Erika (07:14)
I’m sorry about that. I must’ve had the wrong notes. All right, everyone. He’s from Scottsdale.

Brandon Jarvela (07:14)
Scott’s down. That’s okay.

Scottsdale Arizona this you know we were actually previously out of Richmond, Virginia up until Little less than a year ago ⁓ And the reason why we move We do nationwide work, so we’re just we’re just housed in one location, but we’re all over the country so

Erika (07:32)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, you guys do nationwide work.

Brandon Jarvela (07:48)
Yeah

Erika (07:48)
Got it, got it. So with all the deals that you’ve been doing, I know you’ve been operating at quite the volume. Like what’s the secret to keeping that going?

Do you have any systems or strategies for that?

Brandon Jarvela (08:04)
Yeah, mean, ⁓ always adapting to the market. you know, there is

real estate market is just like the stock market or, you know, anything else, it ebbs and flows.

it has its up times, it has its down times. What is

what I’ve learned over the years is learn how to make money in both sides of it. So whether the market’s up or the market’s down.

And so what I love about our business model is it’s very fluid. So ⁓

There are some markets that we, you that do much better than other ones at different parts, during different parts of the timeline. So, for example,

we have such an in-depth approach on our market analysis and our geo-targeting and where do we find these deals? What states or what metros do we need to be in to find the best deals in real estate?

You know, and so we’re in a lot of territories right now.

because

do this research about every 60 to 90 days and adjust our geo targeting.

A lot of the locations we’re in today, maybe 12 months ago, we weren’t in and some of the locations we were in 12 months ago, ⁓ we might’ve pulled out of because of where their current markets are at right now. ⁓

is one thing that gives us a upper hand in this business

for sure. We pretty

just go wherever the money’s going.

Erika (09:26)
Absolutely. What’s your advice to someone who is wanting to find those undervalued properties and you know, they’re also looking for healthy returns?

Brandon Jarvela (09:35)
Yeah, just become an absolute student of this business, be an absolute student of the market. I’m always learning something new every single day and I think I will be learning something new every day for the rest of my life. That’s the approach that you have to have, just be a sponge and learn what you can. ⁓ But that’s… ⁓

That’s probably the best approach to this business is ⁓ just learning everything you can, not just about the market, but about properties themselves and ⁓ knowing how to pivot, maybe different strategies when you can. ⁓ Keep things as simple as possible. I’ve seen people get into this business and they wanna try every method there is out there to move a property, but if you just find one thing, one process that works,

Become a master of that process and don’t focus on anything else. Just become a master of that one thing and build that as far as you can. I think that’s probably the best thing. Just a laser focus on one strategy and stick with it. Don’t throw in the towel too soon.

That’s the other flip side to it. It took me five months to do my first deal. I was a little bit hard headed my first three months of doing it. But once I got past being hard headed with my coach, I was able to ⁓ drop some barriers down and really take off. So having a good mentor and having a really good coach to also be able to walk you through.

through the processes is extremely important. That’s what helped me get successful a lot faster was using my mentor, my coach as a cheat code, because I get to learn from 20 years of experience things that he’s done wrong, things that he’s done right, and I can just take the things that he’s done wrong, not do those things, the things he’s done right, just do those things.

Erika (12:22)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s talk about your own experience. Every investor has some notable story. Can you share a moment where a deal went sideways or you had the pivot fast?

Brandon Jarvela (12:37)
Hmm, a deal that went sideways where we had to pivot fast. ⁓

You know, I would say…

⁓ we actually went through with? Let’s see. ⁓ I would say there was this one property out of

out of Virginia where there was a woman, she had no family, she had no friends, she’s an elderly woman, she really had nobody to help her or help take care of her. She was ⁓ paralyzed for the waist down, so she’s in a wheelchair and she lives in a two story house and her husband had passed away some time ago. So she’s in this big old house, nobody to help her ⁓ and just totally

not sure what to do. ⁓ Now we had come in and talked to her and just really dug into how we could help her. That’s the main thing of what we, know, is how we do everything is figuring out how we can help ⁓ a homeowner. Our profit just becomes a byproduct of the solutions we’re able to solve and help people with. So her thing was she wanted to move.

45 minutes to the next city, you know, and she needed a downside. She needed a place that she could take care of, that she could get around in. And then the challenging part was ⁓ finding a property for her to buy while she sells her current one and she doesn’t have to be homeless for an amount of time or anything crazy like that. So we came in and well,

She did have some people that came to her. This is where it started to go south. She had some people come to her and basically say, you don’t want to work with these people. This is not normal. You need to go work with a real estate agent. They sound very sketchy and you don’t want to wind up losing your house or losing your equity in the end.

we had to come in and basically have a conversation with her.

and really just set her at ease. So trust is a big factor in what we do because what we do is very unorthodox. There’s not many people out here that are doing what we do. ⁓ And to set her at ease, what we basically had to do was have a whole conversation of, hey, we are finding you the perfect house. We had people come in to pick her up so she could go look at houses that she liked, but we even took it a few steps further. It’s like, hey, if we find the perfect house,

You know, it’s a two bedroom, one bathroom, I think is what she wanted. It’s a perfect house, small enough for you to maintain and not so big that it’s too much for you. That ⁓ if it doesn’t have a ramp, we’ll build a ramp for you. You know, so she’s in a wheelchair so she can get up and down. ⁓ We were delivering groceries for her. ⁓ She had just gotten out of surgery so ⁓ it was hard for her to get around. We’re delivering groceries for her, just really… ⁓

going above and beyond to help us sell her out. And ultimately, we did get to sell her house at the end of the day. She got financially what she needed out of it. We were able to build a ramp on her house, get her into the new house.

yeah. So we’ve had similar situations like that where maybe a third party will come in and try to sway the homeowner to go a different direction.

because ⁓ it’s just not normal. yeah, so that’s an example.

Erika (17:23)
Yeah, what’s been like your takeaway from moments like that? how does it inform like what you do in the future?

Brandon Jarvela (17:32)
Well, I think that when we run into scenarios like that, not every deal is like that. mean, some of them are just really easy, just in and out. The seller gets paid, we get paid, house sells at the end of the day, everybody’s happy. But when we run into scenarios like that, we really have to stop and slow down and talk amongst each other, talk with the seller, and figure out how to get a little bit creative

what we can do.

to help somebody out. ⁓ I mean, I have another example of a guy. mean, he had three wives, two of them passed away on him. The third one had just left him. He’s in his 70s. He had Parkinson’s and just really kind of tore up. He had three kids that all lived in different states. And when I talked to the gentleman, we asked him, said,

what is it that you really want to get out of this at the end of the day? And he said, you know, if I could just sell my house, buy a new truck, get a trailer, maybe have some play money, I can go around, I’ll go see my kids, maybe I’ll drive around the country. And so the deal was, hey, how about this? How about we help you sell your new house? We’ll help you pick out the truck that you want, pick out the trailer. And he was all over it.

you know, got what he needed financially out of it and he’s able to drive around now, go see his kids, travel. But those are scenarios where we have to slow down and think about, know, and ask them really good questions. What do really want at the end of the day? And then figure out how to bridge the gap between point A, where they’re currently at, to point B, where they want to be, and then we’re that bridge between those two points.

Erika (19:30)
Yeah, absolutely. Britton, I also wanted to ask you about networking. As I’m sure you know, building relationships in this industry is so important. What has been the biggest game changer for you? Like what kind of relationships, what kind of groups do you recommend people joining who are new to the game?

Brandon Jarvela (19:52)
Well, there’s a lot of groups out here and there’s two sides to it. you can find a million people teaching a million different things on YouTube and there’s a lot of ⁓ people that will teach but they don’t do and there’s people that do but they also teach. So first of all, finding somebody, ⁓ you always have to have a mentor, have a coach. It doesn’t matter how high you get on the ladder.

You know, some of the top, top guys that I know, eight figure, you know, even nine figure producers still have mentors and people they look up to and get, you know, get advice from. So, ⁓ making sure that you never get too big, you know, for your, for your shoes or be the, be the big fish in the small pond. have a really good friend who just moved to Arizona from Cancun, Mexico, because he was one of the most successful people in Mexico. He’s like, man, I got to get around people who are doing better than me.

So it stretches you. But finding somebody who can teach you, again, like I was talking about by Beto earlier, they can teach you the things not to do and teach you the things to do. But then also getting around into a community, into masterminds of people that are in the same fight that you’re in.

So they want the same things, maybe not the same exact things that you want, but everybody wants more time. Everybody wants more freedom. Everybody wants more money. Maybe the things that are on the other side of that look different, but find a good group, a good integralful group, people who operate out of integrity and are honest and a good, pure… ⁓

positive culture, uplifting, encouraging. ⁓ There’s a lot of them out there. But ⁓ getting into an environment like that will stretch you more than anything else. I’ve seen people try to build a business like this without a mentor, without a community, and they get burnt out really fast. Because they get stuck, and they don’t know where else to go. So I would say that’s the, that’s probably the best.

best advice I have for that.

Erika (22:16)
Yeah,

absolutely.

And Brandon, what’s the next big milestone that you’re aiming for?

Brandon Jarvela (22:26)
Our next big milestone is we are working towards our first $4 million year. In order to do that, we have to scale with the right people, ⁓ which ⁓ has always been a challenge, is ⁓ trying to find the right people to fill the right seats. And so it’s a process that we’re constantly improving on. But our big milestone is, again, hitting that $4 million mark and then continuing to increase from there.

helping as many people as we can along the way. And then we also want to implement a lot of charity organizations into what we do.

And so there’s a lot of things that then trickle off from that.

Erika (23:18)
That’s exciting, Brandon. Before we let you go, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about JGM Homebuyers, or explore a deal together, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Brandon Jarvela (23:30)
sure they can reach out to me my Instagram handle is at Brandon Jarvela. They can find me on Instagram, find me on Facebook. We are currently starting to work out our YouTube page. So eventually we’ll be posting on YouTube. But all they have to do is shoot a DM and either myself or I have social media managers. One of us would reach out to that person through a DM and we could connect that way and see how we could help each other.

Erika (24:01)
Brandon, thank you so much for dropping all this knowledge today.

Brandon Jarvela (24:05)
Awesome. Thanks Erika.

Erika (24:08)
for everyone listening. If you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations coming up with heavy hitters like Brandon who are building incredible real estate empires. We’ll see you on the next episode.