Why Real Estate Investors Should Keep Buying Despite High Interest Rates | Anson Young

Anson Young (00:00)
I think the best opportunity right now is for for investors to continue just plowing forward. not being scared of the current interest rate environment, not being scared of, longer days on market. If you’re a flipper, it’s you’re looking at b at high interest rates and challenging sellers market right now, whether it’s days on market or concessions or

the ARVs are softer than they were before. being able to plow through that, like investors were making money in 2008, they were making money in 2020.

Scott Bursey (01:04)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. Glad you’re with us. And today we’re delighted to be joined by Anson Young, a seasoned real estate investor, agent, author, and educator based out of Denver, Colorado. With nearly two decades of experience, spanning over 1,400 transactions. Anson is the author of the best selling.

Bigger Pockets Book, Finding and Funding Great Deals, and The Mind Behind The Property Squad. Listeners, you can expect a master class today on scaling portfolios, mastering deal acquisition, and building lasting freedom in today’s market. Anson, welcome to the show.

Anson Young (01:47)
Thanks so much, Scott, for having me. Thank you.

Scott Bursey (01:49)
Awesome to have you here and to help our listeners get up to speed. Please give us the ninety second highlight reel, if you will, of how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Anson Young (02:01)
Sure. Yeah. So I started off in the dot com bubble way back in the day, 2003. and thought that I would probably just stick with IT because I got I kind of landed on a good job. And but like everyone else in about 2004, I got laid off and and really was at a crossroads. Like what do I do? do I double down on IT? Do I keep going down that road? Or

Something else. And so a couple other opportunities came my way to be able to move down to Phoenix. my brother just had their first kid and so we wanted to be closer to family. I obviously didn’t have a job at that point. I was just bartending, which was a lot of fun, but I knew I couldn’t do forever. Honestly, probably my favorite job ever. but I knew that I couldn’t be like fifty five and still bartending, it does take a toll on you for sure. So

when we went to move down there, right before we moved, a friend of mine handed me Rich Dad Poor Dad. And of the most basic origin stories, I’m just another product of that book. I probably wouldn’t recommend it out now. but for a lot of us, it was a good mind mindset shift, kind of pre heyday of the internet and stuff. So it was like, this information

knew what it felt like. and I landed down at Phoenix and it was kind of an opportunity to just jump in with both feet in real estate. So that’s exactly what I did is get right into there. And so, over the years I’ve I got my license, I’ve been fixing flipping and wholesaling for years and years. And starting in 2022, I started buying burr deals.

actual deals to keep. And so that’s new for me. And so looking around, I found that other states, their numbers were working better. And so when it came time to do this Burr thing, it was, we’re gonna make sure that we did it at some sort of scale and in a market where it supports that. we chose three markets out of state and we’ve been focusing pretty much 100% on

the burr strategy. So no shiny objects. We’re just trying to stay in our lane and do our thing. So

Scott Bursey (04:01)
Well, thank you for sharing that background, Anson. Man, what a journey. what really caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to successfully scale across agent deals, wholesales, flips, and out of state markets without missing a beat. And expanding on that, curious to know what is working best for you right now in your acquisitions?

Anson Young (04:25)
Yeah, acquisitions has been pretty much set in stone for the last 10 years. We’ve been doing primarily direct mail. that’s about 90% of our business is direct mail, and the other 10% is either referrals or you’re getting agents who are bringing us deals here and there. and then we have an in inbound.

kind of call system with two acquisitions managers who take in those calls, vet those leads, kind of go through the whole process with them. And so it’s old school, but still works. So we’re gonna continue doing it if it works. So

Scott Bursey (04:58)
On that note, direct mail. That’s that’s really intriguing. How are you leaning into that advantage day to day?

Anson Young (05:07)
is just being consistent with it. we may not be mailing every day, but there’s something on the to-do list that has to do with making sure that it goes out every two weeks or every month, depending on the list. And so

on a daily basis, we have to make sure that we’re sticking consistent with that. most other investors, I’ve done the thing where I’ve, mailed out a bunch, got, a bunch of leads in, I’m working the leads, and then it comes time to mail the next thing. And I’m so busy that I can’t focus on marketing. And then after a month or two, and my deals have closed or died down or whatever, and then I’m like, there’s no leads coming in. And so I found out really quickly that you have to like no matter what.

how busy you are, you have to keep sending in order to capitalize on something like direct mail. Because it’s definitely a snowball that you’re rolling downhill and it’s only going to get bigger and better and cooler the further down the hill it goes consistently. otherwise, you’re kind of flushing money down the toilet if you’re just mailing once, giving it three or four months and then trying to mail again and then.

If you’re consistent, you’re gonna see much better results. And that day to day is an advantage. You gotta have it on your radar every day if you’re gonna get it done. So

Scott Bursey (06:14)
Consistency is key.

Anson Young (06:17)
That’s right.

Scott Bursey (06:17)
Thank you for highlighting that. And wondering the biggest challenge, let’s say, in your business right now?

Anson Young (06:25)
the challenge is always me. it’s always me I started this business and it was just me. So I was doing every single thing inside the business. And when you do that, you feel like, okay, like I’m the best at this inside my business. I’m the best acquisitions manager, I’m the best project manager, I’m the best marketing

guy, I’m the best, everything in inside the entire thing. But if you ever want to scale, if you ever want to bring other people on board, if you ever want to get rid of things that you hate to do that you might be good at it, but you hate it, you have to start offloading those off of your plate. And for me, the biggest part of that is mental is like getting rid of acquisitions was like such a huge part of it took forever.

And I it almost had to be pride away for me at one point because I kept jumping back in and seeing, like, yeah, I could do this part better, I can close this better, I can help this person better. and like once I kind of got out of my own way, like things started actually getting better and being able to scale three different markets and being able to close a certain amount of deals a month, I could never do on my own.

And so being able to bring people in, let go of those processes and for me to step out of my own way was definitely the key of overcoming the that biggest challenge in my business. And I still do it. I think it’ll always be there. There’ll always be a piece that I want to like hold on to white knuckled, but I’m learning to let go and that other people may not be able to do it as bet as good as I can, but they can do it good enough to our standard.

to help people out and get deals done.

Scott Bursey (07:59)
Respect that accountability. Where do deals tend to slip through the cracks for most operators in your view?

Anson Young (08:06)
I think for most operators, it’s either when like leads come in, they’re not, handled in a timely manner. and then also follow up is just huge. Like doing what you say that you’re gonna do. I find that if we tell somebody that we’re gonna call them at three o’clock on Tuesday, as part of our follow up, and they agree to that, they’re like, Yeah, three o’clock on Tuesday. Sounds great.

Then we actually call them at three o’clock on Tuesday, they’re blown away because like almost no other business just seems to be able to keep their word, which is crazy. So being able to follow up, keep your word, and jump on leads in a timely manner. So when you paid money to have somebody call you or to have somebody answer the phone or you’re doing

PPC and somebody’s clicking and they’re calling in or they’re sending an email or a request. Like you paid for that lead. And the more time that goes by from when it comes in to when you respond, you’re losing them and you’re wasting money.

being able to be on the phone or be able to respond like immediately, it’s hard when you’re on your own. Like I’ve missed calls. when I didn’t have acquisitions people, I would let calls fall through, my CRM was all jumbled, so I didn’t have a good follow up system. I probably lost, dozens of deals over the years just by having poor systems in place. So

Scott Bursey (09:21)
Appreciate you sharing that perspective. Anson, looking at the landscape, where are you seeing the best opportunity right now?

Anson Young (09:29)
I think the best opportunity right now is for for investors to continue just plowing forward. not being scared of the current interest rate environment, not being scared of, longer days on market. If you’re a flipper, it’s you’re looking at b at high interest rates and challenging sellers market right now, whether it’s days on market or concessions or

the ARVs are softer than they were before. being able to plow through that, like investors were making money in 2008, they were making money in 2020. They’re going to be able to make money, right now, as long as they keep at it, they keep marketing, they keep pushing forward. they acknowledge, obviously, you have to acknowledge all of those things and factor those into your analysis, but just be conservative with your numbers.

build in more time to get rid of deals whatever that looks like inside your market but your biggest advantage is gonna going to be to continue moving forward because if you pull back and you’re scared in a year from now you’re probably gonna wish that you just pushed through and continued with it because I kind of did that in 2020 where

I was looking to launch a new market. And then obviously, COVID happened and like there wasn’t just no showings that were able to be done on properties here in town. And it was nobody knew what was gonna happen. it was like, are we gonna have no showings for six months? Like, what’s gonna happen? and so I had pulled back just because I wasn’t sure exactly what’s gonna happen. I didn’t launch my new market right then, and it probably took me an extra like nine months to kind of

Do that. But looking back, I wish I just pushed through and went for it because there was a small hiccup for a few months. And then the 2020, 2021, 22, market was just like crazy. it’s being able to just stick with it. no matter if the interest rates are 8% or 18%. There was investors who were making money in both of those markets.

Scott Bursey (11:18)
Let’s stay on that path. What is your next big move to capture that upside?

Anson Young (12:04)
I feel like the next move for me is probably expand into one more market that is kind of closer to the Great Lakes region. I just really like that area for longevity. If you’re talking about owning properties for 15, 20 years, you gotta really like look what’s going on for the next 15 to 20 years in those markets.

and so like that feels like more of the same, honestly. It’s like scaling is just kind of stamping down your systems into a different area, going through your growing pains and then going from there. I think in probably five or six years, I’ll probably scale back on acquisitions and probably just build, like three to

five houses locally and but it it’s there’s probably more passion project inside of real estate of like instead of worrying about like trying to close like 30 deals a year 30 to 50 deals a year that we’re trying to like build onto the portfolio there’s a there’s just a point where you don’t need another rental

I’m not trying to like amass gold like a dragon or something. I’m just trying to like be comfortable, do fun things, hang out with my family, do things that I’m passionate about. And the process of flipping is very satisfying. And the process I think of building is even more satisfying. You’re taking something that’s like blank and you’re putting something, actually interesting there that people can live in and be proud of and

call, their home. And so I’ve been looking a lot into that without trying to be distracted from what we’re doing on a daily basis. But I think that there’s a version of me in five years where I’m just building four houses a year and being just content doing that. So

Scott Bursey (13:43)
You highlighted the macro. Thank you for that. What are you most concerned about currently?

Anson Young (13:48)
as a business you always have to continue looking at your, current market, being very update dated on, who are the other players in your market, who you’re competing with, what kind of marketing that they’re sending out. is it better than yours? Is it something that you can iterate on? talking to sellers, you can kind of get a feeling of.

once you’re over the hump and they’ve agreed, to sell and everything, there’s like less pressure in those conversations. And so you can ask them, like, hey, did you reach out to anyone else? I just was curious, to see if there’s anyone else that you considered to help you through this. And they’ll tell you, I I’ve been handed big bags of mail before. I’ve, like, here’s all the mail I’ve gotten the last like six months, and that’s invaluable. I can look through and see all of my competitions mail. having

Rentals in the market helps with that too. Cause I get mail for, we’ll buy your house, or marketing text for the most part. But kind of get a good feel of what your competition’s doing and being able to like respond to that and not have your head in the sand of like, I’m gonna do what I do no matter what. I think that can be a little short-sighted. Like your competition could just be crushing you. And if you’re not like in,

At least looking into it, you’re gonna just continue to get crushed. So

Scott Bursey (14:55)
You have two out of state markets. Where are you beating the competition in those markets?

Anson Young (15:01)
I feel like our mail is good, like our mail is quality and it gets people to call in. and then from there, I think where we’re beating them out is like actually caring about their situation, actually building rapport, not just as like a check mark on a worksheet or something. It’s like we’re truly,

caring about what their situation is. if they want to tell us about their, kids or dogs or grandkids or whatever, like we’re listening. we’re not just there to be like, hey, we’re just here for the money. Like, and that’s it. And I feel like, from doing short sales back in the day all the way through just doing direct mail for the last 10, 11 years, people can really feel like if you’re there and you’re motivated by money.

you pull up in a super nice car and you out dress them and you’re like talking to them like they’re just a transaction. Like people feel that and they hate it. And so I’ve always been, the guy who shows up in a hat and a sweatshirt and some shorts or something. none of my cars are great.

And really like listen to them and care. And being able to kind of keep that as the ethos of the company has been hugely helpful because we’ve we’ll beat out our competition on those deals. and we’ll be told just straight up like, hey, you guys weren’t paying the most, but we liked you more. Like the amount of times I’ve heard that me tells me that I’m doing something right and I can sleep at night, knowing that I can like help people and not be profit oriented first.

Whereas I feel like there there’s a lot of investors who I’ve met who are I wouldn’t sell my house to them. So it’s unfortunate that not everybody has this mindset, but we’re kind of beating out our competition.

Scott Bursey (16:36)
Anson, you spoke of the human element. How do you keep that quality high when you’re physically not on the ground in your out of state market?

Anson Young (16:46)
I think that that’s like the perfect question because you can do all that when you’re local and you can do all that when you drive and you show up to their house. how do you keep that spirit inside of all of your interactions? good training for our acquisition guys. Like when we’re hiring, we have to make sure that they are like empathetic, they’re

not just sales sharks, like just there to close deals. and then kind of training them on like, hey, this is sometimes you’re dealing with people in their worst like situation, right? Like losing a house or death in the family, and now they have to sell a house. Like you’re, dealing with very sensitive things that isn’t just numbers on a page that correlate to the house. There’s all this baggage attached to it and navigating it.

With good training, you can train other people to obviously do that. I think that that’s where me letting go of acquisitions is hard is because like I’m very much that centered. And I realized, I have to not only teach someone how to, the sales side of real estate, but I actually have to teach them to like care and find the right person who can care about these situations who could talk about kids for 20 minutes instead of just numbers on a page.

But that’s where we win deals is like finding really good people who are empathetic, who care about people and who are there to help. and kind of instilling that at the top down inside of what we do, scale. could I have a hundred people who are doing that on that level? Probably not, which is probably why I’m not.

Going to scale into like a hundred markets or anything. I found some, folks who do a killer job. I take care of them really well. They enjoy what they do and they love helping people. And so, that ethos is, it comes from me and it goes down into my people and they do it better than me sometimes, which is great, I guess more specific of like how do you do that when you’re remote is

I think that having like very personalized handoffs is good. So if you’re ever handing off somebody to somebody else who’s local, like if we have a contractor who’s walking through, or one of our agents might walk through and take pictures of the property or something like that, like taking time to really set that person up as like, hey, Jenny’s gonna come out, she’s on our team, you’re gonna love her. She’s great. She also has two dogs and

babies them and like kind of tie it into the your previous conversations. And so any like kind of handoff or any kind of remote type of process is just handled like with white gloves is like you’re gonna love this person. It’s not just some random person who’s showing up to the house. It’s like another member of our team and you’re gonna love them too. And they’re here to help too. And so I think that a lot of those things like that come down through the spirit of kind of the organ organization are huge.

it’s definitely a top-down approach because virtual does compound problems and communication is a big one I can’t be face to face with, any of these sellers unless I want to fly out every week and I don’t. So we have to keep that spirit inside of all of our interactions.

That’s huge. It’s paramount to what we do.

Scott Bursey (19:41)
Love hearing how you handle that execution right there. And over the years, what has made the biggest difference for you in building relationships, fostering relationships, Anson?

Anson Young (20:28)
definitely coming at it, I try to kind of have a value first approach. because I can talk, your ear off about like everything that’s going on inside of your business and wanting to know how every single part works because it’s, something that’s interesting to me. But if I don’t lead that off with any kind of value that I’m giving, I just feel like I’m just taking and taking and I never want to be that person.

Know I definitely want to be somebody who is going to offer value first before I ask for something back. And so if I want to know exactly how your marketing is working, I’m gonna see if you need anything from me. if there’s anything inside of my business that’s helpful, open the books and see what the marketing looks like or whatever that is.

for my very first year in real estate, I basically just did side jobs for people. and I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I wanted to be involved. And so, there was a few investors and an agent who kind of took me into their wing and I would go just do jobs for them for free. And I’d go dig post hole signs and plant posts for the agent.

And in return, she would help me with MLS and understanding like how to search on MLS and what I’m looking for and all of that stuff. Instead of going to that person and just saying, Hey, can you can I get this from you? Like I was willing to go, do something for them first, like go knock on doors and learn about contracts, later on. So I found that not just wanting to take, take, take makes people a lot more open to.

everything. I’m here to help you. and if I can get any help back, that would be great. And if not, that happens too. So

Scott Bursey (22:02)
Appreciate you giving us a look into your mind and your inner circle. Let’s dive deep. If an investor wanted to unlock their next level of growth this quarter, Anson, what is the most important tactical shift they need to make?

Anson Young (22:18)
I think part of that is definitely getting around people who are doing what you want to do at a bigger level. I feel like, if somebody’s looking for a kind of a bigger radical change or they’re like looking to kind of push forward through and start off next year really well, something like that, where either a mastermind group or networking with

kind of higher level investors, whatever that looks like, but like I found that that’s helped me in all of my periods of transition or growth have been like, hey, I feel like I’m stuck in a rut. my numbers aren’t where I want them to be. And then if I get around people who are doing, two to ten times the business I’m doing, like I’m not at that level yet. can I learn from them? Can I figure out like

what they’re doing, can I get around them and really, dive into adding value first and then obviously getting some value back of like, hey, what how can I tweak my marketing to do this? And that guy will know because he’s five steps ahead of me. And so I found that most investors are willing to help for sure. But if you like were to join a mastermind or something like that, like obviously those people are there to help by default. And so

Just kind of leveling up by leveling up the people that you’re kind of interacting with and networking with for sure.

Scott Bursey (23:31)
Excellent perspective. And Anson, you have given our platform, our listeners, great perspective here today. But is there any additional golden nugget or two that you like to leave with our listeners?

Anson Young (23:44)
one is something that’s a pet peeve of mine and it’s being able to do like the fundamental work inside of investing yourself, especially these days. Like I if you’re starting off right now, it’s a lot different than when I started off. you could basically just ask Chat GPT any question that you want.

But if you’re if you don’t know the fundamentals of like how to actually analyze a deal on paper without any like computers or calculators, if you don’t know how to do that, then how can you trust like anything else to kind of do that for you? Whether it’s a spreadsheet that has formulas in it that you’re not familiar with, all the way through to what I see now is most investors they start with an LLM. and a lot of times it goes off the rails pretty quick because.

if you don’t know the fundamentals yourself, how can you correct what the system is giving you, whether it’s a spreadsheet or chat GPT, what whatever it’s trying to tell you? And so I would say, like, stick with the fundamentals. I know it’s boring, I know it’s paper, but you’re gonna be thankful when you catch a mistake, which we’ve all caught mistakes, obviously, on either spreadsheets or now with LLMs.

And I think the second part is don’t worry about like the sky falling right now in this market. I know a lot of investors are pulling back and they’re sitting on the sidelines. like seven, eight percent interest rates aren’t the end of the world. They’re not as great as three to five percent that we had.

But I don’t have a time machine, neither do you. Well, if you do, let me know. Maybe I’ll borrow it. I have some things I’d like to get done. but since none of us have a time machine, we can only deal with the market that’s in front of us. and I I’ve always found that like pushing through, kind of turbulent markets has always been the right call. I’ve never been like happy that I sat on the sidelines.

When there’s opportunities in every market. Like my dad bought his first house in 18% interest rate environment. And there was investors who were doing deals in that environment. So 8% doesn’t look too bad compared to 18%. But of course, it looks not so great compared to 4%. But I don’t, I can’t control the Fed. I could only control me and my actions. And so as for me, I’m going to continue pushing forward. I recommend you do the same.

Scott Bursey (25:51)
That is some gold for our listeners right there. And Anson, for those of our listeners that would like to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane, or perhaps even collaborate with you on future deals, what’s the best way for them to plug into your pipeline and reach you directly?

Anson Young (26:07)
Yeah, you can either find me on Bigger Pockets just by my first name, last name. Instagram at younganson. you can go to property squadhq.com. there’s ways to contact me on there as well, but I’m pretty findable out there. So if you wanna if you have questions or follow-up or anything like that, just hit me up.

Scott Bursey (26:27)
Anson, thank you so much for joining us on the Real Estate Pros podcast today.

Anson Young (26:31)
Thanks for having me.

Scott Bursey (26:32)
It’s been a masterclass. You really brought the fuel.

Anson Young (26:35)
Thank you so much.

Scott Bursey (26:37)
And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with the lineup of elite guests, just like Anson Young, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time.

Keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you on the next episode, everyone.