5 Tips to Dominate Real Estate in 2025

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What's going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the collecting keys podcast. So this Friday focus today is brought to you by a kinda similar episode that Alex Tremozi did last week that I thought was pretty relevant kind of to the time of year being the New Year. And he did a whole episode around, like, secret hacks to really grow your business and yourself in 2025. And so I thought that I would do a little episode on five tips to help you crush your real estate goals in 2025. And I always find that these kind of episodes are helpful both as a consumer and as a creator standpoint going into the new year because it kinda makes you reframe what is actually important for growing in your business. Kinda going into a weird year, it's been a, you know, up and down couple of years in real estate in general and going in with a new administration and everything in 2025. So a lot of kind of uncertainty in the market. And so going through this, putting this episode together, honestly, was a good exercise for myself, kinda just analyzing what I think is important going into next year, and hopefully, you guys get some value to it as well. So if this is your first time to this show with collecting keys, we are a real estate investor show for real estate investors, and our goal is to help anyone that is a growing or aspiring real estate entrepreneur to learn from other investors that are in their business full time so you can do more deals, make more money, and have a better future for yourself and your family.

Mike DeHaan: [1:28] And so if you don't know me, my name is Mike DeHaan, and I have been a full time investor since 2018. I have done over 500 transactions, a lot of wholesales, a lot of flips. I built a nice little $15,000,000 rental portfolio for myself, and I am a full time entrepreneur that buys and sells real estate across The United States. Alright. So going into our five steps I guess our our five our five, let's say, tips to crushing your real estate in 2025, because they're not necessarily steps you're doing in order. These are five things that you should definitely focus on, and we'll dive into these here. So first one is going to be to focus on your income. And when it comes to real estate, right, it is much easier when you have money. And one of the most common things that I see people tend to get caught up on is they are too focused on kinda long term investing, and they let the income piece kinda go by the wayside. That's why a big sort of tagline for this show has always been to focus on massive income before passive income with your real estate business, because, honestly, it is a lot easier to be a successful real estate entrepreneur if you have a high income and or a lot of money. And so going into next year, if you wanna take things seriously, this really should be your focus, whether it is in your business or in your w two or whatever it is you're doing. You should be trying to maximize your income before you're focusing too much on just this long term investing. And what that looks like is obviously a little bit different for everyone. Ideally, I think in most markets and most situations, you should be shooting for about $250,000 a year in income at the low end, and you ideally should be able to be able like, live comfortably on less than half of that so that you have well over a $100,000 to be able to invest in in both in your business and into properties full time. Because if you're making, like, $500 a year and you're spending $450,000 a year, I don't know.

Mike DeHaan: [3:18] You might as well be making 50,000 and spending 40,000. Right? You're just as broke as that person if you don't have the ability to invest in yourself and your business systems. And so focus on that income, keep your spending nice and low. And if you can get that income higher than you need to live, you can invest the majority of the extra, then you're going to be in a much better place going into next year. Alright. Second thing is to focus on building a better network. So real estate isn't sexy right now. It's, like, not really a asset class that is getting quite as much interest as it has in past years. A lot of people are shifting to different things, be that crypto, be that, you know, small businesses, even stocks right now. I've seen, like, day trading starting to get really popular, you know, doing different kinds of cash flow education consulting kind of businesses have really started to take off too. I'm starting to see so many people that are, like, trying to be a VA consultant, a virtual assistant consultant, right, or like a life coach, things like that, even though they have limited experience themselves. And as a result, like, you just see less people of quality that are sticking around with real estate. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that you should necessarily follow suit, but it does mean that you are going to have to work harder to identify and maintain relationships with the best people in the space.

Mike DeHaan: [4:38] Honestly, this whole situation is a big reason that we started the scale community. It's because it gives us a verifiable way to know who is good operators because we kinda coach those people up, and we help them get established. There are so many different communities out there that just kind of don't have that. Right? Like, I even the other groups that I'm in, there's a lot of people that like to talk a big game, or they like to, you know, kind of show up to everything, but are nonstarters. And that isn't what you want in your network, especially going to 2025, which I think is going to be a pretty hot year. And so spend your time, like, learning to identify who the nobodies are and get away from them and nurture those relationships that you find with the a players in your market. And ideally, become one of those a players too, because then you will be able to make more money with the top people, because it is a small community in real estate in general. And if you are one of the top providers out there, people are naturally gonna wanna work with you and bring you more opportunity. So focus on having higher quality conversations, higher quality relationships, and find the best people in your market, and then a ton more opportunities will come to you next year.

Mike DeHaan: [5:44] Alright. Number three, expand your lead generation. And this is one that I would say my opinion has changed on over the past couple of years, mostly because what I'm emphasizing with this is that you should be focusing on getting as many different kinds of lead generation as possible coming into your business. So in the past, I've always been a huge proponent of, like, find one source of lead generation that kinda works, be that calling, mail, networking, you know, online marketing, whatever it is, and just lean heavily heavily into that as much as you can until you literally can't do it anymore. Right? And then start to, you know, add in other pieces from there. The problem is now there's so much new legislation coming in around, like, everything. I mean, SMS and cold calling has been on the chopping block for a couple of years. That's going to continue to happen in next year. Even direct mail, which has been my tried and true, is kinda looking a little bit interesting going into next year as they're talking about privatizing the postal service, trying to get rid of some of the government efficiency with whatever Elon Musk and they're working with over in, the Doge Group. There's basically no guarantee that any form of marketing is going to last the test of time now. Even like the pay per lead stuff, which we've been playing with quite a bit where, you know, these different pay per lead companies, they're having require having these new requirements with in order to even receive leads with how they're having to register and everything else. And so, like, who even knows if that if, like, online marketing is gonna be able to stick around like it has traditionally. You know? And at those, not only you're gonna suddenly be at the mercy of the algorithm, which I sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [7:19] You've always been at mercy the algorithm. Now is that gonna continue? But you could suddenly be facing new federal legislation that restricts how it even works or who you're allowed to market to. And so as a result, I think what you need to do is learn to establish as many different marketing channels as you can and focus on the things that people can't take away from you, which is going to be brand, which is going to be reputation, which is going to get customer reviews, right, which is going to be doing good business where you actually leave people in a better position, which I mean that gets caught gets lost in real estate somewhat regularly because everyone sort of looks at good business as how many zeros am I making every year? How many figures am I putting into my bank account? Those are the first people that are going to get wrecked if the marketing systems kinda get funny. Right? Because when it gets harder to find people, when it gets harder to market, customers will suddenly have more and more choices than they've had before. They will have to do more due diligence on you. And when they do that, if you don't have a good reputation, you don't have reviews, you don't have a strong brand, people are not going to work with you.

Mike DeHaan: [8:18] Right? And so if you're small, like you're doing less than $10,000 a month in marketing, you should still be focusing just on a singular form of marketing. But as you're growing, look to do more things. Right? Like, don't just continue to grow your direct mail, but grow your brand, you know, get the online marketing stood up, do some media marketing, go go on TV, go on the radio, put up some billboards, expand your network, host a meetup. Right? Do things that are going to get you in front of as many people as possible. And that way, if any of them do go away, you at least have something else that you can lean on so your business doesn't suddenly go to zero overnight. Alright. Item number four is going to be to resist shiny object syndrome. And this kind of goes a little bit off of the the networking one that I mentioned in number two. But, you know, there's so many different things people are getting fixated on, whether that's, you know, crypto, talking about the multifamily crash. People are talking about, you know, starting up or acquiring trade businesses because blue collar is where all the money's at now. We're starting coaching businesses. People are getting into AI. All sorts of different things. And the problem is is every one of those that kind of draws your attention is taking you away from the thing that you already know works for you, which is your real estate business. And so you need to do everything you can to resist these temptations. Right? You will have friends, competitors, you know, partners, coworkers who all start to go into different things.

Mike DeHaan: [9:43] You need to do your best to resist that temptation and focus on real estate if that is what you wanna do. Right? If you are somebody that is worth tens of millions of dollars, right, you can have a lot more capacity to explore these different avenues because you can hire staff, you can hire experts, you can delegate a lot of the different day to days of these different endeavors. But if you are like most people, you know, you're worth less than a million bucks, maybe a couple million bucks, you make a few $100,000 a year if you're lucky, you do not have the capacity to be spreading out into all of these different endeavors. Right? All that's gonna happen is you're gonna take a little nibble of a bunch of stuff, and you're gonna end up with nothing. Whereas if you just focus in on what you already know works for you, which is your real estate and your real estate business, I'm assuming if you're listening to this, you are at least somewhat knowledgeable about real estate. You're probably a little bit more of an expert since we don't really do a ton of stuff strictly for newbies. But focus on that, and do not let any of these shiny objects pull you away. And I guarantee you that as the larger real estate population moves away and all of their opportunities they would have had start coming into your lap because you're one of the few players left in the game, you will make a lot more money and have a lot more opportunity than if you had gone out and tried to do all these different get rich quick things that are all over the bush right now.

Mike DeHaan: [11:01] K? Alright. And then number five, just the last one, is to cash in your profits on your winners and drop your losers. Right? And this is specifically talking about assets that you hold. So most people get into real estate because they want to buy and hold assets for long term. If you're listening to this, you probably own at least one property. I know most of our listeners usually own a decent little portfolio, whether it's like three, four, five, ten, 30 units, whatever it is. But if you've been buying properties over the last five years, I guarantee you that there are some that have appreciated a ton that you now get a very low return on equity on, and there are also probably some that are kinda losers compared to what you expected. And it is the perfect time to reposition the equity that you have in those properties. Right? So if you have ones that have appreciated a lot, and you're now getting, like, one to 3% return on equity, let's move on from that and free up that capital to be able to focus on the bigger and better opportunities that will be coming down the pipeline. Yes. That might mean that you will be paying taxes. That is okay. Paying taxes is kind of part of realizing gains. You know, the old saying that the only things that are inevitable are death and taxes. You're gonna pay them anyway. And so now if you're in a position where you have the ability to reinvest that money and focus on your business, right, and get, like, a return on ad spend or buy larger distressed assets, you should absolutely do that rather than just, like, holding on to these properties that you've owned for a while just because you have this identity of being a real estate investor. The best investors I know, they typically only hold properties for, like, three to seven years.

Mike DeHaan: [12:40] And so it's probable that you have properties you've owned that length of time and are reaching, like, kinda their peak of what you're gonna really get out of them before you start to have more CapEx items, start to have more issues that come up, you start to have a vacancy that you weren't expecting when you had that tenant that said they were never going to move when you bought it three years ago and have to turn the whole unit. It's time to start offloading those. Right? This is especially true if you have losers. Everyone that has a decent portfolio has some properties that are losers. Right? They are either not performing at all. They are good underperforming of what you were expecting when you bought them. You don't need to hold on to those just because you have a stunk cost bias. K? It's okay to offload those and to move that money onto things that are probably gonna do better for you. Right? And if you are someone that is serious about growing wealth and growing your business, you probably should do that. And so just it's important to go through all your properties, look at your equity positions, do your bookkeeping, see what your actual return on equity, and not cash on cash return, but return on the equity that you have in these properties is, and make a decision on if you really should be holding those for much longer or you should be exiting and moving it to somewhere else. And like I said, most people, if you've buying profits for the last five years, you probably have a handful of properties that you could make a lot more money if you reposition that equity somewhere else.

Mike DeHaan: [13:57] Cool. So those are my five items. But all in all, I do think that 2025 is going to be a pretty strong year for real estate. I think with the current legislation that is coming in, a lot of stuff that they are going to do is going to push people to make moves in the economy. Kind of like macroeconomics aside, I think the big opportunity that's gonna exist in real estate is that the investor population is getting smaller as people go and sort of taste other things, and we're also seeing a lot of lead indicators leading to seller distress. So we have balloon payments coming due. We have consumer debt at an all time high. We have foreclosures starting to reach a peak that we haven't seen for, like, fifteen years. All those things, even though they aren't necessarily the best for a macroeconomic view, they are honestly, if you are a real estate investor that is doing direct seller work, they are opportunities for us. K? And so I think that a lot of those things are going to continue to come together. And if you're in the real estate space, there's a ton of opportunities gonna be coming through next year. So if you want to make sure that everything's optimized for your business, just check out our scale community. Go to collectingkeys.com/scale, and we will make sure that all of your marketing, sales, your pipeline, you know, all of your funding that you need to take these deals down, everything is lined up, and so you're really able to make as much money as you can this next year. So collectingkeys.com/scale.

Mike DeHaan: [15:16] Check that out. We'll see if you're a good fit. We would love to bring you in and, you know, make sure that you really maximize your 2025. So thanks for listening, everybody. If wanna hit me up on Instagram, you can at Mike underscore Invest. Otherwise, I'll see you guys next time.