Why Parker Stiles Chose Less Deals and More Profit | Real Estate Acquisitions, Lending, and Time Freedom

Parker Stiles (00:00)
Well, I mean, can’t say it didn’t break. It definitely broke. I I had to make some massive layoffs and ⁓ really change our systems. And I’m doing things in my business now that I haven’t done in seven, eight years myself that I just had people and managers and stuff doing for me. But it got me back in there. it taught me, while I don’t love talking to sellers all day, it is good to know you can get in there and get some deals signed and make some money yourself.

Scott Bursey (02:01)
Hi everyone and welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host Scott Bursey and today I’m joined by someone I’ve really been looking forward to chatting with, Parker Stiles, who has been making serious moves in the high volume residential acquisitions and private lending space. Parker has real estate in his DNA. He’s a fourth generation entrepreneur who didn’t just inherit the family business, he modernized it.

based in the 706, but operating across the Southeast. He’s the founder of Barrington Acquisitions and a master of the high volume systems, closing over a hundred deals annually. Please welcome Georgia’s own Parker Stiles. Parker, welcome to the show.

Parker Stiles (02:47)
I appreciate that Scott. Nice introduction.

Scott Bursey (02:49)
Well,

we appreciate you on this show, Parker, and I think our audience is really going to take something away from your ability to scale a high volume real estate machine without losing your boots on the ground local expertise. Parker, let’s dive in, shall we?

Parker Stiles (03:08)
Awesome, let’s do it.

Scott Bursey (03:10)
So first off, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus these days?

Parker Stiles (03:18)
My main

these days is really profit and time freedom. think you mentioned the high volume. We did plus or minus 100 deals a year for three or four years in a row.

That was great, but the market has kind of shifted and as cost per deal got higher, cost per lead got higher, margins got thinner, employees got more expensive ⁓ to maintain. And not to say that that high volume wholesale flip model doesn’t come back. I don’t think it’s the here and now best thing to be doing, but it taught me a ton. So right now I’m more focused on what strategies are really working when it comes to marketing, what deal types are.

are really the best ones to take down, whether it’s a wholesale or whether it’s internal. And if it’s internal, are we better to hold tail that property or should we do some renovation work or should we do the entire renovation and full retail flip it? Does it make sense for a rental property or should we buy it cash and sell it on owner financing to a long-term buyer and hold the debt? ⁓ And we have a hard money lending business as well that we kind of keep capital to work at and also

private capital that we play the arbitrage game with. So that’s a cool scenario where we can kind of make money on two different, two different hud, one hud, but two different companies, I guess. We whole tailed a deal recently and got the loan on the back end as well. So acquisitions company made like $47,000 and then brought in like 13 or 14 grand on the lending company and then, know, 2200 bucks a month and.

you know, ⁓ it’s a good combo. So I guess to conclude, it’s quieting the noise. We’ve downed our staff. ⁓ We’ve cut our marketing spend drastically. ⁓ And just kind of a less is more mentality now. ⁓ Almost like a riding out the storm and capitalizing where we can, knowing that we’re ready to, ⁓ you know,

hatch down and scale back up when needed when the stuff starts firing back up again, which we know it will ⁓ eventually.

Scott Bursey (06:25)
Well said. And what markets are you operating in?

Parker Stiles (06:31)
Mainly right now, we’ve gone back and forth with the nationwide thing. I’ve closed deals in probably 13 different states, ⁓ but primarily Georgia and the Carolinas.

Scott Bursey (06:44)
Okay, love it. What caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to modernize the family legacy into a high octane multi-state acquisition machine. That requires a level of surgical precision, if you will, that most people just haven’t developed in the shifting economic climate. What’s the unshakable pillar in your system that allows this machine to scale without breaking, even when the market gets volatile?

Parker Stiles (07:14)
Well, I mean, can’t say it didn’t break. It definitely broke. I I had to make some massive layoffs and ⁓ really change our systems. And I’m doing things in my business now that I haven’t done in seven, eight years myself that I just had people and managers and stuff doing for me. But it got me back in there. it taught me, while I don’t love talking to sellers all day, it is good to know you can get in there and get some deals signed and make some money yourself.

kind of teaches you that, ⁓ you know, for your acquisitions crew out there, it’s like, hey guys, this isn’t that hard. Like, I think for a little while there, I lied to myself by making myself think that it had gotten a lot harder to sign deals when conversion rates were dropping and acquisitions agents weren’t doing as good as they used to do. you really, you you gotta have a crazy work ethic. You have to follow up like a maniac and…

you gotta just do the thing. You gotta show up and do the thing. And a lot of people just don’t want to show up and do that right now. People are just lazy. So there’s no real golden thread or, ⁓ you know, secret key that I have other than I stay close to informed groups. ⁓ I listen where the market is going. ⁓ I don’t let my…

I try to not let my ego get in the way. It’s a constant battle of like, when’s the right time to turn this off? know, versus I can do it, I can make it. And I dug myself quite a debt hole in 2025 that we’ve climbed out of, thank God. Trying to make something work that just, wasn’t the right time in my opinion to make it work. So yeah, having your finger on that pulse.

and tweaking the dials where needed and knowing when to refocus energy and attention, those are the things. Those are the keys if you’re looking for secret keys. It’s that gray area stuff that really just comes through just doing it for years and figuring it out.

Scott Bursey (09:30)
Sure,

sure. And sometimes there’s no secret sauce. It’s showing up and ⁓ just doing it on a daily basis. Well said. Now every operator I know has a moment, Parker, where things got real. Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that ⁓ you had to pivot fast. You mind sharing one of those moments with us?

Parker Stiles (09:55)
Yeah, we were talking earlier off camera about some reverse 1031 exchanges that I did last year, transitioning some rental properties, some single family seasoned rental properties into triple net lease, meaning there’s no landlord responsibility for expenses,

even for property taxes and insurance. ⁓ So it’s a great tool for preserving your wealth and hiding against inflation. ⁓

rising cost on everything, especially when you’ve got 3 % rent bumps every year like I negotiated into the leases. However, I did reverse 1031 exchanges. you have to, for those of you that don’t know, a 1031 exchange is where you sell a property that you’ve owned in order to buy a new property. You sell a property to exchange it for a new property and you have a timeline to do so.

and it has to fit, it’s a like kind exchange. And what I did is I took four single family rentals that had about $750,000 worth of equity in them and I exchanged those for roughly two and a half million dollars worth of commercial property across two triple net lease properties. And one came from a broker off market and the other one I bought off of Crexie and it was a listed property.

And so a reverse 1031 exchange is not to be a smart ass, but it’s just the opposite of a 1031 exchange. So you just do everything backwards. And the reason that I wanted to do that is I didn’t want to sell my properties. First of all, I didn’t want to sell them all at once and then have to find something big. And I didn’t know if I should sell half and then find one and then sell half and find the other. So for more certainty, I wanted to find the asset that I wanted to buy first.

and then sell my properties. Keep in mind, I didn’t even know this was a possible tool to use until January of last year, and then I did two in 2025. ⁓ And they’re not a crazy big deal as long as you have a great exchange agent leading you through the process. ⁓ I used Atlanta Deferred Exchange ⁓ and had a fantastic experience on both properties, but I found a property

that was priced at, I believe, I bought it at $700,000. And I bought it by exchanging a rental property I had bought for 35 grand back like seven years ago. So I took a 35 grand rental property, let it ride up for five or six years, brought in a bunch of cashflow, had it appreciate, and then now I own a $700,000 building that has a nine year lease on it. No landlord responsibilities.

I don’t have annual renewals anymore. I have one tenant. I guess I had one tenant with the single house. But there’s no fix up or anything like that. So that’s not really what I’m getting to. It’s the second one that was the answer to your question. The second one was a little bigger. It was 1.85 million. And it was, it’s actually a restaurant that’s local to me. A chain franchise restaurant. Same thing, 10 year lease, 3 % rent bumps.

I think rent started out at like $120,000. I could be off on those numbers. Don’t quote me on that. ⁓ the reverse, I’ll regain my thoughts here. The reverse means you have to come up with the down payment money in order to ⁓ fund the deal with the bank. So I got debt financing for 70 % that I had to come up with 30%.

Plus, your due diligence is gonna rack up. I think we spent 35 grand between soft costs and due diligence and phase one fees and stuff like that for a larger property like that. And my private money lenders that were supposed to come in and help me out with that, I had some lenders back out. And so I was on the clock essentially to buy this deal where we were already kind of past due some timelines where we initially had agreed upon.

and I had to come up with the money ⁓ in a short period of time. And so I ended up getting a little creative and I had like ⁓ a million dollar property that I’m renovating in Charleston that I’d funded all with private money.

And so I ended up having a hard money lender. used ⁓ anchor loans and they came in and refinanced out my private money.

lenders because it was unsecured, Debt, wasn’t second position or first position was unsecured. So I had them come in and basically do a mid renovation refi that would give me the money that I used as the down payment. It was a little over half a million dollars to fund this triple net lease deal. And then that stayed in there. And after you close on the property you’re purchasing, now your goal is to sell the assets that you want to relinquish.

for the replacement property. And so I had, you that’s easy to do. You don’t need six months to do that. Cause I already knew what properties I was gonna sell. So we lined them up. We had the leases expiring and you know, we sold them in about four months, four and a half months time. And then all that money goes to the exchange agent and then she sends it to you. And I use that to pay off my debt. And now we’re rocking and rolling.

Scott Bursey (16:52)
Excellent breakdown. That’s the real world grit that usually gets left on the cutting room floor, quite frankly. Most people just want the highlight reel, you know, but you’re giving us the actual blueprint from battling in the trenches. And honestly, that’s the barrier to entry for the elite Parker. It’s what separates the weekend hobbyists from the career operators who are still standing a decade from now. Let me ask you this.

What are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

Parker Stiles (17:27)
⁓ The RV park space. So I want to ⁓ acquire RV parks. That’s a goal this year is to buy my first RV park. ⁓ That’s a space that I’ve been following ⁓ other people with pretty closely for maybe six months or so now. And I was kind of uncertain, but through some clarity through the last year, and I don’t want to go scale up ⁓ a single family acquisitions flipping company again. I think it was a great

I did that for a decade. I’m not abandoning it. It’s a bread and butter kind of thing. I know it, right? Don’t jump off a moving horse. It might not be what it was 24 months ago, but it’s still paying bills and putting money in my bank account. now more so than it was. I the last two years, we’re really working harder and doing more deals and scaling more to make less money. Like margins were getting thinner and thinner.

⁓ And now, know, I am doing more myself, but that enabled me to get back in the business, cut some fat, improve some systems, get rid of some things we didn’t need, ⁓ and obviously keep way more of the rip myself versus, you know, a percentage, a small percentage of that number. And, you know, apart from that, that’s going to be what funds the RV Park ventures, ⁓ you know, as well as raising…

raising equity from private lenders. But I love the cash flow model of the RV park, ⁓ you know, set up and I like how not hands off, but you can take an asset that is not systematized and really hasn’t been optimized and you can pass it down to the next, you know, generation, next person. And there’s a lot of improvements that can be made, not necessarily all to the park itself, but with

know, payment portals and software and automations ⁓ and other sources of income within the park versus just lot rent and things like that. So I’m excited for that.

Scott Bursey (19:40)
⁓ and you ought to be the RV park. That’s big, especially when you already have the infrastructure in place. Now that next

is where, you know, quite frankly, the leverage lives. It can either perfect your operation or detonate your workflow, depending on the strategy that you deploy. Interested to know if you were starting over today with 50K and 10 years of experience.

but zero portfolio. What’s the first Legion channel that you turn to?

Parker Stiles (20:16)
So I’ve got all my experience and I’ve got 50 grand, but I don’t have an income or an equity portfolio.

Scott Bursey (20:25)
Yes.

Parker Stiles (20:32)
Well.

Scott Bursey (20:32)
And that

could be a lot of times AI is a common response that people tell me they say Facebook is an avenue now that they explore as well. And it’s a unique question. No question about that. But Google ads, for instance, is what I hear a lot of.

Parker Stiles (20:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, know, sort of remarking, if I had $50,000, no income, no portfolio, but I had my education, I probably would go directly into commercial. ⁓ Most people are not gonna have the education of 10 years of experience and not have those things. So I think the better answer would probably be if I didn’t have my experience.

And if I didn’t, I would go for the easier asset. And the easier asset or the easier mountain to climb, in my opinion, is single family as far as the barrier to entry being lower as well. ⁓ Now, I have in the past told myself I wish I would have just started with commercial. So it definitely means, it definitely doesn’t mean you have to start with single family.

I think it’s a lower barrier to entry and 50 grand is more than enough. I I started with, I think 10K was the savings that I, and I didn’t need all the 10K either, but I started with some direct mail there and then I ended up getting 0 % interest credit cards for 12 to 18 months. I got 40 grand on those kind of promotional credit cards. And I said,

If I can’t take 40 grand worth of credit and spend it on direct mail and get leads and go at least make that money back in a year and a half, then I need to go back and get a job to pay off this debt anyway. I wouldn’t meant to be an entrepreneur. So that was kind of the mission that I gave myself and obviously succeeded at that. But that’s what I would do is I would stick to the single family space. I would take that money.

and I would invest it into two different marketing streams. I would probably ⁓ do PPC mixed with SEO ⁓ for a particular market, and then I would also do direct mail ⁓ with that money. ⁓ And then probably from there, ⁓ you would need someone to pick up the phones because you would probably be underwriting the deals and making the offers.

And the easiest thing to hire would be a VA to just kind of collect basic information or set appointments for you. ⁓ Or you could use a service like Call Ruby or PatLive, like a 24 hour answer kind of service. You want to keep that stuff as basic as possible because they’re not going to be able to build rapport or get into in-depth conversations ⁓ like you would to build trust with the seller. ⁓ And then whether you wholesale those deals or…

you know, buy them to fix them up and flip them or just hold rentals like that. That’s a personal preference based on your situation. ⁓ Most people start with wholesaling, but you definitely don’t have to.

Scott Bursey (23:46)
Parker, thank you for sharing that recipe and what a recipe that was. Very well taken. And now I know a lot of our audiences either, you know, earlier in their journey perhaps are looking to, to level up. And I think they benefit from hearing this when it comes to building relationships and growing your network. What’s the biggest difference? What has really made the biggest difference?

for you, Parker.

Parker Stiles (24:19)
Staying connected with a good group and paying for mentorship, honestly. I I know a lot of people from back home that chose not to pay for mentorship. I know a lot of people.

Scott Bursey (24:25)
Sure, sure, hey.

Parker Stiles (24:34)
I have a small coaching business of my own and I know a lot of people who choose not to pay and we follow up with them every six months. And a lot of those situations are the same. the better comparison is my personal story.

I chose to join a mastermind the second year that I was a real estate investor. And by the third year, I had surpassed everybody within my current market to a certain extent. mean, I was kind of just…

I had bigger sites. I had a further vision. ⁓ I was doing things that they hadn’t thought to do yet. I was getting into vertical integration with adding other streams of income, whether it was lending or ⁓ notes with owner financing or, ⁓ you know, different exit strategies for the acquisitions business. It’s just you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think there’s a bad connotation tied to paying for ⁓ mentorship.

because maybe there’s some bad actors out there. And I don’t mean it has to be a one-on-one coach or has to be a mastermind, it just needs to be something. You gotta get, even personally too, outside of work. You need somebody that can be breathing into you and you need somebody that you can be ⁓ breathing into as well. mean, that’s how life works.

Scott Bursey (25:42)
Sure.

where it’s natural and it’s genuine. And that’s when, you know, the biggest things happen. Thank you for sharing that with us. And I got to ask you, Parker, how do you maintain your edge when things are going well? You know, it’s easy to grind when you’re broke. Let’s be, let’s be honest. But how do you stay hungry when you’re successful?

Parker Stiles (26:24)
That’s a good question. You know, I’ll have to go back to 2019, 20, 21, 22, because I think like the last three years have just been like really, really difficult for a lot of people, me included. And if I go back to those years, which were just, you know, the climb and things were good.

I don’t know if they necessarily were in my head. I still had problems. I still have. We take those things for granted, right? Now we look back and we’re like, God, that was the gravy train. ⁓ But we didn’t think that then. So I think it’s a lot of how you hold yourself, the standards that you hold to yourself. I I mentioned earlier, I can’t remember if it’s before we started recording, but I’ve always had that internal drive to want to be building something.

So if what I’ve built is doing good, then I want to go build something else. I want to be continuing to level up myself, ⁓ whether it’s myself in business or myself in the gym or myself in my marriage. ⁓

beliefs, know, there’s just that edge to want to keep growing. ⁓ And if you don’t have that, I think you’ll have to work harder to, you know, stay sane and stay motivated to keep going. So it’s probably a lot ⁓ of personality as well. you also probably haven’t had enough losses, if that’s the case. Because I know now through a lot of ups and downs that I’ve been through that I hadn’t been through

rewind five years ago, ⁓ I know it doesn’t last forever. I know it’s around the corner. So it almost kind of keeps me on my toes or on edge a little bit to realize like I don’t need to get too comfortable.

Scott Bursey (28:24)
you’re a realist and that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing that with us. All right, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate and learn more about what you’re doing currently, what’s the best way that they can contact you?

Parker Stiles (28:41)
Yeah, sure. Probably DM me on Facebook, Parker Stiles, S-T-I-L-E-S. ⁓ And we do fund loans in Georgia and the Carolinas. So if you’re looking for ⁓ fast, easy access to private money, we do fund deals at fasttrackfunding.com. ⁓ And then I mentioned I do a little bit of coaching, coachingwithparker.com if you happen to be interested in that.

Scott Bursey (29:08)
Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story, and definitely your perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing it the right way. Thanks again for being here. Thank you. Appreciate you. And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Parker, who out there building real dynamic businesses. We’ll see you in the next episode, everybody.

Parker Stiles (29:19)
Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it.