Why Most Investors Buy the Wrong Property (And How to Avoid It)

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In this episode, host Quentin Edmonds welcomes Mike Cossette, a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Mike shares his journey from buying his first property as a college student to navigating the 2008 market crash, building a thriving real estate business in Austin, Texas, and balancing family life with professional responsibilities. The conversation covers lessons learned from adversity, the importance of understanding market dynamics, strategies for new investors, and the significance of aligning real estate investments with personal life goals.

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Mike Cossette (00:00)
one of the things that took me a while to learn after making several mistakes that I see again and again and again in the marketplace is new investors specifically. So if you’re a new investors, new investor, I see a lot of them struggle or fail and not because they are picking a bad

property or wrong property but it’s they don’t they never decide what this property is supposed to do for them specifically in their life in their season of life beforehand.

Quentin (02:05)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am definitely excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest. This gentleman has been in the game for 20 years. So it’s a lot that he can let you know about. And so I love, mean, he, I mean, anything you want to talk about, he probably did it within real estate. And so I love how he’s helping investors. I love what he’s doing within the real estate space. And so I am excited to introduce you all to

Mr. Mike Cossette. Mr. Mike, how you doing today,

Mike Cossette (02:38)
First I gotta say, Mr. Q, thank you and Investor Fuel for everything you do. I love your show. It’s so huge for the community. So I wanna get that out there first because it’s an honor to be here myself. I’m doing great.

Quentin (02:50)
Yeah.

man. Thank you for that. I

appreciate that. And I’m excited, man. And I’ll be honest, you are the expert for the day. I told you that nobody knows you like you. So I want to dive into it, man. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. ⁓ If you want to, if you want to, I hope you’re willing to give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into the game, how you got to where you are now. We love origin stories.

And then also tell them where you are in the world geographically. so Mr. Mike, sir, you got the floor, man.

Mike Cossette (03:24)
All right, well first of all, I am in Austin, Texas, the capital of Texas, ⁓ where we’re enjoying 80 degree weather and beautiful women, beautiful properties, and a lot of opportunity. you know, getting into real estate from my origin story. ⁓

2005, end of 2005 is when I got my license and leading up to getting my license, it was a combination of shopping for an investment property as a college student to kind of give my fraternity a place to host events and at the same time giving my family a headquarters in the state because we didn’t all live in the same place. So marrying those two things together, I was able to leverage a little bit

my folks money as college students do and make promises that I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to write the check on if you know what I mean. getting a big 17 acre property and then being able to rent it out to fraternity brothers, learning about properties, about systems, being able to interact with tenants, collect rent, have difficult conversations, realize the real opportunity costs of rotating.

through tenants. All of those things that prepare you to be a landlord as well as the financial side of things, going to a bank after you’ve lived in a…

property with five plus fraternity brothers for five years and

needing to remodel it because it just was trashed and the bank coming to you and saying, yeah, we’re happy to give you more money, was a mind blowing moment ⁓ where I realized that over time, properties build up equity and you can borrow against them. So I’m sitting in a piggy bank that’s paying for itself. ⁓ And that was one of the big light bulbs that drove me into the investing side.

the real estate side of the 22, 23 year old shopping for a property like this. I wasn’t given the time or the respect that, you know, somebody else maybe a little bit older, a little bit more established would have gotten. So I’ve tucked that in the back of my head as it may be an opportunity to improve the industry. Fast forward 2005, get my license and right before the market crashed, jump into a remax franchise with the help of my father who got his license as well.

and we kind of joined together and then the market went crashed on us and that

presented a lot of new opportunities, right? We could see things crashing, we could see people struggling, having to help people do bank-owned properties and short sales and all of those types of things, gave us a new perspective into a market dynamic that we’d never seen before and where that opportunity lies. So that’s kind of the, you know, guess seven-year start history, if you will, and how I got a lot of the pieces of the puzzle that I operate with today.

Quentin (07:20)
Yeah, I love it, man. I love it. Thank you for taking us to the journey. I particularly love the part about, you know, just looking for a frat house for your, for your, for your fraternity. I love that. And you’ve been through the journey, you know, your dad starting you off. I mean, you know, really helping you out. Just really just an ecosystem around you that was really kind of just pointing you kind of to this real estate space, right? But, you know, I have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning no matter what you’re going through in life.

it kind of prepares you kind of for who you are now. Like these moments, they just tack on different parts of you to kind of make you who you are today. And so I would love to know from college to where you are now, even before these moments, what have they taught you about yourself? Like as you have come to be successful within real estate, did these moments teach you discipline, humility, resilience? What did these moments taught you about you?

Mike Cossette (08:16)
Well, I think ⁓ each phase teaches you something different. ⁓ And I think exactly what you said was on point of that, maybe a lot of this is predestined planning because you seem to learn in hindsight the lessons that you needed to learn at that point in life. during that first crash, I came out of a year of really,

making

10x what I would get in like a college stipend ⁓ and being able to approve people that had no business buying houses for loans and selling houses. ⁓ things got a little loose across the country and didn’t know I was participating in this giant Ponzi scheme, if you will, but I no idea what was going on at the time, you know, ⁓ until everything kind of collapsed. And one of the major lessons I learned there was to really understand and digest

the market dynamics, the macro dynamics, the reasons behind what’s going on, right? Because

A lot of people just assumed everything’s nice and gravy, but looking, that really helped me get into market dynamics and statistics and the greater macroeconomics that go on around you. And I had no wife, I had no kids, so I had all the time in the world, right? So not making more money than I’d seen before to…

very little money and having a lot of time helped me to develop some of the core

guidelines and principles that I needed to climb out and stay afloat during those three to five years, which I’m using, having to go back to and use some of that foundational stuff over the last three years that was put in place a decade ago and will probably happen a decade and a half from now, right? So that was a lesson that I was able to utilize the 12 to 18 hours a day that I had

and really dive in. And I think, you that was that was a time period if you were in the business where everyone kind of remembers what happened and everyone who’s still in the business learned a ton and dealt with a lot of X and fax machines.

Quentin (11:21)
Yes, Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. I love it. I love the journey. I love everything that you’re saying. And you’re right. You know, it was a pivotal time. People had to come out of it. And I would love to know, how did you handle the adversity? Like, you know, within business, within like going through the motions, because adversity find its call, no matter what space we’re in. Even as a podcast, I got to deal with internet connection problems. And I’m like,

Come on now. So adversity founds us all. So how does adversity show up in what you do and how do you deal with

Mike Cossette (11:57)
Well, I think as an entrepreneur, I never really had a outside of college, I figured out I wasn’t a good employee. I had to be self motivated ⁓ in order to perform at my best. so realizing that and being faced with adversity, small problems, big problems, ⁓ I think the main thing is that I get a little…

Even though it’s uncomfortable, that I’ve developed a dopamine hit or an excitement about it, right? So, waking up being able to solve the problem that you’re facing without anybody else’s input. You are the driver. You have to answer for all the mistakes. You’re the quarterback.

Quentin (12:34)
Yeah. Yes, sir.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Cossette (12:53)
win or lose, it’s all on your shoulders. I think understanding that, learning from that, then ⁓ developing the excitement behind it, excited to wake up to these kind of problems.

I get to solve them. That is an exciting job to have. I don’t have anyone telling me what to do. That is the excitement that builds up over time. I don’t know if it’s Darwinism or adaptation or what it is, but the more you get hit with it, the more it invigorates you.

Quentin (13:12)
Yes.

Man, I love you so much. You’re the first person I think doing this part has brought up the word dopamine, man. And I am constantly evaluating where I get my dopamine hit and my endorphin hits from. Constantly like what’s driving me? what’s tacked onto this reward system? right? Like once I get this, like, you know, I feel like I’m accomplished. Like I’m always kind of calculating.

where my dopamine and my endorphin hits are coming from to make sure that I’m doing it the right way. Because one thing about dopamine, you don’t want it to spike too high. Like you wanted to come at ⁓ kind of a smooth level because if you spike too much, you crash. And then when you crash, you’re constantly chasing. And then if you’re constantly chasing, you can get out of alignment real quick. You can find out, wait, I’m doing stuff that really is not maximizing my time, is not maximizing this and so.

Mike Cossette (14:01)
It’s healthy, yeah.

Quentin (14:23)
I love that you said dopamine hit, because that’s something I’m always kind of watching myself for and making sure I’m not chasing my next hit. You know, like I want to be able, because there is going to be things that’s going to give me that hit, but I can’t be chasing it. It got to be something that’s built in to like my natural system. And so I love that you said that, man. I really do, man. Really, really do. So listen, with that being said, sir.

What is your next real goal? Like, what are you looking to solve a scale next, Mr. Mike?

Mike Cossette (14:55)
Well, ⁓ at the moment, enjoying, so I’ve got four kids, I four kids in a period of four years,

right? And I got hit with surprise twins in 2023. Yeah, ⁓ so that changed the course of my entire life. Like I had set up everything. I had custom built ⁓ two SCRs downtown. I was living in one and.

You know, had a dream Baja racing truck and my properties were paying for themselves. This was just my dream and I was sitting like, you know, Garfield back there and then surprise twins happen. And that really shocked me that I had worked all this time to set up this ideal life that I thought I wanted and

Quentin (16:12)
Yeah.

Mike Cossette (16:26)
then all of a sudden out of the blue, something I never could have planned for, never expected comes and it just shakes my foundation, right? New house, new cars, new everything, right? And at the same time, you know, we’ve got markets declining, interest rates going through the roof, you know, all these wars and division and everything that we’ve been dealing with since the pandemic and then two new babies, right? All at the same time. So, you know,

Quentin (16:52)
Yeah.

Mike Cossette (16:57)
I really had to figure out, okay, I don’t have control over my life as much as I thought I did, right? And the faith aspect found its way to me. Like, I have to wake up in the morning with all the information driving through my head, find some sort of clarity to hold onto, to keep myself grounded so I can make the important decisions for my clients, for my investors, for my tenants, for my kids, for my

wife, like I have to be the rock for a lot of different people wearing a lot of different hats and having all the floating things. So that helped me into, you know, a much more faith driven journey that I’m still in the infancy stages of. Yeah, that I never would have expected, you know, I never would have expected that to come. the twins brought twins brought me there. Russian sailor. That’s what we call him. Russian sailor. So the

Quentin (17:40)
I’m on.

Yes, ⁓

Mike Cossette (17:57)
So that aspect has led me to kind of understand the seasonality of life, right? Like I talked about before, when the market crashed and I had all the time in the world, but no money. Well, now the seasons have flipped, right? I’ve got a little bit.

Quentin (18:04)
Mm.

Mike Cossette (18:14)
of a little bit of finance, but very little time and a lot more responsibility. So leading through that kind of journey has ⁓ really reshaped the way I understand things and I think about things and the seasons of life. And this season that I’m in currently is about not ⁓ over leveraging or not ⁓ paying too much attention.

to the things that are renewable resources, to the things that can come later in life. And to really make sure I build the big rocks, know, the big rocks, the small rocks in the sand. Well, the big rocks have got to be the family, you know, with the age of two to seven years old, the formidable years of a child’s life, that’s got to be a focus that I build my other businesses around. So.

And that’s an evolving thing as well. If you have kids, you know how quickly they grow. get in and out of sports, they’re crawling, they’re talking, they’re running, and then apparently they leave you. I’m not there yet. So that is the main focus right now is how to effectively run all these other business pieces of my life while keeping the four burner, the burner that has the most gas has got to be around the family.

Quentin (19:21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You just said, you just taught a master class. Like, my wife and I, we have a saying that say, your presence is a presence. Your presence is a presence. So I love how you talk about the big stone in the sand. That gotta be the foundation. It gotta be built around family. So everything else that breaks off out of this, every foundation that we build on, or thing we put on top of this foundation, has to be, the foundation need to be the family. And so, I mean, I absolutely love it.

And I love how you said the twins kind of they changed everything and you brought up your faith. So I hope it’s okay to say this because there is a there’s a scripture that says we make our plans, but the Lord determined the outcome. Right. So we we make our plans and he allowed us to plan it. You said you had these two places that you had just retrofitted. It was beautiful. And then it come to twins. So you had a plan, but the Lord was like, yeah, let me stir you a little bit this way. And so

I love it, man. I love your perspective. I love your outlook. man, you know, I want to ask you this because I love the way you think. I love your transparency. I love your self-awareness. Is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Or is there any other words of maybe like inspiration, education, motivation that you want to give? I kind of just want to open up the floor to like, is there anything in your mind, in your heart that you feel like?

would be advantageous for people. And it can be about business, it be about family. I just kind of want to open it up a little bit for you.

Mike Cossette (21:06)
Sure, So from the business side of things, know, I deal with, I’ve been an investor, been through lots of phases. I am an investor and I deal with a lot of investors.

one of the things that took me a while to learn after making several mistakes that I see again and again and again in the marketplace is new investors specifically. So if you’re a new investors, new investor, I see a lot of them struggle or fail and not because they are picking a bad

property or wrong property but it’s they don’t they never decide what this property is supposed to do for them specifically in their life in their season of life ⁓

right ⁓ so understanding where you’re at in your life you know and the assets that you have the struggles that you have and picking a job

of the property, then retrofitting the property that does that job for investors, I think is a massive tip and will serve them well as they evolve their portfolio and they build their infrastructure and the time goes by that they have these asset classes that are really working for them, but in a synergistic way, right? Not just an individual way.

that the whole puzzle fits together nicely. The earlier I think that you can start that and start thinking about that, the happier, more time you’ll have, the less headaches you’ll have, all of those things. So if I can drive that point home for new investors to really think about, that’s a key thing that we try to help investors with ⁓ whenever we’re working with them as well.

Quentin (22:33)
Come on. Come on.

I love it, Mike, man. I love the message that you’re preaching. I love the nuggets and just the life experience that you’re giving people. I really, really appreciate it. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, collaborate, like how can they get in contact with you,

Mike Cossette (23:07)
Sure, I’m on all the face-based social medias at ask, A-S-K, Mike, M-I-K-E, coss C-O-S-S (@askmikecoss). that’s the handle everywhere. And you can find me, know, I’m on all the socials and got a media page with the various podcasts and you can reach out to me. All my contact info is out there. So, you know, I probably should reinvest in some LifeLock, but. ⁓

with

Quentin (23:36)
Got you.

Mike Cossette (23:36)
AI out there but you know I’m an open book and you can learn all about me on the interwebs.

Quentin (23:43)
Yeah. Mike, let me say three things to you sincerely, man. Thank you for your time. We just talked about time, right? So you could have been doing anything in the world, but thank you for being here, man. Thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story. I tell people stories have a way of planting seeds in other people, our stories, plant seeds in other people. And we may never see the return or we may never see the growth.

but still our story is planting something inside of them that kind of maybe got their wheels turning or maybe even kind of course corrected. So thank you for telling your story, man. And so authentically, and lastly, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you, sir.

Mike Cossette (24:26)
Thank you, Quinton. And who are we and what are we doing if we’re not serving the people with the experiences and the assets that we have? So that is what you do on regular basis. So thank you for that because you are connecting all these people and giving back in a way that is serving so many people. that’s the big win.

Quentin (24:45)
Man, those words mean so much. And I’ll explain to you more why that means so much, but those words mean so much. So thank you for that. I greatly appreciate that. So listen, y’all heard Mr. Mike checking his show notes, getting in contact with him, but definitely make sure you’re subscribed here because I keep promising you, we’re going to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Mike. So sir, thank you again. And everyone else listen, y’all have a fantastic day.

Mike Cossette (24:54)
Absolutely, pleasure.

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Why Most Investors Buy the Wrong Property (And How to Avoid It)

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