Stop Waiting to Invest: How to Buy Rental Property and Build Wealth Through Real Estate Now

Martine Richardson (00:00)
What they notice is that most people regretted not doing something. Nobody regretted I did something and I failed. No, but…

But yet you get all of these people that say, I’m so afraid. What if I fail? Okay, you learn, get back up and keep going, right?

Cody Crabb (01:50)
Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel. Today we’ve got Martine Richardson, a rental property coach and active investor who has built a multi-million dollar portfolio using other people’s capital with a big focus on helping people buy their first rental property using someone else’s money. She’s also the host of the Do It Movement podcast and leads the Freedom Inc. family where she teaches practical relationship-driven ways to build wealth through real estate.

Martine, your whole, everything you just said sounds fantastic to me. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Martine Richardson (02:21)
Thank

you for having me. I’m looking forward to this. I’m hoping that I add some value to the listeners. And more importantly, I want people to take what we’re saying and put some action behind it. Go make some money off of listening to this episode.

Cody Crabb (02:37)
There you go.

Would you say that that’s part of ⁓ the so-called do it movement? I happen to notice that that might be related there.

Martine Richardson (02:41)
Mm-hmm.

just noticed that it’s like so many people that like, I’ve been doing this for 12 years now. And I remember like, there were people that knew way more than me, right? They read all the books, they went to all the seminars, all the events. And I’m like, so did you buy your first rental yet? Or did you buy your first property yet? no, I’m waiting for the market to be this. I’m waiting for the interest rates to be this. And I’m like, what? Go do it. Stop talking about it, be about it.

Cody Crabb (03:11)
You know, I think there’s so much to be said for like, actually, like I’ve always said this. This is what I say to my wife whenever we make plans. It’s so much easier not to do something than to do it, right? And you know what makes you feel really good is listening to a podcast like this and hearing someone’s story where they did it and you’re like, wow, good for you. And I bet that would totally work and you get all motivated and then you don’t have to do anything. Like that’s so much, that’s way easier and you still get some of the good feelings. So there you go, done. So.

Martine Richardson (03:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Why would you?

Right. That, so I just,

you reminded me of something. I recently went to this event. It’s called Dealmaker for anybody that’s looking for like a really great group of people, like high integrity. I love Dealmaker. Somebody coined me a Dealmaker baby, cause it really just helped, you know, catapult my, like make my career just skyrocket. Anyway, someone, one of the presenters, he had a video.

that it was pretty much a board and on the board it asks people in New York City to write on this board like in a central park in New York City, write down what you regret in your life, right? So he just left the board up there and let people write what they regretted.

they notice is that most people regretted not doing something. Nobody regretted I did something and I failed. No, but…

But yet you get all of these people that say, I’m so afraid. What if I fail? Okay, you learn, get back up and keep going, right?

I just found it like so profound because people regret not doing things, not going to med school, not investing in real estate, not, you know, not doing the things they really wanted to do. And I just like to always push people to go out and do the things that you want to do. What’s the worst that can happen? You fail.

That’s how we learn.

Cody Crabb (05:51)
I I bought an RV when I was 26 years old it was a piece of garbage It was it was it barely ran it was like $10,000 way too much for what I paid for it was ridiculous I hated it. I it cost so much money to keep it up. We sold it for less than I bought it for by the way and I still to this day was like

Martine Richardson (05:54)
Mm-hmm.

Bye.

Cody Crabb (06:16)
that I’m so glad we did that. It was terrible and it made us really broke for a really long time. ⁓ But I wouldn’t trade it because it was this funny, fun learning experience. was a story that we tell all the time. It’s just part of my life now. as terrible as that was, I’m like, yeah, I don’t know if I’d it again, but also now I know that. Now I know that I won’t do it again. So yeah, like you said, think, and who thought I’d…

Martine Richardson (06:21)
Woohoo!

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Right. Right.

Cody Crabb (06:43)
talk about my crappy RV on this show, but basically, I think that’s a really good point that I think most people don’t realize that, I mean, if you talk to someone that’s old, that’s on their deathbed, they’re always going to say, I wish I did this instead of I wish I didn’t do this. But we are getting so far ahead of ourselves, Martine. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? We just gotta dive right in to the good conversation, you can’t stop. ⁓ I know. ⁓ So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Martine Richardson (06:44)
you

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sure. Right, right. I couldn’t resist.

Cody Crabb (07:12)
how you got to be where you are today ⁓ and about what you do now.

Martine Richardson (07:18)
Right, so.

did, I feel like I was the type of girl that did everything right. Like I did what my parents told me to do. They said, go to school. They said, right. They say, go get your degree, go get a good job. You know, something that was like, I feel that was really ingrained in me by my family is that each generation should do better than the last generation because you know, we, at one point people had been living in projects and they’re like, the next generation is not going to be living here. Like we need to do better. didn’t.

Cody Crabb (07:28)
Check the boxes.

Martine Richardson (07:50)
We never had the mentality of just let’s stay the same, each generation go do the same thing, right? So I’ll say that is my backing. So it allows me to want to go do things I didn’t necessarily see my mom do or my grandma do, right? So anyway, they told me to go to school. I got my degree in finance. I had worked all my way through high school, worked my way through college. And like, I’ve always had the mentality of, you know, I’m going to deal with this job.

Cody Crabb (08:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Martine Richardson (08:18)
so I can get to the greater promise, right? Like once I get my degree, I’ll get a really good paying job. I’ll actually enjoy the job. So that’s what I always kind of looked forward to. And then I got my degree in finance. I started working at Fannie Mae, ironically enough. Usually I don’t name drop it, but I started working there and I didn’t know I was going to get into real estate.

And I realized when I got there, like, why do you even need a degree for this? They’re definitely like using this as a barrier of entry because this job is not hard. And…

Cody Crabb (08:50)
You

I

think that about a lot of jobs with degrees. I’m like, really? You have to have a license to be a cosmetologist? Really? Just don’t do a bad job cutting hair? Yeah, okay, anyway, sorry. I could go off on a long time about that, but go ahead.

Martine Richardson (09:03)
No, you’re fine.

So I just, got there and I just wasn’t fulfilled. Like I had been waiting pretty much my entire life up until that point to work this job with my degree because I was going to enjoy it. And yeah, I had been making the most money I had ever made in my life. So my lifestyle reflected that. I got a nice apartment. I had a nice car and stuff like that, but the job just wasn’t fulfilling. was just, something was missing.

So I’m not sure if anybody listening to this feels like this, but you feel like you just want more. You really don’t want to work that hard to build wealth for somebody else. You want something of your own. You want to leave a legacy for your family. So I started hanging around people that felt that same way. They’re like, yeah, the job is cool, but I want to do some, I want to do more. I want to get ahead. I want to invest. like.

We would share different resources. Somebody gave me a book. That book was called How to Quit Your Job in 19 Weeks by Sean Terry. Very specific.

But ⁓ he talked about wholesaling in that book. And I had never heard of that concept before, but he really showed you how to do it. He’s like, you get the leads like this, you get it under contract like this, you sell it like this, you don’t need to use any of your money. Like he really did a great job explaining it. But if I’m honest, I didn’t take any action on what I learned. Yeah, I wanted to do more.

Cody Crabb (10:39)
No kidding, holy cow.

Martine Richardson (11:01)
But I was comfortable so I didn’t have anything that was like a driving force to make me want to go do more And then I guess my lack of enthusiasm in my job showed because I ended up getting fired, right? Right, right and then I remember because at the time I didn’t I wasn’t married I’m married now. I didn’t have a daughter. I have a daughter now

Cody Crabb (11:15)
There you go. Nothing like someone making you make a decision, huh?

Martine Richardson (11:28)
And it was just me that was really relying on me. But so the first thing that came to my mind was how am going to pay for my car? Because this was my only source of income and now it’s gone. So I tried some odd jobs here and there and then like this, didn’t like that. And my car ended up getting repossessed because I just didn’t have it. I didn’t have enough to keep the payments up. And the next day I took real estate seriously and

Cody Crabb (11:57)
the day after

it was repossessed.

Martine Richardson (11:58)
I took real estate, because I thought to myself, I did all of, I did everything my family told me to do and look where has gotten me. Like I’m not.

do all of this for nothing. Like, I didn’t come here to be a bum, like, living off of somebody else in the family. I just wasn’t gonna do it. So it took a while for things to get going, but I ended up getting some deals under contract and I was wholesaling at the time because that’s all I knew. I knew I didn’t have a lot of money. I thought that was all I could do until I got my first rental property and I ended up getting that by accident. I would go into everyone’s house. I would

Cody Crabb (12:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It usually is by accident, yeah, sorry, it

says so, yeah, I don’t know how that’s possible, but it happens a lot by accident. Sorry, go ahead.

Martine Richardson (12:42)
I

would go in everyone’s house and I would ask them, do you want a cash offer or would you take payments? And most people said cash offer until I got the guy that said he’ll take the payments. And you know, like it’s a little voice in your head, right? You’re like, take the payments. I don’t even know how to like set that up. Like, what does that even look like? How do you structure that? So like I figured it out and I ended up setting an agreement with this owner.

Cody Crabb (13:01)
Is that legal? Yeah.

Martine Richardson (13:10)
that I was paying them every month and then I put a tenant in there that was paying me every month. And I started making money from a deal I did long time ago. And I said, wait a second. I think this is the reason I got into real estate because I wanted time freedom. I wanted to financial freedom. Like my mom had a lot of time, but she didn’t have a lot of money. And I knew I wanted a family one day. So I wanted to be able to be there for my daughter and maybe future kids. And

I knew that if I stayed in an active state, that wasn’t going to work for me. So it just made me start diving deeper into how could I keep these properties. And I realized that if you’re able to buy properties at a discount more than what they, well, less than what they’re worth, you’re able to put other people’s capital on it. Their capital’s in a safe position because it’s on an asset that’s worth more than the capital. And if you know how to structure deals, you know how to vet tenants, you can structure this so that you keep the asset. They get a really good return on

their money and you keep just doing it over and over and over and over again to build as big of a portfolio as you would want.

Cody Crabb (14:17)
So my question would be, I’m picturing like you’re still trying to figure this out, you’re still kind of scrambling. If someone says yes, you’re like, uh-oh, now what do I do? But my question for you is, what value did you pitch to this guy that was okay with the payments? I’d be curious to know, because to me that would just sound like if I didn’t know what I was doing and someone came up to me with that, I’d be like.

Martine Richardson (14:26)
I’m

Cody Crabb (14:42)
I’ll just do it myself then. Cool, sounds good. I won’t pay you, I’ll get those renters and we’re good. So what value did you pitch to that guy?

Martine Richardson (14:43)
Bye.

Right. So

this guy in particular, he was a landlord. So he had gotten into this because he wanted monthly payments, right? But he was a terrible landlord. Like he had to chase people for rent. They were always bothering him.

was, you know, so many maintenance concerns. Like he was like, this is not what I signed up for. I got this because I wanted passive income. This is not passive at all. This is a headache.

Cody Crabb (15:48)
Uh-huh.

Martine Richardson (15:54)
So when I talked to him, I said, you wouldn’t have to worry about maintenance concerns. You’d get a guarantee, like, I don’t know if you could say guaranteed check, but I said, you got to guarantee check every month because I’m going to pay you. And to him, that was like, oh my God, you’re going to pay me every month like I want it. You’re not going to call me. I don’t have to chase you. What? Sign me up. So for him.

Cody Crabb (15:55)
Yeah.

This is the same arrangement

I have now except you do all the work. So yeah, it sounds amazing.

Martine Richardson (16:22)
Mm-hmm. So, yes.

So he was finally getting his passive dream that he wanted. So that was very attractive for him.

Cody Crabb (16:32)
Yeah, wow. ⁓ Yeah, so I would say, ⁓ does your program kind of walk you through that sort of thing about like the same process you did or does it kind of work differently now that you kind of know what you’re doing?

Martine Richardson (16:45)
It’s different!

It’s different because my first one, I set it up where I was paying the owner directly. The way I teach it now and the way that I do it mainly is I buy these properties cash. It just happens to not be my cash. Like I’ll go to somebody like Cody, borrow the money so I can buy this property and then you get a great return on your money. I do what I need to do because a lot of the times these houses need work and stuff like that. So I’ll do what I need to do. I’ll vet the tenant. And then what I do is I refinance these properties.

into long-term mortgages and that allows you to get your capital back plus a really good interest rate.

Cody Crabb (17:23)
All right, so let’s say somebody is, ⁓ it sounds like you’ve been really, you’ve really focused yourself on, ⁓ you’ve focused yourself on the single family world, is that right? ⁓ Give me a little bit of background on kind of why you decided to do that. Was it always like that or did you kind of do that after learning a few things?

Martine Richardson (17:36)
Mm-hmm, that’s right.

So I have learned about commercial multifamily, but I will say that I’m the type of person where if everybody’s going right, my team’s gonna go left. like, you know, everybody, the wave, I have to get 20 to 50 units of multifamily. That’s great if you wanna do that. But I had already perfected getting these houses under contract for less than what they were worth. So I was really just building on a skill I already had.

So because I already had that skill, it made it really easy for me to build a portfolio, because I wasn’t learning something entirely different from what I had already been doing.

Cody Crabb (18:24)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. ⁓ So, all right. I’m very curious about your story specifically because you’re like, had no idea what I was doing. So I think that’s awesome. So what is it that after that, like what happened after this first deal? He’s like, sign me up, I’ll still make money, but with no work, that’s the dream. Then what happened after that? You just increased your portfolio after that? Did you find someone else like this guy? I know I’m kind of rewinding a little bit, but this is just.

Martine Richardson (18:32)
Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

right right right

Cody Crabb (18:54)
This is a fascinating look at someone that is just really like, I don’t know, but let’s just try it.

Martine Richardson (19:00)
Right, so up until that point, I had been getting properties under contract and I would just sell that contract to a buyer, right? And a lot of these buyers were keeping the properties. So what I did instead of selling it to a buyer, I started creating relationships with people that could lend me money so I could buy it.

and I would send out lending opportunities. Notice I’m saying lending opportunities. I didn’t ask people for money. I sent them lending opportunities where their money could make a good return. And what I’ve noticed, and if you’re a wholesaler listening to this and you really want to own rental properties, I want you to probably jot this down. Getting money for a property is easier than you wholesaling it to another buyer.

When you wholesale it to another buyer, you would actually, know, the people try to beat you up. ⁓ it’s too much. this, ⁓ that. Lenders are like, well, the house is worth more than my money. You put it in a safe position, sign me up. You don’t even have to go through as many people. I just noticed that like, I used to get a lot of friction sometimes with wholesaling. I’m like, I’m good.

math. I know numbers and these numbers make sense. If they don’t make sense for you that’s fine but maybe you should go get your own deals. So I just started replacing the buyers with the lenders so I could keep them now.

Cody Crabb (20:17)
Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. ⁓ tell me a little bit about, ⁓ you know, your program. So, who is this designed for? Why did you start it and kind of what do you, who should join it? Who’s the ideal person to join it?

Martine Richardson (20:36)
Right, so

the ideal person to join this is someone that is ready to work, because it’s not easy.

I’m going to push you out of your comfort zone. You’re going to do some things that you might be hesitant to do. Like I’m not going to do anything like, go knock on random people’s doors. We’re not doing that. But you might feel a little uncomfortable. You might be in rooms where you feel like everybody is smarter than you. That’s, that’s good. You’re in a good room, right? Right. You’re in a good room, right? So it’s designed for people that have been wanting to do this for a long time and they just don’t know how. They can’t put the pieces together.

Cody Crabb (21:02)
I was gonna say, it’s a good place to be, yeah.

Martine Richardson (21:13)
together.

The reason I created this is because I wish I had this because I could have built my portfolio a lot quicker, right? It took some time for me to build my portfolio because I’m trying to make the system as I go, you know, like I’m like, okay, well that didn’t work. How could I do this better? And I mean just full disclosure when I first became a landlord, I sucked. I was so bad. And I think people think that, you know, ⁓ you get a property, you rent it out. Everything’s going to go amazing.

passive

income. D in no. If you don’t have the right systems in place, if you don’t have the right checks balances, you don’t know what a good deal looks like, you don’t know any of these things right? You are setting yourself up for having way more mistakes.

then you don’t necessarily have to make. Yes, we all learn from mistakes, but who says they have to be yours? If you’re in my program, you’re gonna see all the, like if I see you do something and I’m like, wait, wait, I did that and that was not a good idea. ⁓ That, right.

Cody Crabb (22:09)
Brilliant.

You show pictures of like look no that’s a bad

idea yeah

Martine Richardson (22:21)
That is not a good

idea. Here’s a better way to do it. So what I really focus on is instruction. And to be honest, I give you baby steps to walk you through the entire process. You can be entirely green. And my goal is to teach you from start to finish your first property so you can understand. Now, when you’re in my program, you’re in it for life.

So because you’re in InfraLife, yes, you can grow your portfolio, but I like to make a special emphasis on really teaching you how to do that first one, because that’s the one you’re going to learn a lot. That’s the one that you’re going to have to kick some limiting beliefs. That’s the one that you’re going to have to just do things that you’re just not used to doing. And as you do it right, and as you do it more, you’ll start getting more comfortable doing these things. Like, just to give you a little story real quick.

Cody Crabb (23:01)
It’s the proof, yeah.

Martine Richardson (23:10)
One of the girls in my program, she had been wanting to do this for a really, really long time. Like she, she had became a realtor because a lot of people think you gotta be a realtor before you can buy rental property. So she became a realtor. She’s calling absentee owners. She’s calling ⁓ expired listings and she’s thinking she’s gonna get a deal. She didn’t end up getting any deals and she noticed that…

she fell into the realtor trap. Now, it’s nothing wrong with being a realtor, but only if you wanna be a realtor, right? If you came in this and you wanna be an investor and you’re trapped being a realtor, buying and selling for other people, you’re gonna feel a little unfulfilled.

So she had been going through that and then she decided that, you know what, this isn’t working. Like she even joined a team of people that weren’t investing and it still wasn’t working out for her. So she decided that she wanted to surround herself with the people that were doing it. So she started going to events. She started going to meetups. She ended up meeting up with me on her first property, first out the door, never borrowed money from anybody before. Didn’t know how to structure deals. Green did not know how to do it.

She got her first property. She didn’t use any of her own money to buy it. She actually got $43,000 back at closing so she could start the rehab. And now that property cash flows for her $600 a month. And she used none of her own money to get into it. And the good thing about your first property is that that’s the one that unlocks the belief.

That’s the one that makes you know that you can do it. Because now it’s like nothing. She’s teaching other people how to do it. Like a lot of people are having limiting beliefs. I have to put money down. She’s like, no, you don’t. Like you just have to do X, Y, and Z. And it just, I’m just so proud of her because every time I talk to her, she’s on another deal and another deal. Like she might be on her fifth, sixth property by now.

Cody Crabb (24:58)
Yeah.

Martine Richardson (25:07)
and she’s just like crushing it. And that’s why I focus on that first one because once you can unlock that belief, you’re unstoppable.

Cody Crabb (25:07)
That’s awesome.

Wow, mean, yeah, and really, think a lot of times we just, it’s our own fault. Like, I mean, as you said in the beginning when we talking about the doing it versus hearing it, ⁓ you know, I feel like you, sometimes you have the knowledge, all the knowledge in the world can’t make you do something. yeah. Thank you so much for all of this. The stories, the examples, I think has been really, really interesting. ⁓

Martine Richardson (25:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Cody Crabb (25:44)
Just a couple more questions here. How long does it take for someone to go through this program? Like if someone started today, how long would it take until they kind of had gotten to the point where they could close on a, I mean obviously no timeline is exact, but just out of curiosity.

Martine Richardson (25:50)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right.

So if you do exactly what I tell you to do, hit your KPIs, your key performance indicators, you can dedicate 15 hours a week. I realized that people still have jobs. They still have active income. So if you can dedicate 15 hours a week to this, in 90 days, you will have your first rental property. You will have closed 90 days. Now I have a guy that’s in the, well, it’s no, I think just ⁓ one guy that’s coming up off the top of my head that

Cody Crabb (26:19)
90 days.

Martine Richardson (26:29)
He ended up closing his in two months, so not three months. So 60 days, he closed on his first one. But he was on like the expedited track. I knew he was gonna close early. I have another guy that was in it and he closed on his just to show you that like I’m not just making numbers up. He closed it in 92 days. Like I counted. And this was during the holiday. It was Christmas, Thanksgiving, like all the holidays. He took time off, 92 days because he followed the system.

Cody Crabb (26:39)
Gotcha.

Wow, well I mean, it kind of sounds like, well if you’re thinking about doing it and you have no idea what you’re doing, this is a perfect way to start. So if someone wants to get in touch with you and kind of learn from you and be involved, how can they find you online?

Martine Richardson (27:05)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Right,

so if you are in the learning phase, like I just want to know a little bit more information. I have free trainings. I’m actually doing an interview today with ⁓ a member of the fam, that’s the Freedom, Inc. family, but he’s sharing his experience of being a new investor, what it looked like closing on his first rental property. And ⁓ I host all of this and give you resources in my free group on Facebook. It’s called The Freedom Inc. and that’s INC.

And then for people that are more serious, you’re like, you’ve decided that I want to buy my first rental this year. I don’t care if you know how to do it. I just want, you need to decide. That’s it. Decide and commit to that decision. I want to invite you to apply for a strategy session. Now, how do you do that? You go to strategy.thefreedominc.com. You fill out the questions. I’ll see where you are. We’ll reach out to you and we’ll schedule a call with you.

Cody Crabb (28:07)
Wow, yeah, I would encourage everybody to at least check out those free resources to kind of see if they sound good to you. And how could they not with this kind of, if you have already kind of thought this would be great to get into, but I haven’t actually taken any action yet, and I want kind of a way to do this in a slow, not even slow, but just way that’s measured and I can kind of learn as I go. This sounds perfect, because it’s designed to help people learn how to do it themselves, which I mean, teach Amanda

Martine Richardson (28:35)
Right.

Cody Crabb (28:36)
fish, right? mean, that’s kind of the whole, that’s the whole point of education.

Martine Richardson (28:38)
Mm-hmm, right.

Right, because I mean, you could go places and you can just get the turnkey rentals. You can get a property manager to do it for you. But if you don’t know how to do it for yourself, you don’t even know what to look for when you’re vetting these people to make sure they know what they’re doing. Because a lot of people think that, oh, I’ll get a property manager that’ll solve all my problems. And then they have, like I spoke to one lady not too long ago where she bought a property.

had a property manager in place, she’s like, I’m good. The tenant starts paying late, the property manager does nothing, they don’t like pick up on the signals that this person is going through something. And then they leave and it’s $45,000 worth of damage to the house. So her property, she thought was gonna cashflow for her. Now she has to use any equity she had in that and sell it. So her dream of being a rental property investor is over. Why go through that?

Cody Crabb (29:22)
⁓ man.

Martine Richardson (29:32)
You need to learn this for yourself. We can’t just trust that everybody’s gonna have our best interests. I care about my properties more than anybody else would care about my properties.

Cody Crabb (29:42)
Yeah, well, and that’s good. I mean, it’s like your baby, you know, like I, don’t really like other people’s kids. I like my kids a lot, but, but yeah, I, and my kids do annoying stuff. I deal with it cause I love them and you know, but if someone else does it, then no, I don’t get away from me. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, thank you so much for all this. This has been a real pleasure. Uh, thanks for giving us your time today and thank you listeners for joining us as well. If you liked what you heard today and I know you did.

Martine Richardson (29:47)
What?

Thank

Mm-hmm.

Right. That’s funny, you sound like my husband.

Cody Crabb (30:11)
Go ahead and give us a like, subscribe, follow all the things so you don’t miss another episode with someone awesome like Martine. Martine, once again, thank you so much for your time. It’s been real great to talk to you today.

Martine Richardson (30:19)
Thank you for having me. Likewise.