The Real Estate Syndication Show

WS1994 From Ground Zero to Real Estate Hero | Highlights Grant Warrington

April 06, 2024 Whitney Sewell Episode 1994
WS1994 From Ground Zero to Real Estate Hero | Highlights Grant Warrington
The Real Estate Syndication Show
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The Real Estate Syndication Show
WS1994 From Ground Zero to Real Estate Hero | Highlights Grant Warrington
Apr 06, 2024 Episode 1994
Whitney Sewell

Considering real estate syndication or revamping your property management strategy? This episode of the Real Estate Syndication Show is packed with valuable insights from Grant Warrington, a social media savvy investor and property management expert. Grant's experience highlights the importance of having a reliable local network to streamline property management.

Here are 3 key takeaways to help you build wealth in real estate:

  1. Maximize Your Network with Social Media: You can significantly grow your professional network and open up career opportunities by actively engaging on social media, utilizing tools for automation, and consistently sharing engaging content.
  2. Simplify Content Creation: Streamline your content production by batching work and delegating editing tasks, freeing up your focus for more strategic endeavors and efficient content generation.
  3. Efficiently Manage Rentals Remotely: By appointing a local contact and leveraging established connections, you can successfully oversee rental properties from a distance, optimizing your investment strategy.


Connect with Grant on Instagram at @grantwarrington and explore his course, the Apartment Buying Blueprint, at apartmentbuyingblueprint.com.

Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share the Real Estate Syndication Show with friends interested in building wealth through real estate investing. Visit lifebridgecapital.com to start your journey today!

VISIT OUR WEBSITE
https://lifebridgecapital.com/

Here are ways you can work with us here at Life Bridge Capital:
⚡️START INVESTING TODAY: If you think that real estate syndication may be right for you, contact us today to learn more about our current investment opportunities: https://lifebridgecapital.com/investwithlbc

⚡️Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealEstateSyndicationShow

📝 JOIN THE DISCUSSION
https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestatesyndication

➡️ FOLLOW US
https://twitter.com/whitney_sewell
https://www.instagram.com/whitneysewell/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-sewell/

⭐ Be Our Guest!
We are continuously working hard to help our listeners with their journey to real estate syndication. If you think you can add value in any way to our listeners who are in commercial real estate, then we’d love to have you over.
Apply here: https://lifebridgecapital.com/join-our-podcast/

Show Notes Transcript

Considering real estate syndication or revamping your property management strategy? This episode of the Real Estate Syndication Show is packed with valuable insights from Grant Warrington, a social media savvy investor and property management expert. Grant's experience highlights the importance of having a reliable local network to streamline property management.

Here are 3 key takeaways to help you build wealth in real estate:

  1. Maximize Your Network with Social Media: You can significantly grow your professional network and open up career opportunities by actively engaging on social media, utilizing tools for automation, and consistently sharing engaging content.
  2. Simplify Content Creation: Streamline your content production by batching work and delegating editing tasks, freeing up your focus for more strategic endeavors and efficient content generation.
  3. Efficiently Manage Rentals Remotely: By appointing a local contact and leveraging established connections, you can successfully oversee rental properties from a distance, optimizing your investment strategy.


Connect with Grant on Instagram at @grantwarrington and explore his course, the Apartment Buying Blueprint, at apartmentbuyingblueprint.com.

Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share the Real Estate Syndication Show with friends interested in building wealth through real estate investing. Visit lifebridgecapital.com to start your journey today!

VISIT OUR WEBSITE
https://lifebridgecapital.com/

Here are ways you can work with us here at Life Bridge Capital:
⚡️START INVESTING TODAY: If you think that real estate syndication may be right for you, contact us today to learn more about our current investment opportunities: https://lifebridgecapital.com/investwithlbc

⚡️Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealEstateSyndicationShow

📝 JOIN THE DISCUSSION
https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestatesyndication

➡️ FOLLOW US
https://twitter.com/whitney_sewell
https://www.instagram.com/whitneysewell/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-sewell/

⭐ Be Our Guest!
We are continuously working hard to help our listeners with their journey to real estate syndication. If you think you can add value in any way to our listeners who are in commercial real estate, then we’d love to have you over.
Apply here: https://lifebridgecapital.com/join-our-podcast/


Grant Warrington: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, we've packed a number of shows together to give you some highlights. I know you're going to enjoy the show. Thank you for being with us today. Grant, welcome to the show. Honored to have you on.

Whitney Sewell: Hey, Whitney. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I was looking forward to doing this all day, so excited to be here, man.

Grant Warrington: Yeah, I'm excited for you to be here. I know you have reminded me, you and I met at a, at an event or at a conference a few years ago, and I'm surprised it's taken this long for us to connect again, but I'm grateful to have you on. You definitely have some skillsets that I alluded to in the intro that we want to bring out right to the guests in a number of different ways, even the, from the folks who are raising money to the guys who are in the trenches, uh, you know, working on these apartments, uh, you know, you have some expertise that we want to get to.

Whitney Sewell: For sure, man. Looking forward.

Grant Warrington: Well, you know, Grant, you know, you have, uh, I want us to actually, I want the listener to know you're going to be here for a couple of segments here. So, uh, stick around for a couple of days and we're going to dive into a number of topics with Grant. Uh, but Grant, you know, you have had a lot of success on social media, I think recently, and, and you've been doing a ton of networking and I kind of want to bring that together in this segment. So you can elaborate on how you've done that, maybe some tips and whatnot that we'll get into. Uh, but even why. Why is that important? I've received pushback from people when I've said, hey, you got to be putting yourself out there. You know, you get people have to know who you are to build trust and all these things. But, you know, we'd love to hear your take on that, even why you started that. We'll dive into some technicalities of it as well.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, it always reminds me, I had a friend ask me, like four years ago or something, he's like, hey, why are you doing what you're doing? Why are you putting your stuff out on social media? And I told him, you know what, I don't have an answer for that. But I do know one thing in five years from now, I'm going to be happy that I did it. as opposed to upset that I did it, right? So I did know that, but I didn't know, I still don't know really what the future is gonna be of it, but I do know one thing that it builds social capital. So on Instagram, I have 35,000 followers right now. I make $0 off that, but it's social capital. What that means is to me, like Ryan Pineda is, I'm friends with Ryan Pineda now, and I paid to be in his program around him. And have some questions for him. But now, him and I know each other right so so that counts for something right, and, and through my social media growth. I bigger pockets reached out to me asked me to be a contributor. and they post some of my stuff on their site, which was huge for me because that's how I started listening to BiggerPockets like a lot of us. So it's just people noticing what I'm doing. And again, on New Year's Eve, a couple of months ago, Grant Cardone sent me a message. on Instagram and my DMs. And I'm like, is this really him? And I looked, yeah, it's his account. And he said, hey, I am looking in 2024, I'm setting up all my podcasts and I want to be on your podcast. And he said, I love what you're doing. And I was like, wow. All right, cool. So I said, great. I I was all in. I was excited about it, but I didn't tell him at the time, but I didn't have a podcast. Like I was telling you earlier, I reached out to Jamie Gruber. That's a great entrepreneurial move right there, right? Yeah. I'm not going to tell Grant Cardone, no, but I reached out to Jamie Gruber at the Tribe of Millionaires podcast and him and I went and met Grant in person in Miami at his studio and recorded with him. For the people that say, well, why, why are you doing it? Why, you know, why get out there? It's just overwhelmingly now I'm starting to see like, well, this is why I'm doing it. It's for that social capital. And someone, someone asked me the other day on a podcast, what are you going to get now from having from Grant Cardone knowing who you are? What, what's your benefit now going to be with Grant Cardone? I said, absolutely nothing. But I'm not looking, let me clarify, I'm not looking to get anything from Grant Cardone or anything like that, but he knows who I am. What's that worth? I think it's worth something, you know what I mean? And again, I can't put my finger on it, but I know at some point in my life, I will meet him again. And just these people knowing who you are is a huge step, no matter what you're gonna do in life. So that social capital to me is just so valuable. So now I can start to see it, you know, from everything I've been doing over the years. And it's just consistency, man. You know, people ask that too, right? Well, what changed or what do you do? I just decided two years ago, I'm going to post every single day. And and I never got off that. And I started posting three times a day and then two times a day. But you just got to start once a day and just be consistent. And that's how things start to change and people start to notice.

Grant Warrington: Love that. And no doubt, I've also benefited from just major consistency, right? You know, every day for like five years, you know, we produced a podcast. So it's, it's a very similar story as far as that, you know, that goes, you know, and just the, the what you call it? You know, just the value, right? The social capital. I love the, you know, building social capital comment. You know, one question, you know, why haven't you monetized, you know, the followers, say, you know, of Instagram or something like that?

Whitney Sewell: It's really difficult to monetize. You could do it with a brand, could sponsor you or do things like that, but it's really difficult. I don't know how I would do it, actually, to tell you the truth. But yeah, for me, I'm really happy where I'm at. I'm not looking to make money off it. I'm just looking to help people out, put some videos out there. I just put stuff out there that here's the stuff we went through. Here's how much it cost me. Here's what I learned. Here's how you can not make this mistake. And I try to just do it in kind of an entertaining way. But yeah, the monetizing, I don't know. I guess it's just the opportunity hasn't presented itself yet.

Grant Warrington: Yeah, no, that's awesome. I just, I knew I was going to get that question. Uh, you know, why haven't you? Uh, but no, that's great. And no doubt you're going to have more opportunities even because more people are going to know you, right. Even just like Grant Cardone or other people like him, right. That are going to want to be in your network because of your, of your reach, right. Or your influence, uh, initially, but then they're going to get to know you and hopefully, right. You never know what kind of partnerships or things can happen, you know, after that. But one thing's for sure. If they don't know you, it's not going to happen.

Whitney Sewell: For sure. And I mean, look at look at Brandon Turner, for example, right? He he's raised, you know, how many millions of dollars through his network on social media. And for you, too, I've known you and your podcast for years since before I even knew who you were before I met you. Um, you know what I mean? Because I, I just knew your podcast has been great. And, uh, I I've known that for years. So even when I met you, I'm like, oh, wow, I'm getting to meet Whitney. You know what I mean? So it's again, that social capital, I was like, wow, this guy does big things. He's got this amazing podcast. So, um, Um, you know, it's just tremendous. And to be here, that's why I'm excited to be here with you.

Grant Warrington: I think the same thing about you, Grant. So I I'm, I'm grateful to have you on the show, but, uh, but I want to dive into, I know I'm going to get questions about this or I get questions about this all the time. I'd love to hear more from you on, you know, some of the technicalities behind, you know, building the platform. Uh, and I get questions like what platform should I be focused on? Obviously you have a big focus on Instagram, but maybe why Instagram, or are you focused on others as well?

Whitney Sewell: Well, um, I'm focused on Instagram now. The direct messages are great there. It's easy to communicate with people. I can set up automatic DMs. So for anybody out there, you want to grow your email list, right? That should be everyone's goal. So I created a lead magnet. And what that is, is that's something I give away for free to people. I shoot a video and I say, direct message me or DM me the word best, B-E-S-T. And when they do that, that signals through ManyChat, that's an app. Um, they'll DM me that word in many chat, we'll send them the link to my lead magnet, and then they'd have to put their email in and they get a free, um, you know, one of my free tools and, uh, I get their email and they're my system. So that's a great thing with Instagram. Um, but what I do and how I started, um, is I just started with my phone. So, you know, I have, I have a nice camera. I have, I have lights. I have all kinds of different things now, but I just started with my phone and that's what people should do. Um, I suggest Instagram and you just shoot a video, but then put it on all the other platforms, put the same video on all the other platforms. And that's how I started out. Um, you know, I'll, I'll put it on Instagram. I put it on Facebook. I put it on Tik TOK. And then I would share it as long as I wasn't plugging anything. I'd share it in the BiggerPockets group. I'd share it in other groups that I thought that it might be helpful. And that's what I suggest. So, you know, you shoot one video and you just share it to every platform. And Instagram's where it's really taken off the most. And that's probably why I focus on it there the most too.

Grant Warrington: Yeah, no, that's very helpful. And I love this strategy behind the app and the mini chat and, you know, and it following up on its own and automating those things. Speak to the content creation piece. A lot of people get held up on, uh, you know, well, I, you know, I don't want to be in front of a camera or, Hey, what do I have to say? You, you even mentioned, you know, two to three pieces a day, uh, you know, speak to just the mental process, uh, you know, or even physical process of how you create that much content.

Whitney Sewell: So I'll give you really behind the scenes stuff. So I was at a restaurant the other night and they have a floating toilet in the bathroom, right? And I noticed the cock was cracked away and it was leaning off the wall. And I'm like, oh man, that would suck. Somebody's gonna have to fix that, whatever. So I took a video of it. I didn't say anything. I just took a video of it. And then I come home, right? And I'm gonna put my voice over it. And I'm gonna say, this is why you don't put a toilet like this in one of your rental properties, blah, blah, blah, right? Because it leans away from the wall, blah, blah, blah. So it's just something like that. My brain, when I see something like that, I just suggest to people to shoot a video about it, and then you can put your voice over it. Even in your apartments or anything else, if you're doing a rehab, you're doing any kind of work, shoot videos and take pictures of everything. You can always talk over it in the future, And you just never know when you're going to use that stuff. It could be two years from now. I have videos from three years ago I still haven't used yet. So always record your stuff. The other thing you can do is I use Trello. And what I do on there is I kind of script my videos. I write down what I'm looking to say. And excuse me. I'll look at Trello, it'll be on my screen here. So I'll look down and I'll get my line, right? And I look up at the camera and I will say, you know, I'm going to tell you the top five reasons why you should not use a floating toilet in your rental property. And then I'll look back down and I'll grab my next line. You can cut all that out of your video. People make things they make it too difficult where they think they have to be perfect on camera. You don't, you need to just say what you need to say into the camera. You can pause, think about the next thing you're gonna say, and you can cut out all that dead space for real. And it just, it makes it look so much better, but you don't have to be perfect. That's what editing's for, you know what I mean? So that's a trick I use.

Grant Warrington: Speak to the team required to produce that much content.

Whitney Sewell: So I have two virtual assistants. And again, when I talk to the camera, I talk to the virtual assistant. I tell them, hey, in this one, this is going to be the, you know, I talked to my video editor. This is what the title is going to be. This is, you know, blah, blah, blah. Here's my first hook. I'll do three hooks and then the body of it usually. And I talk right to him. And then when I'm done with the video, it goes into my Dropbox folder and my video editors in there. He pulls it, he edits it, and the social media manager oversees it. And she's the one that approves everything. She has to watch it. They watch for mistakes, misspelled words, things like that. And when she is okay with that, she okays it and she puts the video up on my page. She writes copy to it. So she just listens to what I say in the video. Might use AI a little bit and just write some copy. You know, the words in the description, that's what copy is for if people don't know. And she posts it. So when I shoot the video, that's the last time I see it. So the video might come out two weeks. It just depends how much content I have in there. Um, it could come out a month later. So I've had people say like, Hey, I love that video that came out today. And I'm like, I, uh, which one was it? I, I don't, I don't know which one it was. Right. Because the last time I saw it, I'm like, tell me about the video. Cause I remember shooting them. I just, I haven't seen a lot of them. Right. And that's a beautiful thing about it is once you're doing enough content, I don't have to touch it anymore. So I've, I've taken myself out of that equation. I used to say, well, I need to approve everything. And now I'm like, just run with it. You guys are good. Um, you know, and if I see something that comes out, then I'll, I'll say, okay, guys, we did something this way. Let's let's not do it that way anymore. But, you know, I, I really give them free reign because they're, they're good at what they do. And, um, that's the best part about it is, uh, you know, I'm, I'm more hands off on it now.

Grant Warrington: Yeah, no, that's, that's the best way to do it. Right. People are usually astonished when I say I've never edited the first piece of audio or video and I don't know how to do it and I don't want to do it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Uh, you know, even after this mini, but, uh, but no, that's, that's awesome. Right. It just to be more hands off. And that allows you to, I think, be creative more often, right. Be able to produce more, uh, you know, of the raw content and let them run with it in a big way. Uh, you know, speak to the time spent, you know, how much time is focused on that kind of content.

Whitney Sewell: Um, well, one thing I do is, um, I have a notes app and, um, or in Trello, I'll pull that up. Anytime I have an idea like that, or I shoot a video, I'll just put it in my note. Um, if I see, uh, molding or I see something that catches my eye and I'm like, Ooh, I could do a video on that. I'll, I'll put it in my notes and it just sits there. And then, um, you know, beginning of the week or whatever, I will, I'll I'll try to edit like five videos, usually 15 a week. I try to do like five on Monday, five on Wednesday, and maybe five on Thursday. And then I will shoot 15 videos on Friday. So really editing them and thinking, I'm always thinking of the videos, but kind of putting my mind to it and just putting some words to paper, that takes a little bit longer. But shooting the videos, it takes about an hour to shoot 15, maybe an hour and 20 minutes. So it doesn't take long. I just do them right one after the other.

Grant Warrington: The hard work's been done at that point.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah. And you know, like I'll just, here's another little, the background here, you can see I can change my colors, right? So it just looks a little different. Maybe change my shirt if you're shooting all those videos in one day. So it doesn't look repetitive when they all hit your, uh, your feed, right? So you just kind of change it up a little bit, but yeah, the hard work's done shooting them. You just shoot them right in a row. Um, so it's, and this is my, my full-time job, right? I mean, it's, um, it's this content creation. And then, uh, you know, I have a course that in coaching, that's my full-time job. So, um, that's a beautiful thing about it, but you can make time for, for really, you can make time for anything that's important. You know, we always do.

Grant Warrington: That's right. Speak to, you know, self-managing and managing, you know, even remotely.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah. So it's something we did in the beginning to save money, you know, and looking back now, I'm like, well, if we got used to giving management, giving that income away, maybe we'd been better off, but, but it's, it's something we're really good at. And the beautiful thing is my wife now manages all of our properties. We're a team. And that gives me time to work on the social media and my course, the apartment buying blueprint. So luckily we have that. And my wife hired a boots on the ground person, went on Indeed and put a application out, hired somebody locally to us in Michigan where our properties are. And that's worked fantastic. And I always tell people, invest where you know. So if you invest where you live or invest where your parents live, invest where you went to college, invest where your friends live, you vacation a lot, just invest where you have people. Because if you're gonna invest out of state, like I can call my dad and be like, hey man, run over there and check this out. We had a pipe burst and my dad was there in a minute, as the plumber was still getting on his way there. So invest where you have people is always the best advice that I give people.

Grant Warrington: Do you plan to continue buying more local to where you live now or still up there? What's your plan going forward as far as acquisitions?

Whitney Sewell: I guess we're trying to get away from Michigan because we don't live there anymore. And we want to get into a warmer climate. The other thing is, when you start off, I'm sure you know this, you start with lower class buildings, older buildings, right? It's just what you can get in. Not awesome neighborhoods, maybe, and you just kind of level yourself up. So we're looking to level up into B, B-plus properties. We probably have B-minus properties in B-plus neighborhoods, but they were Cs when we bought them. But they're 1960s Um, so they're older buildings and we kind of want to get out of that. We kind of want to get out of the snow, um, and get in better areas. Now, again, we're in Florida now. So now that comes with, uh, you know, hurricanes and all kinds of other different things. So, so we're not, we're not positive yet. It's Florida, but we know it's going to be in a Southern area. That's a very landlord friendly.

Grant Warrington: Okay, so you've found the building, you've located it. I love all your tactics around calling the owner as well. Even, hey, just walk down the street and maybe you see a tenant and ask them, right? Yeah. You know, that could be so simple, but man, something that you don't think of or just go do, right? So call them, get them on the phone, make an appointment and potentially see if they want to sell. Actually, I want to back up even a little bit more. You mentioned you seller financed one of them. Talk about approaching that conversation a little bit. Obviously, that could be a great avenue for the seller and for buyer potentially. How did you know that was a good avenue for you? And if you can elaborate on any of the terms or some things that made it work for you, that'd be great. Great.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, first I'll tell you how we found it. We owned a single family rental. I was with the inspector in the basement. He was doing the rental inspection to get our certificate of occupancy. And I mentioned to him, hey, because I started telling everybody we're looking to buy apartments. Everybody I met, so I'm like, well, I gotta tell him. And I was embarrassed because we only owned a few rentals. And I'm gonna tell this inspector who to me was like God back then, right? I was like, oh my gosh, this guy can ruin my life. It doesn't have to be that way. But I said, hey, we're looking to buy rentals. You know, my voice cracking and everything because I was so nervous. We're looking to buy apartment buildings. You know anybody that owns one? And he said, yeah, I do. There's this woman named Blanche. She owns like 60 some rentals in the town I lived in. And he's like, you should give her a call. And I'm like, all right. So I Googled her number and found her. And I called her and she's like, who is this again? And I told her, looking at my apartment building, she sat there for a minute and didn't say anything. And then she goes, she's like 80. And she said, I'm not looking to sell anything, but here's four properties that they do a very bad job running. You should reach out to all four of those. The fourth property was that 20 unit building. And we ended up buying it. So if I hadn't told that inspector I, we never would have got that building. So, I mean, just the power of telling everyone's huge. So in that, that guy owned a liquor store right next to the 20 unit building. So I went into the liquor store and I said, Hey, I hear you on the building next door. Are you looking to sell? And he goes, Yeah, I'd be interested in selling. And I was like, Oh, now what? Okay. Um, how much, you know, and then we started, we just negotiated right there in the liquor store. Not, you know, I'm not a shrewd negotiator. He's just like, well, I'd have to get, uh, uh, I think we decided on 625,000 for the 20 unit. And I said, great, we'd like to give you like 5% down or something. He's like, absolutely not. I need 20%. I have to pay off. He had to pay off the water bill. He had, he was way behind on taxes, all these things. He's like, I just, I cannot, I need 120,000. And I said, well, would you be willing to do seller financing? And he's like, yeah, Yeah, we'd be willing to do that. And again, I was like, oh wow, now what? And I said, well, I'll tell you what, let me go home, let me run some numbers and let me get back to you. And then we just, the beautiful thing people, a lot of people don't realize is it's just you and the seller coming up with these terms. There's no seller financing God that decides you can't do this and you can't do that. It's just you two agreeing to it and putting it in writing. Um, and that's what we did. And I said, how about, um, I need a 30 year amortization because I need to keep the payment low. And he said, yeah, I don't care. I said, I need a five-year balloon payment. And he said, no, my dad's older. We don't want to wait that long. So I said, well, give me 28 months. I'll refinance in two years, but give me a few extra months just in case. He said, that's fine. Um, and I asked for a 5% interest rate, which was higher than, um, normal back then. Now it looks great. And he said, yeah, so that's what we did. We put 20% down and 16 months later, we refinanced that property. We bought it for $625,000. It appraised for $1,030,000. And we got a check back for $300,000 tax-free. And that was amazing. All our money was out of the deal and we were able to go buy our next 11-unit property. We found that one off-market too.

Grant Warrington: Congratulations. Uh, appreciate just the, just the simplicity, right. Uh, Hey, just going in and talking to the guy and figuring it, you ultimately figured out what he needed. Right. And made that happen. Made it work for him.

Whitney Sewell: A hundred percent. And I, I tell people like, man, if I can do this stuff, you know, you guys can too. It's just, I'm just open and honest. Like, yeah, what do you need? Let's. And if I can make it work, I'll do it. Um, you know, I, I, I'm not, uh, I'm not a master negotiator. I'm not all these things, man. I'm just a guy that's like, hey man, I just got a dream. I didn't want to work for anybody else. And that dream burned hard enough that I'm like, I'll figure this out, dude.

Grant Warrington: Love that. OK, so now you own the building. What's some big surprises or things that come up that you wish you'd known then that you know now?

Whitney Sewell: People aren't easy to deal with. That was the big surprise. When you buy a building, the average rents were 480. Now, I think they're 900. But when you buy a building and the average rents are 480, we were thinking they should have been like 650 or 700. The people that are paying 480 shouldn't be living there, right? Because the rent should be higher. They shouldn't be living in that city. more than likely, right? Because they can only afford to live there because it's 480. Let's put it that way. They can't afford to live there when it's 700. So the problem is, when everyone looks at a property, they always say, I'm going to increase rents. And they never take into account, how are you going to do that? And it's going to take you time to do it, right? These people need to be on 30-day or I'm sorry, month-to-month leases. You can't just go in and increase people's rent when they're on a year lease. So you have to take that into account. And the people are gonna be unhappy about it. So we couldn't afford everyone to move out. And so what we did was we just bumped people gradually over time because we did not want them to move out. We had five vacancies. He told us there was three, I believe, and it ended up being five. So we rehab those, we bump those up to market. And now here's the problem, excuse me. We're bringing in a better tenant base, right? They're qualified, we're screening them. They're nurses, there's these people that go to work. The other people in the building didn't do that as much. And so now you have your good tenant base with your other tenant base and we made the building no smoking. So we have five people now in there that aren't allowed to smoke. And the 15 others are smoking weed, smoking cigarettes. And it's hard to turn a building like that. It takes time. But that's the one thing that I wish we really would have known. We had to have some real tough conversations with some tenants. You know what I mean? Giving pushback. Because here we're just trying to make this building better, but in turn, all they see is my rent's going up.

Grant Warrington: So that can be a problem. No doubt people can be quite difficult to deal with at times, especially in this business. But oftentimes, I mean, that's why you found so much value in that building too, right? Because people weren't willing, you know, somebody else was not willing to have those hard conversations, right? And to do the hard things, right? To improve that building and that property at which, you know, that's like I said, that's how you found the value. Uh, you know, what about, uh, you know, and oftentimes, you know, so you're going into this property, you already know there's going to be a lot of repairs to be had there, right. You know, you're going to improve this property in a big way. Uh, you know, speak to how you found the team or the contractors to be able to, to make that happen as well.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah. So finding contractors, that's been something I've been really good at, um, just because of necessity. So what I do is one thing is I, I create an album in my phone, right. And I'll name it contractors and anytime I'm driving. I'll take a picture of a truck or like a painting truck or a, uh, a roofing company. And I'll just take a picture of it. And I'll throw those, uh, people in that album, whether I, most of the time I don't need them, but anytime you're driving around, you'll see a plumber's truck. You'll see all these different things. They all go in that album. One day I might need those contractors and I might have to go through there and start calling. The other thing I do is I go to the Lowe's pro desk and I ask them, Hey, uh, do you know an electrician? Do you know a plumber? Um, Like that, right? And that's how I found one of my electricians is I asked the person at the protest, excuse me, do you know an electrician? And she said, no, I don't. And I said, okay, I walked outside and a guy came running out after me and he goes, hey man, I heard you asking in there. I'm an electrician, I'm a licensed electrician. I go, great, you do work on the side? He goes, yeah, I do. I said, fantastic. And that's how we found our first electrician. Another great thing is you go to Sherwin-Williams And I asked the manager there, hey, who do you know that's doing rehabs on properties or apartments or works for property management companies? And they'll tell you because they see them in there all the time. And that's where we've gotten a lot of referrals. I've gotten a lot of rehab crews that way. And painters as well. Obviously, painters is the easy one. But that's something I'll do. They're a great resource. And driving around the neighborhood, if you see somebody working on your neighbor's houses, stop and talk to that person. And I ask them, hey, do you work with property management companies? Uh, because if they don't, you know, I'm not looking for somebody that's going to rehab a kitchen for $50,000, right. That's just not going to work in my price point. So I will, um, I'll do that. Stop and talk to those people. And also if you're driving through an apartment complex or driving and you see, um, a painting company in there or something like that, those are apartment painters. And apartment painters are much different than residential home painters because we can get a unit painted for, don't quote me on it, but for let's say $400 and for like 600 square foot, one bedroom apartment. And a residential painter is going to want to charge 1500. So you just have to get those prices. Those apartment painters are just huge. They're invaluable. And you have to find them and ask at Sherwin-Williams, do you know any apartment painters? And that's another great way. Another great way is nextdoor.com. It's an app. And the cool thing with Nextdoor, it's only the people in your local area So you can ask your neighbors, hey, who do you guys use for plumbing? Does anybody have a painting recommendation? And that's how we found a ton of our contractors. You just, you got to put them to work and you got to watch them. And we don't pay people for labor in advance. Especially if somebody wants to show up on day one and wants some money, that's fine. When you show up, we'll give you some money, but we don't extend money out to people. We buy our own materials from Lowe's. We have those delivered in the unit, in the apartment unit. So the guys can just show up and go to work. And usually we'll pay him in draws. That way, you know, you're going to give somebody if somebody says, I need five grand before I go to work, right? Like for my labor, it's like, no way I'm not paying you that you'll never show up. So you just got to learn to protect yourself, too.

Grant Warrington: Uh, ask me how I know, right?

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Grant Warrington: Uh, Grant, I'm, I'm grateful, uh, to have connected with you again, had you on the show. So grateful for your time and how you've given back to us over two segments here. Uh, and even just diving into this, this deal that you did and the seller financing or ultimately how you found it as well, all the details there to how you found it. financed it, even some things around finding contractors. That's so important in building that team. And so thank you so much. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. That's the best way at Grant Warrington. I'm all over social media, YouTube everywhere, but Instagram at Grant Warrington, you can send me a DM there and the apartment buying blueprint. That's my course. You can click the link in my bio on Instagram and you can find it there or apartmentbuyingblueprint.com.

Grant Warrington: Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you're telling your friends about the Real Estate Syndication Show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to lifebridgecapital.com and start investing today.