A Rental Strategy to Maximize Cash Flow: Lessons from the Flippin' Mayor, Perry Keenan

Perry Keenan: [0:00] My wife and I were kinda considering bankruptcy and we were treading water. And after about six or seven years of of that, I said, we're gonna have to figure something out because at this point, we're we're upside down on mortgages and and that kind of thing every month for five or six years. You know, we'd stuck renters in a couple of them and, man, it was awful. And then I was talking to my my parents who are amazing entrepreneurs. And they said, you know, you need to go and sit down with, our family friend. His name is Johnny Lindahl. He's really like a second dad to me. He said, just be honest, truthful, lay it all out. Johnny was also or is also a real estate investor. And so we had a long three and a half hour lunch and he said, what you need to do is you need to get to 10 doors as quickly as possible because flipping houses, while you've created a flexible income that allowed me to go back and also be mayor at the same time in our hometown. What you haven't done is you haven't created anything stable for the future. And I thought we had those five houses. We sold two of them, and I was stuck with two other mortgages that I couldn't get rid of plus our personal. And I said, man, Johnny, I just don't wanna be a landlord anymore. He said, change your mindset.

Perry Keenan: [1:16] Wrong concept. You need to get to 10 doors as quickly as possible. So I went home after that lunch and, and Mike talked to my wife about it. And she said, you know, he's a lot smarter than we are, and we just need to do what he said. And so as soon as we got to 10 doors, I I call it the power of 10. Literally, as soon as we got to 10 doors, it's like all the pressure was off. Welcome

Speaker 2: [1:41] to the collecting keys podcast. The show where you'll learn how to use real estate to create massive income, not just passive income. Real estate doesn't have to be a get rich slogan. Listen to the country's top real estate operators, and you'll have all the tools you need to replace your w two income and go beyond in under twelve months. Ready to take things to the next level? Let's jump in with our hosts, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin for today's episode of the collecting keys podcast.

Mike DeHaan: [2:17] What is going on, guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Perry Keenan, also known as the flipping mayor from down in Tennessee. He's in a little town outside of Nashville, and this is a really awesome episode to talk about the long game of real estate investing where he goes into how he got started in 2005, kinda lost it all or almost lost it all when during the downturn. And from then, how he has been slowly accumulating assets including, you know, long term rental properties, single family homes, small multi families. He has been doing mobile home parks, all using primarily his own money or establish these different partnerships. But one of the things that he does, is really interesting, and he saved this kind of for the end of the show. I didn't know we're gonna break this But he has this little strategy for how he sets up his rental payments, where he actually makes more annual cash flow than you would from doing rental collection kind of traditionally. It's a really, really interesting tidbit, and he put it right at the end of the show. So make sure that you listen to that because it was one of those things, like, not very often do we hear stuff that I've never really heard before, but really kinda gets my mind turning of going, why don't I do that? Like, that makes a very perfect sense.

Mike DeHaan: [3:27] It seemed like it could be very beneficial for the tenants and also allow me to make more money. So it just seems too obvious. And so let's do that at the end of the show. It's really awesome. And then also, if you are in the Tennessee or the Southeast area, he's very open. He wants to connect with more people down there. So don't be afraid to reach out to him on Instagram at the flipping mare, just on on his Instagram page there. He's very active. He's always looking forward to DMs from people. So remember, people come on these shows to engage with you, so don't be afraid to go on there and reach out. Outside of that, guys, if wanna you check out our scale community, please do that. You can go to collectingkeys.com/scale. It is our group that we are working to take established investors who are doing one to three deals a month and get them to be building a team where they can be doing three, five, six, seven deals a month, taking their business to 7 figures and beyond. We have a bunch of heavy hitters over there right now that we are aggressively growing that group and trying to bring as much value as possible. There's a bunch of awesome things, different perks for joining. So go to collectingkeys.com/scale and see if you're a good fit. Besides that, everybody, we appreciate you all joining us on this episode today, and enjoy this show with Perry Keenan. Alright. Perry Keenan, the flipping mayor, as you've dubbed yourself, out of Pleasant View, Tennessee. Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [4:40] It's funny. I always feel like these southern towns, they always have names like Pleasant View or like Niceville. Oh, yes. You know, or like these other sort of charming names. I feel like it matches the southern hospitality that I've always experienced in the country.

Perry Keenan: [4:53] Yes. Southern hospitality is a real intangible thing.

Mike DeHaan: [4:56] It is. Yeah. That's great. And I've always heard that everyone there is very genuine, but it's when you hear the, you know, oh bless your heart, that's like their way of really sort of like being rude and telling you to f off. Like, always thought people were just being nice when they said that, but I guess it's not actually genuine when they say that to you in the South. But

Perry Keenan: [5:13] The context does come into play. And if somebody does something incredibly stupid, you're like, oh my gosh, bless their heart. Yeah. And then if somebody's got something just incredibly unfortunate, you can say, oh my gosh, bless their heart. And it means

Mike DeHaan: [5:26] Oh, really?

Perry Keenan: [5:26] Two totally different things.

Mike DeHaan: [5:28] That's funny. Yeah. Up here in the Northwest, everyone's just kinda a little bit more direct and to the point, so we don't we don't have those formalities.

Perry Keenan: [5:34] Very much. Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [5:36] Yeah. So well, awesome, man. Well, I'm super excited to have you come on the show today. I got really excited reading your bio before we hopped on because you have your hands in a whole bunch of different things. So I guess first off to start, people that maybe don't know who you are, haven't heard about you, give us kinda like the the cliff notes. Let's start from the beginning for the end first. So what does your current business look like and kind of how did you get into real estate?

Perry Keenan: [6:00] Yeah. So I got started into real estate with a friend of mine. His name is Steve Outlaw. And we went to a seminar back in 2004, 2005 from what I would probably consider the godfather of house flipping, and his name was Ron LeGrand. Ron LeGrand, he's still around. I think he's about 172 years old now and still flips houses and does that kind of thing. He, we went to this two day seminar in Nashville, Tennessee, which really was just a, a feeder for like a $5,000 boot camp that he was really trying to push to get you to buy into. And, I told Steve, I said, man, I'm either dumb enough or arrogant enough to think that I can really figure this out without having to spend $5,000 to go to this boot camp. And so we took some of the strategies that he taught from that. Mike, I'll never forget. And we, one night my phone rang and it was about seven or 07:30. And I looked down and it was a number that I didn't realize this was before people were getting inundated with spam calls every twenty minutes. And so I thought, well, I don't know who this is, but I'm gonna answer it. And this lady, was on the other line. She said, hey, I got your letter in the mail that you might wanna buy my house. It's funny you should send that letter because our house is in foreclosure, which I already knew because we pulled the list of foreclosures as directed by Ron LeGrand. So anyway, she said, yeah, if you wanna buy it, I I'd love to do it. So Steve and I went, we met with the lady and she literally signed over the deed to the house and said, if you just get me out of the foreclosure, you can have the home. Wow. And, I remember thinking, you know, after we did that, I thought, holy crap, I can't believe that worked.

Perry Keenan: [7:41] Like, oh my And so we had our first deal, man, and I was bit by the the real estate investing bug. And and so we did that deal and and we sold that house, and I think we made, oh, about $8,000 total between the two of us and literally didn't have to put any money into it hardly at all. And I thought, holy, like, that's crazy. And then we lost money on the next two deals and I thought, oh, there's the reality of how that works. And so

Mike DeHaan: [8:08] Yeah. Right.

Perry Keenan: [8:10] Yeah. But, you know, Mike, honestly, while we didn't lose a whole lot of money, we lost just enough for it to sting a little bit. Mhmm. But we the most important part about that was, you know, we learned what lessons not to duplicate Mhmm. What mistakes not to duplicate. And then, we just kinda zeroed in from there. So that started the real estate journey.

Mike DeHaan: [8:31] Awesome. That's great. And then so I guess fast forward, what is your business look like now? Because you said that was 2005, so that was about twenty years ago. Yeah. Believe it or not. So you've, I'm assuming you've done a ton since then. Well, I know you have based off of the notes that you sent me, but give us the the fast forward to what it kinda looks like.

Perry Keenan: [8:47] Yes. So we went through the through the entire roller coaster. We were pregnant with our first child in 2007 and our partner, Steve, they wanted to scale into a different direction than I wanted to go, especially having kids. And so I said, you know, hey, let's just split the company and you go that way and I'll go this way. And we're still friends. We go on vacation together. Our families do. And so it was very amicable. And so anyway, we got hit with the seven, eight real estate crash. We were flipping houses left and right, man. You just couldn't hardly go wrong. And, man, when the market crashed, we were stuck holding five mortgages and I couldn't hardly give away the houses. I I literally could not have gotten, you know, Warren Buffett approved to buy a house at that point. It was crazy. And so my wife and I were kinda considering bankruptcy and we were treading water. And after about six or seven years of of that, I said, we're gonna have to figure something out because at this point, we're upside down on mortgages and that kind of thing every month for five or six years. You know, we'd stuck renters in a couple of them and, man, it was awful. And then I was talking to my my parents who are amazing entrepreneurs. And they said, you know, you need to go and sit down with, our family friend. His name is Johnny Windal.

Perry Keenan: [10:07] He's really like a second dad to me. He said, just be honest, truthful, lay it all out. Johnny was also or is also a real estate investor. And so we had a long 3.5 lunch, and he said, what you need to do is you need to get to 10 doors as quickly as possible because flipping houses, while you've created a flexible income that allowed me to go back and also be mayor at the same time in our hometown, what you haven't done is you haven't created anything stable for the future. And I thought we had those five houses. We sold two of them, and I was stuck with two other mortgages that I couldn't get rid of plus our personal. And I said, man, Johnny, I I just don't wanna be a landlord anymore. He said, change your mindset. Wrong concept. You need to get to 10 doors as quickly as possible. So I went home after that lunch and and Mike talked to my wife about it. And she said, you know, he's a lot smarter than we are, and we just need to do what he said. And so as soon as we got to 10 doors, I call it the power of 10. Literally, soon as we got to 10 doors, it's like all the pressure was off. Somebody moved out in the middle of the night, not a big deal. The other nine renters were paying the mortgage for, you know, everything. Water heater went out and we had to replace it. Fine. Maybe we weren't going to Italy this month, but we had the money in CapEx fund to be able to do that. And so then we scaled to, you know, after we got to 10 doors, we scaled to 20 doors and then we scaled to 30 doors and then we bought a mobile home park.

Perry Keenan: [11:39] And so right now my wife and I, we own about 35 doors ourselves personally. And then we have another 10 doors with a partner and I, who is also our our family attorney. And so he and his wife were partnered with 10 doors for them.

Mike DeHaan: [11:54] Nice. That's great. And it it's so interesting, Perry, that I've heard that same story so many times about people that were in real estate at that period of time. And it seems like the reoccurring pattern was everyone was transactional. Like, there weren't, like, people that had that asset accumulation mindset quite like you see now. And, I mean, I was I was pretty young back then in 2000 Yeah. 04/2005. Was only in high school. So I wasn't really, like, a part of that at all or or that wasn't even something that was on my radar. But we've had some major operators that have come through and they always tell that same thing. Mhmm. And it's funny, I guess I'm not entirely sure why because Rich Dad Poor Dad was like a nineties book. Right? Like people sort of had heard that asset sort of mindset before. But I don't know. Maybe just like the income potential was just so good that the rental income situation just didn't seem nearly as appealing. Yeah. So, well, I guess, was that? That that transition, was that hard? Because I know, like, for me, because I have a very transactionally based business, and admittedly, is hard sometimes to have like down payment sitting in a property when I'm like, man, could like do a lot more with that money in my business.

Perry Keenan: [13:01] Yeah. It was excruciating. And kinda going back to what you were talking about, in 2007, 2008, when I, I couldn't give away houses. Johnny was buying properties left and right. Interesting. Yeah. The analogy that I use is, you know, while everybody was trying to to get out of the pool, Johnny was jumping in without a life preserver saying, I'll take everything you got. And so because he was smart enough to do it that way, he ended up with well over a 100 a 100 doors very quickly. And, you know, now that he's held those for fifteen plus years, the majority of those are in a 25% or less debt ratio on those. And so in that scenario, you know, he he is set, but not only is he set, now his family is set for whenever Johnny passes that legacy on to his kids. So now that we've got this opportunity again, and I hate to call it an opportunity because I know there's people that are struggling out there, but you know, Mike, it's all part of collecting keys. You know, it's just like what your podcast says, you know, it it's. I have to learn from the mistakes that I made in the past. And if that's the thing that makes people successful is saying, okay, well, when everybody is getting out, that's the best time to get in with intelligence. Obviously you just don't jump in willy nilly, but you jump in and you just immerse yourself in it.

Perry Keenan: [14:28] Yeah. Yeah. So we we are in full on acquisition mode right now. I see. We've got another mobile home park under contract now. We're hoping to close sometime later this month or next. And I'm constantly putting the word out there that if you've got a problem child, if you've got something that that the income ratio is too high now that the interest rates have adjusted and and what have you, let me know. I'll find a way to be able to take that project down and work through it.

Mike DeHaan: [14:54] Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Let's dive into that because I would love to hear how you kind of balance that because I know you mentioned before the show, so you haven't said this on here yet, but you're not really big into, like, being a syndicator or raising money. Sure. Obviously, you need money to be accumulating assets. You said you are in asset accumulation mode right now, which as of time recording, this is middle of January twenty twenty four. Interest rates are still kinda high. Mhmm. Still a little bit tricky to get long term debt, especially on on certain kinds of assets. So I guess, how do you balance this accumulation with your income coming from your business? Are you you know, you're not raising money that much, you said. Are you, like, looking for direct partnerships? Are you just saving all of your cash flow from your sizable rental portfolio? Are you still flipping houses? If so, like, how are you finding these opportunities? I'd I'd love to dive into what your business operations look like.

Perry Keenan: [15:46] Yeah. So a little of all of it, ironically enough, is of the time stamp on this recording. We're wrapping up a flip on a house. And gosh. I guess it's the first quote unquote house flip Mhmm. Traditional house flip that we've done in probably six or seven years. Oh, wow. So it's been a long time since I've done that. I literally, after I had that lunch with Johnny, I just went into full on, okay, landlord, that's what he said to do, that's what I'm gonna do. And so we'll be using that to just feather the nest egg to be able to work more towards acquisition because right now banks have pulled back some on real estate investors, but you can still find loans that are out there for 7580%

Mike DeHaan: [16:32] Mhmm.

Perry Keenan: [16:32] Loan to value that banks are willing to do. And then obviously, if interest rates right now are are in the eights and you can make the thing cash flow in the eights, then why not? Because even the most conservative, forecasters that I've seen have all said these rates cannot sustain at this level much longer. They are going to have to come back down. Now are they gonna go back down in the fours like they were a couple of years ago? Probably never see that again. But are they gonna be probably in the low to middle sixes, maybe even high sixes, low sevens? Yeah. And so if you're cash flowing at, you know, eight, eight and a quarter, eight and a half percent at, you know, putting down, you know, 20% down on a on a property, it'll really cash flow when it comes time to refinance that thing in a in a couple years when rates are in the, you know, middle to high sixes. And right now there's products out there that if it's the right deal and the things got the right amount of cash flow, there are people out there that are doing loans in the high sixes today, but they're not gonna do that on something that's got $50 a month in cash flow, you know, and that kind of thing. Like, they wanna know that if crap hits the fan and they end up having to take that asset back through a foreclosure or some kind of legal process, they're gonna wanna know that there's enough meat on that bone that they won't have any problem selling it out to another investor. And so right now, we are leveraging cash from from the house flip that we've got going now currently, and we'll probably look at doing a few more this year. We are open to partnerships of working with people because what we're finding is is right now, I've got people that have said, hey, look, I've seen the success that you've had. And I know that you're not overly flamboyant. You're not running around in a Lamborghini and you're super conservative when you're with your spending.

Perry Keenan: [18:29] And so if you've got something that you would like to go in and purchase, I would be interested in just being a cash partner on the deal with you. I don't wanna manage it. I'm too busy. I don't wanna learn real estate investing, but I've seen your track record. And so I'm willing to put some funds in on something that that you would like to go out and take down as an asset. And then we would just, you know, draw up either standard partnership agreement or something to that effect that just kinda spells that all that out legally. You know, that's what our partner and I, who is also our attorney, that's what we did and it works great and knock on wood, it's worth great for years. And then you get sometimes that, you know, people say, hey, look, I just wanna be a full loan partner. I also do real estate investing and I've got this project I wanna take down, but I it's just too big for me to do by myself. And so I would love to have one or two other partners, not syndication, but true partners, to be able to just come together, pool assets and resources and talents, and go in and take those down. And I love those deals.

Mike DeHaan: [19:27] Yeah. That's interesting. Right? And it's so it's such like a underrated tactic, I feel like. And it's something that I think when you're newer, it's a little bit more challenging because you don't quite have a track record yet. Yeah. You know, I'm I'm sure for you, you've obviously been doing it for a long time, but I imagine your position being the mayor of your town gives you some extra credibility to be able to have those relationships. And, you know, I think that a lot of new investors in fact, I don't think I know that a lot of new investors when they start out, there's this challenge of, like, how do you accumulate assets, you know, which requires you to have money? How do you have the money to do that while also being able to pay your bills, while also being able to fund your business and keep hunting for assets and paying your marketing expenses, paying a team if you have anything like that. And one of the easiest ways to get around that is by, you know, instead of bringing your own money to the table to buy deals, you grow your network, you partner, you give away parts of the deal for that.

Perry Keenan: [20:22] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [20:22] So, yeah, just always interesting to see the different ways people break it apart. So, you know, you see you're having these deals at work still. So I just looked up Pleasant View, Tennessee. Average home price there right now is showing 490 k. Yeah. I guess you're you're still finding deals that are panning out there, or are your deals in another part of the state or part of the country?

Perry Keenan: [20:42] So great question. The one that we're flipping, we're actually flipping here locally. Was Nice. A gentleman that, that I'd had a relationship with. Just, you know, we'd known each other in the community. His job relocated him, out of state, And he tried the landlord thing being long distance landlord for a couple of years. Wasn't real happy with that. Casually threw out there that he might be interested in selling the house. And I said, well, I'd be interested in taking it off your hands as is, where is. You won't have to fix it. You won't have to paint it. You don't have to call a real estate agent. Let's just settle on a price and knock it out. So we did, settle on a price that was financially good for him and also financially good for me. And so we then turned around and did just your traditional flip just like people see on TV, you know, new carpet, new paint, new, you know, landscaping and, you know, change out light fixtures and all of that stuff. But it literally didn't even get to put it on the market. The electrician's son was over helping his dad one day and he said, dad, this would be a perfect starter house for my wife and I. Do you think he would just sell it to us? So the electrician called and I said, yeah, absolutely. Would love to, you know, kind of keeps it in the family.

Perry Keenan: [21:51] And obviously, the electrician thought enough of the house to say this would be a good buy for his son. And so we we didn't even get to put that one on the market before it went under contract.

Mike DeHaan: [22:00] So Yeah. So that's where you found your flip that way. That that's like perfect motivated seller. Right? You can Oh, yeah. As an educated person, you can have a good conversation. You can reach a good mutually beneficial out. Absolutely. What about all your holdings? Are all your holdings in that market and you've just were able to buy them kind of before prices and stuff went up exponentially? Are you more dispersed with that?

Perry Keenan: [22:22] No. More dispersed. So having a moral compass, I felt like real estate investing in in my hometown was probably a no no. And so we did not buy any rental properties at all in our hometown Really? While I was an elected official.

Mike DeHaan: [22:37] Yeah. Yeah. So I guess just really quick on that. You say your moral compass, was that because you were in office and you felt like it was a weird precedence, like a conflict of interest, or you just

Perry Keenan: [22:47] Yes and yes. But also, I just didn't want somebody to come back and say, oh, well, he had some insider information on that because of his, you know, position as mayor that, you know, he knew that was gonna be a good property to buy or whatever. I just The haters. Mike, I just never even went there. So we went to the next county over, which is Clarks, Montgomery County where Clarksville, Tennessee is. Fifth fastest growing county, and city in the state of Tennessee. And so we started buying rental property there. It's a great market. Also, it's close to the hundred and first airborne army base, Screaming Eagles. And so it's just a great market for us. We started buying properties there, and it just worked really well for us. But kinda going back to locating deals, you know, the last rental property that we closed on was about, six or seven months ago. We found this house on the MLS. Like, was literally on the MLS.

Mike DeHaan: [23:41] Yep.

Perry Keenan: [23:41] A real estate agent who knew that, you know, that we bought houses in that area of town called my partner and said, hey, I've got a house. It literally, it just looks like one that you and Perry would would want. And so I think the lady was asking a $140,000 for this house. Bless her heart, she had just kinda gotten to the point to where she couldn't take care of it anymore. She had like 10 cats, not exaggerating. The house was a mess on the inside, had some electrical issues, that kind of thing. And so we went in and said, look, I understand that you're trying to to get a 140 for it. For us to do what we need to do, the best we can do is a $100,000. And if you want that, you know, we've got a lot of credit. We'll just stroke a check. We can close it in seven days. And so she came back and tried to renegotiate at a 110 and we we stuck at a $100,100 even. And she said, okay, if y'all can close and pay cash, great. Do it. And so that was that was a house that was on the MLS that we got a $40,000 discount on. So those deals are still out there too. You just gotta be patient.

Mike DeHaan: [24:48] Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you throwing in the bless your heart in there for me so I get the true southern hospitality experience. Yeah. So and you're clear. Right? Especially right now, you know, a lot of people, they kinda wrote off the MLS over the past few years. Because it's like 2021, honestly, it was kind of impossible to find MLS deals. Oh, totally. Because everything was getting bid up. But, I mean, that was several years ago at this point. And you're finding opportunities all the time. Yeah. I mean, people even buying, like, homes for themselves to live in, you can pretty easily get things for $10.15 cents on the dollar. You know, nice neighborhoods like the people across from me. You know, I live in a newer build neighborhood here in in Spokane, Washington. People across from me, they needed to sell their house in like a set time frame. It was like a two month time frame. First offer fell out, k, when they were kind of like pushing to the time crunch a little bit. Second offer came in and was like a $100,000 less, and they took it because they were like, we need to move on from this situation. You know, they had some personal family stuff and things that they That were dealing happens all the time. But like, I think a lot of people on the MLS, because it's kind of a public domain, they get a little bit more embarrassed like making these lowball offers. But it's a great way to find deals right now if you don't wanna be doing the whole direct to seller marketing thing and having like a sales pipeline, which just isn't for everybody. Yep. That makes sense.

Mike DeHaan: [26:07] I wanna dive into this mobile home park that you you acquired because you kinda threw that in there casually, but that's a different asset class. Right? And and one of the most, I guess, reoccurring questions that we have from people in our scale community or from listeners who have hit me up on Instagram is about, you know, learning to get away from residential or, you know, learning to buy like larger stuff. And so you did this mobile home park.

Perry Keenan: [26:33] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [26:34] Can you just like go for it? Or did you have like a mentor? Did you have a partner?

Perry Keenan: [26:38] So true story. I love going to the gym first thing in the mornings. And as much as I love my eighties hair metal, you can see my Yeah. Def Leppard guitar over there on the on the wall and that kind of thing. That's awesome. As much as I love my eighties hair metal, I'd gotten to where I was just constantly listening to podcasts in the mornings when I was at the gym. And, Brandon Turner from Bigger Pockets was on an episode and he was talking about, I wanna buy a mobile home park. And then a couple episodes later, again, I'm at the gym and he mentions it again. He's like, I'm really dialing in on this mobile home park thing. I've never owned one and never really thought that I would ever look at that, but here I go. And so I thought, I've never thought about a mobile home park either. But again, leaning into people that I consider to be much more intelligent than I do. And to me, I don't wanna recreate the wheel. I just want to duplicate systems that are successful. I kinda dove in on a couple other outside podcasts and listening to people about mobile home parks and assets, you know, like that. And man, Mike, I kid you not. Total god thing. I got out of the gym and about an hour later, a lady that, has fed me deals wholesale, she called and she said, I've got a deal that's perfect for you. And I said, okay, what is it? And she said, it's a mobile home park.

Perry Keenan: [27:58] And I thought, there is no way. Like, that is not a coincidence. I said, really? And she said, yep. And so, it's about an hour and thirty minutes outside of Nashville. So still an easy drive. We went down and took a look at it. And I literally tried to find every reason in the world to buy this thing. And so I crunched the numbers 14 different ways. I talked to Johnny about it. I talked to my parents about it. Like I literally, I tried my best and like, there's gotta be something in here and it and it was a mom and pop that owned it. They were retiring, buying their dream home on a lake in Virginia somewhere and just wanted to they own the asset, they just wanted to sell it outright and be able to cash out and go retire into the sunset and have their dream home on the lake. And so we negotiated, to a price on that and ended up buying a mobile home park. And I felt a little bit as the old country saying goes, you know, you always see like, especially out in the suburbs, if somebody lets the dog loose and the dog will like chase the car, you know, down the street, you know, and he's always like chasing the car and chasing the car and chasing the car. And I felt a little bit like the dog that was chasing the car. And then when he finally caught up to the car, he's like, now what do I do? I've caught this car that I've been chasing and chasing and chasing, and now I don't know what to do now that I've caught it. And so it's one of those where honestly, you just, you kind of learn as you go and you can listen to podcasts and you can listen to the experts and they can help steer you in the right direction on certain things. But there's just nothing like jumping in with both feet and just trial by fire, baby.

Mike DeHaan: [29:36] Yeah. I mean, especially to learn anything is by exposure. Yeah. And it's something I I contemplate a lot because I get a lot of newbies that that reach out. They hear my story on on different episodes or different podcasts I've been on. So I guess just a quick background for you, Perry. Sure. I had an engineering career for five years. I quit that in 2018 with like no real plan and just decided I was gonna, like, figure my my life out. So I went from making, you know, 100 plus thousand dollars a year when I was 27 to working in a gym full time and making essentially, you know, 20% of that and just got into real estate as a result. And people all the time are asking, like, how I learned things or how I I got started in flipping houses or buying rentals. And it's exactly like you talked about. Right? You just gotta do it after a while. And, you know, if you do it intelligently, you have a little bit of risk tolerance, you believe in yourself, you have some hustle. The great thing about real estate is at the end of it, you have an asset. Right? It's not like you're investing $50,000 cash into a business that you don't actually have anything tangible. Like, the worst case with real estate is if stuff gets a little bit tricky, it's very easy to find people to help you figure out the problems. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [30:48] It's a very established Sure. You know, industry that has professionals. You can always sell the asset and walk away with something. You're never gonna lose, like, all of your money unless you were extremely highly leveraged. You know? And there's nothing but educational material out there for everything. Some of the people have been doing for as long as we've had, I don't know, real estate, as long as we've had property.

Perry Keenan: [31:10] Right? Right. So you

Mike DeHaan: [31:11] just gotta jump in. And and so, like, with with this one, like, I guess, how big was it? How many pads? What was the price point?

Perry Keenan: [31:18] 20 pads, $15.15 units. 15 units. Price point, we purchased at $6.25.

Mike DeHaan: [31:24] Yes. That's not like a small purchase either. It's not like you're buying a quote, unquote mobile home park that was like three mobiles at the end of a cul de sac that you bought for like 60 k. Right. You know? So that was an investment.

Perry Keenan: [31:37] Oh, yeah. So on this one, and you're absolutely right. So on this one, you know, one of the first things that we did, like the owners, I'll say bless their heart again, because they were retirees, they would literally go down, the wife, she would go down and set up a card table at the maintenance shop that they had that they kept the lawn mower and extra doors and refrigerators and that kind of thing. And she would set up a card table and chair and a handwritten receipt book starting at noon on Friday until 05:00 on Friday. And if somebody needed to pay the rent, they would because she charged weekly, they would come up and pay the rent. And they would pay her cash, and she would handwrite out a receipt and give it to them. And then she would be back around 09:00 on Saturday, and and she would stay until about noon on Saturday and do that again. And so my wife, she asked, she said, gosh, are you prepared to to come down here every single Friday and every single Saturday to collect the rent? I said, no. I'm not doing that. So with the bank, did the financing there locally, called the senior loan officer, and I asked him, his name is Matt. And Matt, great guy, small town local bank, super connected. And I just said, Matt, here's what I need to do. I need to set up just a general operating account for the rep deposits to go into, and I wanna give all of the tenants the account number. And then I want them to just come through your drive through and every Friday or Saturday morning, make their rent payment.

Perry Keenan: [33:11] And then I'm gonna have them take a picture of that rent receipt, the deposit receipt that you get them back, and they're gonna write their name and and unit number on there. Take a picture, text it to me, and I'm gonna give them credit for paying the rent. He said, yeah, I'm good with that. And I said, now for the ones that are more tech savvy, we're gonna set up a Venmo account. And if they wanna pay their rent via Venmo or cash app, we're gonna set up for them to be able to do that too. But I'm not driving down here an hour and forty five minutes each way or every Friday and every Saturday to go do this. And he said, I don't believe me. I wouldn't do it either. And so we did literally in the very first, the very first week, it just, it just clicked and everybody was super happy with that. Plus I didn't want to be the guy sitting in the middle of a mobile home park with $2,000 worth of cash on them. And then one of these, you know, tenants get pissed off or sideways and tell their buddy, Hey, you know, if you show up around 04:00 on Friday period, you'll probably have about $2,000 in cash sitting in his pocket. That'd be a good time to go and, and, you know, handle a little extracurricular business. So I just, I wasn't gonna, just wasn't gonna do that. Funny side note to that, when we're crunching our numbers and we're kind of getting into it, and she gave me her final copy of the books and stuff the day that we closed, you know, like for the final, like two or three weeks of rent collections. I'm trying to go through and I'm like, something's not, it's just not adding up.

Perry Keenan: [34:36] It's not adding up. I can't make these numbers work. And so she's showing what she's collecting in rent. I'm showing what the projections are. What she's collecting was higher than the projections. And I thought, gosh, I just can't figure this out. What's going on? And then it finally hit divine inspiration. I'm like, she's collecting rent every week. I'm doing my projections based monthly. There's fifty two weeks in a year. Yeah. But if you're doing it monthly, there's only forty eight weeks in a year. She was collecting an entire thirteenth month worth of rent every year. And when I went back and talked to the banker about it, I said, Matt, am I looking at this right? Like, is that what I'm seeing here? And he said, yeah. So essentially you're going to be making 12 mortgage payments and 12 insurance payments, but you're collecting thirteen months worth of payments because there's fifty two weeks in a year. I thought, oh my gosh, that's brilliant. So it's been fantastic.

Mike DeHaan: [35:45] Yeah. That's awesome. That's funny. That's that's a really interesting sort of thought. I wonder if, like, a long term rental, you could do that and if it would work. I mean, yes. You yes. You could. It'd a little bit of headache.

Perry Keenan: [35:57] Yeah. No. That's exactly what we did on some of our others. So we actually have tested that out on some of our more brick and mortar style.

Mike DeHaan: [36:04] Interesting. Yeah.

Perry Keenan: [36:05] What I have found is that the the rate of people that are either late on their payments or the rate of people that I've had to evict in those units that we've converted to that model, it has gone down exponentially because if you've got something that you're renting for a thousand or 11 or $1,200 a month, and somebody has a car issue or, you know, their dog ate their homework or they were sick with COVID for a week and they missed work or whatever it is for them to come up with a $1,200 payment on the first of the month can be a little hairy. But if somebody's making a $600 payment every two weeks, that's much more manageable. And so when we did that, like, literally, our eviction rate went way down and the number of missed payments and late late payments went way down because people were better equipped to manage their money.

Mike DeHaan: [36:59] Yeah. And then at the end of it, you basically collected a thirteenth month worth of of cash flow. That's that's really smart. It's funny. I've never you're the first person that I've ever heard say this. That's very interesting. Thank you. Yeah. From like a a sales standpoint as well with the tenant, I mean, if it was like net higher per month or per year, it is an easier sales pitch. Instead of it being $600 a month, which is expensive, we go it's $400 a week. Sure. You know, they'll probably extrapolate the math at some point, but it fundamentally sounds the same. And especially most people, they get paid, you know, weekly if they're in the service industry or biweekly if they're in a w two job. It's easier for

Perry Keenan: [37:40] them to budget that too. It is.

Mike DeHaan: [37:42] That's fascinating. I've never once thought about that. It's a great way to increase your cash on cash.

Perry Keenan: [37:46] It was huge for us. Man, what a what a phenomenal little tidbit that we picked out. So now on those brick and mortars that we have converted to that system Yeah. I'll actually say, okay. Well, this is what I want to get every two weeks. I'll multiply that by twenty six weeks and then divide it by 12. And I give the tenant the option. You can either pay this amount every month or this amount every two weeks. And if they say, well, I wanna do the every two weeks, then I go ahead and tell them these are your '26 payment dates. I tell them that in advance so that there's never any confusion of, well, wait a minute, I just made a payment, you know, on the first of the month and now I'm making it on the fifteenth, but now I've gotta make it on the thirtieth. Why am I making three payments this month? They already know because it's broken out for them. And a lot of times, especially here in our area, people typically get paid every two weeks. And so if they get paid on every other Friday, I will typically set up for them to make their rent payment every other Monday. So it follows, the rent payment goes in, it's direct deposited, it hits their account on Friday night or Saturday, it allows them to be able to make their payment on that Monday.

Perry Keenan: [38:59] And again, that's I I truly attribute that to a lot of why so many of our late payments just went down.

Mike DeHaan: [39:07] Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. Yeah. That's that's a very interesting one. I've never heard that. Awesome. Give me something to think about.

Perry Keenan: [39:14] I'm gonna

Mike DeHaan: [39:14] I'm gonna go and look through through all of mine and see if that makes sense. Because also to the way most people do unfortunately live paycheck to paycheck, and it's just easier for people to budget if it's literally coming out paycheck by paycheck like that versus having to, you know, calibrate things every month and and focus on saving money or or Yeah. Cutting back whatever they were going to buy on the twenty seventh or twenty sixth of the month because they gotta be worried about making rent in a few days. Right. Very, very cool. Awesome. That's that's a great tidbit. That's a that's a great listen for the whole episode just for people to get that. So alright. Well, thanks. Yeah. So sweet. Well, thanks, Barry. I really appreciate all the information that you've shared. We're gonna dive into the end of our show here. And so we always have the same three questions that we ask everybody that comes on the show. They're relatively simple. Don't worry. I'm not gonna ask you, like, favorite book or your favorite, like, motivational flow or something like that, which is always a little bit trickier. But first question, which is always the the crowd favorite, and don't overthink it. There'll be I'm sure there'll be one that immediately comes to your mind. But what is your craziest real estate investing story? Right? And so, like, if you are somewhere and, you know, you're trying to like tell the real estate story that is going to make people be like, wow. That's that's wild.

Mike DeHaan: [40:29] What's the first one that immediately comes to your mind?

Perry Keenan: [40:31] Oh, jeez.

Mike DeHaan: [40:32] This can be a big win, a big loss, a crazy tenant, whatever you got.

Perry Keenan: [40:37] So it would be easy to say that first one because that was the one that, you know, even though we only only made like $8,000 that we split between the two of us, you know, that was the one that that kinda hit the itch, so to speak. I would say probably the very first house flip that my wife and I did where it was just us with no partners. On that one, it was a great cosmetic flip. It wasn't overly complicated. And it was one where we learned really quickly, oh, we can actually do this and we can get that figured out. And so that one, while it's not overly crazy and off the rails, that one is one where I look at it and say, that was really the one. That was the one. And so on that one, we probably made 35 or $40,000 profit, which was great. Again, that was the most I'd ever made on a house flip ever, and that was a net net net profit. And that was fantastic. Like that really was awesome. Because again, especially if somebody's listening to this and they've not done, they've not done a lot of real estate investing to know that, yeah, you listen to these gurus and you listen to people that, you know, want you to buy their course and that kind of thing. And they try and tell you, oh yeah, you can make, you know, tens of thousands of dollars and that kind of stuff. Like, I did it, you know, and I don't own, you know, a thousand doors and I've not flipped, you know, 6,000 houses. Like, I'm I'm just a guy Mhmm.

Perry Keenan: [42:02] That did it part time and figured out that the best way to do it was just to listen to podcasts like this and just immerse myself into as much education as possible. Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [42:14] Yeah. It's such a underrated comment right there. It's really not that complicated, honestly. It just takes a lot of repeat repeated intentional action. Yeah. That's something I tell people too is like, there's a reason that you see this influx of people on social media that are talking about their investments and their business and, like, how they're traveling to all that sort of stuff. It's because it's not that hard, like, honestly. Right. They have just put in the time to do it. And the great thing, especially on the residential real estate side, is there's an abundance of opportunity. You know? There's tens of millions of houses Mhmm. In The United States. Like, you only need to do a few dozen of them to completely change your financial picture forever. Yeah. You know? And it's just a lot of people never never really quite want to take the leap. So

Perry Keenan: [43:01] Yeah. And and you even touched on it a minute ago where you were talking about the resources that are out there. This, I'll call it the real estate investing community as a whole is unlike any other community that I've ever, that I've ever been a part of in that professionally speaking, people are just so free with their advice and their tips and their wisdoms and this is what's worked for me and this is how I took this deal down and that kind of thing. You just don't get a whole lot of that in other industries where people are just so so willing to help bring other people up and along with them.

Mike DeHaan: [43:39] So it's very easy to have an abundance mindset when there really is a lot of opportunities. And also too, because it's such an established industry and there's so many opportunities for partnerships, a lot of people just have a go giver mentality as well that if they do provide, then people will bring opportunities back. Yeah. And, you know, it's it's a great community for sure. I would agree. Awesome. Alright. So second question is what is the number one tip you would have for a small time investor trying to take the business to the next level?

Perry Keenan: [44:09] Oh, take action. That's it. That's an easy question. Take action. I love when people are like, hey. Can I can I take you to lunch or dinner? I just wanna pick your brain. And I love that. I enjoy spending time. Even if I don't have time, I try to make time because someone took the time to do that with me and they took four hours out of their day to walk me through it and say, this is what you're doing right. And these are the things you're doing horribly wrong. And so I don't mind doing that, but I also cannot tell you the number of people, Mike, that, that are like, Hey, let's go have coffee or let's go to dinner. And then we'll spend three or four hours going through stuff and we'll make pages and pages of notes. And then I never hear from them again. They never do anything with it and they don't take action. And I tell people all the time, I may have amazingly good hair, but I'm not that smart. I literally just followed what someone else said do, and I took action. Really? And I did it. I didn't try and recreate the wheel, and I didn't try and go in and make it complicated. I literally just did what other people did that were super successful in this. And I said, I'm gonna do that, and I'm gonna do it exactly the way that they did. Yeah. And so when we did that and followed that mindset, you know, and just said, okay, well, it's not complicated and these people are smarter and they've already paved the way and so I'm just gonna take action and do it. I oh my gosh.

Perry Keenan: [45:37] Like, things just started to fall into place. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [45:41] Yeah. I mean and that's whether you're brand new, whether that's a piece of your business that you're trying to, like, figure out, whether you're trying to branch out from residential and then local home parks. You just gotta get after it and start doing something. You Right. A lot of I think I don't know if it's like the traditional school system or what, but people always feel like they need to be an expert on something before they're willing to jump in, and that's just the greatest way to kinda get nowhere. Because there's always more you can learn. You know? And there's only so much that you can learn from from content and information.

Perry Keenan: [46:10] Yeah. Awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [46:11] Alright. So so last question, Perry. Where can people find you, follow you, and reach out to you?

Perry Keenan: [46:16] Awesome. Instagram is always easiest at the flipping mayor. That's f l I p p I n, no g, the flipping mayor. I actually kinda going back to that moral compass. I always tried to approach that title with a level of humility. And so whenever I was, you know, flipping houses, not in my city, I never went into meetings with, you know, the subcontractors and that kind of thing wearing a shirt and tie or one of my shirts that said, you know, Perry Keenan Mayer or that kind of thing. And this one particular meeting, was running late to get out of, and the siding guy was waiting on me at a house that we were flipping in Clarksville, and I didn't have time to change clothes. And so I pull up on the job site and I get out, I'm wearing this shirt that says Perry Keenan mayor on the chest. And so he starts to talk to me and he just stops in mid sentence and he says, what's that say? You're the mayor? I didn't know. You never told me that. I've been working for you for six months. I didn't know you were the mayor. I'm like, well, you know, it sounds arrogant. That's funny. That kind of thing. And he said, so you're the house flipping mayor? And I said, oh, believe me. I've been called the flipping mayor more than once.

Perry Keenan: [47:23] And he laughed and I laughed and and it just kinda stopped. Yeah. And so I thought, you know what? It's very tongue in cheek, and I try not to take myself too serious. And so we said for Instagram Instagram, that's what it's gonna be, the flipping mayor. Perfect. I love it. I just shot you a

Mike DeHaan: [47:40] follow as well. So excited to see how all your stuff continues to come along. So awesome. Well, Perry, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I really appreciate all the insights, deep dive into your business, and congrats on all the success you've had as well. I'm really excited to hear how things continue to develop for you. Nice. Dude, I've enjoyed it great. Absolutely. Awesome, guys. Well, thanks for listening. Go and shoot Perry a follow at the flipping mayor on Instagram. And if you are in the Tennessee area as well, don't be afraid to reach out to him. Pleasant View is just outside of Nashville. So if you're in that general vicinity, I'm sure you probably probably all know that. But Oh, yeah. People come on these shows to get exposure and to get in front of other people. So don't be shy, reach out, say hello. Maybe he wants to do a deal with you. You never know. That's really why people put themselves out there. Let's be honest. So thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to you next week. God bless. Thank you.

Speaker 2: [48:36] Star review on iTunes and send us a screenshot to mike@collectingkeys.com for your chance to receive a free collecting keys t shirt.