The Danger of Relying Solely on Numbers

In this chapter, the speakers discuss the importance of not blindly trusting numbers when evaluating a property, sharing a cautionary tale of a bad investment based on a promising rent roll. They also draw parallels to the Atari game ET and discuss what makes Barbara feel comfortable when pursuing deals.

Transcript

chevron_right

Play full episode

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

You’ve seen Barbara Corcoran on Shark Tank, heard of her unbelievable real estate deals that make millions of dollars, and might own a product or two that she’s invested in. She’s spent her entire career betting on New York real estate, and her risk has come with tens of millions of dollars in rewards. And while Barbara is known for her “go with your gut” type of investing, her son, Tom Higgins, went a completely different direction—and it paid off.

Tom has flown under the radar for most of his real estate career, never relying on his Corcoran lineage thanks to his different last name. He worked at a real estate brokerage in college, attended real estate finance classes at night, and eventually found himself in the industry as a real estate development professional, helping develop and renovate over 2,000 multifamily rental units!

Tom is a hard-numbers guy. He knows the cash-on-cash return, loan-to-value, and acquisition cost of every deal he’s done. Barbara, on the other hand, self-admittedly, can barely remember which metrics are which. Today, Barbara and Tom debate whether you should go with your head or heart when investing in real estate and why using a little bit of both could make you richer than all the other investors.

In This Episode We Cover:

Barbara and Tom’s sneaky way of finding up-and-coming real estate investing areas

Why Barbara says to never touch a DIME of your cash flow until…

How Tom made Barbara even more money by making her go against her investing nature

One super simple way to immediately find out if a contractor will be worth the money

Risky leverage and the one type of loan Tom says to STAY AWAY from

Why Barbara looks for “old ladies” every time she’s in a new market

How Tom uses BiggerPockets to meet investors, contractors, and partners (and why you should too!)

And So Much More!

Links from the Show

Find an Agent

Find a Lender