BRRRR-ing to 16 Rental Units (WITHOUT a Ton of Money)
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One way to get started on your investment journey is working with partners who combine resources and money, and then use the BRRRR method to accelerate all that hard work. And our guest today pooled money with his family to buy their first property, used sweat equity to get it to market, and has since built a small BRRRR empire.

This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, and I'm Ashley Kerr. And I'm Tony J. Robinson, and welcome to the show, Seamus. What's up, brother? How are you doing, man? Doing great. Thanks, Ashley and Tony. Excited to chat today. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Can you give us a little story behind your first real estate deal? Yeah, absolutely. I know everyone's first deal is unique, and they come to it from different places. What was really interesting for my first real estate deal, my brother actually brought it to myself.

one of our other brothers, and my father. I'm the oldest of five kids. And he was doing a project in college where he had to create a business plan.

And so at that time he was living off campus and he looked around and was seeing the need for just good quality housing for college students and thought back to Schenectady, New York, which is right near where we grew up. And the opportunity there for off-campus housing was super, super sparse around Union College. And so he did a little bit of investigation, created this whole business plan, and

submitted it into school for a grade and then turned around on break and pitched it to myself, one of my younger brothers, and my father saying, "I think this would actually work in the real world. "We can take this outside of just school. "I think we could invest

invest in Schenectady Rentier Union College and make a really big impact. And so that's really what kicked things off. And this was back in 2014. So what grade did he get on his project? So knowing my brother, my guess is not a great one, but he probably talked the professor into a better one afterwards. I'm sure he'll roll his eyes when he hears that. But that's a great life skill to have.

Yeah, he's fantastic from a sales perspective, from a conviction standpoint. And I wish I was half as likable as he is. So when you guys decide to actually go in on this first deal, what does the structure look like? Do you guys do actually put together an operating agreement? Is it a handshake deal? Kind of walk us through that process.

Yeah. So it started with, uh, his paper was around college housing, right? And so we looked at, uh, the area of Schenectady, New York and, um, GE was headquartered there that one time. So went through a huge boom, Erie canals there, but then it really came down, uh,

And a lot of the areas went from these beautiful old structures to a lot of dilapidated and so he first kind of pinpointed like let's look at these neighborhoods right outside this campus as As the target and we had two things going for us one. We really understood the space - because of my father's background in residential construction we had a lot of confidence that if we bought a place we could actually fix it up and get sweat sweat equity out of it and

And so with that, we went in just 25% each of us. There's the four of us. LLC created a structure where we knew for the purpose of managing it in construction, we'd be able to pay individuals so that while we're all equal owners, the actual cash flow would flow according to the energy people were putting into it.

And then we started prospecting and we got really fortunate in that one of my father's customers, 'cause he did a lot of work in the city that we were purchasing in, had a rental property, a multifamily available, a duplex.

And so we said, perfect, we'll take this duplex, we'll do room rentals on it, we'll get six rooms out of this, and it will be the ideal place to start. And so we had a company formed, we had the target, we pooled together funds so that we could make the purchase happen. And then right around the time we were closing,

Union College saw the same thing we did and they actually went on the other side of campus and bought a whole row, basically a couple streets worth of properties and started fixing them up for the purpose of offering off-campus housing. And so immediately what we thought was completely underserved environment changed dramatically.

drastically. We had to pivot pretty quickly. We still decided, hey, let's go forward, let's close. A lot of people need housing. It's not just the students on campus, but we had to pivot to using our personal network of people that needed places to live and then actually advertising at the local community college. But it turns out a lot of people still don't want to live with mom and dad while commuting to college.

And so we were still managed to fill the rooms, but immediately, like I said, it was right about the time of closing. It was like, there goes that plan, right? And we had to pivot. So Seamus, I mean, dude, like what a, first of all, you guys had the right idea, right? Because clearly the college implemented your idea. It's maybe just the timing of it that was a little off, but good that you still had the, I guess like the backup plan of being able to pivot to the community college.

Now, I guess a couple of questions come to mind for me, right? So your younger brother comes to you with this idea. Do you do any kind of vetting yourself or is it just your knowledge of that area and kind of the skill set that came with your dad that made you confident and comfortable in this business idea? Or did you like was there any, I guess, like a deep analysis that you did on your own or was it kind of like a gut feel?

Did kind of the typical of like, let's look at Zillow and what rental prices are, right? Let's back these numbers out. I wasn't really familiar with real estate at that time. My life's completely changed since then, right, in terms of familiarity from that perspective. But I wasn't aware of a lot of the tools that exist today to actually do some of that research, right? And so, yeah, we looked at Zillow, right?

Really what it was though is the conviction from my walking through the properties with my brother and with my father and him saying like, no, we can fix this up. The bones are good. That's been the reoccurring theme as we've purchased and kind of done the Burr Method is like the bones of these properties are good. And when I've heard that, it's like, okay, that makes sense. We're going to be left with a property that not only can be rent out, but is going to appreciate in value.

throughout that period of time. But no, I would say embarrassingly, it was that those first deals were a very small amount of research that actually went into it. With having not a ton of construction knowledge and you partnered with your dad who has that type of knowledge, what would be your recommendation to rookies as far as

you know, having four partners is a lot of partners or three partners, I guess, but four of you, what's your recommendation for giving up more of the pie, giving up more pieces of the pie, taking a smaller like sliver of it to actually make the deal happen?

Was this something you are glad that you did? Or going back, would you have said, no, I could have done this on my own? I'm very glad that I did. I think it's unique when you're talking about family. Because I, since, have branched out and I have some properties that... Or a property that I...

own just myself. But having the expertise and help on the conviction is just wonderful from partners. And that's really expertise from a construction standpoint, the conviction of my brother. So another thing that happened as part of all this, as we started investing, my brother moved right into that neighborhood in Schenectady.

And so he was living in the community that we were renting in. And so that was incredible. And so his continued conviction of like things are on the up and up. We're making a difference here, right? People are not just treating their property correctly, but we're serving them in a way that they're grateful for the housing, right? Which was such a different thing.

feeling than most of the rentals in that area where tenants felt neglected, right? They felt like the properties were run down. They felt like there was no reason for them to bother respecting the property because they weren't viewing themselves as being respected from the property managers or the landlords. And so,

That conviction of having other partners with different perspectives was so helpful. So I'm so glad that we all went into it together. Four people is tough. You have no tiebreaker, right? Working with family is tough because you have to define, hey, are we talking to speaking as brothers right now? Are we speaking as business partners, right? And those things crash together because you'll say things to siblings who never say to a business partner, right?

And when you're questioning decisions as a business partner, that's a normal practice. When you're questioning decisions with a sibling, it can be taken a lot differently. So there's definitely challenges, but we're much better for it from that perspective. I think that's the hidden power of partnerships in real estate investing is that communal confidence as you guys start to make decisions.

No one ever retired off of their first real estate deal. Like it hasn't happened. I've never met anyone who their first deal was like the best deal that never has to another one. The purpose of that first deal is to educate yourself is to lay the foundation so you can do your second deal and your third deal and your fifth deal and your 10th deal together.

So for you, Seamus, the way that you built that confidence was like, hey, I'm going to do this with these three other partners. Then that's what you need to do to get the first deal done. And I think sometimes we can maybe be short-sighted where we're only focusing on what we're losing by getting into a partnership and giving up X percentage of a deal and not always focusing on what we're gaining. So I just love that perspective that you took into that first deal, Seamus. So what

So we're going to keep going here. We've got to take a quick break first. But but Ricky's before we move on, I just don't want anyone to forget the BP con is in Las Vegas this year and early bird tickets are out now. So make sure you grab your tickets. Now, when we come back, we're going to hear more from Seamus about how he started stacking these deals together. We'll be right back after this break.

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All right, let's get back into the show with Seamus. So after this deal, right, it seems like your family kind of got the real estate bug, Seamus. I guess, can you share with us like an overview of your next deals in that neighborhood and how you kind of snowballed into a few more? Yeah, absolutely. So the first property we purchased had some work to do, but largely was relatively cosmetic, did room rentals. So we were able to fill it with six people. And then if you look directly across the street, there was a

uninhabited dilapidated property, just sitting right there. Another one of these old Victorian looking buildings that actually had, it was a duplex and was split level. And so we looked across the street and said, wow, if we could get our hands on that, it would be incredible because it's a huge eyesore in this community. And it's hard to imagine

It's hard to rent these out for the prices we believe that they're worth now that we've done the change with a property like that across the street. It also brought a lot of unwanted attention from people in the community, right? That might want to hang out someplace that's unsupervised. And so...

My brother, because he was living in that community, was talking to all the people that own property in there and really opportunistically would just kind of continue to slip in, hey, we'd be willing to purchase that, right? And so it was a very personal form of canvassing, I would say, is what he was doing in the neighborhood. And so it became available and we purchased it for...

just about $40,000, which is incredible for a duplex, right? And the size of it. Some people in some markets have never even heard of that as a purchase price for a duplex. At this time, I'd moved away from upstate New York and was living where I do now in Colorado. And so I came back to see the property with my siblings. And

$40,000 was a stretch. Once again, I'll come back to that. The bones were good. And I was really leaning on them being right that the bones were good because pigeons had been inhabiting this property. And so no exaggeration, there was places of two, three inches of just pigeon crap.

in this property. And so we had to gut the whole, we had cleaned the whole thing out, gut the entire thing. And it ended up being a longer process because construction always takes a little bit longer, a little longer, a little more expensive than we thought. But we turned it into a phenomenal house. And the huge benefit

of doing that was not only did we improve that, but we also got rid of the largest eyesore in the community. And so once we did those two things, and when you're there, you're doing the construction, you're outside, people take notice, they come by, they chat with you.

My brother can talk to anyone. And so he was having conversations with the neighbors. And so we ended up buying three other properties on the same block. It increased the value of our house. It increased the appreciation the community had for us because no one wants to live next to dilapidated properties. So even people that weren't our tenants

you know, loved the fact they'd stop by. In fact, the mayor even came by the one property with all the pigeons inhabiting it, came by once we got it all fixed up. And it was in the newspaper as an example of like,

really neglected corner that no one cared about having a fresh life. And so that was really successful for us. The deal started kind of finding us and our confidence just grew with every property we bought in that area. And so

We're right now part of 18 doors. Like I said, one of those is here in Colorado. One of those we opportunistically had a single family that was a little north of Schenectady, New York. But then the other 16 are all kind of right in that same exact neighborhood. One aspect of my brother's original business plan that really followed through is our goal was that when we invested in a community, we'd find ways to incentivize. We thought they'd be college students, but incentivize tenants.

to participate in the community. A couple times a year, typically around 4th of July, around Halloween, we do like hot dog cookouts where we'll bring out a grill and since we have four properties right next to each other, we'll open it up and feed anyone in the community that comes through and hangs out. And we ask our tenants to actually come down and participate, right? Hey, do you mind manning the grill for this afternoon? And it's really been incredible the amount of change in the neighborhood. And there's an altruistic part

But from a strictly business standpoint, it pencils out because rent prices are going up. Our home equity goes up. Crime committed around our properties has completely dropped. We've had very few problems with neighbors. And so it's been really cool to see how that sort of effort has just had such a large payoff in the area. That's a really incredible statement.

when I managed a 40-unit apartment complex, there was like a community room. And so every once in a while, we'd do like order from Panera or something like that. And it's so inexpensive to, you know, just get some general catering, put it in there. But you get everybody to come in. They, you know, get to know each other. They become friends. So it really helps you as the property manager to not have to deal with,

less disputes, things like that, because it becomes more of a community. So yeah, that's awesome that you're doing that for the neighborhood there for your block. Really cool. Pay off during like COVID, for example, where the community had about 60% of tenants were paying rent.

New York really had some pretty strict lockdowns, right? Eviction moratorium. A lot of the incentive to continue to pay was kind of going out the door with some of the local legislation. And so, yeah, landlords were under 60% of their tenants were actually paying rent. We actually stayed above 90%.

during that period of time. And when it first started in the lockdown started, the first thing we did was send gift cards for local supermarket and our favorite pizza place in town to our tenants. As soon as they paid that first rent after some of the legislation came out, they basically said there'd be no evictions and there'd be some rent forgiveness programs and stuff. And so we tried to just immediately incentivize them to keep going. And once again, like it's awesome to see the change in the community from a business perspective, we've been paid back

in a huge way. There's such like a fine line as like an investor of like, this is a business, like don't do anything extra. Like this is your business. And then it's like, you know what? But this is actually customer service based also. And I think there's like just two really different people that are, you know, like kind of

either side of that line like you get into the bigger pockets forums and people will debate this forever as to what you should be but it's really working out for you being more of a customer service based landlord and that doesn't mean bending over backwards that's just providing perks for somebody to want to live in your property and to pay their rent it's super easy and that's that is how we look at our tenants and it's been really interesting how that experience has curtailed into my career

building tools for landlords that are self-managing and really helping to bring that level of customer service to more landlords as opposed to just the properties that I own. And Seamus, we actually interviewed Miller McSwain back on episode 486, and he also talked about the power of

co-living. And it just aligns a lot with what you said. Like he would throw pizza parties for his tenants and, you know, like ice cream socials and things like that. And it's just cool to see that there are other investors who are focusing not just on like the tenancy part, but really trying to build a community with the folks who are living at their properties. And I think you exemplified that so well. One thing that I'm really curious about is the funding aspect.

So how is it working that, you know, purchasing the deals and then the rehab? Is it your brother saying, okay, I need X amount of money for repairs. You know, I got to go to Lowe's today. Benmo needs some money. Kind of explain how you guys have been able to structure the finances with the four partners.

Yeah. So from the, from the get go, we didn't want to have to create that kind of situation where it's this constant ask. We wanted to make it feel like a real business. Right. And so to do that, you need a bank account that expenses can, can be paid out of. Right. And so we've,

leveraged personal HELOCs to start. So I have primary residence. And so I was able to do that and use that as a loan to our LLC and then get paid back. That was a lot easier when interest rates were like zero, right? That's a more expensive proposition now, but we were fortunate in

Uh, the time that we did that interest rates were, you know, going back to the late, uh, 20 teens interest rates were actually just dropping. It was getting easier and easier to do that. And so that actually is what helped us get things off the ground with myself. Um,

my father being able to use actually personal lines and then pay them back. Also, another thing I'd only suggest when you have a high degree of certainty and confidence in the remodel process, right? How long it'll take. You feel pretty good about the bids that you've got so that you're not in a situation where you're leveraging yourself and the

you need another 10,000, 20,000, $30,000 at any given time. But that helped us to start. And then we created really good partnership with a local credit union. We went to all the banks in the area and it was a local credit union that had branches right in Schenectady, New York, was excited about the revitalization. And I feel like we were able to pull out their heart strings a little bit as well as show them a competent business plan.

And that has helped us from a finance standpoint going forward, both doing cash out refis for current properties as well as a line of credit. Yeah, Seamus, I just want to drill down on that because Ash and I have both talked about the power of working with the kind of smaller local regional banks and credit unions. And it sounds like you said I presented a business plan.

I don't know if you can like walk into Bank of America and give them like a business plan to say, hey, help me get this debt. Right. So as you were talking to these different lending institutions, who are you going to? How did you actually get to the point where you're presenting a business plan? It's just walk in with it. Like, how did you get this in front of someone to actually give you the light of day? The first one, we didn't bother doing that. I mean, I think we talked to a couple of banks. Right. And then we realized, like, hey, we should we need to do this out of our own our own cash reserves and our own HELOCs.

After that point, yeah, we'd go in, we'd ask to talk to a loan officer, give a little bit of a synopsis as to what we were doing. Sometimes you're literally just doing that up to the teller, right? And then they're pointing you to a couch that you go sit on for who knows how long until someone talks to you. But as those conversations were being had, we just realized that the opportunity to talk to the same person every time, the opportunity for that person to literally be able to drive down the street and pass the projects we're working on,

felt so vital, right? When I see that email come across, I know that exact person who's handling our loans and finances and the ability to interact and then be flexible has just been incredible. And yes, I have not experienced that through national branches or really in any other facet of banking.

the ability to have kind of that personalized touch, um,

from the local credit union. And so, yeah, we've been incredibly loyal because of that. We've shopped around a couple of times just to make sure we're not missing out on an opportunity. But every time we come back to investing further in that existing banking relationship as opposed to strength. It definitely makes it easier too, because they still have a lot of your information. So from starting from scratch, trying to get someone caught up on knowing about you. I've had the similar experience with local banks that

It's so much more personable, especially talking to one person. The first time I ever did a hard money loan, there was literally like 20 different people working on that. And it was the worst experience of my life, like not knowing who to talk to for what question.

But as far as the business plan that you brought to the small local blank, what was in it and how can a rookie kind of replicate the same kind of plan? Yeah. So that we had the advantage because we realized that we were going to do the first ones ourselves without financing. Right. So we brought the rent roll.

and just showed them like, listen, this is what we're doing today with our current property per room. And then showed them the plan for the next property. Now for us, we were actually able, because I mentioned the one across the street is $40,000. So we were able to buy that one with,

And then really we just needed the money for construction to start and then to do the refinance. And so that was another huge benefit because we were able to show like, Hey, we're going to have the property immediately that we can put up for collateral, right. That will be paid free, free and clear from the business.

And so then we just showed them timelines, expenses, and then what we thought we could rent it out for once we got there. This is personally our net worth. This is the equity that we've created in the other property we already own in this LLC. This is the money we've already, as an LLC, personally invested in acquiring this property that we need a construction loan on to start. And then this is our belief in the...

the expenses to rehab and what it'll end up renting for. Seamus, let me ask. When we think about BRRRR, at least for a lot of people, they think that the only way that you can really do a BRRRR is if you get all of your money back out of a deal. Just real quick, how many total properties? You said 16 in that area right now, right? 16 different doors, yeah. 16 different doors, right? So with those 16, do you know how many you're actually able to do like a full BRRRR where you left no money in the deal versus how many you actually had to leave

some sort of capital in those properties? Once we got things rolling, exact point was probably around our fifth one. We got to the point where we weren't investing any of our own capital in. And so our original investment for that original house, that we had all agreed we weren't going to bother taking that out. That's in the company. That's original investment.

And then we had money, personal money tied up in deals for three to four years in there before we acquired enough properties where it kind of supported itself to continue to do cash out refi and rollback.

roll it over into the next one. So, but even then there's been times where we use a cash out refi to pay, you know, for 60% of a purchase price, we then put personal money in and then are able to take that personal money out. But we haven't been in a situation where we're getting a initial, let's say,

loan to value of like 80% and then we're taking all that 80% out. We've been able to leverage the other properties. So the most kind of loan to value we're flirting with is 50 to 40%, which is a lot easier than to get back out. That's great. Like to not over leverage yourself to actually pull out, you know, the majority or all of your money. So like kind of give us a breakdown of what we're kind of looking at for these types

type of deals as to you bought it for 40,000, what's the rehab and then what were you able to pull your money back out? That one specifically coming in at 40, we did about 140 rehab. And then we were able, the first then refinance we did took out that full 140. We left the 40 in there, took out that full 140 and then we paid

paid that back. And then we had the other property as well that we had invested our own money into. And so then we were able to leverage that for the down payment of the next one. And not a process that would work if it wasn't for the significant amount of sweat equity we were able to build in these properties and the low entrance price, right? And that's the other pieces. We've looked to expand outside of that area that we also recognize. Well, I think there's a lot of things that you have mentioned along those that have mitigated your risk too, as far as they're

being the four partners too, where you're each putting in some capital. So it becomes less risky instead of one person, you know, funding $180,000 to do this deal all on their own too is another aspect of it.

Absolutely. We've not been in situations where if somebody needed capital for something like refinancing their own house and they needed to get their portion back, someone else hasn't been able to step in and subsidize. And I think that's the other aspect of that's where the lines probably cross from business partners to family members, a willingness to do

to do that. And it's been just another strength of our, of our company. So we have to take one final ad break, but we'll be right back after this. While we are gone, make sure you are subscribed to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube, and we'll be right back.

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The Tacoma is designed for those who go beyond the trails. Stay ahead of the pack with available off-road features like crawl control or break out your tunes with the available portable JBL speaker. Toyota trucks are built to last year after year, mile after mile. So outlast every adventure and outlive the moment.

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Okay, welcome back from our break. We are here with Seamus, who has been giving us insight into working with his family in real estate. So Seamus, I have one kind of follow-up to the funding structure, and you had just mentioned before break about putting money in if someone else needed to pull their money out. Are you paying interest back to yourself at all, or is it just purely you're investing capital and then you can pull your capital back?

We always pay interest on that capital coming out to ensure that if people take that risk, they're paid for it. Now, the first couple times, that was a delayed payment. But now when we do that, we're always paying off interest. And we'll do some creative things in that we have a line of credit in the business, right? And we're

One thing people don't, I think, take advantage of is a lot of times banks and the credit union we work with will have these introductory rates. And these different specials, they run at different times a year. And so what we'll actually do sometimes is-- and they're only on new draws.

at times we'll pay back things 100% out of our own and then literally the next day pull it back out at a reduced interest rate. That's something we do on personal HELOCs. That's something that we've had the opportunity to do from a business perspective too. And depending on the facility you have, you don't have to pay new closing fees, right? Because it's just a line of credit. So you're just paying the balance down to zero and then you're doing a new draw. And so we've been flexible in doing that, which once again has helped mitigate especially some of the interest rates you'd face today.

We are going to have to have you back on. We always have people coming on and talking about credit card hacks, but not line of credit hacks. Now, Seamus, you mentioned right before we went to break that part of the reason that you're able to be so successful with these BRRRRs is that you're doing a really good job of getting these properties at a discounted price, but then you're also putting a good amount of sweat equity into the properties as well. I guess a couple of questions on the sweat equity side. First,

Would you recommend that for everyone? Do you feel that that's still the best approach for someone who's getting started? We can start there first. Do you feel that's the best approach for rookies who are looking to get started? I think if you have those skills already or skills in your network, I think it's a fantastic way to...

to get started, right? To just lower the barrier really to entry from that perspective. I do think that a lot of people, and I've talked to individuals that have, they don't have experience with that. And there's one of two challenges they face. One is they're like, oh, I'm sure I can learn on the job. Well, it's like, well, you're learning on the job and

And it's kind of double costing you, right? That, that, uh, a, the, if the quality is not there, the, what you end up with is lower quality and, and, um, doesn't appreciate as much and doesn't rent for as high. Um, also it takes longer, right? So you have a vacancy for longer, um, and you're actually doing the work as well. And so I think people do that or they, uh,

they don't have experience and they say, okay, I'll GC it. Right. And that'll be quicker. So I'll sub every portion out myself, but I'll be the general contractor. Um, that in itself is a real skillset that, um, is not worth, I think just winging, especially, uh, if you have a lot of personal finances kind of on the line and maybe you've, uh,

you've financed it with less flexible terms, right? You did hard money lending or something like that. And you have a very tight timeline. I think that's an area where people just get into, get into hot water pretty quickly. So yeah, I don't think it's, I don't think it's for everyone.

Let me ask her, are you guys still performing most of the work yourselves or have you started outsourcing any of that work yet? We're still performing a decent amount ourselves. We're also bringing in subs for a lot of, a lot of different aspects of it, which we weren't in the beginning. The beginning we were basically doing everything ourselves.

Um, we, we've created a really good network of, um, subcontractors that can come in and tackle, uh, specific parts and really speed things up a lot. Last question there. And then on this piece, Shamus, like if I'm a, if I'm a Ricky brand new, never done this before, I know you guys had the connection of your father and him kind of being in this industry, but say I dropped you into, you know, somewhere in Idaho, somewhere you've never been before. And I said, Hey, Shamus, go, go build a team of subcontractors.

Where are you going and how are you really validating whether or not those subs are good subs? I've actually been in that exact circumstance here in Colorado, very far away from family and that expertise. And so for me, we first started just asking individuals around our primary who they use, if they have anyone to suggest.

And then once we found people, so we did that, we've done the Google search and, you know, at times of emergency where you just, you have a water heater goes out, right? And you need something fixed. So we've done some trial and error there. But the one thing that I learned from my, from my father is once you have someone hold onto them,

And so my wife and I do different things, whether it's send Christmas cards or holiday cards to subs that we like, make sure if they're working. So I worked for my father for six summers going through in high school and in college. And you love the people that bring you out, you know, maybe a Gatorade or a Coca-Cola while you're out working in the middle of the summer, right? Just

those little things. And so we've tried to do all of those for individuals that, whether it's working on our property, working on our primary, to make sure that when we text or we call, it's not that headache moment, right? It's the idea of like, oh, this is a good person, right? I don't mind helping this person out, kind of tug at those heartstrings

And so we really try to lean into that tipping really well. Basically anything we can so that we stay top of mind. And I think that's really underutilized in that space where people look at the subcontractors that come and help them out as just,

a rotating set of human beings. And they forget that at the end of the day, someone's got to answer that phone call. And in thriving markets, they have their choice of jobs. They don't have to talk to you. And I think a lot of times, especially the people that are good at what they do, a lot of times that's really missed. Tony's wife does a really good job with that. They have this contractor, Nacho, right? Is his name that they've had forever. And like, she'll bring him a whole birthday cake on his birthday, things like that.

You got to take care of them for sure. I love that. We had one of those individuals who really tried to build up and make sure they answer. If they see Nally on the caller ID, they pick up. We had a water heater in our rental in

Colorado two weeks ago, I got the message, a maintenance request at seven in the morning. And by 930, he was there and replacing the water heater. And what went from what would have been a lousy day for us, even though we had to spend the money, right? By the end of the day, it felt great. It felt like I got this. You know what I mean? We're taken care of. Our tenants are taken care of. And our tenants were more appreciative of the speed we reacted

than had it not broken in the first place, right? They missed out on warm showers before work, but they were so excited to come back from work to the property working, right? That they were more grateful than if it had never happened, which I think is one of the interesting aspects of providing that customer service, Ashley, that you were mentioning earlier.

Now, are you doing the property management for all of your units or is it just that Colorado one? And is it your responsibility to tackle that? Maybe you can talk about the operations and how that works for your business. Yeah. So from a property management standpoint, they're all self-managed.

Um, and so the ones in Schenectady, New York, my brother plays a lot, a larger role. Um, he uses TurboTenant, which is the software that, um, I'm created. And so, uh, I, I'm a customer support rep, uh, for, for the software, uh, to some, to some extent there. Um, but those are all managed through that platform. And then, uh, likewise, our one in Colorado, um,

My wife actually has taken a real hands-on approach to managing that, which is really awesome because I get to look over her shoulder and see how she interacts with the TurboTenant platform and get a lot of really good, candid feedback from her.

as to how the tool set that I spend my day job building is actually working for landlords that want to manage themselves. So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Did you start as an investor and then get into tech for real estate or vice versa?

So I started as an investor. I started that. We had the first property up and running, like a lot of people that just get started. We were using spreadsheets, text messages. And then I met the founder of TurboTenant in a co-working space. I was working for another tech company and we hit it off and it just felt like my

professional, my lives were kind of colliding there. And so I got the opportunity to start working on TurboTenant and have been in some capacity or for the last six, six years. So my life went from real estate on the side to now it's,

It's all real estate. It's all landlord and property management focused. For me, it was the opposite. I started out working in property management, then became an investor. But I think if you can find a job that is in the real estate realm and then you're getting paid to do and also learning so many things real estate, it's a great way for a rookie investor to get started in real estate or even just expand their knowledge if they're already an investor.

So Seamus, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story of how you got started. Maybe one time we'll have to have your brother, your dad on and get their side of the story of how they're active in the investing business. But thank you so much. Can you let everyone know where they can reach out to you and find out more information about you?

Yeah, absolutely. So TurboTenant.com is where I spend all my time during the day. It's a free platform for landlords that are self-managing, the vacancy, fulfilling your property, screening your tenants, rent payments, and throughout. So that's the best place you can reach me on the web. Well, thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Real Estate Rookie. I'm Ashley, he's Tony, and we'll see you guys next time.