Andrew Holmes understands real estate investing. After 13 years as a traditional broker he switched to investments and has focused there ever since. In his career he has personally flipped 600 homes and currently has a buy-and-hold portfolio of 180 properties. Three years ago he found ChicagoREIA which is now the largest real estate investment association in the country with over 5000 members. ChicagoREIA brings together the industry’s leading investment experts and teaches members strategies of top investors like Andrew.
Keeping it Real Podcast listeners will receive $10 off ChicagoREIA’s upcoming three day summit in Skokie. Click here for more details!
Andrew Holmes can be reached at 630-635-5996 and info@chicagoreia.org.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:15
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real. The only podcasts made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host through the show. And first of all, I wanted to say continued Thank you, which we do the beginning of most of our shows, but we wouldn’t be here for if it wasn’t for you listening. So our numbers keep going up. And we appreciate that, which means you’re most likely telling a friend because we’re not doing any marketing. So we appreciate that. And if you have anyone else other brokers that you think might find these kinds of conversations interesting and helpful, please pass this along. We really appreciate it helps keep us going. And today we have a really great conversation interview with Andrew Holmes of Chicago Real Estate Investors Association, which you can find at Chicago, ria.org, Chicago are eia.org. And he has a three day seminar seminar coming up, which is called cash flow to freedom, he’ll be talking about it in the upcoming interview in just a few moments. But as a keeping it real podcast listener, you get $10 off the admission price, it’s already very low, but you get an extra $10 off. So you can learn more about this and sign up at Chicago ria.org. I’ll put the link as well in the notes. So thanks again for continuing to listen to and continuing to support our show, tell a friend, tell every broker you know about us, and let us know who else we should be talking to on this podcast we have in the next week or so we have new podcasts with Kerry McCormick, Eric Workman, and a few others as well. So thank you again and onto our interview.
Today on the show, we have Andrew Holmes from Chicago Real Estate Investors Association. Andrew got into real estate at the age of 20 when he was in college, and he ended up selling real estate until the age of 33. And he was solely focused on working with sellers. So he’s basically a listing agent, and he still had his license but in 2008 made the decision to start investing full time. And as of today, he and his business partner have a investment portfolio of 180 single family homes and, and two to four flats. Over the past 10 years. He and his partner have done over 600 flips. And he started three companies along the way, one of which is Chicago real estate investment investor association with over 5000 members in three years, by the way, which is an impressive, impressive growth there. It’s the largest real estate investors association in the country. So congrats to him there. Also, he has two other companies Chicago flipping which is about of course flipping homes, and Chicago cashflow, which is his rental division for his properties. His message to all agents is that, hey, we are in the business of helping others buy a home and invest in their futures. And we as brokers should be doing that for ourselves. He has some we’re gonna be talking about some of his philosophies and practices. And about five years ago, he also started a radio show on real radio, not these dumb podcasts like mine. But he’s I’m 560 am called the answer. And he’s all about empowering investors and agents about how to build their wealth through real estate. So we are so grateful to have Andrew Holmes. So welcome, Andrew.
Andrew Holmes 3:41
Thank you, DJ. Glad to be here.
D.J. Paris 3:43
Well, thanks. Thanks for taking time out of your day. And tell us a little bit about and I mentioned a bit of your journey there. And that’s quite a journey. Very impressive. Tell us a little bit about how you got started.
Andrew Holmes 3:57
So in college, you know, I was always the kid that all my friends went out and got drunk, and I went out with them. And I was counting the number of people in the bar trying to figure out how much the bar was making. It was I was always kind of since I was a kid. That’s just how my brain work. My college days, I was trying to figure out, how do I become rich? I mean, really, they asked me to pick a career. I’m like, well, whatever makes the most money, that’s what I’m going to do. And that was kind of a tough one for the counselor to he’s like, but what are you passionate about? Well, making money because I’m really broke. So I don’t want to be here. So that was kind of the you know, I didn’t know what exactly entrepreneur at the time meant, but sure, apparently that somewhere came in built.
D.J. Paris 4:44
And and so you really started in at the age of 20. What was that like getting your license that early?
Andrew Holmes 4:50
And I was like I went to this really small school and there were a couple of people who drove really nice cars. And when you’re 1920 years old, a nice car seems Like someone who is well off, and some are who were through the grapevine I heard that they owned a lot of Earth’s real estate. And I used to check out a lot of books, blah, blah, blah. So I’m like, well, that must be the common thread. And really, I thought I was going to get a real estate license, I was going to be a successful investor. And that would be a great summer job and supposedly make so much money that I would be set for the rest of the year. You know how that story starts. So that was I mean, I was so naive that, as you can imagine, the first two three years were rough to say the least, you know, so?
D.J. Paris 5:35
Oh, sure. Yeah. How, you know, as as a young agent, how did you? How did you drum up business I imagined, it’s, you know, none of your friends are buying, buying and selling at that age, I imagine.
Andrew Holmes 5:45
At the time, I was in a really small town about the population, I think was about 30,000 people. And I mean, somewhere I got hold of some, like old cassette tapes. And they said, you should just cold call people. Sure. And I mean, I used to be so nervous calling for sale by owners expired listings, is to forget my own name. So I used to kind of sweat bullets. I had no idea. And I mean, I remember how painful it was, but I didn’t want to. So my parents happened to live in India. And when I left there, I had told them that, you know, one day, guys, I’m gonna be a multimillionaire, and they happen to be both the surgeons, and so I told them, I’m going to show you guys and, you know, I did not one thing I never wanted to do was go back to my parents, and say, I failed. And so it didn’t matter what happened. I had to make it. And so for 234 years, I really didn’t communicate with them much. Because I didn’t know what to tell them that I quit college, and I’m trying this whole real estate thing. And I mean, literally, I built my whole business on literally calling for sale by owners expired listings, and canceled listings.
D.J. Paris 6:55
And we should we should like not move on quite yet from from that statement, because that is it’s probably the hardest cold call there is in real estate, I imagine. And certainly not for the faint of heart. You’re calling people who either have have had bad experiences with realtors, or are just I don’t want to pay those Commission’s and basically trying to turn those into clients. And those are Boy, that is a real trial by fire. But I suspect if you could make those calls. After that
Andrew Holmes 7:24
just interesting. It’s what happened was literally I mean, what happens is initially when you call people do obviously hang up on you because you don’t know what you’re saying. And literally you come to a point where once they know you’re truly there to help them. Yeah, and serve their needs. I used to call people 1015 times, and literally and they’re like Andrew, you realize you called us a week ago. And like guys, I’m not calling to ask for your listing. But if you do think of an agent, I want to make sure that if I’m willing to work this hard now, how hard do you think I’m going to work when you actually do put me to work. And literally they used to call me and go you know something you’ve been so damn persistent, that my sister in law is an agent, but she will never work as hard as you do. And, and it was literally that was my secret was that I was like, just not a bad dream, but a good dream that just would not go away. And I was persistent. If they couldn’t sell it out, literally go tell them what to do to get their home sold. And what I figured out was after a while people figure out that you’re genuine about what you’re trying to do. And that catches on and it was first people would look at you like strange. They’re like, What is wrong with you? Why would you help us? I’m like, Guys, it’s simple. If you sell it yourself, fantastic. We should have asked if you don’t just please remember that I’m here. And a lot of times people would this is, you know, in the 90s and the 2000 or two up to 2000 678. So obviously a lot of people did succeed, kind of selling it themselves or do whatever they did. But I mean, I was I moved to Chicago literally in 2002. And starting in 2002. At a time, I used to always carry 40 to 50 listings at a time. And that’s all I did. I think I had maybe 10 or 12 buyer controlled transactions. And that was it. And every single thing was pure logistics.
D.J. Paris 9:14
Wow. That is and there are so many brokers and I was mentioned to you offline, we have 1000s of listeners, you know, all of which I assume are brokers and they would kill to have that number of listings. But they what they probably wouldn’t do is make those kinds of calls. And so I really applaud you for oftentimes when we talk to top producers on the show, and we say what you know, what did you What do you do so differently? They always say generally, it’s almost always it’s not really anything different. It’s just they’re willing to make those types of phone calls and or whatever that particular activity was. It’s it’s always kind of like I call it like those those types of things like cold calling expireds and for sale by owners. They’re really I kind of call them like the push ups of real estate. They’re like it’s a really simple exercise, it’s not easy, but it’s a really good idea. But it’s one that we all go, Yeah, I should do more push ups, and nobody very few of us ever do them. So I applaud you for doing that. And as a result, Boy, that’s a pretty impressive, you know, start with, you know, that many number of listings. So then what made the shift from that into investment?
Andrew Holmes 10:21
You know, so what happened was this, I had seen my parents, like I think mentioned, when we got started, both of my parents fortunately, did very well for themselves started with kind of nothing but got a very good education. My dad happens to be able to pick surgery, my mom was OB GYN, gynecologist, and it’s the old school in a way of thinking you have to study hard work hard to make something of yourself. And it did. I mean, they have a lot of recognition, they’re very well, you know, all the things that kind of come with being a very successful surgeons, for me, what I always bothered me was this, that I had friends whose parents had way more than we did. And yet, they didn’t have the level of education. They didn’t write as many hours. But the difference between them and my parents was my parents were always running on a treadmill. Now, it was a very fancy treadmill, mind you. Or if you’re a gynecologist, OB GYN, you’re it’s a very fancy treadmill, Georgia problem still is that they have to show up to get paid. Yeah, they’re, they’re trading hours for dollars, for sure. Right. And what I realized was at real estate, I mean, we’re like purebred athletes, if you’re, if you want to perform at a high level in real estate sales, you have to grind it out. I mean, I wish, at least I don’t know. I mean, I’ve always looked at a lot of top producers, they don’t overthink things, but they have something they have very good at due diligence in terms of follow ups, as they keep, in fact, I mean, they go from I mean, in my business change, going from 100%, cold calling to, you know, to 80% to 60% to 40%. Because you start calling the people, you know, after a while, you don’t have to do as many cold calls to produce way more results. But still, January 1, or December 31. Christmas time was a very painful time for me, because even though I had done well for the year, and I was one of those people who wouldn’t spend money, and put as much money in stock, stock and away as much as possible, but still, I was not sure if I could repeat that performance the year over, right, you know, the next year, the next year, because the calendar gets reset. And, and that’s the reason I was I always had this thing in my mind that one day, when the market is right, I’m gonna jump in. And that day came January 14 2008. I mean, that was literally the date. So Wow.
D.J. Paris 12:46
And and what, how did you start to learn about investing? Was it just information you picked up along the way? Did you read books? Did you tend
Andrew Holmes 12:54
to read books, I went to a lot of different kinds of meetings. And a lot of clients, I lost a lot of clients, because I tried to tell them what I believed, which was don’t buy stuff without cash flow. Sure, and buy things and hope to go up. You know, I mean, I pray all the time to get taller, it doesn’t seem to happen. It’s I’m still short, I mean, you know, appreciation obviously happens over a period of time. But you can’t predict build a predictable business on it. And what I saw people doing from 2000, in 9899, and 2001, all the way through six was they were buying buildings where they were losing money. And the idea was, well, we can lose money for two, three years, but it’ll be worth two or three times as much. And we can get rich, and they got caught with it. And I saw that. And I saw it as I mean, I had the front row seat, because sure some of those were my clients and I sold them the property. And I sold the property again, when it went into short sale. I mean, it’s sad, but it’s and for the first time I realized, you know, that there’s something happening, and it’s right in front of me. And if I don’t get on the field, I’m going to miss this game. And so that was kind of my thing. And it was scary. I mean, it was very scary in 2008 to be jumping into real estate sales when everybody was losing their shirt.
D.J. Paris 14:18
Yeah, yeah, I imagine it was it was scary. It’s funny I’ve heard by more than one person more than a few who have said never think of your primary residence as even an asset much less than investment unless there’s there is cashflow which probably there isn’t if it’s just a primary residence, but like they said don’t even put it on your asset column because it really it costs you money. It’s an asset on the day you sell it. But also you have to live somewhere to so likely and certainly don’t don’t think of it as an investment and you know, it’s anything it’s going to suck money out of you year, you know, month a month over month. But that is a really, really, really intelligent thought. ought to, to only want to have, you know, assets that that make money for you on a, you know, residual income basis, which is obviously what you get into so as as you bought your first property in 2008, then sort of how did you?
Andrew Holmes 15:12
How did you know what to happen was, it’s like, again, sometimes, you know, will you shoot for something, and you kind of miss the target yet it’s taking you somewhere. So what I did was, I had a great treadmill, which was selling real estate, and it was, I mean, I was very blessed, that after a lot of struggle, I did figure out my niche. And it’s very, very rewarding. I mean, I don’t know, any other profession where you don’t have to have a college degree, you have to kind of put your head down and go to work. And you can make, you know, 5060 100 200 400 500,000 bucks, a million bucks, literally. And it’s, it’s so I always feel very blessed that I didn’t pick real estate, real estate picked me, that’s how I feel about it. But what happened was, you know, I got off one treadmill, which was sales, and I got on a more stressful treadmill, which was doing flips, so 1008, through 2009, and 10, all I did was just pure flips. So I buy a house rehab, get it rehabbed and resell the property. And when I was a listing agent, I only listed properties less than 450. Because I was in the Schomburg market, surrounding areas. So I always wanted bread and butter properties and never wanted a big house to list because the turnover was an issue. So that’s what I did in terms of flips, that I dropped down the price and the median price range. So I was buying properties at, you know, 100,000 or 50,000, flipping them at 250 300. And I just did a heck of a lot of it. And then I finally realized that I had gotten out of one treadmill, and gotten on another treadmill. Now, if it rains four inches outside, now I don’t have to worry about my customers or clients house, I have to worry about my profit. It’s very true. And so it creates a different level of stress. And finally, I had a friend of mine or somebody who I have respected immensely for a long period of time. And what he said is because I was asking him kind of the lifestyle, I looked at, well how he lived. And I’m like, How is this possible? He’s like, Well, back in the SNL crisis days in the 80s, he had bought quite a few houses in California, about 80 or so houses, and he had paid all of them off. And he’s like, you realize, every single day, the tenants go to work, and they read on a treadmill, they run on a treadmill, so I don’t have to write. And that’s the first time when it struck me. I’m like, instead of selling some of these properties, how about if I flip two properties, and keep one, flip two and keep one and so I started that process, which was I would flip to which was kind of money to live on and invest some of it in a rental property. And then as the kind of stage started growing over time, I could keep three rentals only flip one then keep for rentals, only flip one. And that just equation over the years has obviously kind of grown so.
D.J. Paris 18:12
And with your buy and hold properties. Do you focus in one particular geographic area? Are you sort of looking all over? Or do you kind of keep it localized?
Andrew Holmes 18:22
So I started buying basically, for people who are familiar with Schumacher, from Chicago area sure around Chombo. Market Schomburg I consider as a a market economically. So because the houses are expensive, so the market right next to it, which is going to be a more bread and butter market economically, you get relatively good rents, stable long term tenants, we don’t rent to anybody less than two years. So minimum two year rentals, if not three, and four. So it’s impressive. Yeah. So I mean, that’s just that’s kind of the philosophy is that if you live in our property for five or six years, we’ll send you on a vacation for your entire family anywhere in the world. As long as you live there six years. Wow. Because they’ve paid down my property. What’s your results? That’s wonderful. You know, so if we can give them a reward of for $5,000. And okay. So, right. Philosophy has been is buy the property, rehab the property, rent the property, refinance, the amount of money that you invested in the property, and every month, you have four to $500 net cash flow, after all expenses.
D.J. Paris 19:29
Yeah, my boss has a very similar philosophy. He, he owns, I don’t know 2025 properties, and has that same philosophy. He just He goes, I want I he wants to net 1000 every month and so that’s his goal. But if it’s 500 He’ll he’ll do it. But yeah, he he always, you know, is able to figure it out. I think that that makes a ton of sense it also to when you’re working with these tenants who are signing multi year leases, you probably probably I mean maybe maybe this isn’t true, but I would assume they probably treat the property Be a bit better, since they know they’re gonna be there for a period.
Andrew Holmes 20:02
And we were very, I mean, we’re fair to people. But we’re equally tough with everybody in terms of that we don’t want. We want good tenants, we want people who will take pride, because we provide a nice clean home for them. And we are prompt in terms of repairs. And so but we’re rigorous in terms of how we do all the checks in terms. So most people who basically, you know, don’t meet our standards, we’re not going to we run it like a business. I mean, that’s the difference with how we run that business is that this is a business and we pay attention to that business. So and the philosophy kind of what started was that we were talking about 257. So my goal initially, was in two years, I wanted to own five houses. And I wanted to get them paid off as quickly as possible. Because I, we take that, but I don’t like long term debt, because to me, it’s just a noose around your neck. So what my philosophy is that in two years, any person normal person can buy can learn how to buy five houses. And if they buy it with the right numbers, about four of them will get paid off completely in seven years, maybe not the fifth, depends on how aggressive you are with your payments, but you use all the cash flow to pay the property off, because there’s a basic philosophy in real estate that I believe and that is that if you take care of real estate for the first five years, real estate will take care of you for the rest of your life. Right. But the first five years are critical.
D.J. Paris 21:36
Yeah, wow. I absolutely, absolutely agree. And, you know, that brings us into your your association, which is the Chicago Real Estate Investors Association. And this is really important because it because I know you started about three years ago, and it’s funny that that we’re talking about this, because I noticed that there really there was one other group that I was familiar with. And I think this is even before your group founded. And they were way out in the western suburbs, and I don’t, you know, they had a pretty sizable group. But But there really was, was a wasn’t any other cohesive group. And I said, somebody’s gonna come along and build a really impressive investor Association. And you’ve done that. Can you talk a little bit about about year this? Chicago, Rei?
Andrew Holmes 22:23
Yeah, so So basically, kind of how that started was that I went to other groups, I attended the meetings, and it’s like, you know, hiring a coach or hiring a trainer at the gym, that doesn’t kind of follow what he preaches. And that’s what I saw with a lot of these groups that they people talked a great game, they would never share any information. And but they didn’t have the results to kind of prove what they said that they were doing. And I was kind of trained by somebody in real estate, who basically, basically, it was very against Bs, and I just absolutely couldn’t stand it. So really, that was kind of the thing that I lacked a connection with people, where I wanted to get a group of people together with similar mindset with similar thinking people who are not afraid of sharing ideas, thoughts, and openly creating a forum where we can as a group can grow. And I’m of the school of thought that, you know, the five people you hang around your net worth is basically your net worth is equals your net worth. And so that’s, that was basically the basic philosophy. And that’s really how we started was a group of people who I knew, and I was like, Hey, guys, let’s get a lot of experts in the area. And let’s provide great information and try to get people to take action.
D.J. Paris 23:51
Yeah, I mean, before Andrews group, it was a lot of meetups at a local bar, a handful of people would show up, and somebody really needed to come and create something with structure. And so they did that. And we should talk about your upcoming summit, your upcoming conference, which is in Skokie. It’s February 16. Through the 18th says the three day event. You can learn more about it at Andrews website, which is Chicago are eia.org. What else would you like to talk tell the listeners about the about what the Learn at the summit?
Andrew Holmes 24:21
You know, so the three days of kind of divided into day one is all about acquisition? Where do you find transactions and more so rather than retail transactions, where do you find those transactions that have 2025 30 35% 40% equity in terms of when you buy a property because because really, anybody can buy a property at retail price that doesn’t require skill. What an investor is looking for a is a good deal and good deal by our standards is somewhere where there is 30 35% 40% equity, and those today are that’s the art of investing which is if you can find I find a great deal, you can literally not do any work and sell it for a profit to somebody as a retail sale, you can obviously do a fix and flip, which is rehab it, or you can keep it for rental forever. So that’s kind of the focus they want. So we’ll talk a lot about pre foreclosures, still bank owned inventory, still a lot of off market, landlords deals
D.J. Paris 25:23
and, and to not just interject before you get to the second day of your summit, but it’s important to note that, you know, brokers who are who are most likely listening, you know, often don’t know what’s beyond the MLS, not that these properties, they may be on the MLS, but likely, there’s possibility they won’t be. And so I imagine you’ll learn alternative strategies for finding these these types of properties.
Andrew Holmes 25:45
Exactly. DJ, you know, it’s interesting, because I was trained in that mindset, right, that picks up on MLS, I didn’t know anything. That was really and it was great till two, till about two or three years ago, I didn’t have to look any other place, I could find phenomenal deals on the MLS all day long, because I was used to working the MLS all the time, yet the market has changed. So that’s kind of day one. And then that day will, what everything that we talk about, we want to bring examples of people that anybody that says, Well, I can’t do it, because I can show you an example that has beat the odds and still succeeded. And so we’ll start with somebody last year, who bought five properties to 15, to 20, to 25. To 30, by the end of the day, what we want people to say is okay, there is no excuse, the excuse is the one I make. Day two, we want to step it up, which is we put people on, we hire about five school buses, and we put people and we send them to properties. These are not for sale, we’re not selling those when I’m trying to get rid of the properties. The intent of that is we want people to look at properties that are right in their neighborhood, they may live in those neighborhoods. And there are properties that we own. I mean, it’s kind of interesting that just out of a group of about 300 people at Chicago Ria, right, there’s over 3000 properties that are owned by just a small group of investors. And it’s phenomenal how many great properties come up all the time. And so the reason for that bus tour is to kind of show the reality of what goes on what type of rental properties you should be looking at, and what type of flips you should be looking at. And then in the afternoon, all we talk about is numbers, numbers and numbers. Because really, that’s what kind of makes this business run, which is purely numbers. So day two, is purely based on flips. And we’ll have people who do small 30 $40,000 profit flips. And then we’ll have people who do complete rebuilds remodels, new construction, you know, 100 $150,000 markets, and we’ll kind of show the difference why a certain strategy works better than another, and how many transactions that really are in our area right here in Chicago. And then the day three is really kind of the big boy network, which is that is all about 257. What our goal is this that if your need is, let’s say somebody says, well, I need to make $10,000 a month, that’s my, you know, my outlay every month is 1000. So we’ll say Okay, raise it up by 20%. So that’s going to be 10,000. So you need about 13 houses to make sure that for the rest of your life, you have $10,000 that comes in doesn’t matter if a renter pays doesn’t pay, you still have enough income. And that’s what we want to build to on that date. So from the morning, we start with regular lenders that will come in, then we’ll have private money lenders come in, then we’ll have commercial lenders come in and we start building that up. And in the afternoon, we have attorneys come in talking about asset protection. So it’s about building a business, what the three days are about is that how do you build a sizable business? And how do you do it quickly, safely and with experts that are local? I mean, the great part about living in Chicago is there is real estate literally still from $30,000 all the way to 234 million. The question is what are you going to do with it?
D.J. Paris 29:02
Yeah, and I think this is such a such a great conference you’re putting together because even if the listener out there as a broker who he or she does, maybe does not want to invest themselves which which Andrew would tell you to do too, you should learn to invest yourself but even if as a broker you want to work with investors, you are now going to have the skill set of exactly what that investor is looking for. And there are so many brokers out there who whether they want to invest themselves really do want to work with investors that you know, and and that this this will give you that exact skill set to to do it yourself and also to find other investors and also be their broker.
Andrew Holmes 29:41
Nikko is going to mention that because so many, I mean some of the big names in lb that have huge businesses built on investors. I happen to be some of the speakers at the three day conference. You know some of the big REO brokers from Ryan Smith with classman office A bunch of people, Frank Montero a bunch of people that are brokers that have specialized in that but you know, our most successful people at the Ria, almost every one of them has a real estate license. Right? They like a lot of times agents will come, they’ll look at it, they start selling properties to investors, and they’re like, Oh, my God, right? I don’t I keep few of these for myself. And that light bulb goes on. And it’s awesome to see that happen. Because now not only are you serving the public, which is helping them find a home, you know, home of their dreams or building a portfolio for themselves. But now you’re, you’re basically practicing your own message, which is you’re doing it for yourself, which is the best service you can do for you and your family.
D.J. Paris 30:47
I don’t think it could be it could have been said any better. Well, let’s, let’s plug the website one more time. So in order to get more information about the conference coming up, and also the regular meetings for the Chicago Real Estate Investors Association, visit Chicago, R E, I a.org. There’s a good looking website with a lot of great information about upcoming events and how to get more involved and more educated about investments. Andrew, if there’s anyone out there who would like to reach out to you directly to get more information, or to even maybe work with you what’s the best way they should reach out?
Andrew Holmes 31:24
I mean, a couple of things. Number one, the number is 847-303-5011, or Chicago, ria.org. And anybody that calls from your show that listens to the show, and comes to the conference, just all they have to do is just mentioned that or just email, Chicago Ria. And we’ll give them it’s only 39 bucks, but we’ll give them another $10 off just as especially, I have a special kind of, you know, soft corner for people who are real estate agents, because I’ve been in those shoes. And it’s a wonderful opportunity that we have at our fingertips. The question is, what do we do with it. So it’s something that if you’re not going to take advantage of it, learn how to work with investors, the last year 25%, of Chicago market was investors. And there’s a shortage of people who are good at working with investors, and you can get 5678 transactions from one investor. So if you pick the investors properly, it can be a wonderful means not only for building wealth for yourself, but for multiplying the amount of transactions with less effort.
D.J. Paris 32:35
Absolutely. And I was just thinking back to when you said, most of the people, almost all the attendees have their license? Of course they do, because you’ve told them go get your license, save the commission. So this is
Andrew Holmes 32:46
we actually don’t you know, we discourage people, what we have always believed is this that, in fact, if anything, I always say, if whoever the listing agent is work with them, let them earn the commission, you know, and what I’ve always said is that once you find a good broker, a good broker is worth their weight in gold. I mean, this is something I’ve always had this philosophy, because this is, especially great deals, great deals come by and when they come by, if you want to be the first person, you cannot be chasing commissions, you have to chase the deal. And let the agent who has listed or whoever you’re working with be fair to them. They’re putting in time they’re putting in effort, right, let them make money. Yes, focus on the deal. The reason for having a license, as far as I’m concerned, is only one reason access, that’s it.
D.J. Paris 33:34
Sure. Sure. So yeah, you get access to the MLS and right and other properties. That’s a that’s a very good point. And so is there an email address that people can can reach you out?
Andrew Holmes 33:46
Absolutely. It’s info at Chicago RIA R E. ia.org. That’s info at Chicago ria.org.
D.J. Paris 33:56
And let’s also mention your radio show which is on 560 am the answer how often and when can people hear you on on five? On 560?
Andrew Holmes 34:05
Every Sunday at 12 o’clock noon to 1pm on AM 560 WMD
D.J. Paris 34:12
Awesome. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for your time. This has been a really fun conversation and I hope everyone listens. Gosh, for 39 Or I guess $29 to go attend this three day summit in Skokie is is kind of it seems like a no brainer. So everyone should go sign up for it. And thank you so much for being on the show. Love being
Andrew Holmes 34:33
on it. It’s a great it’s one of the best podcasts I kind of was privy to listening to it through Rosario, who you had on slick invest. And Ryan from renewable. Yes. And, and so I mean, you guys are doing a great job. So I think we might ship needed some. Well, everyone
D.J. Paris 34:53
go and register at Chicago rei a.org. Go to the summit in February or sign up for their you know, regular meetings. Obviously, Andrew is a wealth of knowledge and he surrounds himself with experts who come and are part of that organization to help clue you in on what you need to know. So thank you so much.
Andrew Holmes 35:12
Great. Thank you so much. Did you have a great day
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