Get Rich Education 531: How to Replace Your Job with Rent Income in Just 3 Years
From railroad conductor to becoming a successful real estate investor and replacing his day job in just 3 years. On today’s episode, Keith chats with one of our very own GRE listeners, Grant Francke, about what he did to build his portfolio to quit his steady union job.
Hear about the importance of having a clear "why" for investing and setting specific goals.
We discuss the concept of inflation profiting on debt and how it contributes to wealth building
Leveraging cash-out refinances and 1031 exchanges as a strategy to scale up and diversify.
Resources:
Check out Grant Francke’s book “The Unlikely Investor” here.
Show Notes:
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Complete episode transcript:
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Keith Weinhold 0:01
welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, it's a highly relatable show today because you're going to meet a fellow GRE listener and real estate investor like you that use the principles of this show to build wealth, and he reached real estate financial freedom even faster than I did today on get rich education.
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Keith Weinhold
when you want the best real estate and finance info, the modern Internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's a replete with paywalls, and you get pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers, ugh. And no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content in your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it is to the point to get it. It couldn't be more simple. Just type up a text message with the letters G, R, E in the body and send it to the phone number, 66866, and when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course, completely free. Subscribe to my Don't quit your Daydream newsletter, and your mind will be wired for wealth. Text GRE to 66866, text GRE to 66866.
Corey Coates 2:57
you're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 3:13
Welcome to GRE from Washington Crossing Pennsylvania to cross City Florida and across one area, nations worldwide, you're listening to one of America's longest running and most listened to real estate shows. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get rich education here for you every single Monday, every week, without fail. This is the voice of real estate investing Since 2014 you know, being successful in real estate such that you can quit your job when you're young enough to enjoy it is counter cultural, even kind of Bohemian. I mean, just imagine telling yourself this or saying this to somebody else. First, I had a lot of debt, then my situation got even better, because we had a surge of high inflation, and it's all making me rich. To that, most conventional financial wisdom would reply like, Dude, are you nuts? Maybe. But I'll tell you what, I'm not normal. I wouldn't want to be normal. That's a real pejorative, right there. Normalcy is, like, slanderous. Yep, you gotta get iconoclastic. Well, it's all grounded in fundamentals. Yep, inflation dilutes your debt for you, and it's almost perfectly predictable that that's gonna happen too by following principles just like that aligned with GRE 's inflation triple crown, and that real estate pays five ways. The guest that you'll meet today, yeah, he did reach financial freedom faster than I did. You're gonna hear about how he did it. It's like I've said on the show here before. I am divulging to you the information that I wish I had when I started out, because if I had this when I began, I would have reached financial freedom sooner. You know, after I bought my first ever income property, that fourplex, I didn't buy my next investment property for almost five years. Okay, it was not a fast timeline for me, but after about four years from buying that seminal first property, I started analyzing what it was doing for me, and I well, not only wanted to buy more, but I would soon learn that really the lessons I extracted from that property, I ended up articulating that in ways that no one else that I know of has. Today's listener guest is from a Midwestern MSA of 343,000 people that we haven't discussed on the show before, at least in any detail. And that's also the market that he invests in. Let's meet him.
Keith Weinhold 6:05
From time to time, we like to have a GRE listener on the show to learn about how the show has changed their life, and also discover you know just what you're out there doing as a real estate investor. And this is because other listeners can find these episodes so relatable. Today's listener guest is from Nebraska, and he listened to GRE in the commute to and from his job for years back when he still had one, because he's a success story. Since he has replaced his day job income with rental properties in just three years, which is a remarkably fast timeline, and now he's got more time freedom for his passions or for his family and kids. So we're gonna learn about how he did that. Hey, welcome to the show. GRE listener GrantFrancke, Thanks, Keith. Honored to be here. Frankie is spelled F, R, a, n, C, K, E, and Grant, this is great that you've been on this fast timeline to produce financial freedom. But before we talk about that, let's back up. Tell us about your beginning like your family situation in your now, I guess former job.
Grant Francke 7:09
great question. So I started it out as a conductor for BNSF Railways. So I was a trained conductor. I started out there pretty much right out of high school. It's a great job if you don't have any family or kids because you're gone all the time you work crazy hours. Yeah. So it was great before I was married, but then I got married, I was like, I don't really love this as much. And then once we had our two kids, I was like, I've got to find something else that can get me that time, freedom to spend more time with them. And stumbled on real estate and started going that route.
Keith Weinhold 7:40
Some people don't have that mindset. They justify working overtime because, well, I'm away from my kids, but I'm working for them, but with financial freedom, you really can have both a time for your children when you want it and the income that you desire a railroad conductor. So I believe that's different from a railroad engineer, right? The railroad engineer is the person that kind of drives the train and changes the speed in the conductor. They're the one that's sort of making sure that the staff and the cargo and the passengers are taken care of. Is that what a railroad conductor does?
Grant Francke 8:12
Yep. So we only did cargo freight, so I was in charge of, like, how fast we could go, what was all in the train, talking to the dispatcher and making sure we're going the right directions and and taking the right sightings, and then if anything broke down on the train, we'd have to go back and take care of it. But yes, the engineer is the one who he physically drives a train, and we're kind of like the co pilot.
Keith Weinhold 8:32
You talked about how you were away, and it takes an awful lot of hours. You based there in Nebraska, geographically, what kind of routes Did you run?
Grant Francke 8:41
It's 300 miles from Lincoln. So I was based out of Lincoln Nebraska. So it's about 300 miles, yeah, so we did to Kansas City, cook Nebraska, some places out in Iowa, up north, to Sioux City. And those trips ranged from 36 to 48 hours, round trip for us to be gone and back.
Keith Weinhold 8:58
making the economy run there, but this was, you know, rather time consuming, obviously pretty disruptive to one schedule there when you're working long shifts or away for these long periods of time. So okay, it sounds like you got the idea that you wanted something where you could control your time better. There are so many ways to produce income in an informal sense, there's entrepreneurship, which might be something like you could have launched your own app or started a donut shop. Then there's something more passive when it comes to investing. I mean, most people that are working at a job, they even think, Oh, hey, I have my investing bucket covered because I invest through my employer in 401k and that's good enough. But somehow you must have had this notion in you that this wasn't good enough. So tell us about how and why real estate.
Grant Francke 9:42
I've always been like, somewhat handy. So I was gonna go and just be a GC or a handyman. I was Googling around, and I found a post that said that the best customers for handymen are landlords, because they keep you busy and they always got work. I was like, Oh, that's great idea. So I stumbled upon a podcast. Where it was a handyman who became a landlord, he recommended a book on there called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I went and got that book, and then my life was changed after that.
Keith Weinhold 10:11
It's amazing how that little purple book influences so many of us. Okay, so that sort of opened you up to the concept of real estate investing and Rich Dad content is terrific. A lot of times, though, it doesn't really get down into the nuts and bolts too much. So just in your educational journey, where did you progress from the rich dad school of thought?
Grant Francke 10:30
Yeah, so Rich Dad, Poor Dad kind of taught me about that not spending your giving your time for money is creating that loop of the money. So after that, you know, I started off just listening to all the podcasts. You know, I'd listen to your podcast, bigger pockets, Kathy Fettke, I'd listen to all those just on repeat, reading all the books that I could get my hands on. Because I was just once, I started learning about real estate. And it did scratch that entrepreneurial bug that I did have. It kind of gave me the both of the passive income and being able to build a business for myself as well. So I just went through all the education that I possibly could, podcasts, books, you name it. I was obsessed with it.
Keith Weinhold 11:08
Yeah, all right. Well, it's all about doing the right thing before you do things right, like we say here on the show. All right. So it sounds like you were confident that you were doing the right thing. You were in real estate. Tell us about the start, especially buying that first property. What was that like?
Grant Francke 11:25
Yeah, it was nerve wracking, right? It was a small, up down duplex in Lincoln, Nebraska. It's really one of my only properties I've actually gotten that's been on the market on the MLS. Just got an agent went and bought it and it was a good deal, like it cash flowed. Well, I took it down. I was managing it myself, and I still do manage my portfolio myself. I do vividly remember, like sitting in the living room of that doing my showings, and I just did after three or four showings, I couldn't get it rented, and I was listening to one of your podcasts, and you were talking about the different ways that real estate pays you, besides the income, and that really kept me motivated. This is a long term journey. This isn't a short term get rich quick thing. You know, by getting a tenant in there, it might take a month, but then they're going to pay down your note, you're going to get the tax benefits, you're going to get all those different items Flowing into you from real estate. So I remember that vividly from that first deal is listening to Keith in the living room.
Keith Weinhold 12:16
Yeah, being a profiteer in real estate, it's a little, maybe just a little like the iceberg analogy. Maybe only the top 20% of the iceberg is visible in what you see as profit. You're thinking about monthly income, and maybe you're thinking about appreciation. You don't see everything else below the iceberg that's underwater, I should say rather, like the inflation profiting on the debt and the loan amortization in the great basket of tax benefits, you sent me a paper letter earlier this year. One thing you wrote about is how the show influenced you, because you vividly remember sitting on the floor of your first ever vacant rental unit. So presumably it was in this Nebraska duplex, one of those units we're talking about here in this the show kept you motivated. You thought you were failing because you didn't get the unit rented after the first three showings, which I think we know now is sort of funny. That's really normal, even in a good rental market. You know, it could take more showings than three until you get the right match between a tenant that wants the unit and a tenant you'd accept. I mean, the tenant themselves, they have to accept all sorts of things. Uh, maybe they don't like the parking situation. Your unit layout has to be right. In my first ever property, which, as you know, was a four Plex, one problem I had is some tenants just didn't like the fact that the only bathroom in these four Plex units was upstairs. And then it's funny, as soon as you get the showing, say it's the sixth showing that you get it rented out, the problem's over. It's solved. You're back to 100% occupancy. And you wonder why you ever thought you had a problem. That's just sort of how that goes.
Grant Francke 13:43
Yeah, hindsight is always 2020. It's really stressful in the moment, but just keeping in mind that the different ways it pays you the different avenues of income that come from it, and that's even something like it was conceptually, I understood it, but it really didn't take effect for me till it was like five, six years down the road, and you go, look at your loan balance, and you look at what the inflation's done, you're like, well, that's a substantial amount of money that you've made just passively getting your tenants to pay down your debt.
Keith Weinhold 14:09
Yeah, some don't even think about the fact that your tenant is paying down your principal for you, an advantage that homeowners don't have, because homeowners, they just have $1 that goes from their cash pocket over to their equity pocket every month. But in your rental property, your tenant is doing that for you, and then inflation is, in almost all cases, paying down your loan silently, even faster than what that tenant is doing for you.
Grant Francke 14:31
It's amazing concept. Once you can can, can wrap your head around it
Keith Weinhold 14:35
all right, so you started with this duplex in your local area, Nebraska. Is there anything else to say about that first property, or is it more about the growth from there? That's more, yeah, it was
Grant Francke 14:46
the growth from there. That one was just like I said, kind of a base hit, and then we started scaling up after that. So my next purchase was another duplex, and I happened to find it on Craigslist, back when that was a thing, that you could find properties on Craigslist, and it was actually a retired engineer, rare. Order that was selling a duplex. I was like, Oh, this is great. We hit it off really well. Had a great transaction. I closed on time. I did what I said I was going to do, and then I was looking around on the assessor's website, and he had five more single family houses that were clearly rentals. I told him at the closing table. I'm like, Hey, if you ever want to sell those rentals, just let me know. You know, I'd love to scale our portfolio up. He ended up offering to sell or finance me those five properties with a minimum down payment. Well, just because we had just a great relationship, I showed up, I did what I said I was going to do, we ended up getting seven properties from that guy.
Keith Weinhold 15:33
Wow, that is huge, a way to scale up fast. So just with your behavior, your work ethic, the fact that you did what you said you were gonna do, you know, that engendered some sort of interest in the other party to offer you, seller financing. What percent down did you put on that next batch of properties?
Grant Francke 15:50
We did 10% down, great, and we had 5% interest on it, and we had a balloon payment due in, I think it was seven years so funny story about that. He sold all his rental properties. He was going to Florida to retire and just relax and and be a retired guy. He called me about two and a half years later. He's like, Hey, I still have the bug. I found a property I want to buy. Is there any way you could refinance the seller financing and close out my notes so I can use that capital to buy something? I was like, Yeah, Larry, I get it. Yeah. Let me see. I'll talk to the bank and see what I can do. But in those two years, I had done enough improvements in those properties and raised the rents, took care of them. When I went to refinance those five properties, I was able to pay two of them off, so I only had a loan on three and pay him back on the proceeds. So throughout that transaction, I pretty much had two properties free and clear, and then three houses on 30 year notes from Fannie and Freddie.
Keith Weinhold 16:44
How did you come up for the down payments with all this? Was this something you were able to do with income from the job as a railroad conductor?
Grant Francke 16:52
Well, that refinance was more like a burr model, so I was able to do all that with the equity inside that property. So those five single families that are refinanced. Was just all the equity inside those properties. So I didn't have to put any more money out. It was just the equity that was able to pay off the other two. And then I had the three on the notes, from appreciation, from appreciation, and, yeah, forced appreciation. So I was fixing up the units, raising the rents, you know, changing out flooring, redoing bathrooms, doing all that myself while I was still at my w2 job.
Keith Weinhold 17:21
Okay, really getting hands on, because you do have this bent of sort of a GC or a handyman, something that I personally didn't have, maybe this would have accelerated my wealth building faster had I done that. You're realizing that a source, you know, it doesn't have to be your own money from your own job. When you've got leverage, and you had 10 to one leverage on these, I believe it was what five single family homes that you had added seller financing that really multiplies you wealth substantially faster compound leverage, rather than compound interest. But a lot of people just let that equity die in their properties, rather than pulling it out a tax free event through a cash out refinance and moving it along.
Grant Francke 18:03
Yep. So we kept that process on. We buy a duplex that was needs some repairs. Nothing like crazy rundown, but you fix it up over 6,12, months, you do a refinance, and you just keep that ball rolling. And it makes the whole process really easy.
Keith Weinhold 18:15
I know that you are pretty open to discussing your assets, discussing your unit mix. So tell us about more of that expansion. What you brought it up to, and the exciting time when you've replaced your salary because you had enough income from the units.
Grant Francke 18:31
Yeah, so we would just keep that snowball method going of refinancing those two paid off properties we had, we had a line of credit against those as well, if we needed that for a down payment, or if we wanted to pay cash for something, we could use that leverage, that money from the bank and buy the property, do the refinance at the end, and pay it all back. And, you know, be out of pocket with minimal cash out of pocket for us. We just kind of kept that process going. And then once we had about 30 units, I would say so, about three years. So I started buying in 16, and then in September of 2019 is when I resigned from BNSF Railway and went full time.
Keith Weinhold 19:06
That's a great timeline. You mentioned some paid off properties there. And you know how I'm the proponent of leverage in good debt in all of them. But really you talked about despite the fact that you had, I think, two paid off properties, it sounds like single family homes. Early on, you were still able to leverage the fact that they were paid off as collateral for getting more loans. So you are still using those as other people's money despite the fact that they were paid off.
Grant Francke 19:31
Absolutely we still use it to this day. That's if we need a down payment, if we need a chunk of cash. That's where we go to is grab those from that line of credit.
Keith Weinhold 19:39
Talk to us more about sort of the sourcing of the financing. There were you getting together with some local banks in order to get good terms where you can collateralize some of your existing portfolios assets?
Grant Francke 19:52
So we used to use a small community bank here in Nebraska. I started with them, probably 2018 and I've been with them since you just create a really good relation. With them. They trust me. They know what I'm doing. They know if I bring them a deal like I'm not hiding anything, I'm not showing them certain numbers, it looks better like they trust what I'm doing. I trust that they're going to take care of me as well. It's always good to have a few in their back pocket. But if you have a really good relationship with one small community bank, it can take you pretty far.
Keith Weinhold1 20:18
Tell us about how you built that relationship with the community bank. I think a lot of people hear about how to do that. This doesn't mean going bowling with a banker and having to be your buddy for watching the NFL on the weekend. So I guess, how do you demonstrate that you're a capable business person to a local bank in order to get good treatment?
Grant Francke 20:37
That's a great question. So my first couple deals, I created a full deal pitch deck sheet that I brought in in a laminated folder of pictures, timelines, my past history of what I've done. So I started off on the right foot of showing them that I was very professional. And then the same thing, like with Larry, with the seller finance properties, I showed up. I did what I said I was going to do. I didn't close late. I always was on time. I was on time for my meetings. I was on time for my closings, just staying top of mind with them too. So if I didn't have a deal going on, I'd stop in when I was depositing some laundry change and just chat with my banker or chat with the check guy, and just make sure I stay top of mind with them.
Keith Weinhold 21:14
Yeah, it's a little bit like how people classically think about as interviewing for a job. It sort of sounds like you took a page out of that book, and you're sort of interviewing for a loan, if you will, tell us about your portfolio size now, and kind of what that asset mix is like.
Grant Francke 21:30
yeah, so we're up to about 120 units now, all in the Lincoln Nebraska area, all multi family, small, multi family. We saw those single family houses we hold on to. But otherwise it ranges from duplexes, four plexes, some six, eight units are mixed in there as well. So we're still just buying, like, just boring cash flowing deals. That's one thing I always say is, like, I just buy boring real estate. I don't want anything super stressful or super crazy, like, I'm not infilling to build ADUs. I'm just buying boring cash flowing rental properties.
Keith Weinhold 22:02
It really can be pretty boring. Real estate is really slow moving. Yeah, it's almost like the more boring the area of the nation that you invest in, the more likely that it's not a trendy place. And, you know, people are wearing Carhartt rather than Lulu Lemon. It's almost like that's an indicator of what a good market is we're talking with Grant Francke. He's a GRE listener. He's telling us how he built his portfolio from being a railroad conductor to going ahead and doing this on the side and leaving his day job. When we come back, we're going to talk about, was he nervous and like just what level did he have to get to before he had the confidence to quit his job and replace his salary. You're listening. To get rich, education more. We come back. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold.
Keith Weinhold 22:02
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Caeli Ridge 24:35
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Keith Weinhold 24:55
Welcome back to get rich education. It's one of my favorite types of episodes because we're talking about a GRE listener, much like you, with what you can do, where he started, what the architecture of his portfolio building was, and a big part of that is you don't really want to be debt free in real estate. You want to be financially free. You want to build enough income in order to replace the income from your day job. I want to talk about that part grant replacing your salary. That sounds really good in concept, we know that's what you need to do. When I personally was at that point, I still remember how scared I was to walk out from my cubicle where I was employed at a State Department of Transportation and walk across the hall and tell my boss's boss, Therese, that I'm giving my two weeks notice. I've got to admit, I was still scared. My heart's still racing a little bit just bringing it up and talking about it. So why don't you tell us about at what point you replaced your salary?
Grant Francke 25:55
My wife's an accountant. She's really good at like, Excel spreadsheets, so we made an Excel spreadsheet that factored in the tax benefits of real estate that I would get as a full time real estate investor. What my income was. I went to the lowest paying job at the railroad just to see if we could live off of that paycheck. So once we hit that cash flow number, which was, it wasn't a great big number, it was like 4800 a month or something, once we hit that number, she said, All right, I think we can do it. We're good to go. So I went in, and I only had one of my buddies at the railroad that knew I was going to resign that day. I was going to go in and resign, then clean out my locker. I got there, it was like, well, I'll just clean my locker out first and then make sure this is exactly what I want to do. I got my locker cleaned out. Everything was in my truck, and I walked in, and it was the most terrifying thing that I've ever done, you're walking away from a great union job with a heck of a pension that I've been there for at that time, 13 years, you know. So I had some seniority built up. I just went back to like my family again and thinking about all the times I'm going to spend with my kids, with my wife, the trips we'll be able to take, the memories we're going to be able to make, and the hard work that I put in those first three years of just grinding doing all the work myself, managing all the properties myself, that gave me that push. I was like, No, I can do this. These numbers make sense. The math adds up, and we're going to make it work. That's
Keith Weinhold 27:13
great. And by the way, I also walked away from a union job with the pension guaranteed retirement benefits, and they were guaranteed in the state's constitution because I had a state government job, so that pension wasn't going to go away, and I just went ahead and walked away from all that. Yeah, it certainly is a scary thing. It takes a certain level of confidence in order to go ahead and quit your job. But here's what I think, Confidence comes on the person that you made yourself be to on the side, build this portfolio and become the type of person that can demonstrate to a local bank that you're credit worthy and that you're an ethical operator. That's sort of a skill set that you build, such that if something went wrong and you had to go get a job again, you just sort of have a skill set where you know you could get another job. That's the confidence to quit.
Grant Francke 28:05
Yeah, once I had that confidence, built up and confidence in myself, you're kind of trained as even a man, just to not be proud, you know what I mean. But once I was proud of myself and what I built, it gave you that confidence, that I could walk in and say, No, I can do this on my own. I don't need this job. I'm done with it.
Keith Weinhold 28:20
Right to not need an employer. So not only walking away from a union and pension benefits and a paycheck, you're also walking away from paid vacation days and paid holidays. But yeah, I mean, part of that confidence is like, I know that I can, you know, furnish this myself. I'm not dependent. I don't need someone else. And that's really that feeling of freedom.
Grant Francke 28:42
Yep, absolutely, it's a very freeing feeling.
Keith Weinhold 28:45
On this show, a lot of investors start out with single family homes and part of that scaling process, and I really help encourage, hey, the rate of return from home equity is always zero on doing a cash out refinance, or a 1031 exchange, and at some point, say, maybe your single family homes, you probably have a few that are less desirable than others. Maybe you have a few single family homes in your rental portfolio that have higher interest rates. You just have a few where you just can't seem to keep them occupied very long. They're the ones that are ripe for doing a 1031 exchange or a cash out refinance. Why don't you talk more about sort of those next sets of properties where you might relinquish a couple single family homes and get into some of those properties, a four Plex, a six Plex, an eight Plex, a 10 Plex, and just sort of some of the differences in managing, since you're still self managing, is that right?
Grant Francke 29:37
Yeah, we just actually completed our first 1031 exchange about two months ago. Great. Oh, yeah. So we actually sold two duplexes. So we sold four units and bought 17 in the 1031 exchange. The cash flow is going to be as we buy them right now. We're getting a little bit better cash flow. But you know, the ability to scale that and the management side, for me is much easier. If I would rather manage 117 unit than 17 single families, spread out all the way around. I only have one lawn to work worry about, totally on one roof. I have one sewer system to worry about. It seems scary in the beginning, but now that why I'm at where I'm at, I would much rather take down a 10 Plex than 10 single family houses.
Keith Weinhold 30:19
100%. oftentimes single family homes, you know, they tend to be scattered. They're probably not all going to be in the same development that introduces management difficulties. Of course, I circumvent that because I totally use professional management for all of my properties. So that's really not problem or a hold up for me, where it sure would be with you. Yeah, there really is that mental leap. I've owned a few properties that have been 10 plexes or in that area, and there are just things to do with there that we know we don't need to deal with in single family homes or duplexes, there might be one central communal laundry room that you have to manage. And you know, how are you going to keep that clean? I had one particular eight Plex building while the kids just had their bicycles parked here and there in the front yard, and it looked junky. And my property manager built a screen, just like a fence, where you had to keep your bicycles behind there, and that really increased the curb appeal of the place. If that's a single family home, you don't really care so much about that grant. I once had an 11 unit building. It had four units on the top floor, four units on the middle floor and three units on the bottom floor. There was a laundry room where the fourth would have been. So we had 11 families live there, and there were about 14 parking spots for this 11 Plex building. And figuring out who was going to park where was a real mess. Some people had more than one car. Some people had seniority, so they felt like they should have gotten some of the spots we had the building next door where people tried to park at our 14 spots. That was such a mess. I told my property manager to you, go figure it out. You go assign the spot. So my point is, there are a whole bunch of dynamics when you kind of get into this 10 or so unit area that you just don't have with rental, single family homes.
Grant Francke 31:58
Absolutely. Yeah, I've had to have many conversations with people telling them I manage properties, not parking. I don't just figure it out be adults. I don't want to hear about your parking dilemmas, which I get too. You know, you also have, you have noise complaints, and you want to make sure everybody's being respectful of their neighbors when you get into those bigger buildings. So there are definitely pros and cons. But boy, if I, if I could have a 10 single families on the same street, that would be, you know, ideal management wise, that would be a lot easier, but it's just tough to get everything together.
Keith Weinhold 32:24
Is there any other guidance you can give with scaling up? Because a lot of people just continue to let so much equity accumulate in any one property, and they're not scaling up, you're sort of leaving some meat on the bone. There any other strategic things one can think through?
Grant Francke 32:38
Just take advantage of your cash out refinances when you can, I'm a proponent of leverage, but not over leveraged to where your negative cash flow on it, if you can cash out, refinance, pull your equity out, and still be making some money off of it, that's really going to allow you to scale over time, a lot larger than just holding that one duplex and waiting for it to give you that cash flow, that financial freedom. You really got to take that equity out, spread it out over multiple properties, and then watch them all scale up at the same time.
Keith Weinhold 33:05
There's probably less risk when one does that. People are averse to making that move because they think about how they're taking on more debt. But the more you cash out and scatter it into more properties, you've got more diversification geographically, if you want to. And really, I think the mindset that helps people with this is, when you do a cash out refinance, you didn't lose any equity. You really transferred some of your equity.
Grant Francke 33:30
yep, tax free too, which is something you harp on, like it's tax free money. You get to walk away and not pay taxes on it.
Keith Weinhold 33:38
It's really amazing. All right, well, so you have a substantial portfolio of about 120 units in is it all in and around Lincoln Nebraska?
Grant Francke 33:47
Yep, Lincoln Nebraska and a couple small communities around there, some more college type towns that have industries in them as well. But all the Lincoln Nebraska area.
Keith Weinhold 33:55
we don't talk about Lincoln Nebraska here on the show very often. What kind of personality does the market have? Whether that's, you know, like you mentioned, is there a preponderance of student housing? Are there particular economic sectors that really help float and drive that market? Tell us about Lincoln as a real estate investment market.
Grant Francke 34:13
Like I said, with boring real estate, it's a great boring real estate town. We've got a couple universities in Lincoln. It's a big ag area, obviously, so surrounded by the the ag industry. But it's also got some great tech jobs that are coming in. It's just a very steady it doesn't have a lot of the ups and downs. You know, 2008 was obviously tough with everybody, but there wasn't this massive housing correction here. We're just kind of slow and steady, which is that's kind of my pace.
Keith Weinhold 34:39
typical of what I call a stable market, where, conversely, you tend to have the volatile markets that are on the coast. I'm going to imagine in 2008 it didn't go down in value nearly as much as markets, but in the big housing price run up in 2021, I'm going to guess you got some really nice appreciation, but probably not as much as a lot of the other markets as well.
Grant Francke 34:58
Yeah. Absolutely that depreciation, then that inflation run up, was pretty substantial. But, yeah, it's just a really boring real estate market that just steady. There's some great rentals. There's a lot of people that move into, move into town, from Lincoln, from outside, that go to school or start out here, and then they go somewhere else. So it's great town.
Keith Weinhold 35:16
What about some other things in the character of the market? What are property taxes, like one or 1.2% per year based on the value of the property. That's about a national average. How does Lincoln look that way?
Grant Francke 35:29
Yeah, it's a little bit higher. Right now, there's been some fighting in our legislature about how they're trying to fix that, because we have a really fairly good budget in Nebraska tax wise. So they're fighting to get us some relief now, but it's a little bit, I guess, like 1.3 or 1.4 right now in Nebraska.
Keith Weinhold 35:43
a little higher than the national average. But really, the more important metric, one I talk about a lot, because it's so simple, is approximately, let's say, for a rental, single family home, is what is the ratio of the rent income per month to the purchase price?
Grant Francke 36:00
Yeah, it's tough to find those 1% deals anymore. Those are tougher to come by. I think if you're buying a single family right now, you're probably going to be, at that .75% of the income to the property. If you get into multifamily. We're still finding deals that are decent around that 1%
Keith Weinhold 36:15
so with the 710, of 1% rent to price ratio as an example, on a $200,000 purchase price property, that would be a rent of $1,400 so you can find something like
Grant Francke 36:28
that. It sounds like that's usually about, yeah, for single family, I think that's what we're seeing. But like I said, multi family, we're getting pretty close to that 1% still with with some added rent.
Keith Weinhold 36:37
Do you think about branching into other markets? Like a lot of our investors do, not everyone lives in an investor advantage market like Lincoln, but even those that do say, if they live in a Columbus, Ohio or in Indianapolis, Indiana, they might want to add a couple markets for diversification, maybe Metro in Alabama and another one in Florida. Do you plan to continue to grow right there, since you have these great local relationships with local banks.
Grant Francke 37:03
I mean, it'd be tough. There is a couple of markets we've looked at, like San Antonio, I really like that one. And then Louisville, Kentucky. I've been there a few times, and it's just a great town. And I think there's some really good industry down there too. So those are the two that would be on my list. I haven't taken a massive action on getting down there yet, but if I were, that's probably be where I go.
Keith Weinhold 37:21
Of course, San Antonio is going to have those higher property taxes, but I just visited San Antonio last month. They really look to be the beneficiary of this near shoring movement, with more companies relocating to Mexico, this is great. We talked about how you grew your portfolio. Are there any other strategies overall that you employ any mindsets that you make actionable, either that you learned about on this show, or just anything else that you do in there grant your keys to success, your formula.
Grant Francke 37:49
The big thing for me is like, my why? Like, why did I do this? And why was I doing it that was huge for me in the beginning, and my, why was my wife and kids like? I wanted to spend more time with them. So when you know your why, like, all these tough things that happen, because, like, you know pipes are going to break, tenants are going to be tenants, and things are going to go wrong. So if you know your why and why you're doing that, it makes it so much more easy to get through those difficult times. So it's really a mindset thing, which is kind of odd thing to say, but it's a mindset thing, because things are gonna go wrong, so you gotta have a strong why behind you.
Keith Weinhold 38:22
Did you write down your why?
Grant Francke 38:24
I did? Yes, I'm big in goal setting as well, so I write goals and like, every year and then quarterly as well. So writing down my why and knowing that, it helped me when I was working on those properties and driving back and forth, listening to get rich education, just knowing why I was doing this, it made it a lot easier.
Keith Weinhold 38:42
Yeah, there's something about writing it down. I've even learned that using blue ink on yellow paper, somehow there is something about doing that in particular that really helps create this imprint in your mind. But however you do it, yeah, writing it down is so important, and that way this goal doesn't become a morphous or malleable when you do that.
Grant Francke 39:03
yeah, it sets it in stone. You can look at it. It's actually physically there. It's not something just conjestually in your head. It's actually something that's taken place.
Keith Weinhold 39:10
You have had such success. Gosh, congratulations on that, such that you even created a resource. But before I ask you about that, is there just any last thing that you'd like to talk about in your journey overall, whether that's goal setting and having a good why, or any GRE concepts, or just really anything else that's led to your success, to have 120 units.
Grant Francke 39:32
it really goes back to, like I said, my why, and then the education. So I do want to thank you again, like, for all the podcasts and and all the information you put out. It was uh very, impactful on me as I was learning the reason that why GRE always spoke well to me is like you would talk about conjectural things, about real estate and cash flow and all this, but it was also the larger economic process of how things worked, how things mixed together. So having that in my brain too and in my back pocket really gave. Me the confidence to attack these things when inflation started happening. I'm like, Oh, that was nothing I ever thought about. But I've heard you talk about it for hours and hours on the end. So I'm like, I understand how this works now, and I know how I'm positioned. I can use it to my advantage as well. So a lot of those things helped me out scaling up and just taking all those resources that we got from the show.
Keith Weinhold 40:17
Yeah, we're actually beneficiaries of inflation here, which is certainly pretty counter cultural. With your success, you put together a resource, and I definitely want you to share it with our audience, because this is something I really think they can benefit from, because they can relate to your story. I'm pretty confident.
Grant Francke 40:35
appreciate it. Yeah, so I wrote a book. It's called the unlikely investor. It's available on Amazon, but it's just a book that I took, kind of my story from a w2 employee to scaling up to where I am. Now, some of those tips and tricks in there. I have maybe plagiarized some stuff from Keith's podcast, and we talked about some the different pillars of wealth that you get from real estate. But it really just kind of goes into the mindset part too, of finding your why, goal setting, and then the basics of real estate investing on up through scaling up to a decent sized portfolio.
Keith Weinhold 41:07
Oh, I know, in every instance you credited me in the book.
Grant Francke 41:11
I do. I did, yeah.
Keith Weinhold 41:13
I really don't care. It's more about, you know, people getting the information, rather than me getting any credit for that. That's great. And you know the name The unlikely investor? When I learned that that was a title of your book, for a moment, that threw me off. I'm like, I wonder what that means. But you know what? No, I think I know what that means. You can tell me, but I'm an unlikely investor. I went to college for geography and regional planning. That was my double major. I thought I'd be a geography teacher. It's just really unlikely that I got into real estate, I didn't have this bent in me anywhere within academia. So why do you call it the unlikely investor?
Grant Francke 41:49
That same story, you know, I had a great w2 job, I had a great union, a great pension. There's really no reason that I had to go out and do this. It's very unlikely. You know, if you look at the numbers of our peers that actually do what we've done. It's extremely unlikely that we did it, so it was a great call to action of like, No, you can do this. It may seem unlikely, but it's possible.
Keith Weinhold 42:09
Oh, well, I think that title is 100% appropriate. That was good to talk with you more, and I really want to thank you for coming onto the show, because you're going to help out a lot of people with your story and you the listener. If you find it relatable, check out. Grant's new book just published this year. It's called The Unlikely Investor Grant Francke, it's been great having you here on GRE
Grant Francke 42:33
appreciate it. Keith, it's an honor.
Keith Weinhold 42:40
Grant mentioned the tax breaks when you leave your job quickly, so as not to gloss over that when you're at the point where you're getting close to leaving your job, if that's even a goal of yours, some people want to get in real estate just for some additional income. But like he said, it was at a point where he and his family needed just $4,800 of rent income per month. That was back a few years ago there, and your number will almost surely be higher than that with the inflation that we've had. But you know, figure that in once you quit your job, you're probably going to identify for what's known as the real estate professional designation, as outlined by the IRS, what that is, is the status that gives you some really nice tax breaks. And one way in which you qualify is that real estate needs to be your principal activity, meaning you expand more of your time per week in real estate than you do any other discipline. Now, I'm not a CPA, but frequent guests here, Tom wheelwright and I, we have discussed the real estate professional designation on a prior episode, and every year, there's a form that I quickly fill out myself confirming my ongoing real estate professional designation. Now you're probably not going to be able to qualify for that when you still have a day job, because that's going to be your principal activity, where you spend most of your time each week, and also before you do quit your job, if that's a goal of yours, well, it is a good time to first qualify for loans Fannie and Freddie like the steadiness of a w2 income. So qualify for your last few loans before quitting. There might even be a seasoning period in there as well. Now, when it comes to today's guest grant, when he reached out to the show here, you know there's something about his approach that engenders this willingness to want to collaborate with him. I think I shared with you before that we get 50 times as many requests to be a guest on the show as we have available slots, but Grant, I guess, exudes this professionalism while being humble, and it just makes you want to see him win, and yeah, no wonder his local banks want to make him loans. I gave a formal written endorsement of Grant's new book earlier this year the. Forwarders, written by Brandon Turner, the book titled The unlikely investor. I mean, I might be an even less likely real estate investor than Grant because he's somewhat handy. That's a skill a handle. He's got that I don't have. I am a writer and well then somehow became, I guess, an unlikely podcaster or two in the book. He also writes that if you're unhappy in real estate investing, it means that your system is broken. So if you're seeking an approachable, relatable book, one where you can really, like, put yourself in the author's shoes and tell yourself, you know I can do that and I can be that. Well, then check out grant Frankie's book called The Unlikely Investor. More great shows coming up for you every Monday here. I'm grateful for your listenership. I'm your host. Keith whitehold, don't quit your Daydream.
Speaker 2 46:03
Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively,
Keith Weinhold 46:23
The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com