Jennifer Beadles the Founder and CEO of Agents Invest talks about the beginning of her career in real estate and how she built her business. Jennifer describes the process she uses to find investors. Jennifer also describes what characteristics she values in a city when deciding where to start investing. Jennifer and DJ discuss the importance of the local partners in building your business. Last, Jennifer presents her two upcoming events- the 4-week bootcamp in September and the 3-day event in October.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Jennifer Beadles can be reached at hello@agentsinvest.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Jennifer beetles from agent invest. And before we get to Jennifer, just a couple of quick reminders. Number one, please tell a friend to think of one other agent that could benefit from listening to our podcast and hearing from top producers like Jennifer and send them a link to our show, you can always send them right over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done right there. Or they can pull up a podcast app on their phone, do a search for keeping it real, and hit the subscribe button. And also just want to say thank you for continuing to listen. And to be part of our audience. We really appreciate it. We couldn’t do it without you. And we are forever grateful that you find this content interesting and helpful. And please feel free to share your thoughts with us, you can always email us directly right through our website. So go to keeping it real pod.com Let us know your thoughts, any ideas on how to improve the show or guests you think we should be reaching out to those are always appreciated. And again, thanks for continuing to listen and now on to our interview with Jennifer beetles.
Today on the show, our guest is Jennifer beetles of agents invest.com. And let me tell you about Jennifer Jennifer beetles, who is the founder and CEO of agents invest is extremely passionate about helping real estate agents close more deals while working less hours. As a real estate agent herself Jennifer was working tirelessly, tirelessly, yet seeing meager results. Then she discovered the power of working with investors and soon earned enough to take control of her time and began investing in real estate herself. Through 14 years of experience Jennifer has honed in on the craft of searching for deals and working with investors and is now providing agents with the tools they need to scale up and build their wealth. Jennifer herself has sold over 150 million every year with over 150 referral transactions, please visit her website which is agents invest.com, where you can learn more about as a as a real estate professional how to begin working with investors. And also she has an event coming up that is a three day event which is 100% free for agents and if it’s from October 12 through the 14th It’s a three day event you can sign up and learn more at Investor agent summit.com. Again, investor agent summit.com. Both of these links will be in the show notes. So you can just scroll down there and and learn more about it. Jennifer, welcome to the show.
Jennifer Beadles 4:21
Hey, DJ. Hey, thanks so much for having me here. Great to be here with you today.
D.J. Paris 4:26
I am super excited. Can we pull the curtain back before we get started? And are we allowed to talk about where you are right now? Or is or do we want to mention Okay, I just want to keep your privacy intact. But can you because I think this this is so apropos to what we’re going to be discussing is is I asked Jennifer? I said oh hey, where are you right now because I just assumed she was she was somewhere here domestically in the United States. But she isn’t. Tell us tell us a little bit about what you’ve been up to.
Jennifer Beadles 4:59
Yeah, Yeah, so I’m currently based in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the the country in the Balkan region just came from Montenegro the country right next door a couple days ago. And then prior to that was in Croatia. So my family and I were doing about, I think three or four months over here in the Eastern Europe and just kind of Europe, Europe in general, for the summer. So yeah, we’re enjoying this passive income lifestyle, while kind of running my business remotely and enjoying it really, really great time here.
D.J. Paris 5:35
Well, and the really funny part is, it’s the weirdest thing, because I am going to Croatia, myself, with my girlfriend here in just a couple of weeks. So we won’t, we won’t actually pass each other. But Jennifer and I are sort of strangers passing in the night, sort of so to speak. But what a funny, funny coincidence, so she is exactly well, we’re driving through Bosnia. But we’re not, we’re not stopping there. But we’ll be in Croatia. And so she just gave us some great recommendations in Dubrovnik. And then she’ll be in Split Croatia before we get there. So she’ll be helping me with that too. But what a great small world. But again, it really speaks to what you teach, because most Realtors couldn’t fathom being away from their clients, their traditional, you know, first time homebuyers or just traditional, you know, residential clients who are aren’t on not on the investing side. And so I know that you really focus on building a life with a lot more geographic freedom and financial freedom. And there’s, you know, a small percentage of agents really, are even all that familiar with working with investors, and most agents don’t think about it. And it’s something that they really should think about, because it opens them up to a whole nother line of business, really, and possibly a passive income stream as well. So let’s start all the way at the beginning because Jennifer is really a Seattle, a Seattle person. But let’s let’s talk about how you got into real estate and how you got from from when he first started all the way to where you are now. Yeah, absolutely.
Jennifer Beadles 7:09
So my desire to get into real estate was really in buying my first house. So I was 21 years old, at the time working two jobs to save enough money to buy my first house. And it was this 1901 kind of half falling down structure and pretty much the cheapest property in town that I could afford. And I kind of noticed a couple things throughout that transaction. One is the realtor made a lot of money, but I felt like was a lot of money at the time being a 21 year old to kind of, you know, fresh out of fresh out of college. And and I just kind of really enjoyed the process of like finding a deal, you know, potentially taking this kind of almost, you know, falling down property, fixing it up and potentially doing something with that. And so I wasn’t quite interested in going the real estate sales track. And so I had actually gotten hired on with the builder developer. And so that was in the year 2007. And that was really good. The first year, the 2000 was summertime and 2008 happened. So Seattle is about to two years behind the rest of the country. And so we didn’t really feel much of a recession until 2008, when I think everyone felt it. And so I made the crazy decision to get licensed in 2009, when most agents were leaving the business, and I really kind of saw an opportunity prices were getting much more affordable. You know, I had now some knowledge and construction and building and development. So I got my real estate license, primarily so that I could let myself into properties. And what I found was that friends and family started reaching out. And in my first six months, I got licensed in May of 2009. In my first six months, I closed six deals. And I said wait a second, I’m kind of onto something here. I’ve actually made more money in the first six months of being an agent doing it part time than I had all year working for this builder developer. So I ended up I closed on another property. So I had like three properties when I closed as an agent. And the day after the property closed, I quit my job. And I said, Okay, I’m gonna be an agent. And what was happening though, at that time in Seattle, was pretty much like there was a ton of properties on the market. I don’t know, maybe nine months of inventory or or, you know, or what have you. And there was a lot of distressed sales. So actually, for my first two years as an agent, primarily, I was doing short sales. I was doing, you know, bankruptcy sales, foreclosures. And I didn’t know what a traditional sale look like for almost about two years. And so my opportunity that I saw was really working with investors. So in the first couple of years, I mean, I might have worked with 15 to 20 investors that were closing between, you know, five to 10 deals a year. And to me that was a great business. I didn’t have to go out I didn’t have to pay You’ve already advertised and how to do marketing, I didn’t have to do the things that traditional agents have to do,
D.J. Paris 10:04
right, you just had to
Jennifer Beadles 10:05
find opportunities. Yeah, I mean, I just had to find opportunities, and then email them to my clients, and then have them raise their hand and write offers. And so it was just really interesting. So I kind of had a different approach than most other agents who were really struggling. I mean, there were agents that I saw in my office who, you know, were used to making 50 to $100,000 a month, that were month after month, just not closing sales, or sales falling through or buyers, you know, deciding not to buy, they wanted to wait to see what happened in the market. And, and so for me, it was actually a really great time to get started. And I saw this opportunity, I’m very much systems and processes kind of person. And so I saw this opportunity, as you just said, DJ is to just, you know, kind of work with a funnel of real estate investors not have to really focus much on lead generation, that investors kind of came to me because very few agents work with investors. And so I’m thinking why essentially no competition, and abundance of deals, if I just focus on finding deals, and you know, having a consistent effort of putting those in front of my clients, they’re going to write offers. And so that’s essentially how I got started and how I built my business. It looks very different today. But But that’s, that’s really how I got started.
D.J. Paris 11:19
And for anyone listening, who might be thinking, well, that’s great. I don’t know any investors. I’d like to, and again, I’m gonna put my own narrative on this, and I want you to correct it or disagree or agree, because really, I just want to confirm on this the statement, or have a challenge, because I am I do, I am not a practicing agent, though. We have 800 agents at our firm, we have a lot of investor brokers at our art, because of the sort of the way we do commissions and fees attracts a lot of investors, who are who are agents, but so I’m just telling you, sort of relaying what they tell me. But finding investors I’ve heard is actually the easy part that the money shows up when you find opportunities. So well, I’m curious to get your your sort of again, I know it isn’t that simple. But you know, for anyone thinking, oh, gosh, all I know, are traditional first time homebuyers or just regular residential clients who aren’t thinking investors? I don’t know that world. You know, is it difficult to find investors?
Jennifer Beadles 12:27
No, that’s the easy part. So consider that 20% of sales in the US are happening with investors, which agents might think, okay, 20%. But think about all the agents that are competing for the 80% of deals, whereas maybe 1% of agents work with investors. And so in my opinion, I think you have the more ability to create recurring revenue, with fewer clients, you’re running a leaner business. So again, you’re not paying for advertising, you’re not having to really do much in order to generate new leads, you’re working with the same leads, who are gonna close multiple deals every year, right. So again, it’s just so much easier to run a, you know, highly profitable business when working with investors, but how to find them. Again, that’s really easy. So the way that we did it in Seattle is we started a local meetup group. And so meetup.com, you know, subscription to meetup.com, we post our event in bigger pockets.com Because that’s where all the investors hang out. And, you know, the first couple of months, maybe we had, you know, 10 to 15 people show up, you know, we would bring in a guest speaker or I would talk about a specific deal or a topic. And then at the end of every meetup, we would showcase deals in the market, we’d say, hey, you know, here’s a duplex in Everett, Washington, here’s, you know, something else that we found off market. And so we found that investors were coming there to kind of learn network, and then also just buy deals. And so every meetup, we were selling a handful of deals, and it was, you know, free lead generation for us. And, of course, you know, is a great sales opportunity. So that, in my opinion, that’s the number one way to get access to investors is to start a local meetup group. You know, bring your property manager in, bring your lender in, you know, tag team that you don’t have had the lender talk at one if you have a property manager talk at one showcase deals. But yeah, we weren’t getting I mean, anywhere 75 to 100 people showing up. Every single month, it actually got so popular that we ended up having to charge for it and have a ticketing system because we were running out of space in our venues. And so, so then we you know, with COVID, of course, we brought it online, and we were able to reach a whole nother level of investors all across the country. The second opportunity that every agent needs to be thinking about is within their own database. So a lot of our students inside the investor agent Academy are actually talking to their past clients and or people who are looking to buy a house right now. And talking them talking to them about House hacking, you know, maybe buying a duplex living in one half, turning the other into a rental. That’s a great opportunity to have you first time homebuyers that maybe can’t afford property. In this market, if they consider, you know, living in a multifamily property, they can use the rental income potentially to qualify. And so maybe if they were only pre approved for 200,000, but if they’re looking at a duplex with, you know, maybe $1,200 a month, in rents on the other side, maybe that could be, you know, 350, or even 400. So there’s a lot of opportunities to take existing clients, turning them and helping them in becoming investors, creating passive income streams for themselves. And, you know, again, just getting more potential sales opportunities, and helping our clients. So those are some really, really great opportunities to get investors. But I would, I would guess, that most agents that are listening, have investors in their database, they just haven’t asked if their clients are thinking about investing, or put investment opportunities in front of them.
D.J. Paris 15:48
Yeah, I think I think you’re right. And I also think this specifically around house hacking, obviously, if you’re, if you’re listening and aren’t familiar with that term, Jennifer, really just just sort of defined it. But if if you’re not familiar with it, it is becoming part of the lexicon, it’s becoming part of our lingo, especially skewing younger, that particular term. So anyone in their 20s, to really, you know, 40s, or 50s, may be starting to get familiar with that idea. And if you don’t have a good answer, as an agent, when you’re maybe you’re out showing homes, more traditional, you know, sort of you’re selling somebody a condo, or, you know, a single family home, that, you know, wouldn’t have the ability to do what what they call house hacking, there’s a good chance that question may just come up, you know, while you’re working with your client, and you should have a really good answer for Yes, I understand what this is, here are those kinds of opportunities in our market, or maybe, you know, right now, there’s not a lot of those opportunities, you just have to be familiar enough with it or, or even better, if you don’t want to get familiar with it, say, a house hacking specialist, another agent I can refer to, and I’m going to get you in touch with them so they can discuss with you other opportunities. And for anyone listening, if you’re like, you know, I don’t like working with investors, that’s not my skill set, then you really need to build a partnership with investor realtor who can, who can, you know, take over. And then of course, you can still earn referral commission. But what you should either make a goal to determine, you know, whether you want that to be part of your portfolio of what you offer clients, or build a relationship, so you can, you know, just pass it out. And we should also mention bigger pockets, we, you mentioned it earlier. But for those that aren’t familiar, just go to bigger pockets.com, it is the largest online forum for real estate investors to hang out and chat. It think of it as like, the Reddit of real estate investing. And you know, it’s I don’t know, maybe it’s 100 bucks a year or something, but it’s absolutely worth it. And you will get the best education you’ll ever you could ever expect to learn about the world of investing, specifically from the point of view of the investor. And they have podcasts and books and all sorts of things. But but definitely check out bigger pockets. If you’re, that probably be the first place I would recommend somebody could go. And and we’ve done interviews with some of the bigger pockets, guys. So we can always email our show, we can send you those those links. But so tell us about agents invest. So So what do you guys do that? Yeah, so
Jennifer Beadles 18:26
as mentioned, the business looks very different today than it did when I was just getting started in Seattle. And really how that pivoted and how it shifted is, you know, I found myself in 2016 with a huge investor database. But the deals in Seattle just no longer made sense for my clientele. And so And same thing, can
D.J. Paris 18:44
we I’m sorry to pause, can we talk a little bit about where your where your clients, and we should talk? You know, so investors tend to be one of one of two, sort of, we’ll say, residential investors tend to be in sort of one of two camps, either their fix and flips, you know, sort of quick in quick out or their buy and hold. They want, you know, a predictable cash flow. And And I’m assuming, what, what, what was your what were your investors looking for at that time?
Jennifer Beadles 19:11
Yeah, they were primarily looking for maybe an 8% cash on cash or higher, which is going to equate to maybe like a six and a half cap or so. And, you know, Seattle cap rates had come down to five, you know, in some cases, even four cap. And so I had a lot of investors that were thinking, Okay, I wish I had a huge buffer in other markets that I can continue to buy. Well, I myself as an investor was kind of thinking the same thing. You know, my, when I was building my own personal portfolio, I was taking, of course, you know, commissions off the side and putting them into rental properties, which I hope every agent should be thinking about and doing. But it’s, you know, so I built my own portfolio doing really well in Seattle, but then the deals just no longer made sense for me either. And so I decided to get into Indianapolis, Indianapolis and found an agent there from the property manager was really you know, pretty simple for me to just go ahead and you know, buy a duplex that was half the price of Seattle. And you know, the rents, I was able to get double digit returns right away. And so a lot of my clients said, Hey, can I get access to your team there? And I said, Absolutely, it’s really common. Of course, as agents, we know that we can refer business out to other agents. And so it was really fun. This agent was actually a newer agent, he had maybe been in the business for a year, maybe it feels like 10 deals or so. And I said, Hey, if I bring you a lot of investors from the West Coast, do you have the capacity and the bandwidth to take on all of these new investors, and he said, Absolutely. And so it was really fun. So one investor from California that I connected with him, closed on 10 deals in like, two months. So he’s like, keep them coming, keep them coming. And so um, and I also was kind of going through this my own kind of journey, as an agent, I wanted more freedom, you know, as Agent, it’s great, because we have freedom, but then we also don’t. So our freedom is dependent on how much we want to work, how many clients we want to take on. And as my business grew and grew, and as I kind of became known for this investor agent, I was getting more investors coming to me every day. And I wanted to kind of enjoy, you know, the fruits of my labor, I wanted to travel more with my family, I wanted to go and, you know, do different things other than just, you know, being on the phone all day long, and working seven days a week. And so I actually pivoted the business to what it is today, which is a referral only brokerage. So we will never have agents, you know, hanging their license at agents invest. It’s, you know, kind of a cloud brokerage based in Seattle, of course, here, I’m in Europe, you know, for the next couple of months. But what we do is we research the best markets across the US, we find an agent there that wants to work with investors, or has the knowledge of working with investors. And then we help put their deals in front of investors. And so, you know, in the past, we’ve actually done just the referral. So we said investors wanted to invest in Indianapolis great. And, you know, we would send all the referrals that way, and it actually became too much, it became too popular. And the agent said, I wish that there was a better way to do this. Because in some cases, like the example in Indianapolis, that agent would get 10 leads from us in a day. Wow. And he would say, I don’t have time to do all these calls. And so we said, okay, okay, why don’t we save you the time, and having to do all these investor calls, will kind of get the investors like pre approved ahead of time, we’ll kind of you know, get their criteria straight. And you send the deals to us and put them in front of the investors that our investors are ready to write an offer, they’re going to click a button, and you guys initiate the conversation there. And that changed everything. So now, you know, some really cool stories, we have an agent who joined us as a referral partner, and also as part of our agent Academy, in the Twin Cities, and very successful residential agent, but had never worked with investors. And within 37 days, he was able to I’m trying to remember how many deals it was, I think it was eight deals under contract in like 37 days. That’s what I think, I think was the equivalent of $56,000 in commission income, just from investors that we had referred to him because he put the deals in front of us. And the investor said absolutely, exactly what I’m looking for. And so So now he’s like, Oh, investors are fantastic. I don’t have to show houses.
D.J. Paris 23:12
No, not as emotional.
Jennifer Beadles 23:15
Yeah, it’s a click of a button, the investors are saying, okay, you know, maybe they have a couple of questions about the neighborhood or want to talk to the property manager, but they’re pretty much ready to go, you know, and these are all, of course, out of state investors. And so again, there’s no showings, you know, it’s maybe some video and again, just, you know, some dialogue about the neighborhood. But it’s really cool for us, because now we get to create wins on both sides. So now we get to help agents build and scale their businesses. And we get to serve our investor community, which of course, is you know, a passion of mine, I love to see people build passive income streams and, you know, have freedom and quit their jobs early, we have a lot of investors, you’ve done that. And then we get to be the connection point between the two. And so for me, again, it’s really exciting.
D.J. Paris 23:58
It is really exciting. And you guys do get to sort of connect on both ends. Because like, for example, if I had somebody I knew who said, Hey, DJ, you’re you’re in real estate, which I’m sort of I mean, I technically am, but I really am not. I sit at a desk all day. I’m a marketing guy. So sometimes people do say, you know, Hey, how’s the market? I’m like, I have no idea. But if somebody said, Hey, what’s the investor market look like right now in Chicago? Again, I’d say I have no idea. But I would, I would ultimately say you need to talk to you know, so and so who, who really does understand that market? And then they might say, Well, what about other cities and maybe Chicago is not a great spot for the kind of investment they want to do. And I would say again, I don’t know that’s what I would send that investor to you. You You’re so what you guys do is you really identify opportunities for investors, at least areas around the country which I was going to ask you how you found Indianapolis so actually would like to buy you know, how did you arrive at gosh, I we need to start an Indian I know you your self invested there. And then Obviously pushed a lot of your clients over to Indianapolis. What was it? How did you evaluate that city? And what was it about Indianapolis that that piqued your interest at that time?
Jennifer Beadles 25:11
Yeah, so I was looking for cities where the population was increasing the job. Outlook looked fantastic. Right. So there was a variety of jobs, jobs were increasing, I was looking for, you know, wage growth, and and also just, you know, price to rent ratio. Sure. So again, in Seattle, you know, the market is great for appreciation. I mean, some of my properties have, you know, more than doubled over the last couple of years, the rents are going up, but it’s really hard for an investor to get it. Whereas in Indianapolis, that first duplex that I mentioned, that I bought was $155,000. And the rents were almost $2,300, which is unbelievable credible. For somebody in Seattle, where the average duplex, you know, as 500, where was $500,000 at the time, I mean, I could buy several of those, right? And I couldn’t get those returns in Seattle. So I was looking for something that was very different than the market that I was already in. And then that just kind of opened up a world of opportunity. And then we said, well, what is Kansas City look like? And so I’ve kind of a data nerd, I mentioned that I’m a little systems and processes. And so it’s like, okay, well, Kansas City also looks really good. Okay. And then we, you know, went to some markets like Memphis, Tennessee, for example. There’s a lot of investors in Memphis, Tennessee. But when I analyze the market, I said Nashville, there’s more people moving out of Memphis and are moving in. And the rents aren’t really going up over time. wages aren’t really going up over time. There’s not really any appreciation came, maybe that’s not a market that we want to focus on. And so it’s been really kind of fun to find these, I guess, hidden gems, if you will, across the United States. And a lot of agents don’t realize that they’re sitting on a goldmine in their local market. Because to them, you know, again, I mean, we have one market about 4545 minutes outside of Nashville, Clarksville, Tennessee, population growth has been like 50%, over, you know, 2000 to 2017 50% increase in population. rents are going up, rents are up like 25 45% year over year. And the prices have gone up. And so to them, they think ads, you know, a little bit expensive right now, but you take somebody from the West Coast, and they see, you know, brand new duplex going for 200,000, where rents are going to be like 2400 Oh, I say I’ll take five of those. So so it’s really fun. So our partner actually in Clarksville, Tennessee, she closes anywhere from I don’t know, maybe 15 to 20 deals a month with investors. Just in her local you know, MLS deals again, we’re not talking about getting, some agents might be thinking, Oh, you guys are probably having to do a lot of, you know, off postcard campaign door knocking or postcard?
D.J. Paris 27:46
No. These are MLS deals. A lot
Jennifer Beadles 27:50
of them are MLS deals. Wow. And so agents
D.J. Paris 27:54
for everyone listening and I apologize, Jennifer, I just wanted to so that might be the other question. But the first question was, how do I find investors? Don’t worry about that look for deals, then the question is how do we find deals. And again, you can always partner with an investor broker who already knows how to do that. But it depending on your market that was might be MLS listed, they may be non MLS listed, which there’s a whole art and science to sort of getting in front of people who who aren’t already listed, you know, and finding those those owners and seeing if they’re interested in selling. But that’s where your partners come in. So you guys find these local realtor partners, who are who are either willing to learn like you said the Indianapolis person couldn’t have known that much about investments when he first developed a relationship but but boy, I know if somebody was feeder, you guys are kind of almost like the Zillow for realtors who want to work with investors. But it’s a good thing. Right. So you have you have you know, you have this this group. And and you’re right, like when you said, Clarksville, I was thinking why, you know that makes sense, because Nashville is exploded so much. That’s probably just continuing to spread out. Because you imagine if you would have known Nashville was going to turn into Nashville, you know, five years before it did. We’d buy but but but but but because maybe and I don’t know, the Nashville market, if it’s still highly competitive, I imagine it is. But now you have these surrounding markets that are popping up and and again, you as our listeners, you don’t have to know that. You just have to know where to go and say, you know, where are opportunities right now? You know, and that’s where agents invest what what you guys do is sort of educate the realtor enough to sort of to be able to sort of speak just a little bit about it, but then also to say, hey, we’ll take it from here. You just make the introduction to us. You guys sort of vet the investor and then you’re able to then sort of give them opportunities. Is that my understanding?
Jennifer Beadles 29:52
Yeah, absolutely. And so some of our best agents have maybe been in the business for a year or two. And they’re really good at negotiations, but When we can kind of apply the logic of you know, it’s more focused about the rents and the price to rent ratio, they can kind of team up with a property manager, get a good idea of what rents are in their area, we have a handy dandy calculator, it takes maybe 30 seconds to see if the deal makes sense. And so we have agents, again, that, you know, every morning, they spend maybe 90 minutes, just kind of scouring the MLS or scouring different opportunities, you know, maybe looking to see if it kind of hits that metric of that 8% cash on cash or higher, and then they just send the deals to us. And so a lot of our agents again, you know, it’s not unheard of, to have an agent that’s been in the, in the business one to two years, that’s closing, you know, five to seven investor deals a month is like extra business, right? So some of our agents don’t even work with residential clients anymore. Because they say, Well, why would I? Why would I work, you know, nights and weekends and show houses and do open houses and all these things. And it also works in really hot markets with, you know, another student in our academy, she got licensed in February, this is a Seattle cave. So like one of the hottest markets in the country, really, really, really tough market right now, just because, you know, lack of inventory, and she’s closed within 12 transactions, so far, you know, it is, and again, this is in five months, I meet with investors, and this is investors, right. So this isn’t even, you know, residential clients. So again, I may be making this sound really, really simple, but it really is. And so, you know, DJ, you’d mentioned, if an agent is listening this and thinking, I don’t really like working with investors, um, you know, remember, we are specifically talking about buying hold investors, right. So these are, you know, it flippers and developers kind of have their own, you know, kind of differences, but buy and hold investors, when you have the ability to help someone build passive income streams, you’re literally changing their life. And so as agents, I think we all have this kind of desire to help, and to help our clients, you know, build wealth than you know, and, of course, you know, further further their, you know, net worth and wealth building through real estate, but I want you to really consider working with buy and hold investors, because it’s really not that different. And in my opinion, also, having worked with, you know, traditional clients, it’s a heck of a lot easier. And you can potentially close more deals, and just have it be, you know, more of that recurring revenue that I that I love about working with investors, because they’re just gonna keep coming back to you. Because you’re, you’re adding value to them.
D.J. Paris 32:26
When you were working with strictly when you were doing your own deals with investors in Seattle, what percentage of the time? Did you have to? Did you end up showing in person, the property to your investor, like just estimated? Was it 50% of the time? Was it 10% of the time? You know, or were the investors like, I get it? Here’s the offer. I’m ready. Like, what, what percentage of the time? Do they need to see the property versus not? Um, I mean, gosh, maybe 25% of the time. Isn’t that incredible? So 75% of the time, they just go the numbers make sense? Let’s put it off for it.
Jennifer Beadles 33:03
Absolutely, no, of course, you know, we get under contract. And if it’s tenant occupied, then it’s, you know, subject to interior inspection. And sometimes we’d go in and we’d say, this is not the condition that we thought it was gonna be, you know, listing agent says, oh, turnkey rental, you know, and then you get in there, and you realize that it’s not. So sometimes that happens, right? But then you just negotiate it, of course, you know, as agents, we’re used to doing that. But, yeah, I mean, it’s, again, I feel like you can close so much more business and just do you know, really great things from working with this type of clientele. You also consider like, when working with investors, you know, love working with first time homebuyers. I’ve worked I have worked with a lot of first time homebuyers. But it can be a bit of a challenge, right? Because there’s a lot of hand holding, and there’s a lot of, you know, are they getting gift funds? Are they trying to do FHA? And then does the property meet FHA requirements, and you know, things like that? Well, with investors, I mean, again, a lot of also pay cash, we haven’t even gotten into conversation about how in some cases investors can close quicker, right, sure. And so so when you’re kind of dealing with investors, you’re also kind of dealing with you know, somebody that has a little bit more solid financials. And so it means the deals are often going to stick. So again, not to not to put down our first time homebuyers because love them, but it can be a bit of a challenge when you’re dealing with FHA and kind of, you know, a limited budget
D.J. Paris 34:21
and just the emotional ups and downs about purchasing a primary residence, which is I you know, I just did it myself, and I wasn’t the first time I’ve done it. I just did it myself a several months ago, and I was completely stressed out through the whole experience in which meant, and I didn’t, my boss helped me through the deal, but he had to talk me off the ledge a few times, and I’m in the industry, investors tend to, of course, it depends on the individual, but they tend to need a lot less of that. You know, this is a business proposition to them. This isn’t where they’re going to be hanging their hat and walking in every day and needing it to be exact to their living requirements on But let’s talk about the but for anyone out there who’s like, I don’t really know how to find these transactions, or how to explore my market, you guys teach this. And you guys do this through your agent Academy, which by the way, you can easily get to right from agents invest.com. But let’s talk about this, because this is you saying, I will teach you guys there. It’s a four week program. And I will teach, you know, these real estate professionals how to, you know, sort of source these deals, find them, and then connect with your investors. But can you talk a little bit about that?
Jennifer Beadles 35:34
Yeah, yeah. And so, the last couple of years, we’ve been doing this referral program with agents. And we started having a lot of agents reaching out to us or even team leaders reaching out to us and saying, Hey, I love what you guys are doing. But I don’t know where to get started, or can you teach my buyer’s agent, they’re new to the business, but they want to focus on investors. And so we put together basically 14 years of experience and working with investors, and really kind of bottled it up to just really the, you know, the top 20% that you need to know, I think as agents, sometimes we have this impostor syndrome. And so we feel like we need to know everything, or have done it before we can help our clients do something. And that is absolutely not the case. Like we need to completely remove this whole imposter syndrome idea. Because, again, you know, maybe 1% of agents are doing this. And so if you can even just have an intelligent conversation about House hacking, right? Do you do that you suggested in the beginning, or, you know, price to rent ratio, or just some of these, there’s really only three calculations that you need to understand is cash on cash return net operating income, and cap rate. Above that, I mean, the investors, obviously, you know, they’re gonna do their own due diligence, they know these things. And so yes, we teach agents how to build an investor database, how to find and pitch deals, because it’s really important that, you know, of course, if you have a great conversation with an investor, but you’re not out sending deals to them, they’re potentially going to move on to another agent that’s sending them deals. And then also just, you know, really kind of putting some systems and processes behind what you’re doing. We don’t want agents to spend, you know, hours and hours, you know, trying to find deals work with investors, we, a lot of agents actually do this kind of on learn this on the side, and then they realized that it’s actually a viable business opportunity for them. And then they actually refer out their, their residential clients, because it’s so much easier to work with investors. But yeah, it’s, it’s just a really great program, we’re having a lot of success with it from agents all across the country. So again, we have some who are brand new to the business, that want to just go straight into working with investors, because they don’t want to compete against every other agent and their brother was choose trying to get listings right now and do and do that sense of business. And then we also have, you know, more experienced agents who are just wanting more freedom, and you know, wanting to have a little bit more time back, and they see investors as the opportunity to get them there. And then we have a lot of team leads, who are, who are having us train up investor specialists on their team, so that they can add that leg DJ, as you’d said, Right? When you said, you know, partner up with an investor agent? Well, if you’re a team leader listening to this, maybe you need your agent on your team.
D.J. Paris 38:09
That is a brilliant idea. I really, you know, it’s funny, you mentioned that it seems like such an obvious idea, but I don’t think we’ve ever we’ve done about 300 episodes of the show. And I don’t think anyone’s ever specifically mentioned that. So if you are a team lead, or if you’re just on a team, or if you’re thinking about building a team, and you’re Hey, I am I like working with traditional home buyers and sellers, not not investors, and I really don’t want to do that. But boy, I’d love to add that to my portfolio, then consider bringing on an agent, and then you guys can teach them exactly what to do. And that’s what investor agent Academy, does. It’s a four week program. I know there’s one coming up here in September, you can get to it and sign up for the waitlist right at agents invest.com, you’ll see a link for the agent Academy. But can you tell us a little bit about what what did what will they learn in this four weeks?
Jennifer Beadles 39:02
Yeah, so essentially, everything you need to learn in order to build that investor database. Also how to find deals, how to pitch them, and then just how to bring systems and processes into your business. So most of the students that we have inside of our academy, they’re going to go pending on at least the first deal in the first 30 days. Now, if you’re anything like Mike, who is an overachiever, you’re gonna get eight under contract and 37 days, like I said, he made up he was bringing in, you know, 56,000 in commissions in that, you know, first five weeks or so. And then he’s also brought on some help now. So it’s really exciting. Now, he’s kind of taken over the lead, and then he’s got other agents that are submitting deals and doing deals for him. So it’s really, really cool to kind of see him scale up in that way. So yeah, we would, again, if you guys have any questions, you know, definitely reach out to us. As DJ mentioned, our next cohort is starting in September, and we’d love to help you get started. It’s going to work in any market so even if your thing Again, I’m in a really hot market or I’m in LA guys, there’s investors that are buying in every single market. So if you’re thinking I had probably can’t find a percent cash on cash flow in your market, it might be more for appreciation. Right. And so we have calculators and ways to kind of show you how to pitch the deal that’s going to work for your market.
D.J. Paris 40:18
And then we should also say, as we’re wrapping up here that there is a summit. So we have the four week boot camp, which starting in September, which by the way, everything you can you can learn about what Jennifer is offering right at agents invest.com. But there is a summit coming up shortly. And some of the speakers at least in previous years have actually been guests on our show. Avery Carl has been recently on our show Bree Schmidt. And so you have you what what this is a little different. So you bring in specialists, investor, brokers mostly, or people sort of related to this industry to bring it and teach and do a four day event, or a three day event, rather, tell us a little bit about what agents will learn at the Investor Summit?
Jennifer Beadles 41:01
Yeah, so the investor agent Summit, we hosted our first one in February, and it was fantastic. So yeah, we had about 1900 attendees that were participating in the investor agent Summit, and really is all about teaching agents, again, how to work with investors, and really why you should consider adding this to your business. Again, either through you know, bringing somebody on to be that specialist on your team, or you adding that as a service to your current existing clients. And so we have this next one that’s coming up, we’re gonna get a little bit different. So day one, is actually going to be all about working with investors inside your real estate business. Day two is going to be all about how you as an agent can invest in real estate. And then day three is our mastermind slash workshop day, that’s where we’re actually going to be kind of breaking down specific strategies. And we’re going to be kind of talking about different things that I like to bring content that’s not easily accessible or found at the brokerage level, you know, things such as like running, profit and loss, things about, you know, how to understand investment, property financing, you know, commercial financing, and, you know, residential financing. So, again, it’s going to be a really fun event, we’re super excited to host it, again, we’ve got a great speaker lineup. And we’re just really excited, again, to bring this content to more agents, because we’re just so passionate about the opportunity in working with investors, and then also seeing agents close more business and then get some time back. So they’re not always working, you know, seven days a week.
D.J. Paris 42:28
Yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity for the listeners to learn more about an ad this either as a an additional service that you provide to your clients, or, again, maybe you say, You know what, I just don’t particularly enjoy working on the investment side. But I want to make sure that I’m knowledgeable enough to then pass that off to other you know, people who make this sort of more about their business. And this is a great way to do that. So I would encourage everyone who is listening to sign up for the, for the summit that’s coming up here. And then also for the four week, bootcamp, is there, by the way is there a cost for either of those
Jennifer Beadles 43:09
Summit is completely free, we do have a VIP all access pass. So if you want access to all videos for lifetime, and also our mastermind day, then we do have a cost for that. So it’s $97 to get try to make this really affordable for you guys, especially for newer agents that are just getting started. And then our bootcamp so we’re running a small promotion, the doors aren’t actually open yet, but, but you’ll get a bit of a discount if you join the waitlist. And the doors are gonna open in about, I think two weeks from today. And so if you joined during that, that weightless time period for for that week, you’re gonna get a couple $100 off the price. But again, we’re keeping these just really affordable, because we really want to focus on adding value to agents, so that then they can put that back into their business and really just kind of grow and scale from there.
D.J. Paris 43:55
Awesome. Well, for everyone listening, please visit visit agents invest.com Check out the free summit that’s coming up. And again, there is an upgrade opportunity to to download some of the speaker presentations, if you’d like to, to have those sort of on demand. And then the bootcamp which is coming up which is the four week boot camp, you can join the waitlist, you’ll get more information about it to see if it’s a good fit for for your business. Jennifer, thank you so much for being on our show. This was really, really a lot of a lot of fun, but also really educational. I think I think you’re right. You know, you said something very powerful towards the beginning about probably 1% of real estate professionals are familiar enough to work with investors. So if you can, you know, improve that skill set a lot less competition, and you might find that working with investors is a lot more rewarding. I imagine I should have asked this earlier and I know we’re at the end. But I imagine your nights and weekends even opened up more when you started working with investors. Is that a fair a fair thing to say? say,
Jennifer Beadles 45:01
Oh, absolutely, I don’t even know what working nights and weekends looks like anymore. And I haven’t for a couple of years. So great, great benefit of working with investors,
D.J. Paris 45:10
well, if anyone is looking to recapture some of their time, and still participate, you know, with with transactions, and look, Jennifer is doing it from, you know, halfway around the world, and is able to travel. And, you know, she is the real deal. So check out agents invest.com, and sign up for the summit, sign up for the bootcamp. And you know, we couldn’t be bigger fans of agents and bass. So Jennifer, thank you so much for being on our show, we really appreciate it. This, this was a wonderful time that we spent on this episode. And we want to thank you on behalf of the audience for sharing time out of your vacation to do this with us, which we are so grateful for. And on behalf of Jennifer and myself, we want to thank all of our listeners and viewers for continuing to support our show, only thing we ask is that you please tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Jennifer about agents invest and send them a link. Think about any other realtor, you know, that is not working with investors and say, Hey, here’s an opportunity that you may want to check out to add this to your portfolio of services and send them a link. Easiest way you can do that, if they’re not a podcast person to send them to our website have sent them to keeping it real pod.com, which they can stream every episode we’ve ever done. They don’t have to be a podcast person, or a tech savvy person, they can just listen right from their browser, or if they are a podcast person, have them just pull up their podcast app on their phone and search for keeping it real. And hit the subscribe button so they can get this episode. Jennifer, thank you so so much. And if I if we ever are in the same city in Croatia, I will definitely say hello to you. Because from what I understand there are not a lot of Americans in Croatia, sort of one of these places on the Adriatic Sea. In fact, most of us are probably going where’s Croatia? Exactly. But it’s on. It’s on. It’s in the Adriatic Sea. And it’s kind of, you know, nestled above sort of Greece and, and I’ll be any enough if you other places, but anyway, um, did you find that when you were in Dubrovnik? Were there a lot of Americans or was it was it not wasn’t mostly Europeans?
Jennifer Beadles 47:18
There’s been very few English speaking people. Here English being spoken, we say Oh, from so yeah, but it’s great. It’s, you know, it’s a good time to travel right now, because there’s just not a whole lot of tourists out.
D.J. Paris 47:31
So I am I am excited. And again, if we’re if we if we’re in the same city, at some point, I will come by and say hi, and so we can speak English and have a nice moment. But anyway, enjoy the rest of your time with your family. I love that you’re still able to run your business I am I am going to be completely shut down. Well, not completely. I’ll have to check my emails and and stuff but I do not. I feel like I am more tethered to my job than you are and I really aspire to being able to do what you do. So I appreciate you sharing that with our audience. Jennifer, thank you so much. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Jennifer.
Jennifer Beadles 48:07
Thanks again. Thanks all
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