Genius System for Real Estate Investors – Memphis Market Secrets: Dive into the world of Memphis real estate with a proven investment system. Leverage your funds strategically to build a lucrative portfolio using our proven investment system. Say goodbye to pitfalls by choosing the right neighborhoods and avoiding risky $35,000 deals. We’re not just agents; we’re your partners in wealth-building. Invest wisely in C to C+ neighborhoods for long-term gains. Our system works, creating a sound retirement plan. Say no to quick fixes; say yes to a sustainable, profitable real estate journey. Join us in the Memphis market – the safest, most stable rental market with over 340,000 eager renters.
Brett
0:00:41 – All right, welcome to another episode. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere real estate podcast. We are sponsored by Title Assurance and Escrow. Chris and April are great people here in Cordova, 901-737-3332. I work with them exclusively. I don’t deal with other title companies, not because of any other reason than I can just get things done for my investors that I normally can’t get done somewhere else. They’re just part of our team. And we’re also sponsored by the Sam’s Real Estate Company. We are the investment division of that. We deal with investors around the world, across the country, buying, selling, rehabbing investment properties. And we do a lot of work helping young investors get educated and teaching them about the investment world and helping them get started. 901-692-7401, or you can go to our website, mymemphisinvestmentproperties.com. Today we’re gonna talk a little bit about our team, our process, what sets us apart from all the other investment agents in Memphis, possibly touch again on the markets. I know we’ve done this before, but we’ve got a lot of new subscribers, so we want to make sure everybody understands that we’re here to educate, but we’re also here to be your agent and to assist you in any way we can. So let’s jump into who we are. We are the Stamps Real Estate Company. We are the investment division of that company, and that’s all we do is investment. It doesn’t mean we can’t help someone sell their house. It doesn’t mean we can’t drive Bob and Susie around on a Saturday to find their dream home, although I’d rather pull my teeth out with a pair of needle-nose pliers while sticking pins in my ears if I had to do that, but I would do it.
Jeff
0:02:10 – Well, you can send those referrals to Jeff McNett.
Brett
0:02:13 – I’ll send them to Jeff. Listen, I love the investment game. I love dealing with investors. A lot of agents hate it, and that’s because I don’t think they can take the personal effort it takes. It does require a work ethic. Yeah, it requires, you have to get your ass out of bed and go to work. You got to get on the phone, you got to work your CMAs, you got to understand what you’re dealing with, the markets. One basically, you got to know how to do a damn CMA correctly, which isn’t hard, but people don’t want to take time to learn it. So we are a small investment team, but a very powerful investment team. We deal with investors from Japan, Hawaii, Israel, across the United States that all buy and sell in Memphis. I am sold on the Memphis market not because I’m here. My wife asked me the other day, baby have you ever thought about us moving somewhere else like down to the Florida Keys or which would be my dream to live in the Florida Keys. But my answer is always going to be the same. I cannot make the money I make here in those other markets. Specifically for the fact that the Memphis market is unique, it’s super hot, it stays hot and we have 340,000 renters here. Now if I wanted to be Unrock Agent and drive people around on Saturdays to find their dream home, I could move to the Keys and do that. But right now those people are starving because there’s nobody buying homes currently. So the investment game is where we’re at, that’s what we specialize in. So Jeff, let’s get into our process. Our partner who passed away in May created this concept that we use and this process that we use. He was of the mindset that the question is how do you build loyalty with investors? An investor has to first get an agent and then they have to go talk to a management company and then they’ve got to go talk to a contractor and manage that from a thousand miles away. Then they’ve got to talk to an inspector, then deal with their lender, and there’s a lot of moving parts. So Glenn, when he first got his license, his idea was to be a one-stop shop. In other words, you call us, we identify your goals, we lay out a plan for those goals, we set up the searches to find those properties, we work the inspections, we deal with the title companies, oversee the rehab, oversee the closing, oversee the rehab, and then moving it into management for you. Then, once we’re done, we stay involved in that property. Investors call me all the time about, hey, I got this text from the management company. They’re saying, this is going on. A lot of times, vendors create work for themselves, so I’ll go out and check that work or check the problem. And nine times out of ten, I just get my wrench out of my truck and fix it and take care of it. So, we are a very organic boots on the ground team and we do a damn good job of taking care of our investors, which is why we don’t lose investors. We gain investors weekly, the entire team.
Jeff
0:04:58 – Let’s back up a little bit and just give an overview for the new investor. We love new investors. We love to help them get started. So basically what we do is we just find rental investment properties for our investors with the mindset that you’re not creating cash flow, you’re not trying to draw a monthly income, you’re investing in this property for long-term equitable income. No different than your stock investments, your 401k, your pension, whatever you want to call it. So we’re not a get-rich-quick scheme. We don’t try to go out and buy you 600 slumlord properties to rent for 500 a month. We’re basically finding you good properties and good areas to build good equitable income. You’re putting a tenant in it, that tenant pays the rent, that tenant’s rent pays the mortgage, pays the taxes, pays all the upkeep on the house and you benefit from the equity long term. And we help investors build these portfolios one house at a time, ten houses at a time. We help seasoned investors diversify and grow their portfolios. So, if you’re a new investor and you’re looking to get started, we’re your guy.
Brett
0:06:06 – Yeah, we’ve done a lot of it. Glenn created this idea of what he wanted and then slowly over the first year or two kind of built and designed and laid out this process. He was much better at it because he was an analytical individual, so he was able to lay out the spreadsheets and the process. Everything for Glenn was process. Everything starts and ends with the process. I’m the road guy, he was the process guy. So this system does work, it works well. I do get investors all the time asking me, well what’s it going to cost me if I hire you? Zero. Because if you come to me, or you come to Jeff, or come to one of our team members, and you say, okay I want to build, I want to buy 10 homes in the next five years, I want to build asset wealth, and I want to take advantage of appreciation and take advantage of rent growth. I don’t want to put 20, 40, 50 grand into each house. I’d like to buy something that’s in pretty good shape. Then immediately we’re going to put a plan together for you that says, okay, well then here’s the path and here are the markets we need to be focused on and here’s what’s available in those markets and here’s what we have currently off market that you can use to take advantage of that. So that’s the start of the process. Once we identify a property, you just sit back and wait for us to call you, because we’re going to take care of everything from that point forward. We’re going to write the contract, negotiate it, get it accepted, get the inspection started, deal with the inspection report, deal with the repairs, deal with negotiations on those repairs, if there are any, and just get you to the finish line, and you will end up owning your first one, two, or three rental properties. I can’t stress it enough, there are a lot of agents in Tennessee, a lot of licensed agents, but there’s very few good ones. If I can say that, I’ll probably get in trouble for saying that, but that’s the truth. Jeff, you’ve been now doing this long enough. You’re dealing with some agents, quite frankly.
Jeff
0:07:52 – Well, I’m going to be a little nicer to you and not say they’re bad agents. They’re not.
Brett
0:07:56 – Lazy.
Jeff
0:07:57 – Yeah, they’re not bad agents. They don’t have the work ethic that it takes in the investment side of things. Your typical agent wants to sell to contact them, put a sign in the yard, wait for the phone to ring, go to close and collect a check. That’s easy money. What we do requires so much more work ethic, like Brett said. We’re boots on the ground. We’re writing the contracts, securing the properties, getting them to closing, setting up inspections, overseeing the contractors that are doing the rehab work, setting up the management company. It requires a lot of work, a lot of work that we enjoy doing. Brett and I live, breathe and sleep real estate investment. We love every aspect of it. We love helping the investors. We love helping all the trades that are part of putting a rehab together. We love the tenants that rent these homes from our investors. It’s a win-win for everybody, but it does require one hell of a work ethic to get it done.
Brett
0:08:52 – It does, but it’s fun. Like Jeff said, we enjoy it. And the same old saying, if you enjoy what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. And I feel that way every day. Our phones are always on 24-7. I’m always reachable. Jeff’s always reachable. So our investors enjoy, and maybe some of them are a little spoiled at that now, because they know that when they call, I’m going to answer the phone. If they call you, you’re going to answer the phone. So sometimes they’ll take advantage of that and call me at 11 o’clock midnight, send me a text at 1 a.m. and wake me up from my beauty sleep.
Jeff
0:09:25 – Well, that’s because it’s 4 p.m. where they’re at.
Brett
0:09:28 – Well, I get it. But, you know, but we are available, right? And that’s the key to being a good investment team, a good investment agent is being available to your investors. Because like Michael said when he was here that time, he says, sometimes I’ll have sleepless nights. And he goes, Brett, I’ll pick up the phone and I’ll call you and you’ll answer. And by the time I’m done talking to you, I feel better and I go to sleep. So we want you to reach out to us. We’d love to bring you into the Memphis market and teach you and guide you through the Memphis market and building a portfolio, investment asset wealth building. Please don’t come into this market thinking you’re going to buy 50 homes in the next two months and become Donald Trump. Whoever’s telling you that in whatever seminar they’re telling you that at is full of crap, that’s not an obtainable goal. Your goal should be to buy for long-term wealth building. Buy a home that produces 1% or better, that’s going to gain equity, and rents are going to grow year in and year out, and that 10 years from now you’ve got 20 or 30 properties that are worth 3, 4 million dollars that are now paid for. That should be your goal. Reinvest that cash flow and make it work.
Jeff
0:10:33 – Well, Brett, talk a little bit more about, for the new investor again, about how to diversify that. For example, explain the benefits of if you have $100,000 to invest, why you wouldn’t want to buy one house, but leverage the bank’s money, put 20% down on five houses and then building the equity, taking that money and taking your monthly cash flow, reinvesting 100% back to the principal and all that good stuff, and possibly taking equity out of a home you’ve had for a few years, using the down payment on another home to help build that portfolio. Explain that whole process.
Brett
0:11:07 – I’m a big proponent of leveraging funds because it helps you get to where you wanna go faster. Let’s say you only have $40,000, you’re 25 years old, and you’ve just started your first job a year and a half ago, two years ago, you just got married, you just bought your first home, and you got 40 grand squirreled away, that you want to get into investing in real estate. Call every agent in Memphis before you call us, because by the time you get to us, you’ll want to hire us, because every one of them is going to to tell you flat out, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can get a $35,000 house in 38106 for, you know, all day long and rents for $800 a month. Because they’re after one goal, that is to sell your property, close it, and get paid a commission.
Jeff
0:11:50 – And never look back.
Brett
0:11:51 – Right, and you’ll never hear from them again. What they’re not telling you is that in this particular neighborhood where you’re paying $35,000 for a house, that you’re going to rehab it, and probably by the time you’re done rehabbing it, you’re now going to have to go back in and replace the windows, the copper, the furnace, the fixtures because they’ve all been ripped out of the home. Now you’re into a home for $50,000 and that’s how you get it rented this time for $500 a month. Six months later, you’re going to evict that person and they’re going to trash the house. There’s no such thing as a great deal at $35,000. There’s always going to be cost that is going to hurt you in the long run. You’ve got to get into a C to C plus neighborhood. Go ahead and put the money up for the property that makes sense. Get away from this idea of buying ten properties for $350,000 and turn into $700,000 tomorrow. Because if you pay $35,000 for a house and you want to sell it for $75,000 or $80,000 six months from now, good luck.
Jeff
0:12:45 – Doesn’t happen in some of these bad areas. You can pay $35,000.
Brett
0:12:53 – Well, right, because people that are going to buy and own an automate don’t want to live in those neighborhoods. And investors don’t want to have rental properties in those neighborhoods because they’ve been told or they’ve had experiences there. So I will tell you, take that $40,000 and you contact us. And what we do is we go through our list of turnkey properties rented producing 1% or better or maybe one of our new construction properties that’s producing 1% or better. And we then set you up with one of our portfolio lenders or one of our investment lenders. We have multiple that we work with. And they say, okay, I can approve you to buy two $100,000 homes and you’ll take that $40,000 and put $20,000 down on each property. Well, guess what? 30 days from now, you have two rental properties producing 1% or better. Cash flow, $200, $250 a house. Next year it’s $300 a house and you’ve gained $4,000 or $5,000 in equity because we’re seeing a 4% or 5% average growth here in Memphis. And year on and year out those two assets grow. You scroll away another $40,000 over the next couple of years and you’ve got your two rental properties that are performing that now have equity. Now you can refi those properties, pull equity out and take that 40 and turn it into 80. Go back to the same lender and do what? Buy four more properties. Same process, two to three years later, and you buy six more properties. Now all of a sudden in 10 years you’ve accumulated 10 to 12 rental properties in the Memphis market all because you took your money and you leveraged it. If you were to take that 40 grand and go buy a $35,000 house, I guarantee you, you will be in the negative and upside down and probably at a pretty good loss on that property. Leverage your money, buy the right type of investment, get away from these guys telling you this pie in the sky dream of paying cash for properties and fixing them up and flipping them because you’ll go into neighborhoods that you don’t know anything about and you’ll make the biggest mistake that will probably end your investment career right there on the spot. That make sense?
Jeff
0:14:52 – Perfect.
Brett
0:14:53 – So leverage your money. That’s what we do.
Jeff
0:14:55 – So what’s the most important thing when you buy that property and you’ve got that cash flow coming in? That’s put your reserve aside for maintenance.
Brett
0:15:02 – Well, you take that $250 a month and you go buy yourself a new car, pay your boat note with it, I don’t know, buy your wife a new dress, take your wife out to dinner.
Jeff
0:15:10 – That’s what the real estate seminar guy does.
Brett
0:15:12 – That’s what they tell you to do.
Jeff
0:15:14 – You could pu a researce.
Brett
0:15:14 – The truth is, you take that $250 and you build your reserve account for the oh, s*** moments. Once you got two or three, $4,000 set aside for that, then you take that $250 and you pay it down on your principal and keep paying it down on your principal so that 15-year loan becomes a 10-year loan or that 20-year loan becomes a 15-year loan. You pay your assets off sooner because every time you plop that 250 down onto that principle, you’re just building more wealth. Because that 250 didn’t come out of your pocket, and I’ve got an expert arguing with me about this, and he truly believes that what he’s telling me is accurate. That every dime that you spend on that mortgage is coming out of your money, out of your pocket. No, it’s not. You’re collecting $1,000 a month rent. Who gave you the $1,000? A tenant, right? The tenant didn’t come out of your bank account.
Jeff
0:16:04 – The tenant’s doing all the work.
Brett
0:16:06 – You’re paying your principal, your interest, you’re paying your management fee, you’re putting money in reserve.
Jeff
0:16:12 – You’re paying your taxes. Paying your taxes. The tenant’s doing all this for you. And you got… And you’re benefiting from the long-term income.
Brett
0:16:18 – $250 left over, which is profit, but then you pay that toward the principal, which is only doing what? Building equity faster in that property, paying that property off sooner, which is what you want to do. And I don’t care what some expert in California is telling you to do, this is how you build wealth in real estate. You don’t do it by going out and trying to create some dream and reinvent some wheel that’s been around forever. You do it by smartly, patiently, methodically working your way to building a real estate portfolio and you do it smartly. If you do it that way, you will end up like our friend Daniel, who’s got 60 properties and is 48 years old, lives in a beautiful house on a mountain, and that’s all he does is real estate. Period. He doesn’t do anything else but real estate. He’s getting his kids, his mid-20s daughter and son and daughter into it. They’re buying their first properties now. He’s getting them set up to do the same thing he did. Daniel’s living his dream, basically, because he did it the smart way.
Jeff
0:17:15 – In my opinion, it’s more sustainable retirement income than your traditional 401Ks, stock markets and all that. But it’s hard to get to the guy, the young investor, the potential investor that’s set through these seminars and they’ve got it in their head they’re going to get rich next year doing this. It’s just not going to happen.
Brett
0:17:35 – No, it’s not. We see it so many times. There are investors that have come back to me from seven, eight years ago that started down this path. As a matter of fact, one of them is flying in next week. He just called me out of the blue. Hadn’t talked to him in four years, but he came into Memphis and bought a bunch of $35,000 houses, was going to put 20 grand in them and rent them out for 800 bucks a month and make all this money. Well, guess what? He lost every single one of them. He had to liquidate them at a huge loss because he just kept getting broken into, tenants evictions, tenant gets pissed off because you evicted them so they trash the place, there’s another five, six, seven, eight grand, get it ready to rent again. Sits begging for two months, during that two months the HVAC gets stolen. It was just one thing after another. And then you’re lucky if you get to rent anyway. It felt good when he said, Brett, I just want to tell you this, but you were right. I’m like, what do you mean? He goes, you’re right. And he went in to explain that after him and I were working together and I was pushing him away from these neighborhoods, he got irritated with me. And without telling me, he pretty much fired me and went off on his own and got another agent to do this. And ended up losing almost $80,000.
Jeff
0:18:42 – Well, it’s a win-win. Glenn’s system that he created, it’s a genius system.
Brett
0:18:47 – Yep, it works.
Jeff
0:18:48 – And it’s easy.
Brett
0:18:49 – So, if you want to get into investing in real estate, I highly encourage you to come to the Memphis market. I think it’s the most sound, safest, most stable rental market because we have 340,000 renters and this is a huge distribution city. I’m not saying you need to call our team, but you’ve got to be careful with who you work with. You’ve got to get an agent that understands the market and isn’t chasing a paycheck because those guys that are chasing paychecks really could care less if his house is good for you or not. They want to get paid. Our goal is for you to buy one from us and then buy two and then buy ten and buy 30 and end up being like Daniel and have 60.
Jeff
0:19:23 – We want to build relationships. We’re not looking for paychecks. We’re looking for relationships.
Brett
0:19:28 – As a matter of fact, Jeff’s heard this story. I’ll tell a little funny story about a scenario of an investor who went against my wishes, reached back out to me a couple of years later and asked me to go look at this property that he purchased. Last year, I think.
Jeff
0:19:41 – Raleigh-Millington Road?
Brett
0:19:43 – No, Mississippi Street.
Jeff
0:19:45 – Oh.
Brett
0:19:46 – Named after a state, which every agent knows if it’s named after a state, it’s not a street you want to go down.
Jeff
0:19:51 – Yeah, that’s rule number one.
Brett
0:19:52 – Yeah. So, anyway, I had this investor who was committed. He lives in California, went to a seminar, and was given this Burr Method process. This is how you’re going to do it. You’re going to take your $100,000 and buy three properties and you’re going to put money in it and you’re going to flip it out and you’re going to make all this money. So he called me and same as my clients coming in last week, this guy verbally told me that I wasn’t the right agent for him after he kept saying, this is what I want, these are the areas I need to look in, this is my price range and I kept telling him, you don’t want to buy in these areas. He got irritated and finally told me I wasn’t the right agent for him. What he needed was one of these other clowns that were like, Oh, yeah, yeah. Mississippi Street. Great. Yeah. We can buy 10 on that street. Well, sure, you can buy talent street because all streets abandoned. So anyway, he bought the property last summer sometime, maybe May or June. He calls me because, hey, I got this house on Mississippi Street that I bought back in 2021 and I’ve been able to get it rented, it’s been broken into, I think the roof’s caved in. Can you go look at it and tell me if there’s something we can do with it?” I’m like, okay. So I hop in my truck and drive down to Mississippi Street, turn on to Mississippi Street, and immediately realize I’d made a huge mistake. So I pull up to the house and there’s two guys sitting on the curb. And there’s about four or five guys sitting down in the road, in their cars. So I did what I always do, I breached down and put my weapon on my side and got out of the truck. And these two guys in the car, I’m like, hey, I’m going to go in this house. Is anybody in this house? And they’re like, oh, no, no, no, sir. There’s nobody in there. I said, nobody live in there? No, not at all. So, okay. So I got a gun. I don’t want to be startled and shoot somebody. No, there’s nobody living there. So I walk around the back of the house, get the back door open, slowly make my way through the house. The ceiling’s caved in in many of the areas, all the windows are broken out, I get in the living room and there is a 72 inch flat screen TV on with an extension cord running four houses down to one of the neighbors’ homes. So it turned out these two guys were living and squatting in this house. This guy paid $35,000 for it, put about $20,000 in it, and as I walked through this house it was completely destroyed. He had never had a tenant in it. He lost 50 grand on that one house. 45 or 50. That’s why I preach, the first thing you do is call yourself a good agent. Talk to every agent in Memphis if you need to. And if you call an agent and they don’t call you back within an hour, move on to the next one. But make us your last call at 901-692-7401. Because after you’re done talking to us, you’ll understand that there’s a system that we use that works. And we will protect you and help you grow because we want you to keep buying from us. We don’t want you to buy one from us, get pissed at us and move somewhere else and go to a different agent.