Why You Should Keep Your Home and Turn It Into a Rental Property | Rich Durante

Rich Durante (00:00)
I think that is the message: that you can rent out your place, even if it’s a high-end home. There are people that are looking for that. So my message is you have to get that real estate in your portfolio. Take advantage of the tax advantages that are there, and at least use that to start your real estate investing. So start it with the place you have that you’re moving out of and start building the wealth, generational wealth, from there.

Quentin Edmonds (01:58)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast.

I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited today. I have a fantastic guest who is a founder and an investor. He manages single-family homes—about 550 under management. I’m excited because he practices what he preaches. The same thing he preaches for everybody else, he practices himself. So I’m so excited for us to peek through his lens and learn from his experience. Now I introduce you all to Mr. Rich Durante.

Rich Durante (02:30)
Excellent.

Quentin Edmonds (02:31)
Awesome, sir. Appreciate you, sir. Man, listen, I’m so glad you’re here today. How are you feeling, man?

Rich Durante (02:36)
I’m doing great.

Quentin Edmonds (02:37)
Good, I’m so glad, man. Mr. Rich, sir, listen, I am really the type that likes to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little origin story, maybe how you got into the space that you’re in. And then tell them where you are in the world—people love to know where people are located. So, Mr. Rich, sir, you have the floor, my friend.

Rich Durante (02:58)
Excellent. So yeah, I’m located in Chicago. Our business, Durante & Rich Real Estate, manages in three markets right now: Chicagoland, Milwaukee and southern Wisconsin, and then in San Diego, California. So we have a pretty good range of markets and investments in those markets.

A little bit about the origin story: I used to work a corporate job for a little over 13 years, and then I really started to invest in real estate. After I completed my master’s, I started this business with just one property that I owned myself. Then we started managing properties for others. So we started from that one property and now we manage a little over 550 single-family homes for others.

The way that we started was we thought that everyone should have an investment property—everyone should have a hard asset. One of the best assets they have is the home that they currently live in. So if you’re going to move, what a great opportunity to keep that property and turn it into an investment. That’s really where we started. We started with mine when I moved and kept it as an investment, and that’s what we’re doing for everybody else.

Our main focus is on single-family homes, townhomes, or condos. Most of our clients have one place and then they hire us to manage that property so it’s completely hands-free. We locate the tenant, do all the tenant screening, do the marketing, and then manage it from move-in to move-out. That is what we do, and it started almost 15 years ago with just one property and we’ve grown from there.

Our philosophy and the reason why I started the company was because I just thought that everyone needed real estate in their portfolio as an investment. They can invest in the stock market or other things, but the tax advantages are huge if you have an investment property, and everyone should really take advantage of those.

Quentin Edmonds (05:48)
Love it, man. Thank you, man. Thank you for telling me where you are and taking me through the journey and the way you really want to serve people. I absolutely love it—telling people, “Hey, you should have at least one property within your portfolio.” So I love that.

Mr. Rich, I often say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning we’re borrowing from every leg of our journey—borrowing from the failure, from the success, borrowing from everything—and it kind of reinforces the people we are today. So, Mr. Rich, on your journey, man, I would love to know: what has it revealed to you about yourself? Has it revealed discipline, humility, tenacity? What has the journey revealed to Rich about Rich?

Rich Durante (06:28)
I think that one of the things in this business that is important is really being able to trust somebody. I think that’s always been my background: integrity. I think that has shown through everything that we’ve done. Also, just the work ethic of always making sure the customer is first and trying to help people build equity and build long-term success. That’s really where we have focused, and that’s what I found out about myself: I really love helping people do that. I love having conversations with somebody on how to build for their future.

I had a great conversation with a potential client who is living in Germany right now and wants to invest in some real estate here. I always say, “This is how I would invest. If it was my own money, this is where I would go, and this is what I would do.” So I love telling those stories and having those conversations with different types of investors. What I found out is that what I love to do is having that conversation, helping somebody build equity, and sharing my experiences through this process.

Quentin Edmonds (07:33)
Love that, Mr. Rich. I think at the foundation of any sustainable business is servitude—wanting to serve people, wanting to help people. So I love that. In the spirit of wanting to help people, we have a lot of business owners listening in, investors, people who are trying to help people as well. I would love to know: what’s one operational thing you’ve put into place over, let’s say, the last two years that you have found really helpful in being successful?

Rich Durante (08:02)
I think for us it’s around how we handle rent collection. Operationally, we handle it a little differently than probably any other company: when a tenant pays rent, it goes directly from the tenant’s account into the owner’s account, and it doesn’t touch our bank at all. So it’s a streamlined process, and again, speaking to integrity, the money goes directly from the tenants to the owners. We’re processing a lot of rent on a monthly and yearly basis, and that operational piece makes it so smooth for us because we don’t have to handle rent and then redistribute it to owners. It just goes directly into their account.

I think that has been huge for us as we grow and have so many different owners, because we don’t have just two clients—we have about 500. Because our clients have one property or a couple, that process makes it really simple for us and really simple for our owner clients.

Quentin Edmonds (08:57)
So what’s next for you, Mr. Rich? You’ve figured a lot of things out and got systems in place. What’s the next real goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next, sir?

Rich Durante (09:06)
For us, we’re in three very large markets, so we have tons of opportunities to grow within the markets that we’re in. I think our market share is still very low, so there are so many opportunities in Chicagoland, Milwaukee, and San Diego for us to really expand how many properties we have under management. It’s about getting that story out there: that an owner should keep their house instead of selling it and turn it into an investment, because their investment is already there and it can probably already cash flow for them based on what they’ve already put down on their house.

That is a great piece. Instead of buying up and increasing the value on your next property, maybe you buy similarly priced, and then you’re able to keep that home and that other mortgage payment that you have. For us, it’s about growing in the current territories that we’re in. We just see so many more opportunities.

Quentin Edmonds (09:56)
I want to talk a little bit about relationships. I would love to get your perspective when it comes to building healthy business relationships—and probably for you, even healthy tenant relationships. I just want to get your perspective on relationship building: how it has helped you, and who are some people in your corner within your circle who have helped you be successful? Again, I just want to get your philosophy on that word “relationship” in its totality.

Rich Durante (10:22)
I think relationships are what we do. We’re not manufacturing anything or making a product, so we’re offering services. It’s important to take care of the tenants that we have in place. We’re different in the aspect that we’re not renting out anything that’s brand new—usually it’s a place that’s been lived in. So building that relationship with a tenant is key, because things will go wrong at some point—something’s going to leak or something’s going to break. Building that relationship with our tenants coming from our office and being able to handle things that don’t go right is important. I think that’s a huge piece of helping our tenants and making sure they have a good place to live, that it’s a functioning property, and repairs are handled as quickly as possible.

Building that relationship has been huge, as well as building trust with our owner clients. We really don’t want them to be involved; we want us to handle it so the owners aren’t worrying about a dripping faucet. They build that trust with us.

One of the great stories we have is that we work with a couple of small investors who have multiple properties. One of our investors came to us with a few million dollars and asked us to buy properties in the Milwaukee area. We handled buying the investment properties, doing small fixes, and then doing a long-term buy-and-hold. It’s a great return story for properties that we purchased and have managed for so long. We don’t get a lot of clients like that—most of ours have single places—but it’s the same concept of building that relationship with a client who trusts us to pick properties without them even seeing any of them. They trusted us because I built that relationship with them, saying, “I would buy this with my own money. This is what I would do, and this is our strategy.” Building that relationship with somebody like that is one of the things I have the most fun with: building that relationship and building that trust.

Quentin Edmonds (12:17)
Great story, man. Thank you for sharing that—that peaks into the serious lens of relationship building. Thank you for sharing.

Mr. Rich, I just want to make sure that you have been able to put out your personal message so that we don’t leave any stone unturned. If there’s a message that you came into this episode wanting to make sure that you got out about you, about your business, a message of inspiration, education, or anything that was on your mind—I want to make sure you got it out.

Rich Durante (12:48)
Yeah, I think one of the great inspirations for me was reading the *Rich Dad Poor Dad* book a long time ago and thinking that having an investment property was really the way to go—that you really should have at least one piece of real estate in your portfolio. My message is that you can rent out your place, even if it’s a high-end home; there are people who are looking for that. My message is you have to get that real estate in your portfolio. Take advantage of the tax advantages that are there, and at least use that to start your real estate investing. Start it with the place you have that you’re moving out of, and start building generational wealth from there.

Quentin Edmonds (13:30)
Love it. Mr. Rich, man, thank you, sir, for coming on. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, or learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, sir?

Rich Durante (14:25)
Go to our website, DuranteRich.com, and hit the contact button. We will get back to you and we can set up individual appointments and meetings to have a discussion about real estate and how to start investing.

Quentin Edmonds (14:38)
Well, sir, I appreciate you. I want to say three things to you sincerely:

One, man, thank you for your time. I think time is our most precious commodity, so thank you for giving us some of your time. I really appreciate that.

Secondly, man, thank you for your story. Thank you for the gift of your integrity and the gift of your authenticity. I believe when we operate that way, we sprinkle seeds for people, and we never know when those seeds are going to take root and grow, but it can happen at any given time. So I think you came on and planted and sprinkled some real seeds, man, that really can be planted at any given time. So I appreciate that.

And lastly, thank you for your mindset, man. Thank you for the way you think and for bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming on today, sir.

Rich Durante (15:21)
Thank you very much. I really appreciate the time.

Quentin Edmonds (15:24)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard my friend Mr. Rich. Please look in the show notes; his information is there. Definitely make sure you’re connected here and subscribed here, because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people, just like Mr. Rich. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen: y’all have a fantastic day.