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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel Podcast, host Leo Wehdeking interviews Ben Magnie, a successful real estate investor and consultant. Ben shares his journey from starting in real estate at a young age to building a substantial portfolio and transitioning into consulting. He emphasizes the importance of hard work, understanding market dynamics, and helping others navigate the complexities of real estate investment. The conversation also touches on the significance of building relationships and providing value in the industry.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Ben Magnie (00:00)
Yeah, so we bought quite a bit of property between 2006 to 2011. We went from having like eight units in 2006 to 200 units in 2012. And this is during the downturn. So we had a moment in 2012 where we…My father still talks about he didn’t know if we were gonna go under at that time because our buildings weren’t worth anything. Because you couldn’t sell anything. So we knew that the only thing that was gonna get us through is, maybe it seems trite, but is hard work.
Leo Wehdeking (02:12)
everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Leo Wehdeking, and today I am joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Ben Magnie. Magnie, yeah, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate industry. Ben, I’m glad to have you here, man.Ben Magnie (02:28)
Glad to be with you,Leo Wehdeking (02:29)
Thank you, thank you. Ben, I think that our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’ve been approaching the real estate business for a long time, all right? So let’s dive in and for people who may not be familiar with your world, can you tell us what is your main focus these days?Ben Magnie (02:46)
So my main focus these days is helping people build their own real estate portfolio. It’s something that I did for many, many years and had a lot of success at, but my true passion is teaching. And so now the thing I get the most out of is helping other people build their own real estate portfolios.Leo Wehdeking (03:06)
Alright, cool man, cool, cool. Now, what markets are you operating in?Ben Magnie (03:11)
So I live basically in the Tampa Bay area. Technically I’m in Pinellas County, which is kind of the St. Pete area. the greater Tampa Bay area is where I’m at as a realtor. that is the, I’ve found as a realtor, it doesn’t work to go too far because in order to give the best service to my clients, I need to know this block.versus that block, this neighborhood versus that neighborhood. I’m not BlackRock or someone who’s trying to spend a trillion dollars in trying to decide if they’re going to Austin versus New York. For most people, if you wanna invest, you need to know the area. So you need a realtor who knows actually what’s happening in this city. So that’s where I’m doing as a realtor as…
As an investor, we have about 50 doors in the Pinellas County area. We used to have about 180 in Kansas City, Missouri. I also own some vacation rentals in Blue Ridge, Georgia, and I used to own some commercial property in Denver, Colorado.
Leo Wehdeking (04:17)
Ben, actually something that caught my attention about you was your early starting in real estate. Can you tell the audience?How is it that you were able to begin at such a young age and now you’re turning 40, alright? And you are moving or transitioning from as a real estate agent, which is how you started, and now you are a real estate consultant guy, right?
Ben Magnie (04:45)
Yeah,yeah, yeah. So right now I’m in the middle of transitioning more into the consulting and in course creation to help a much more broad group of people as opposed to as a realtor, can help basically people who live in my city. But I started as a real estate investor and really when I was 15 years old, my dad bought a small apartment building.
and he put me to work and I worked my butt off and I complained and he told me to just keep on working and I’d work about 60, 70, 80 hours a week over the summers in this eight unit property. And that was something that I just really got at a young age is hard work from my father and that type of discipline. But it started small. We bought an apartment building and then there was another eight units.
that we bought and about the time I was in my early 20s and I was finishing off college, we got some investors together and we started buying properties in Kansas City, Missouri. But really the thing is, is we were willing to do the work and that is something that I don’t think a lot of people get is that if you’re willing to get your hands dirty and
actually mean literally because we managed our own properties we had opportunities to buy properties that we wouldn’t have if if we just wanted to hand it off to a property manager and have nothing to do with it a lot of the deals we bought wouldn’t have made sense the only reason that they financially made sense and how we were able to get our foot in the door I was cleaning the halls I was painting
I was getting up in the rafters and just doing all sorts of work and running wire to save a couple of bucks for the electrician. I can run the wire in the attic for you kind of a thing. And so we were able to build a portfolio mostly because we worked our butts off and we were willing to do the work now. When we got bigger, we made more money than we can hand it off, but we could have never done it if we didn’t.
literally go in there and clean apartments and do stuff like that ourselves to get going.
Leo Wehdeking (07:44)
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, actually that’s not easy, man. That’s not easy. Now, Ben, what’s been the recipe, you know, to keep your business running smoothly?Ben Magnie (07:55)
So I think that really one of the biggest lessons that we’ve learned over our careers is when we got into this business, we put a lot of attention on how the numbers look today. So everybody’s looking at proformance, everyone’s looking at the spreadsheet and going, where’s the rent at? Where are the expenses at? there’s actually a specific thing that happened thatI always will look back at is in 2006 we bought two properties in the same city, 24 units and 26 units. In 2006 we bought them. They looked similar on paper in terms of their income versus expense ratios.
but we sold them both 11 years later and when we sold them after running them, run by the same company, by us, run the same way, one of them had appreciated more than double the rate of the other and the revenue from one was substantially better than the other because one was in a good neighborhood and one was not. And that drastically changed how I think about my portfolio, but also how I help other people.
is that when you buy properties, the most important thing that you can do is buy properties where the appreciation and the rent growth are going to be more, you know, at like a steeper trajectory because we bought properties that didn’t do well. And in retrospect, we should have known that it was kind of a funky building and a funky area and it was never going to be worth that much.
We’ve actually been wrong several times over our career, but if you buy in a neighborhood and you buy a building where the rents are going to go like this, even if you, the numbers don’t look as good as you want on day one, by day, you know, by year three or four, you’re doing pretty good. And by year 10, you’re a genius. And so we’re in it for the long haul. We’re not flippers.
So we know if we buy the right properties, we’re going to be very right in the future. And that is like my stable concept for all real estate, buy the right asset.
Leo Wehdeking (10:35)
All right, man. All right. Now talking, you know, a little bit about what you were saying. I know that every operator has a moment where things got real. All right. Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that they had to people real fast. Do you mind sharing one of those moments?Ben Magnie (10:51)
Yeah, so we bought quite a bit of property between 2006 to 2011. We went from having like eight units in 2006 to 200 units in 2012. And this is during the downturn. So we had a moment in 2012 where we…My father still talks about he didn’t know if we were gonna go under at that time because our buildings weren’t worth anything. Because you couldn’t sell anything. So we knew that the only thing that was gonna get us through is, maybe it seems trite, but is hard work.
The thing that really pushed us to go through is because we’re not slippers and because we’re not that concerned at any given moment of, what’s the value?
that, you know, it’s the reason that I don’t do well with the stock market, because I just look at my stock price every day and then, and I get nervous. But when you own property, you know that you just need to, to just put your head down. And what we did is we continue to make our properties better. It really was one of the stable ideas that we always have is even in rough times,
If you’re improving your properties and continuing to invest in them, you know, there are dips, but it’s gonna go back up. But we had to just put our heads down and keep grinding and know that the only bad thing is if we sell it right now, because then we’d be quitting and we would have lost a bunch of money. As it turns out, we made millions when we started selling stuff later, but we stayed in the game.
we disregarded anyone who was saying that, this is so bad. Well, then just don’t sell right now.
I can’t hear you all of a sudden.
Leo Wehdeking (12:37)
Okay.Ben Magnie (12:38)
There you go.Leo Wehdeking (12:38)
All right. Actually, that’s the kind of stuff that a lot of people do not talk about. And like you said, you know, you decided to stay with the project, you know, and at the end, you made a profit out of it. Okay. I think that’s what separates people who just dabbles from the ones who actually stay in the game long term. So big one for you, my friend. Now, let me ask you something else, Ben. What are you most focused on solving or scaling next?Like what is the next real goal for you?
Ben Magnie (13:10)
I want to help more people. And so the thing is, that when I became a realtor years ago, I got tremendous joy out of taking the lessons that I had spent decades learning and then helping other people. The problem is it can be slow and I can only help so many people in my geographic area. If someone calls me and they live 50 miles away, I can’t help them.I’m not gonna drive two hours to do it and I don’t think that that’s actually a good thing for people to do if you for everyone out there who’s looking for a realtor get someone who’s lives like right in that area you could get the best realtor in the world and If they are a hundred miles away from where you need to be they’re gonna do a subpar job so what I’m trying to do now is is help as much people as possible and the thing that
I realized after years of helping people as a realtor is clients would come to me and they would say stuff and they go, well, I saw this video online and it said this, or I saw this other thing on Instagram and it said this and it’s all nonsense and it’s just things that influencers and people who trying to get views are telling people. And I went, man, there’s actually so much more bad data out there than good data.
on how to meaningfully build a portfolio. So I went, it, I’ll make the program myself. So I took all the lessons that I’ve learned over the years and I created a course that goes over basic concepts. There’s so many people that get into the weeds. They’re trying to be like, only buy a property if it’s exactly this after repair value. And there is some value to that, but when
we made our money is understanding like how much debt can you actually have on a property? What type of return on investment should you actually be focused on? Appreciation, cash flow, loan pay down, tax benefits. Like how should a person actually be thinking about their business? How do you treat your tenants, collect rent, stuff like that. So I put all of these major realizations that I had.
I put it together and then I added with that a consulting package that I’d already been using for years where we took our our lease and our applications and Qualification guidelines how to renovate units how to talk to tenants three-day notices like really your Bible and Then had it all approved by a Florida attorney so that I could start selling it to someone because what I want now is
I want to get people to a point where they’re confident that they can invest because that’s not a fast process. As you know, people bump into this for years, just kind of searching in the dark without really a sense of what to do. And so what I really want to do is help a person bypass that first five to 10 years where they’re going, I don’t know what to do, but I’m trying stuff.
I’ve noticed as a realtor, there’s kind of this magical point people get to where they’ve bought some properties, they’ve made a lot of mistakes, they’ve learned some things, and all of a sudden, they’re starting to get enough confidence that they can really start doing something special. And a lot of times that takes years if people do it themselves. I want to help people do that in a matter of weeks and months by getting them the correct data.
Leo Wehdeking (17:16)
in months.Ben Magnie (17:19)
and the tools so that they can start now. So that’s the main thing that I am focused on for everyone in the United States, not just people who live within 30 minutes of me.Leo Wehdeking (17:29)
All right, cool, man. Cool. That’s actually pretty big. Now, I know that a lot of people listening are either earlier in their journey or they’re just looking to level up, you know, like people like you. And I think they will benefit, you know, from hearing this. Now, when it comes about building relationships and growing up your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?Ben Magnie (17:48)
Be a good person. No, actually the way that I do business is super important to me. Warren Buffett’s got this line about it takes a lifetime to build your reputation and a minute to ruin it or something like that. That’s not a perfect wording. I’m not one of thoseLeo Wehdeking (17:50)
LaughterBen Magnie (18:11)
Like I know realtors who are bulldog and they’ll just crush people into submission to try to get a deal done. You’re never going to work with that guy twice, right? And so I find that the way that I treat people and doing it from a standpoint of can I add value is so much more important. Everyone’s trying to make a paycheck. Everyone’s…Leo Wehdeking (18:21)
Exactly.Ben Magnie (18:37)
can’t just give out free advice for forever. I understand that, but I want to help people. so I hope that that comes out when I’m dealing with people. So whether it’s a mortgage broker or an inspector or an investor or whatever, if I can help you, I’m going to help you. I’m going to see if, and I also, I refer everyone I know to everyone I know.tax guys and all sorts of people are constantly being sent from one person to the other. It’s organic and maybe there’s someone who has a better idea about some big scalable thing, but to start out, you need to have as many people liking you and going like, wow, that Ben guy, he’s good and he sent me a referral even though we didn’t do business together.
I think that matters if you’re in it for the long haul. It won’t get you anything today,
Leo Wehdeking (19:31)
Yeah, correct. I totally agree with you. But you know, when you do that, when you actually refer someone that hasn’t made, you know, any type of deals with you, that actually speaks a lot about yourself. Okay. And people will actually start, we’ll start, you know, like taking you into account because what you’re doing is that you’re building a relationship with them by sending that referral. You are knocking.on the door. You know?
Ben Magnie (20:00)
Yeah, you know and and I’ve had it happen several times where I speak to someone and Maybe we haven’t done business in a couple of years and they say like Gosh, I’m just thinking about calling you the other day or I sent you I sent your number to someone There’s actually a lot of stuff going in the background that people don’t realize if people are doing if people are doing goodLeo Wehdeking (20:20)
done.Ben Magnie (20:22)
and they’re helping people and they’re creating value and they’re networking. You’re gonna find that years later that there was conversations that you had, oh yeah, I talked to my buddy about you one time and he was saying he might give you a call to invest. And I’m like, maybe you never hear about that, but maybe you do. That takes a while to do that. it’s not.It’s not a quick thing, but it grows over time and then eventually your phone starts ringing.
Leo Wehdeking (20:50)
Exactly. Correct. All right, Ben. Now, before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or even learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?Ben Magnie (21:04)
The best way is probably through Instagram, Ben Magnie, name of my company is Real Millionaire Academy. That’s probably the best thing, we can keep it simple. I’d love to hear from anyone who is looking to get into real estate investing or they think they need help getting to the next level. This doesn’t have to be, just because I have 200 units doesn’t mean…Not everyone has the same goals. There are people who would be very happy to have 10 units and they’re paid off and they can retire. That’s great too. Real estate is not a one size fits all goal. So whatever your goals are, I’d love to see how I can help.
Leo Wehdeking (21:39)
All right, all right, Well, listen, I really appreciate your time, your story and your perspective. We need more people like you in this space. We’re actually doing it the right way. All right. Now, for those of you tuning in, all right, if you got value from this, just make sure you’re subscribed. All right. We got more conversations coming up with operators just like Ben, all right, who are out there building real businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode,Ben Magnie (21:51)
I appreciate that.
