The Quadplex Wealth Plan: Real Estate Investing for Beginner

Lisa Bernstein (00:00)
if you don’t own any real estate yet, go out and buy a quadruplex.

and if I lived in one of them and I rented out the other three

not only are you living somewhere for free, but you’re getting the tax write-offs.

your mortgage tax write-offs,

living there for free, staying for a couple of years, and then go from a fourplex to a triplex to a duplex to a house.

don’t know why everybody’s not doing that.

Dylan Silver (02:01)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is based in Athens, Georgia, was the youngest person in Florida to earn a real estate license, former firm owner, now an associate broker with EXP and has previous experience as a licensed loan officer, mortgage broker, and is currently shifting her business into the next chapter. Please welcome Lisa Bernstein. Lisa, welcome to the show.

I always like to start off at the top, Lisa, by asking folks how they got into the real estate space.

Lisa Bernstein (02:34)
As you said, I was young and I would, after high school, I would go to my grandmother’s job and hang out with her. And she worked at a real estate firm as a bookkeeper.

And they would say, we need this document to go to this office or title company. And I was sitting there, I had a little yellow Volkswagen bug and I would take documents. It was like a carrier, like back in the mid eighties.

and would see people working, females dressed nicely. And I asked my grandmother, well, what do they do? How can I do that? She’s like, well, you just have to take a test and be 18. And I was like, well, I’m good at tests. So it started that way. 40 years.

Dylan Silver (03:04)
Yeah.

And so was she, was

your grandmother a mentor? Was your grandmother at all a mentor to you in the real estate space?

Lisa Bernstein (03:32)
She was my mentor in life. I love my grandmother. She raised me. ⁓ But she didn’t have anything to do with real estate other than being a bookkeeper for real estate.

Dylan Silver (03:46)
And so at that point in time, this must have all been new to you and being so young. And it was Florida, right?

Lisa Bernstein (03:52)
It is. Mm-hmm. It was, yeah.

Dylan Silver (03:55)
It must have been a lot of a lot of things to learn and I can imagine to maybe not necessarily all the resources in the world to learn everything because you’re so young. What was that first year like in the real estate space?

Lisa Bernstein (04:09)
It was so hard. They don’t prepare you for how challenging it can be. And even a hard worker and a hustler, you still, it’s still challenging. You know, the money outpour rather than, you know, coming in. I will have to say that my high school teacher, I remember to him.

saying in economics class he wanted to sell a house. And so I went knocked on his door and God bless him and his wife. I mean, it was a painful presentation, like flip chart, you know? And he just sat there and listed his house with, he would sell it. But yeah, not everyone was so patient and kind.

Dylan Silver (04:56)
That first couple years in the real estate space, were you falling in love with real estate or were you thinking, man, this is hard? Or were you thinking, let me just see how this goes because this is my first kind of foray into a career.

Lisa Bernstein (05:58)
I couldn’t financially stay in the residential real estate space. I happened to see an ad for timeshare sales where they were offering $250 a week and all you needed was a real estate license. I quickly went into that part of the business and became shockingly one of the best timeshare salespeople, always in the top three in Florida. And then I…

got recruited to an office in California, San Diego area. I would just say whatever they told me to say.

Dylan Silver (06:33)
So some nice.

some nice weather areas, right? Where in Florida, and then you mentioned San Diego, but where in Florida were you based out of at that time?

Lisa Bernstein (06:45)
Yeah, I sold at the Catalina Beach Club in South Daytona Beach and then went over when we sold that one out over to Westgate Vacation Villas in Orlando. It actually a little show about that woman. ⁓ And then after that was recruited to California to Glen Ivy. They have beautiful properties.

Dylan Silver (07:07)
Now, Florida, California, you’re in Georgia right now. A lot of places I think that ⁓ certainly had their peaks and valleys. I’d say right now, every real estate person that I know, seemingly the ones they’ve scaled a business to a certain point in time, either is moving their business to Florida or is thinking about moving their business to Florida. At that point in time, I Florida must have been a totally different space. You moved to San Diego, you mentioned, but

What was the real estate space like in Florida at that time?

Lisa Bernstein (07:39)
It was smaller, you know, like, for example, I remember selling a house and it sold for $80,000 and my 3 % was like $2,400. And then, you know, I had to split that with my broker. So it was challenging because the pricing at that time was so low. But now the pricing is up because, you know, talk about people wanting to move their business to Florida. There’s no state tax.

I mean, you know, in comparison to California, if you’re making good money, that’s a lot of money you could be saving, sometimes six figures.

Dylan Silver (08:21)
It’s a huge difference, right? mean, the the regionality of your business and of real estate in general impacts people in so many different ways. I want to pivot here a bit, Lisa, and ask you about your growth within the real estate space. You’ve been involved in a number of different niches within real estate. You mentioned loan officer, mortgage banker, sold a firm. You’ve been in different ⁓ markets in the U.S. Were there any significant pivot points or moments that

or maybe aha moments or something where you said okay this is really working and I’m gonna double down on this.

Lisa Bernstein (09:00)
When I went from a mortgage banker to a real estate agent, and I did that because at the time I had two young children and I needed a little bit more flexibility from working in mortgage banking lifestyle, ⁓ I could not seem to find success. I…

had all of the skills, I had more knowledge than most real estate agents and I just couldn’t seem to figure out how to get my phone to ring. And so finally I learned about Mike Ferry, his coaching and I…

found out that really a successful real estate agent is a telemarketer and door-to-door salesperson and you just got to get rid of your ego. out there and just start making phone calls. mean, just like having a schedule where I would go in, become completely professional, always dress it in a suit, put my headset on and just dial for dollars for three to four hours a day. Then in the afternoon, I’d want to get out of the office, get some fresh air.

Dylan Silver (09:46)
Yeah.

Lisa Bernstein (10:07)
a door knock and I’m a very good door knocker.

I don’t mind just, hi, how are you? I’m calling or stopping by because there’s this house on street and I want to invite you to an open house. I mean, you could say whatever, but you just have to get out there. You can’t just sit on your computer and wait for something to happen. It just doesn’t work. You’ll die of financial suicide.

Dylan Silver (10:50)
Yeah.

You know, I’ve-

That’s right. I had an early mentor in the real estate space before I was a realtor tell me that real estate is a contact sport and that has since been even more true as time has gone by. And as much as people want to, you know, do this remotely and do as much as they can from maybe a desktop, there’s an element of real estate which will, because it’s people’s homes, that’s where they live, which will always be kind of rubbing shoulders with people.

shaking hands, meeting people, knocking doors you mentioned. I don’t think that’ll go away. As you’ve grown in the business and you’ve seen shifts in the business, has that mentality still stayed with you where it’s, you know, I still have to be treating it like it is, know, a contact sport?

Lisa Bernstein (11:54)
You know, when COVID happened, that was really when everything shut down. And at that point, that’s when I realized even more to reach out, to

check in, see how people were doing. Do you need any services? Can I be helpful in any way? Like, do you need a vendor or do you have…

questions. Sometimes people just want someone to talk with about the real estate market. You know, it is the, in most cases, their largest investment. They want to know how much did that house sell for, what’s happening, should I be worried, should I double down and buy some investment property? So I think that as time goes by,

And there’s so much cool things happening in the AI world and there’s so much technology. And yet it’s so important to go back to the basics, to go back to the things that always will work. Hello, how are you doing? know, those.

Dylan Silver (13:00)
Right.

That’s right. was in I drove from Houston or took a bus down from Houston or from Dallas to Houston this weekend to meet up with a real estate guy. And, know, just the synergy that you can get versus a Zoom call or versus it’s still there. Nothing’s going to replace that, I think. But I want to I want to pivot a bit here, Lisa, and ask you about the investing world. So

You mentioned before hopping on the podcast, shifting and focusing on some investments and having dollars work for you, right? Many workers, what vertical, that’s right. Many soldiers. What, what vertical within the investing world are you looking at or has caught your eye? There’s so many different verticals that people can get into single family, multifamily, commercial residential land deals. can do hard money loans.

Lisa Bernstein (13:37)
That’s right. They’re soldiers. They’re soldiers.

You know, during preparing for this podcast, I was thinking about what would my message be? What would I want to share to

who

you know, 20 years ago. ⁓ So someone in their 20s and 30s. And what I decided is that number one, I know this sounds crazy, but I’m going to tell you that the first thing that you have to do is you just have to visualize it. So I went to a thinking big trip with some mastermind and I got in my head this number of 24 properties. I wanted to own 24 doors and on the flight home,

I spent the whole time wrapping my head around it and what I realized is that my first instinct was to be negative. So I thought, well, 24 doors, how could I do that?

Why me? You know, I come from a very poor background. Why do I deserve to have that? And so it was interesting to even start to realize some of the things that I was saying to myself. And then I had to start,

you know, training my brain. Like, why not me? And what would that look like? And how could I do that? So I really believe in the power of you have to first see it, then believe it to

really achieve it. I know that sounds corny. We’ve heard that a bunch, like for example, little things

my password forever was dollar sign 540 K pass a year, right? I really wanted 540,000 at one point we were bringing in $45,000 a month in income and somebody realized, Hey, isn’t that 540?

And I was like, damn, I wish I’d have said

So just having those goals in everything that you do, I really feel like that’s important to have. First thing.

Dylan Silver (16:47)
Yet it’s no question, you know, I think

a lot of people when they’re just starting out might think, okay, you know, I want to reach X amount of dollars and they might do a

card or they might do a password like you did, right? But there’s also goals along the way, right? Kind of ⁓ steps that show you that you’re making progress because otherwise you could kind of get lost in the journey and say, well, where am I making progress? But it might not be as easy to track that you have kind of those mini

metrics along the way so that you could stay focused on the long-term goal.

Lisa Bernstein (17:22)
Yeah, I totally believe in…

not saying, oh, I want to buy a shopping center at the beginning. I feel like it’s so important to start small. And there are two things that I would suggest, especially for someone who’s kind of at the beginning stages. And number one, I would say,

if you don’t own any real estate yet, go out and buy a quadruplex. And it’s interesting. So I was preparing for today’s call and I was thinking, OK, so we just

a quad. In our market, this is a real life experience. So we bought this cute little quad for $340,000. They’re for one bedroom, one bath units. And we paid, and this was non-owner, so if you did an owner-occupied, you could get an FHA loan. You could get the seller to help you with your closing costs, right? So here’s what I came up with. At 6.5%, FHA includes

including

MI, your mortgage would be $27.35. That includes $150 for taxes, $150 for insurance. Now, again, you know, do your own math for wherever you are. But if I have, and we took these four units, and if I lived in one of them and I rented out the other three at $950 a month,

where one of them’s already getting over a thousand, but let’s go low and say 9.50 a month, right? That would bring your three units to 28.50. Your PITI is 27.35. So the thing is, is that not only are you living somewhere for free, but you’re getting the tax write-offs. Then what I would do is I would take the money that I’d spend in rent and also what I want to invest.

and bring that property up so that you can slowly increase your monthly rent for the other three units. And then right now, because of this big, beautiful bill that Trump has come out with, you also get accelerated depreciation. So if you are improving your product, getting some accelerated depreciation tax write-offs, getting your mortgage tax write-offs,

living there for free, staying for a couple of years, and then go from a fourplex to a triplex to a duplex to a house. It really should be that easy. I don’t know why everybody’s not doing that.

I tell my daughter who’s 22, get ready. This is what you’re doing. And you know, the problem is, that some of these kids are used to like the fancy little things that their moms and dads…

have put them in through college or whatever, you’ve got to be able to scale that down. You’ve got to say, okay, I’m going to live in a not best part of town, one bedroom, one bath. You know, I know this doesn’t have all the amenities that my rent would have, but suck it up buttercup for just a little bit because those are the steps that are necessary to get you where you want to go eventually.

Dylan Silver (20:17)
Yeah.

The quadplex idea is so, I’d say, great and also people don’t think about it as much, I’d say, from outside of the real estate world and sometimes in because it almost seems like, I can’t, I’m new college grad or I’m young, I can’t qualify for a single family home. Why would I qualify for a quadplex? That’s four units, they’re not gonna qualify me. But the lenders are looking at it the opposite way. They’re like, you’re a young person, you maybe have a college degree but.

Lisa Bernstein (20:59)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (21:04)
you have no work experience or very limited work experience. And so if you default on this, we need some other collateral and the collateral is going to be we have three other renters in there. It’s a cash flowing deal. And so even if you’re not paying those other three people are paying. Right. And so it makes so much more especially in a high rent area where this is going to be like kind of a win win on all sides. And so for as long as this strategy works and is around I’d say

Lisa Bernstein (21:20)
Mm-hmm. That’s so true.

Dylan Silver (21:33)
All young people should be looking at the quadplexes, right?

Lisa Bernstein (21:37)
And then take it because now you want to get into a triplex, right? And then go to a duplex because an underwriter is going to believe, because you are, but you can’t go from a single family house to an owner occupied fourplex with an underwriter going, well, that makes sense because it doesn’t really make sense. the best course of action to start with would be going that way. Now, by the time you own a house, you’ve got…

Eight doors working for you, right? Wait, no, nine.

Dylan Silver (22:11)
It’s a huge, I’d say a huge niche to be involved in an area where a lot again, a lot of people are not thinking about it. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who may be listening to this podcast and other podcasts that I’ve done from outside the real estate world thinking like, you know, my son or my daughter couldn’t get into a quadplex. But if they go talk to some lenders, they’ll actually see it’s not none of this is easier straightforward. I’m from northern New Jersey. I live in North Dallas right now. I know the price of homes where I’m from in northern New Jersey and

You know, to qualify for a single family home where I’m from in northern New Jersey, you need like $220,000 a year. So a different situation while not necessarily traditional, can get people in in a way where they can start their ownership career at a young age. But Lisa, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go if maybe they are in the Athens, Georgia area or if they’d like to reach out to you or if they have a property or a deal they’d like you to look at?

Lisa Bernstein (23:10)
Yeah, I would love to talk with anyone that has, I’ve got some money in my pocket. We just sold a couple of deals. And so if anybody’s looking for an investor, you can go to our website, Athens, GAHomes.com, or you can call me directly. My number is 706-765-7441. And I always pick up the phone.

Dylan Silver (23:36)
Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Lisa Bernstein (23:41)
Thank you so much for having me. It was great talking with you, Dylan.