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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Cory King, a real estate agent and investor based in Tennessee. Cory shares his journey into real estate, focusing on his strategies for working with investors, building a community for networking, and his future goals in the industry. He emphasizes the importance of relationships, community building, and the power of networking in achieving success in real estate investing.
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Cory King (00:00)
I would say really being the curator or host of one is where most of the opportunities lie or where they’ve come from.you know, there’s a little bit of that law of reciprocation that happens, right, is you spend just so much time giving and pouring into other people that there’s inevitably what will happen is come around people who want to go work and talk with the person hosting the party and at the front of the room and find a way to collaborate. And so I’m still finding that a majority of the opportunities that come our way are just from continuing just to give to other people. And so I’m excited to just continue to, you know, doubling down on that and just growing that network even more.
Michelle Kesil (02:08)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Cory King, who is an agent and investor in the Tennessee area, who also hosts a networking community for investors. So, excited to have you on the show today, Cory.Cory King (02:28)
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate you being here.Michelle Kesil (02:30)
I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching your business in terms of connecting, networking, and relationship building and all that you do. So let’s dive in.Cory King (02:43)
All right, let’s do it.Michelle Kesil (02:43)
First off, for those not yet familiar with you and your world, can you share what your main focus is?Cory King (02:49)
Sure, absolutely. So, my name is Cory King. I’m a real estate agent and investor. ⁓ Now, my main focus over the last, say, six years or so has been working pretty heavy in the real estate sales space. And I would say we really cater to the investor market. So if you’re eyeing investing here in East Tennessee, we definitely like to think we are the team of choice. We work to really specialize ourselves in that regards from folks that are maybe.just beginning their investing journey and, maybe looking at just getting into their first deal or looking to invest for their first deal out of state, or if they’re a seasoned investor, you’ve been in the game for a while. We like to think we’ve got the most well-connected resources available in this region by far, so we can help anybody at any level.
Michelle Kesil (03:31)
Awesome. And when you are supporting these investors, is that only in the Tennessee market?Cory King (03:38)
Yeah, mostly here in the Knoxville Metro market, I would say within about an hour to 90 minute radius of Knoxville. So that’ll include other major markets investors may look at, including the Smokies like the Sevierville Pigeon Forge Gatlinburg Cabin Market. That’s another big area of opportunity that we explore in as well. So would say the Knoxville Metro about an hour-ish radius, and that also includes the Smokies.Michelle Kesil (04:00)
Awesome. And how did you get started in your real estate career?Cory King (04:52)
Sure, sure. ⁓ So I like to throw it back even to 2009, just when I became a homeowner. I was 22, I was young, I got into that as, for me, I saw a lot of my peers were graduating college at the time and I didn’t go down that path. I just jumped into working full time after quitting high school and senior year. And so I was facing a bit of a challenge like, what do I have to show for myself at this point? And so for me, home ownership was the equal equivalent to a college degree.kind of like it was going to be a hundred grand in debt one way or the other. So let’s go with that one instead. That proved out to be really, really well. I started house hacking at that point, ⁓ AKA just roommates, right? In my early twenties, that was really fun. And then discovered a niche. This is in probably 2010, 11, 12 at some local auctions that were happening down in Florida. And they were selling cars, boats, tools, collectibles, and
I would go there for comic books and stuff like that, picking up collectibles, but I saw real estate was, was transacting. People were buying these vacant lots in subdivisions that had maybe crashed during the crash in 08. So you had all these half built subdivisions like all around and I could see like, okay, well, ⁓ you can buy the lot for say 3000 bucks and it’s selling still for eight to 10,000. Like there’s a, there’s an opportunity there. So like bought my first lot. it was a
Single lot like between two houses in a subdivision again, that was like halfway built. bought that quite literally went and like knocked on the doors of each neighbor said, Hey, you know, I’ve got this lot next to you. Um, Zillow says it’s worth 10, you know, you take eight and closed it. And that was a big aha for me. It’s like, Oh, there’s a, there’s a model here. There’s a way to kind of arbitrage this. And so did that for a couple of years, which was a lot of fun. And then, uh, fast forward, I guess now to when, um,
I was a restaurant owner operator there in Florida. So I sold off part of that business, moved here to the East Tennessee market with my now wife and knew I didn’t want to stay in restaurants. And so I liked what ⁓ real estate could do and dabbling in that. I’d had some peers that were real estate agents and some of that was a little bit of like, well, so-and-so could do it. Like, so could I. So that led me to getting my license and just jumping in with both feet ⁓ here as a real estate agent in this market.
I say I’ve been pretty investing since then as well. I as I was building my sales business, I was also investing as well.
Michelle Kesil (07:19)
Awesome. As far as investing, what type of investing strategies have you been diving into?Cory King (07:26)
So a lot of fix and flip and buy and hold has been my main strategies. I really identified a few key zip codes that I just personally liked. I could see sort of where the ball was headed, just kind of an advantage of being a real estate agent, right? As you’ve got boots on the ground to peel, you’re around the stuff all the time. And as the market was moving and changing, I could at least see where things are headed towards.And so I was strategically buying in the zip codes that at least gave me options. I can be, I’m willing to take risks, but I would otherwise say I’m fairly like risk averse. So anything I would take on as a fix and flip, well, I always have the backup plan that I, I can always hold this if the numbers don’t quite shake out to where they need to be, I can always rent it out. And I still operate under those same principles. I generally don’t take on a project to flip it.
if I’m not at least willing to keep it as a rental. Those are the two prime strategies that I use. I do some wholesaling and assignments from time to time. It’s not been a major focus of my business. I’d say maybe half a dozen, you know, assignments a year. I do on average, the rest of it’s just facilitating sales or then just doing some fix and flips and you know, buy and hold. I would like to get into the…
new construction and build to sell, build to rent space in this next year. I think that there’s a big area of opportunity in that. having now flipped a bunch of these older houses, ⁓ it seems a lot nicer just to go start from scratch than going and undoing all the work in some 80 year old house that you’re going to have to put everything back together anyway. It just seems more cost efficient and ⁓
know, less stressful to just go start from scratch and build new.
Michelle Kesil (09:11)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome that you were able to dive right in as an investor as well.Cory King (09:53)
It was a lot of fun and I saw the opportunities. I really, would get, I got to give a lot of props and love out to one of my, I’d say first real investor clients was a guy Declan out of California. I had this listing here in Knoxville that was a real kind of Frankenstein of a triplex, really just ugly property. And I was like, nobody.here’s gonna buy this thing, right? So I didn’t know what I didn’t know early on in sales and you’re just throwing stuff at a wall and so I took that property and put together an ad and threw a $10 ad in Los Angeles, California. Just let’s see what happens if I throw something into a big old pond and got Declan, he called me up. Now he didn’t buy that property, somebody else relocated me to the area eventually did. But he was looking to invest in the area. He’d heard good things.
He sold a condo in San Diego that he was looking to attend their new one exchange and defer some of those capital gains. So he and I partnered up to help him go build a portfolio here. This is a guy who’d never been to Knoxville before ever. He was willing to work with me, put a lot of trust in me to go help him out build this out. And so over the course of less than a year, honestly, he bought six properties or so.
with me in that timeframe, which was awesome because it also allowed me to go be a, you know, de facto project manager for him. I learned a lot about the local real estate, you know, scene, shadowing home inspectors on all those crawling up under the houses, helping evaluate everything. So it helped me get a real crash course in, you know, investing in this area. And so from there was where I saw the opportunity was to go scale that out.
I looked around like, hey, nobody’s really servicing this niche, at least at a very high level. Certainly plenty of investors will say that they work with investors and stuff, but nobody really had projected that out from say a marketing perspective or had really seemed to ⁓ be the investor themselves, even as an agent with that. would have all of the resources, like that became the mission. like, well, how can I just go be
the one stop shop for somebody that’s investing in this area. If I have all of the connections that you would ever need, every contractor, every cleaner, every lender, private capital, traditional money, like everything. And so that became the mission was just let’s go build that out. And that’s what we’ve been able to do, which has been awesome.
Michelle Kesil (12:24)
Yeah, definitely. That is so awesome that you were able to find that niche and support those people.Cory King (12:30)
Yeah, definitely the niches are in the riches as they say, Or the riches in the niches, yeah.Michelle Kesil (12:33)
YeahSo what do you feel are some keys that have made the biggest difference in allowing your business to be able to grow and to continue to run smoothly?
Cory King (12:45)
Sure. So I would say one key thing that’s helped us really be able to consistently grow and what helps keep us growing and evolving is the investor community that we put together. And so about four and a half years ago, my business partner and I launched an expansion of Grid Investor, which Grid is a national investor network and meetup group that meets in different markets.⁓ having just local meetups or taking a national network and bringing it down to a hyper local level. And so we opened this up here in Knoxville, coming a little bit off of necessity. I would go to some of these meetups here in town and it was a lot of these, you know, old timers, you know, talking around how they bottle these houses for a couple of bottle caps and nobody would ever tell you where they find the deal, where they find the money, what contractors they use, like what were the resources. It was just very just gatekeeping community.
And I didn’t really like that. I didn’t vibe with that at all. And so in the spirit of like field of dreams, you know, if you build it, they will come. We launched ours and that was in June of 2021. And that started off as 11 of us on a zoom call because at 2021, it was still pandemic and no one knew, can we get together? Can we not like, are the rules here? ⁓ so it started off, you know, online like this, just 11 of us on a zoom call talking about how to build your dream team.
Like who do you need to have in your corner if you’re going to invest in real estate? So we started with that. We then started moving into what we call a hybrid format. So live streaming online first on say like zoom and then to Facebook live. Now we’re on YouTube every single month, which is really fun. And it started to grow. You know, we had a bit by bit, you know, first, the first time we got together, we had, you know, half a dozen or people in the room, half a dozen people online.
We have been through the pains before of throwing an event and nobody showed up. You can find that video on YouTube. If you go search the grid Knoxville or grid investor, you’ll find that video. It’s the first time we talk about syndications, more sophisticated topic for investors, especially the brand new. And yeah, it’s me talking to the camera and there’s no one in the room whatsoever, which was a ⁓ humbling experience.
For those who have thrown events, like it’s kind of the worst fear, right? It’s like, what happens if I throw this party and nobody shows up? I’ve been there, right? But I would say a key point to that is we just never quit. We’ve never missed ever. It’s always the same day, same time, every single month. We don’t miss no matter what. And just that continuation of working to get better every single month, looking to keep growing is what allowed us to really just.
continue to grow. We started to outgrow that room and we got to 30 people, 40 people, 50 people in that room. We had to go find a new venue. Now we average anywhere between 80 to 100 people every single month. And we’ve topped out, I wanna say probably our biggest was 150, 160 people in the room, which has been awesome. And then now we stream online as well, just to continue to expand our audience. And I’d say that’s been probably the single biggest driver.
for us in our business is just growing that community and being a part of it all so that we’re able to, as we know that as we grow that, like the more opportunities come for everybody. Like it’s not a selfish endeavor at all. One of my favorite things is actually seeing all of the different ventures and businesses and deals that happen in that room that, you know, I’m not necessarily a part of it. It’s fine for me, right? I just like seeing my friends win at the end of the day.
Michelle Kesil (16:59)
Yeah, that’s amazing that you were able to create a space where everyone can get some opportunities.Cory King (17:06)
Mm-hmm.It’s been awesome.
Michelle Kesil (17:08)
Definitely. So what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next in your business?Cory King (17:15)
Sure.Probably the next thing we’re working on scaling or growing because we’ve now been building out our sales team for the last two and a half years and that’s been awesome. That’s been a great journey for me as a leader to go on. The next big thing we’re looking at really opening is our own acquisition arm. So our own, you we buy homes cash mofer. That’s a whole other separate sales team and separate sales business.
That I’m going start building out here started this year, which I’m super excited about as well, because I think, well, hey, now we’ve got this massive list and buyer pool and everything ready to go. So now let’s just go build out the acquisition arm that can just feed deals directly. And that’ll be one of the one of the additional benefits for being part of this local community is how you’ve got immediate deal flow that.
others might not see, right? We get something that we can feed things directly into and if anybody within that group say doesn’t buy it, well then cool, then we’ll shop it out to a broader audience. But that’s the next, say, big arm or lever that we’re getting ready to pull and I’m stoked for it.
Michelle Kesil (18:14)
Yeah, that is so cool that you guys are working on all of these facets of the business.Cory King (18:21)
Yeah, it’s ⁓ it’s the biggest area of opportunity. Like I see first just really like add something that will just be another multiplier for us.Michelle Kesil (18:28)
Definitely. You’ve mentioned that networking is something that you find really supportive. What aspects of networking do you feel have made the biggest difference in your journey?Cory King (18:43)
That’s really good question. ⁓Let’s see, biggest difference. ⁓ I mean, definitely I would say there’s just plenty of opportunities to come through from just being, say, the host of the party, right? In throwing a network. I also go to other meetups, we’re a member of the National, of our local home builder association. And so I work to go to their meetup every single month as well as a way to expand it. So I try to join other networks, but
I would say really being the curator or host of one is where most of the opportunities lie or where they’ve come from.
you know, there’s a little bit of that law of reciprocation that happens, right, is you spend just so much time giving and pouring into other people that there’s inevitably what will happen is come around people who want to go work and talk with the person hosting the party and at the front of the room and find a way to collaborate. And so I’m still finding that a majority of the opportunities that come our way are just from continuing just to give to other people. And so I’m excited to just continue to, you know, doubling down on that and just growing that network even more.
I’d say that being part of a network allows you to scale or grow quicker. You come in with the right intentions, which I’m a big fan of the book, The Go Giver. So if you’ve not read that, I highly recommend check that out because it really is just all about that. Like givers gain, go and just provide value, give everything away. The universe will take care of itself, right? The universe provides and I found that to be equally true. So.
You have to have the right mindset when you’re going to go into a networking space and don’t think of it as what can this other person do for me? Like it’s fact that the opposite is just like, what can I do for them? Like asking people, what are you excited about right now? Who’s a good connection for you? Because you likely know somebody you can connect them to. And that’s how it scales and grows is being the one to make the connections.
Michelle Kesil (20:28)
Yeah, definitely. There’s so many ways you can add value in people’s lives and create new relationships. Awesome. So do you have any goals as it comes to the investing side of your business and growing that?Cory King (20:32)
That’s right.Sure, yeah. So the goal for me personally on my own investing side is to continue to grow the portfolio. Right. We’ve got about half a dozen rentals right now. We’re taking our first foray into the multifamily space right now. I was able to structure a creative financing called a lease option strategy for an apartment building here in Knox, which I’m very excited for a little nervous, but but in an excited way. So I’m excited to really continue to grow that.
I’m not in a position where I necessarily need the cash flow to live off of. I don’t buy bad deals. I don’t buy things that are going to lose money just fundamentally. But I’m not in a position in life where I’m trying to complete this. ⁓ Internally, we call it the income flip, where your passive income offsets your monthly burn.
I’ve been able to hit that point, but I’m not at a point where I’m ready to just like stay, step away and retire. So I’m very much in a building phase. I’ve still got young kids. I’m playing a game for when my wife and I are empty nesters and where do I want to be at that time? So goals right now is really just to continue to, build and acquire. Most everything we have is in the Knoxville metro area. I imagine it’ll stay that way for a little bit. Although I am starting to explore some other markets and looking into some areas in like Ohio, for example, where
It’s a trade-off. You don’t necessarily get the steady appreciation that you might in some other markets, but you’ll get pretty good cash flow. And so I’m looking to explore some of those other areas, maybe balance portfolio out a little bit that way. But that’s also what leads me into looking into locally getting into the build to rent or build to sell space because a lot of our inventory locally is older and
You know, I don’t really want to buy right now houses that are say 80 years old that are going to be 100 plus when I’m ready to sell them. Like at that point, I’d rather just build something new and when I’m ready to sell it great. It’s 20 years old at that point as opposed to what it’ll be, you know, 80 or a hundred.
Michelle Kesil (22:49)
Awesome, thank you for sharing that, that is exciting.Cory King (22:52)
It’s been really cool.Michelle Kesil (22:53)
Yeah. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more. Where can people find you and connect with you?Cory King (23:00)
Sure, absolutely. So I am across all socials. If you search Cory King, you can find me on Facebook, can find me on Instagram, YouTube. I’m starting to build out the YouTube channel as well. So you can find me there and you can also find me through our website. That’s ⁓ thecazagroup.com. That’s C-A-Z-A group.com. You can find me on there as well.Michelle Kesil (23:22)
Perfect. Appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here. Sure. And for those tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Cory who are building real businesses, and we’ll see you on the next episode.Cory King (23:26)
My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
