Multifamily Success: Tips to Find Properties, Negotiate Seller Financing Deals, & More w/ Grant Warrington

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Really quick before the show starts, in case you haven't heard, we have a growing community of investors called the scale community, which is full of people learning to make massive income with their real estate businesses, so they can reach financial freedom a little bit faster than building a rental portfolio solely over time, because honestly, that takes decades and who has time for that. So if you're an investor who is serious about growing and creating a scalable business without needing to be a slave to it twenty four seven, then go to collectingkeys.com/scale and apply. And if you're a good fit, we would love to have you join the community. So again, collectingkeys.com/scale, go ahead and apply, and see if you're

Grant Warrington: [0:37] a good fit. Before that 10/31 expired, I reached out to every single one of them I could. Now I also dealt with brokers. I dealt with real estate agents. I was a real estate agent as well. So there's three facets to it. It all really depends on how much work you wanna put into it. It's like anything, it takes work, but it's not hard, right? I tell people digging a ditch is hard, or going to prison for twenty years would be very hard. But this is inconvenient. So how inconvenienced do you wanna be to have an incredible life in five to ten years?

Mike DeHaan: [1:18] What is going on, guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Grant Warrington, who is a multifamily extraordinaire, especially with the smaller multifamily stuff, which I think is a really good sort of niche because I feel like everyone is always just trying to go bigger, bigger, bigger all the time. And we have a really good conversation today about the niche that he has found in like the five to what he

Dan Austin: [1:42] say 20 unit range, Dan? Yeah, five to 20 units savages, what I would call him not extraordinary. I'd call him a savage at the five to 20 unit.

Mike DeHaan: [1:49] Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, he's. But anyway, the five to twenty year range is his bread and butter. And we go into a pretty wide range of conversation to this about how he finds these deals, how he runs the conversations with the seller. She does all this direct to seller. He doesn't really use brokers that often. How we negotiate seller finance deals.

Dan Austin: [2:08] Doesn't do anything fancy with it. Like he just does he just does the he called the inconvenient work,

Mike DeHaan: [2:13] which we all should be doing. Totally. And and the funny thing is, I said it kind of probably through the show here. But what he goes to and I describes it, surprise guys, it is a marketing and sales process that is extraordinarily similar to every other business. So if you're trying to do any business, and you're like, man, this marketing and sales thing kind of sucks, I don't wanna do it. Sorry. It's exactly the same in small multifamily assets. Oh, no. Yep. But either way, really, really good show. And then at the end, we start to talk about some of the other content he's producing out there. He's done a lot of real estate content over the years, and now he's starting to veer in some other stuff, which can be really interesting to see how that unfolds. But either way, he's a super, super good personality, really nice guy. So don't be afraid to reach out to him either. Very present on Instagram. There's lots of fun YouTube and everything else. So anyways, guys, really good show today. Enjoy the show with Grant Warrington. See you. Alright, Grant Warrington, my man, super excited to have you on the show today. For people who maybe haven't heard about you give us kind of like the thirty second view, who you are, what exactly you specialize in,

Grant Warrington: [3:17] and what's your business currently looks like. Yeah, no problem. I'm probably like a lot of people out there listening. I hated listening to all these podcasts after a certain amount of time, so I'm gonna keep it real brief. I was a construction worker, hated having a boss, didn't know what to do, bad drinking problem, got into real estate, had to declare bankruptcy, and I was a shit show. And I changed all that, and now here we started buying apartment buildings, and we lived in Detroit. Now we've moved to Florida, and life has completely changed for us, thanks to real estate.

Mike DeHaan: [3:52] Awesome. That's cool. So you said you started buying apartment buildings. What does your current portfolio look like? And I guess like, do you still actively acquiring? Are you just on financial freedom mode? Like, what's all that look like?

Grant Warrington: [4:05] So we first we started buying single family rentals, I tell people, man, just get in wherever you can. I have a course apartment buying blueprint. I teach people how to buy small apartments, five to 20 units. That's where the bread and butter is, and you're gonna hear a lot more about that in the coming years. Syndicators are switching to, Hey, I should buy my own apartment buildings. There's more money in it. I don't have to incorporate 35 different people in this product. And then with single family rentals, you know, after a while, you're gonna figure out I'm gonna need to own 50 of them to make any money. And that just us was just absurd. You know, we'd have to put a roof on, and all of a sudden that wiped out our profits for years on a single family. So

Dan Austin: [4:44] you said got into real estate, then declared bankruptcy, or did you do? Declare before? Is that so this is a single family drove you to bankruptcy?

Grant Warrington: [4:51] So what happened 2003, I bought a course by Carlton Sheets. If anybody remembers Carlton Sheets, through the mail, you get these cassette tapes, right? And you listen to them, How to Buy No Money Down. And I listened to zero of them. All I did was buy them. So I was a genius, right? And so uneducated. I had no education on what I was doing. I had a bad drinking problem at the time, very bad. And I decided though when I bought this, I'm going to give my tenants, I won't make them pay rent around Christmas. Like, I'm going to be a good landlord. You know what I mean? And that's why a lot of the shit on the internet just drives me crazy about how bad landlords are and that let's pass all these laws against landlords, and nobody's sticking up for landlords. And it just drives me crazy. So I did that. I got into it with all of this good intention, and then no one paid. So whose fault was it? It was my fault. I didn't screen properly. I didn't know what I was doing. Again, the drinking problem. I don't blame any of them. I had a mentor. He was a terrible mentor, and that's who I bought two of the three houses from. But guess what? Guess whose fault it was? It was mine. That's the accountability. And no matter anybody listening to this, if you've failed in life, you really haven't failed, you've just learned with the tools you were given. So just take responsibility, ownership, and just proceed.

Grant Warrington: [6:11] So again, before 2008, they were giving away loans, man. I took three of them, and it didn't work. Everybody owed me money, $5 on each house. I wasn't working. I owed my own money on my own house. I took a $28,000 home equity line of credit on my personal home to pay mortgages. And finally, it all caught up with me. I was breaking out. My health was so, so bad because I was going through all this. But luckily, there was nobody else in the deal. It was just me, and I gave all the properties back to the bank, declared bankruptcy in 2007, and I was like, I'm never getting debt again. I learned a valuable lesson, but I always knew, I always told myself, I know I'll get back into it, but I was done with debt. I was like, That's it, it's over with. And then 2011, quit drinking with the help of God, and that slowly started to change my life. Met my wife in 2014, and she said, You know what? I've always wanted to buy real estate. I said, so have I. And look at all these books I got. So that's when it started. I said, let's buy a single family house together. And then we were off to the races again, the correct way with an education.

Mike DeHaan: [7:19] Cool. I like that. Yeah. And you said you specialize in the five to 20 units. So what specifically do you like about that asset class? Because if I'm being honest, if I go on social media right now, all I see is people in fact, yesterday, I saw this video from Brandon Turner, basically saying that buying anything underneath 70 units is a waste of time. And he listed out all these reasons why it sucks. But I disagree with that personally because we're honestly residential people as well. Yeah. The five to 20 unit range, why did you find that to be

Grant Warrington: [7:46] your sweet spot? Well, first, I wanna tell people, like, you gotta start somewhere. And that's what I I'm disappointed to hear him say that, but I mean, I know why he says it, right? Because I tell people apartments are the best. I think they are, but you gotta start somewhere. If Brandon Turner would've started with that mentality, he wouldn't be where he's at today. He started with one rental. You guys have seen the pictures of him. And that's why we all liked him and resonated with him. He's an awesome dude, and he knows what he's talking about. But it's scale. So I love what he's saying about it, because if you're not leveling up in real estate investing, you're gonna get beat up in real estate investing. So once you do those five to 20 units, I teach people, let's work on your first building, let's get you there, And and then we're gonna work on leveling up to a bigger property, to a newer property, to a better class property. Because your tenant base can beat you up, man, bad. And you get a D class tenant in a D class neighborhood, and you're gonna have a lot of problems. I come from the Detroit area. Everybody looks at Zillow to buy a house for $20,000 in Detroit. Looks like a no brainer, right? I could rent it for 1,200. That property, you're gonna get people that have to live in that area that qualify for that property.

Grant Warrington: [9:00] Like you two aren't gonna live there. You two are the people I want to be my tenants, right?

Dan Austin: [9:04] Right, totally.

Grant Warrington: [9:05] You're not gonna be. And it's just economic drivers, right, that these people, they have evictions, they have this, they have that, lower income, whatever it might be, because people are trying to move outside of the city of Detroit. So I tell people like, look around the city of Detroit. Look at maybe cities that touch Detroit and start there, because you gotta start somewhere. We started in a city called Lincoln Park, touches Detroit. Wasn't the best neighborhood, but it was better, but you gotta start somewhere. So I would say start with a single family if that's where you're comfortable, and that's what you

Dan Austin: [9:40] can do. So I would say too with the like, the thing that comes to mind on these small ones, because Mike and I have owned and do own smaller buildings like that, that five to 20 unit Yep. Is it's a lot easier to find and acquire those than it is a 100 plus unit. Because of the 100 plus unit, you have people making offers and willing to take a small return like, you know, they were buying those at, like, basically one and two caps. Right? I think that is catching up with people now. But to me, and I and I'll test this on you, is it seems like when you can find these smaller apartment buildings, they're typically mom and pop people. Yeah. And there's some value add component, and it's just they're more plentiful than if you're gonna go out and buy a 100 plus unit.

Grant Warrington: [10:17] Yeah, and you know what, the other thing, and I forgot to say, two commercial loans, right? You get into units and above, that's commercial loans. They're gonna base it off of the building, the performance of the building, the finances of the building, and not so much yourself. So that's a value too. If you ever bought a house or a single family rental, it's like, man, they stick that probe up your ass and they wanna know every single thing. It's terrible. Then you buy a commercial loan and you're like, oh, wow, that wasn't that bad. I'll do more Yeah, of

Mike DeHaan: [10:44] now instead they just stick the pro up the seller's ass to see their financials, and that's their problem. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

Grant Warrington: [10:50] Well, that's what I love. The other thing with the five to 20 units, and again with my course, I just that on there because I don't wanna scare people. If you own a couple rentals and you're scared to make that jump, it's not that difficult. So that's why I say five to 20, but it's five to anything below a syndication. Okay. But I teach people to find properties off market. Okay. There's so many properties out there. It's easy to find them, and I teach them how to do it for free. And just with the tools, your computer, you know, you can get the owner's cell phone number, all that. And that's what I do. Teach them how to do those, how to target those people, and just how to have conversations with owners and go after seller financing. And that's what I did. I got seller financing. I found 31 units off market. So that's where the money is. Because two things, everything on market is already a bad deal, really. And then also a lot of the gurus that you guys see on, again, talk about leveling up, but a lot of the guys on Instagram or girls that are killing it, crushing it, that teach single family rentals, they've already leveled up to apartment buildings. They just forgot to tell you, right? Or you hear that they bought the boutique hotel or whatever it is.

Grant Warrington: [12:05] That's a multifamily property. So they're realizing too like, oh, I need to level up. It's all leveling up. Gotta start somewhere, and then just realize one day eventually I might have to level up into bigger buildings. Or not. If you wanna just own six, great. Just own six and pay those off, and you'll have a nice nice little retirement. Well, so I just quickly, what does that look like? Because Mike and I, obviously, that's what we do a

Dan Austin: [12:27] lot is, like, teaching people how to find deals. From an off market, small multi, Are you showing them like, hey, here's kind of the parameters of what a building needs to look like? Probably going into, like, prop share or something saying five to 20 units, of course. Looking at some age, probably looking at some, like, equity position in it that would look good for somebody that wants to sell and finance it. Because not everybody's a seller financing fit, but if they meet these metrics, you're saying that would be probably a good one to reach out, negotiate seller financing.

Grant Warrington: [12:56] Yeah. So what I teach people is just not even to have to buy PropStream or anything like that. I teach people create your buy box. Right? Yeah. What kind of age, what kind of building, what area, and once you once you figure all that out, once you figure your area out, just start looking, and you can look with Google Maps. You'd be shocked if you look at Google Maps in an area and just you start one quarter of the city, and just start looking from above. Look for large roofs and large parking lots. Jump down the street view. Yeah, there's an apartment building. Write the number down. That's what I do. Then I'll get the owner information from that. Then I can Google, get the owner's cell phone number. There's a couple of different ways. And then I just reach out to the owner. But a lot of these buildings you're gonna see like that, the five to 20 units, they are either generational, so they've been in the family for years, or they are somebody who's 70, 80 years old. This is their baby, they've had it forever, but it's a little beat up. Can tell it's a little Of worn The grass isn't cut, the windows are old, right? So you can look at these and go, this has been neglected. Right? So you know more than likely this is somebody that owns it outright, probably owned it for years, and you can do a little free searching and you can find that out how long the owners owned it. And what that means is their rents are low and they don't fix anything. So you have a certain tenant base in there, but that's the trade off. Hey, I'm gonna keep your rent low, but I'm not gonna fix anything.

Grant Warrington: [14:24] You're probably gonna be happy with it. So when people always say when someone's selling you a building and you hear them say, I have long term tenants in there. Okay, that tells me two things. One, the rents are very low. Two, it's a tough tenant base. And three, it's gonna need a lot of repairs.

Mike DeHaan: [14:42] That's so funny.

Dan Austin: [14:43] We say the same thing.

Grant Warrington: [14:44] Eight leases for twenty years.

Mike DeHaan: [14:45] Yeah. Well, it's funny. We had a we literally had this conversation on one of our scale community calls yesterday. We're doing a sales review of one of our members. And he the seller on the phone was like, like, yeah, the place is in great condition. We've had the same tenants in there for fifteen years. I'm like, okay, you know, it sucks at that point. That's a long time to be fixing up nothing

Grant Warrington: [15:05] at that property.

Dan Austin: [15:07] So true. One thing I think about just to maybe close out the acquisition piece of this that I personally think about is for us, Mike and I have such a great pipeline for, like, single family. Like, for us, we could go find single families all day long. I stress more about owning the single family than I do our larger or smaller multifamily. And so to me, it does make sense if you can to step into that, like, five to 20 unit range. But you sometimes especially if we're do seller financing, a lot times they're gonna want, like, a down payment or something. So I think about, like, hey. Can I buy like, flip a house, make $30.40, $50, and then re reposition that into a multifamily instead of keeping it into a single family rental? Mhmm. For when you're doing these seller finance deals, is that what you're helping, like, your students and stuff, like, figuring out that cash position? Because it does take money. Right? Ultimately, it's not a real estate is not a zero money down industry. I mean, like, we all hear about.

Grant Warrington: [15:57] Yeah. A 100%. I I agree. I and if some people are in that situation, I would tell them find a partner. Right? Find somebody with money if you have time and you're gonna go out and do all these deals and you're gonna do all the work, bring somebody in that has money. But, yeah, to your point, we've done a $10.31 exchange. You know, we sold three houses and took the proceeds and then bought a building with that. So I mean, there's a lot of things you can do to get those buildings, but with seller financing, it's all negotiation. So, it just depends. Our first building, he wanted 20% down. I fought him on that, but he owed so much money to I think he owed back taxes. Owed all these different things. He's like, I have to get 20% down. And there's just nothing else I can do. Like, I need to pay now or they're gonna take the building.

Mike DeHaan: [16:44] Okay.

Grant Warrington: [16:44] And I forget exactly what it was because I know that would wash out a title, but he needed the 20%, I fought him. But he gave me other things. He gave me a thirty year amortization, and that kept my payment down low. He gave me we had keys to the building nine months before we bought it. It took nine months to

Dan Austin: [17:01] buy this building. Was disaster. That's interesting. So you maybe got to do some value add before you actually had to take on the liability. We didn't work on

Grant Warrington: [17:09] it because we didn't know if it was gonna close.

Dan Austin: [17:11] We got

Grant Warrington: [17:12] to get in there. Made lists. We got to walk vacant. We got to look at everything and get an idea of what we're gonna do.

Mike DeHaan: [17:21] That's the

Grant Warrington: [17:21] hard part. If you don't know what kind of materials you're gonna use, you just buy this building and you go in, and then if you say, All right, Unit 1, I'm gonna rehab it this way. Unit 2, let's make it a little different. We'll do different light fixtures and Right? Different cannot do that. You have to do everything the same. So we knew the paint color we were gonna use. Now, we use this on all 41 of our units. The carpeting, the vinyl plank flooring, what kind of light fixtures, kitchen faucets, everything. Everything is the same on all of our properties. That way, our contractors know what to use and we know what to use. And anytime somebody gets in there to do a rehab or a turnover, it's simple. We know what to use. We order the same materials, and so that's the best way to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [18:04] Yeah. Yeah. Do you think there's, like, a good opportunity in that space to create the vertical income as well? I know you said doing partnerships. But one of the reasons that we're so hard on, like, the residential piece is a big motto of our show is you wanna focus on creating massive income before creating passive income with your real estate investing business. And the thing with residential real estate is it's so easy to create a large income as well that you can use to invest, you know, through wholesaling, through flipping, through being a realtor, you know, through, like, different relationship based things, things like that. On the multifamily side, is there an option that you think realistically exists with the lead flow that you have? Like, and I understand you can, like, you could flip or wholesale multifamily properties. But I guess my roundabout question is, like, how many chances are you getting with all of these deals? Are you looking at, like, having, like, several conversations a month, several a week? Is it, like, three times a year? Like, I I just don't necessarily have context for what a realistic sort of

Grant Warrington: [19:03] Yeah. So it all depends on how many people you get on your list. So the more people you put on your list, the better off you're gonna be, and that's your off market list. Right? So you just gotta do the work. You push out. If you live in Manhattan, people are gonna say, Well, I find any properties in Manhattan that are your criteria. Then push out. Maybe look in New Jersey. But I had like a 100 and at one point in Michigan where I lived, a 110 in my geographical area off market. And I would reach out to them. And that ten thirty one, that's what I did before that ten thirty one expired. I reached out to every single one of them I could. Now I also dealt with brokers. I dealt with real estate agents. I was a real estate agent as well. So there's three facets to it, but it all really depends on how much work you wanna put into it. On that end, is putting people on that list, looking It's for like anything. It takes work, but it's not hard, right? I tell people digging a ditch is hard, or going to prison for twenty years would be very hard. But this is inconvenient. So how inconvenienced do you wanna be to have an incredible life five to Totally. 10

Mike DeHaan: [20:14] Yeah. And that gives me good context.

Grant Warrington: [20:16] You had 110 out of those, how many, like, good conversations? A lot. A lot. Believe it or not. Yeah. A lot. I call people, and I I teach people that you just you you wanna just be nice and say, hey. How you doing? My name is Grant Warrington. I own three apartment buildings in in the area there by yours. My wife and I always drive by your building. Love the property. I mean, you're in a great location. Have you ever thought about buying? And it's like, okay, I'm local. I'm nice. I'm not sending a mailer, and I'm on the phone with them. Right? So people can be a lot more rude over the Internet. But when you're on the phone with people, they tend to be a little bit nicer, and I always have nice conversation. What are you renting your one beds for? We're renting ours for $9.25. Mhmm. That's interesting. You guys would be like, shit. I'm renting mine for $8.50. Oh, okay. Yeah. We're getting $9.25 now in our building. We just so did you know what I mean? Like Yeah. You're an owner. So I've always had great conversations, and and just word-of-mouth is another great thing to do. I was in the basement of our single family rental at the time. We were brand new. We only had a few units, and I told the city inspector, and I was definitely afraid of the city inspector because, you know, this guy can make or break you. I'm new. So he's coming in, he's looking at everything for the rental certificate, and I'm like, shit. And I just mentioned to him, like my voice was cracking. I was so scared.

Grant Warrington: [21:42] I'm like, hey man, do you know anybody looking to sell apartment build? Or do you know anybody that owns apartment buildings? And he goes, you know what? As a matter of fact, I do. There's this lady named Blanche in the city I lived in, and she owns like 65 of them. You should reach out to her. Wow. And I was like, holy shit. Yeah. And so guess what? I did what he told me to do. So I reached out to her, and she's like, how'd you get my number? How'd you right? She's 80. And I told her, and she's, like, long pause, and she's like, I'm not looking to sell anything. But she goes, here's five properties. They do a shitty job. You should reach out to those five and see if they wanna sell. I reached out to all five. Fifth one was owned a liquor store. I knew the guy. I knew the liquor store. I didn't know he owned the building next door, but I went into the liquor store, and I said, hey, you own the building? Yeah. You ever thought of selling? He goes, yeah, I would sell. I said, okay. I was like, well now I don't know what to say. Yeah, right. Not supposed to work like this, but it does, it really does.

Dan Austin: [22:46] That's a great story. Think that's encouraging too, and I like how you said it. As an owner or or prospective owner, you're doing kind of like a it's almost like a you are doing a sales call, but in a professional way. Like, commercial real estate brokers do this all the time. That's what they do is they call owners, and they build a relationship, take them out of coffee, lunch, all that stuff. Because at some point in time, they're gonna wanna sell, and you wanna be there. So for you, you had a 110 people that was basically on your client list, and you would just through your cadence, whatever that call cadence was you're calling them Yeah. Having conversation with them, talking about things that matter to them and you, and eventually it shakes out to something.

Mike DeHaan: [23:21] Yo. If you don't follow me on Instagram, which is that mike underscore invests by the way, then you might not know that we officially have a new mission as a brand, and that is to help 2,000 real estate investors build million dollar businesses. Obviously, to do that, we need to get in front of as many people as possible. So quick little ask to help us reach that goal. First, shoot me a follow on Instagram at mike underscore invests. Second, follow collecting keys podcast on Instagram. That's at collecting keys podcast all written out. And third, every time the algorithm is kind enough to show you a post from either of us, share it on your story or in your post and tag us. If you do that, I'll DM you and we can have a little DM conversation about what is preventing you from having that million dollar business that everyone is seeking. And we can see if we can come up with a plan to help you make that massive income, not just passive income. So again, if you see any of our posts, just go ahead, reshare them, tag us, and let everyone know that you enjoy the content we produce. It will help us a ton, and then I'll be happy to help you as well. I never had anybody that was rude.

Grant Warrington: [24:27] Sure. No one that was rude. Some people weren't interested in selling, and I'd ask them, do you mind if I check back with you in a few months? Yeah. They've all said, yeah, that's fine. One guy I talked to, 110 units, 110 or 120, and he lived in a very affluent city. I'm like, screw it. I'm calling him anyway, right? Like that would be more of a broker would list that, but I'm like, I'm gonna And call him I got talked to the owner. He's like, no, I'll tell you what, we're not interested in selling. My sons are gonna take over the property, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Well, do you mind if I touch base with you in a few months? And he's like, Yeah, that's fine. You know what I mean? So it happens, and I'm just Now when I first started calling these people, I didn't own apartment buildings. So I would just say I own real estate in the area. I would try to just relate myself to them. Or my wife and I drive by your building. I love it. It's in a great spot. Or I love what you did with the paint, the color, the the new roof, this, whatever. Just I just try to relate and just be nice and just ask them if they're interested and okay. That's cool. You know what

Mike DeHaan: [25:28] I mean? Well, the thing I really like about what you're saying there, Grant, is it's all the fundamentals of marketing and sales. Right? As you determine your audience base and you do the sales process, you know, you have the initial phone call or introduce yourself. You identify if there's an opportunity there or not, you're setting a follow-up cadence. And then eventually, if someone is open to receiving an offer, you make an offer. And that same concept exists whether you are doing multifamily, you're doing single family, you're doing, you know, selling widgets, you're selling online courses, you know, you're doing anything else. Marketing and sales is fundamentally the same, and that's really one of the most important skills. That's really, really cool. So going back to that seller financing piece really quick. This is a question we get asked about all the time. When it comes to negotiating seller finance deals, how do you kind of like open that conversation? Because kind of like Dan said, people typically want like a large down payment, which obviously isn't necessarily fair. Will you as an investor? Also, people tend to, I would say from our experience in seller financing, they tend to have term expectations, which are based off whatever the current bank terms are or current like economic situation is, which isn't always beneficial either.

Mike DeHaan: [26:34] So what are some good tips that you have around approaching a seller finance situation, kinda early on?

Grant Warrington: [26:39] Well, okay, here's two really good tips. First, don't give the seller any money, okay?

Mike DeHaan: [26:44] Don't

Grant Warrington: [26:44] ever give them money. Get a title company involved. Title company gets the money, not the seller. A lot of people might make

Mike DeHaan: [26:49] that mistake. Like the choice to get money to

Grant Warrington: [26:52] the seller directly? Yeah. Don't, mean, if you don't Nobody does that. Who does It's your first deal. That's why I like to tell people, do not give that seller money. Listen, the seller we bought our first property off of, he had no idea. Like, he probably thought we'd give him, you know, dollars 120,000, but get a title company involved. They'll disperse funds. You ask them. Just ask them. I asked them, Do you own the building? Yeah. I asked the second building too, Do you own the building? Yeah, I do. Would you be interested in seller financing? No, the second building was off market, but he said, No, I'm not. I wanna do. I said, Okay, all right, that's fine. You sure? Because here, I would lay out the steps. You know, your returns over time, you know, you're gonna have to pay less capital gains. You you could spread your capital gains out over time. You know what I mean? It's going to be I'm gonna pay you now, so it's gonna be more passive. Right? You're not gonna have to do any of the work, but you're gonna get that payment every month, you know, like you've been getting. And really, that's all I do. I just try to explain it to them, try to tell them, Hey, here's the advantage of it. And again, the second building, said, I can put you in touch with the first gentleman we did all seller financing with if you wanna ask him how we performed or whatever. And he's like, No, no, no, I trust you, but I just don't wanna do it.

Grant Warrington: [28:07] And that's step one. You gotta ask, right? And most people don't ask. And again, like you guys said, well, sellers want a high down payment. And I'm like, well, is is that true or is that a story? Yeah. How do we know? Have you asked a 100 sellers? And you can go, yeah, Grant, I asked a 100 sellers and a 100 sellers said they want a high down payment. Or is it like, well, yeah, I talked to one or two. And I'm talking to the multifamily space. You know what I mean? So a lot of times people will do that with these preconceived notions like, I don't wanna even ask. He's probably gonna want a lot of money down. Ask him and tell him, hey, man, I'm gonna have to do a lot of work here. I don't have a lot. But the good news, if I don't perform, you get to take the building back. So can you work with me on that? What could we do that I could get the building, take it off your hands, and we could work this out? You know what I mean? Maybe I give you a little bit more money, We adjust the interest rate. I don't know. But there it's always a conversation, and if you don't ask, you'll never know.

Dan Austin: [29:04] Yeah. I like that. And there's like lots of ways to to structure these to where it's advantageous to both of you. Like, one of the things that I quickly get if especially if you're worried about, like, taxes, like, sellers worried about taxes and you're worried about cash flow while you're repairing or adding value. Like, what if you just did interest only for the first two years where he's not getting any of his and his capital back? So he's not having to pay capital gains. He's gonna pay, you know, normal income tax, and you're getting a lower monthly payment. So you can do the repairs or, you know, take the time to fill the units. Like, there's so many cool things you can do with creative finance. As long as you know what would work for them and you know what works for you, there's something in the middle if they're open to it.

Grant Warrington: [29:38] Yeah. A 100%. Yeah. It's totally there are no rules. You know what I mean? It's totally between you and the seller, so you can just make whatever up whatever up you want that works. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [29:49] So are you still acquiring right now in current interest rate environment, like outside of seller financing, or what does your current day to

Grant Warrington: [29:56] day business look like? So we just moved to, well, a year now, just bought this house that we live in now. We moved to Florida from Detroit. We live in St. Petersburg, Florida now. So are we put that on pause buying anything else? Because we wanna get familiar with the market. We wanna see if maybe Florida's where we're moving to, where we're gonna invest. So we haven't really done much with that right now, but I have a course, The Apartment Buying Blueprint. I've been full time into that for the last year and a half, teaching people how to buy those five to 20 units. And then the other thing is my social media. And now I just switched over to YouTube long form, and that now is like my main focus, my YouTube channel. So Let's talk about that for a minute then. So you're basically saying and you and I

Dan Austin: [30:43] had we we had a little bit of conversation before the show. Like, you have your 41 units, and now you're doing something totally different. You're a you're a social media YouTube influencer. Like, let's talk about, like, how real estate is allowing you to do that, kind of your mindset around it, I guess.

Grant Warrington: [30:57] And I I'm gonna say this, and this will be just about the only time it's ever been said on on the internet. I don't love real estate. Okay? Oh my gosh, right? Grant said it here. Yeah. And here it is. It's done, let me clarify that. Today, I'm not as passionate as I was ten years ago about buying properties, rehabbing, and going through all this. We self manage, we do all this stuff, my wife and I ourselves. So we've done a lot of it, we've seen a lot of it. And I'm just not as passionate about it as I was back then. Here's the beautiful thing, right? So somebody might be watching this just starting going, Oh, no. What does that mean? Isn't everyone supposed to love it forever? No. You're supposed to work your ass off, build something, whatever it might be, and then do whatever the hell you want. So I now have gotten to a point and I said, you know what? YouTube interests me more. I'm gonna focus on YouTube, and I don't know if I love putting out real estate content anymore. So I'm not gonna do it. So that is freedom, and that's what people don't understand. People watching this, you do not have freedom. I hate to tell you, but you do not have freedom. Let me go back three or four years ago, whatever job you were in, however you felt about, let's say, the shot, right? Whatever you felt, if you worked a certain job, your ass was getting it, or you're getting fired. Now is that freedom? No. But that's when I truly went, holy shit.

Grant Warrington: [32:28] I get to choose. It's my decision of what I do. It was incredible, and I was like, there's nobody making me make a decision because I built this. I built this, and this gave me true freedom from anything. And I get to do what I truly want. And that's freedom, man. And that's what a lot of people don't realize. You're in the rat race, and you will not get out of it. So you need to start. Starting with you guys is a great step. You guys have been there, done that, and you can help people get going, but you gotta start.

Mike DeHaan: [32:59] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [32:59] That's really good insight. I'm glad you said that because you said it. You're like, I don't wanna put out real estate content anymore. And you're empowered enough to know that you have that ability to make that choice. And also, honestly, some confidence in yourself to just be like, I don't like doing it anymore. It got me here, but it's not gonna get me there. So, like, that is really powerful.

Grant Warrington: [33:18] Yeah. And confidence might be a strong word because I'm because it's scary, right? I'm like, how can I say that? And I might get back into it. And here's the thing too, I'm gonna make a YouTube video that says I broke up with a billion. Great title, right? It is. Yeah. Because I built this machine, my content, all of this. Instagram, I got 35,000 followers on there. Grant Cardone reached out to me, found me because of my real estate. He's a billionaire. And now I'm saying, I'm done with that content. I'm done with you. Right? That's a little scary to do that because I built up for that, and now I'm getting recognition in this space. And now I'm going, this space just I don't know if it interests me anymore talking about doorstoppers and weeks and this stuff. I'm like, maybe there's something else out there that interests me more. But again, the cool thing is, since I built that portfolio, my wife and I were both fiftyfifty partners, I can do that. And I can say, you know what? Why don't I go over here and see what happens? Maybe I come back, maybe I don't. And that's

Mike DeHaan: [34:20] the true power with with real estate at the end of it is, it gives you the ability to have these life changing wealth generation events in a relatively short period of time, honestly, especially if you're you're buying things at good prices or on terms that are beneficial to you. I went to a mastermind with Aaron and Muchaszteggi last fall, and he opened it with a, like a quote. I don't know if he came up with it or or he got it from somewhere. But it was basically like real estate is not the thing. Real estate is the thing to get you to the thing. And that's something that I've really sort of been pondering for most of the last year, because I don't know about Dan, but I'm quite the same as you like, I don't really have this desire to keep buying properties and to get more calls from property managers about how tenants been shoving tampons on the toilet, right? Or like be going then going through the loan process again, to have them like question all of my finances. I'm like, I've been doing this longer than you have loan officer. I've literally bought and sold hundreds of properties. Why are you stressed out about this, like, $30 difference in the debt to income ratio, like you're being ridiculous.

Mike DeHaan: [35:23] And after a while, just like, why? Like, you don't need to keep putting yourself through that if you don't want to, especially once you've sort

Grant Warrington: [35:30] of made that little nest egg. So that that's really good self recognition. And so I guess you say you're going away for real estate content. Like, what are you looking to go towards? I'm doing content on just things that inspire me. So the squatting, just for instance, I did a video on this. So Florida passed the anti squatting bill, which was amazing. I love living in Florida. I'm like, this is genius. Now come back to that. So New York, this woman gets arrested. She tried changing the locks on one of her tenants, right? Someone was in there squatting. I did a video on that. Go to my YouTube GrantWarrington. It'll blow your mind how stupid this is. But New York finally said, Okay, this is a bad idea. We need to pass anti squatting laws. Good for New York. But then guess what they did? They said, But you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna take these squatters, and we're gonna help relocate them. We're gonna give them a place to live. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Is that where we live today? There's no accountability, dude. Do you know what mean? It fires me up just talking to you guys about it. There is no accountability to say, You did something bad, and you should be punished about it. You know where they should help them live?

Grant Warrington: [36:39] Jail. That's where they should go. Right? They broke the law, yet we're gonna help them, and we're gonna coddle them. And now we're also gonna create a They're creating a task force. So guess what that means? More taxpayer dollars.

Dan Austin: [36:54] More taxpayer You're gonna pay

Grant Warrington: [36:55] for it. Right? The taxpayers will, living in New York City. A task force, bloated government. Right? And what they're gonna do now is they're gonna target homeowners of vacant properties, and they're gonna punish people for leaving their homes vacant for too long. That's wild.

Dan Austin: [37:11] Does that make So

Grant Warrington: [37:13] we're gonna battle squatters by now going after the homeowners because who's got the money? The homeowner. Right? So it blows my mind, stuff like that. You know what happens in Florida? DeSantis passed this bill. You go to the sheriff's office. You fill out a piece of paper. Sheriff goes with you to house. Sheriff kicks them out of house. Done. Nothing else. They didn't add any more jobs. Not jobs. This is bloated government in New York, but it's that simple. And it can be that simple. It's things like that that get me excited and go, like, how come Florida is making these common sense laws and New York is doing stupid shit like that? So it just blows my mind.

Mike DeHaan: [37:52] Yeah. It's unfortunate to see things going in that direction. Seattle did that a number of years ago where basically they had this new law where if you had a property in the city of Seattle that was vacant for a certain period of time, these city got the right to place somebody in your property for temporary housing. And their whole thing was like, we will pay you market rent, wherever it is, but they got to choose who it was. So you could have like, say, a duplex, gay, and one side's a family, the other side's empty for whatever reason. And they go cool, here's a method, we're gonna stick in this house next to this nice family that's renting the other side, you know, and like, there's all these ridiculous things that that could happen. I actually don't know what ultimately became of x. They're pushing for that very, very aggressively. Do know if that ever went through? Dan Ever came to fruition?

Dan Austin: [38:40] I don't know. A lot of that stuff is getting overturned or getting put back. They're starting to realize, like, oh, that was a bad idea. Like, you know, they had, like, a five year run, especially, like, like, the 2020 to, like, 2023 time frame. Every city like that was passing stupid stuff or, like, the decriminalization of drugs and, oh, that was a bad that was a bad idea. We better kind of flip that one back over. And you know what

Grant Warrington: [39:01] I would ask in that situation too? Are they following fair housing by placing those tenants?

Mike DeHaan: [39:05] No. Course Right? It's like reverse discrimination. You have the people that are out there trying to make ends meet that can't afford it, but they're not getting the same services. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Grant Warrington: [39:16] Exactly. So they're violating fair housing.

Dan Austin: [39:18] So true.

Grant Warrington: [39:18] It's just crazy. And that's what bothers me too, is there's no one out there for landlords. In Michigan, they're trying to pass a law that expunges evictions. So after two years, you can get evictions off your records. How do landlords protect themselves from these people? You know what I mean? There's awesome tenants out there. We have great tenants and great tenant relationships. Good tenants don't hate landlords, and good landlords don't hate tenants. It's a good relationship, right? But these government agencies try to get involved, and again, they don't want that accountability. No one's there saying, oh, you got evicted four times. You know what? You're the problem, not the landlord. But they say, well, let's pass these laws so we can hide your evictions and we can these stupid landlords will just have to take you anyway. That's fair housing. It's really it's not.

Mike DeHaan: [40:08] Just never ending. Who knows what direction it's gonna go. Awesome. I'll subscribe to the channel though. I'm excited to sort of hear the direction you go with those sort of things. Cool. Alright. So we're getting into the end of the show here. Grant, I really appreciate the candor and the conversation. It's been a really good one so far. So we ask the same three questions of every single person that comes on the show. The first one, which is always the group favorite, is what is your craziest real estate investing story? It's gonna be a big win, big loss, a crazy tenant, whatever you got.

Grant Warrington: [40:37] Oh, man. We've dealt with all kinds of crazy tenants, and I self manage. And so it's it's been really crazy, but I'll leave those out. I would say the biggest the biggest one for us, we got sewers scoped, sewers camera in our apartment building before we bought it. Everything looked okay. What happened? Then after that so the owner told us, hey, listen. I have to snake this unit every so often, know, every month or so. And I'm like, Oh, okay, no big deal. So lesson number one, if any owner ever tells you they have to snake a unit repeatedly, that's wrong. No property gets built to snake repeatedly. So you have to go, The line is broke. Okay, there is a problem. So what happened, we bring plumbers in. After we bought it, that unit kept backing up, and we couldn't catch the problem. We'd call a plumber, they'd come in and snake it, and they'd say, We don't see anything. We can't fix anything. We don't see anything. The line's clear. Long story short, found a plumber after thousands and thousands of dollars spent on this, found a plumber who could figure it out. He ran all the water in the building. There was bellies in the pipe, which is okay, and it's normal, but dirty water would sit in it. So this guy ran all the water, so clean water now flushed all the dirty water out, and clean water was sitting in the belly. So when he brought his snake through his camera, he could see the bottom of the pipe, and the bottom of the pipe was a zipper in it. That means the cast iron was jagged, cut.

Grant Warrington: [42:02] The bottom had fallen out. The toilet paper would come through, get stuck, all the water would back up, it would back up into the 10 inches unit, and then whoosh, it would release. And by the time the next day the camera came out, it was gone. So he found it. It cost us total spent on all plumbing like $27,000 Wow. That's a lot. Because we had another plumber saying this over here is the problem. Nope. Now this, we can try this over here. He couldn't find it. So that was a a good lesson learned, and I like to tell people that story because if they're ever coming, you know, going through that, that's probably what's going on, and that could save you a lot of time and money. Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [42:40] That's good. We had a similar situation where we were in one of our duplexes, like, chasing a problem, and, like, we could not figure out what it was. It wasn't that extreme. What it turned out to be is that the tenant upstairs was dumping their oil down the drain, but somehow it was going and blocking the unit next door. So we kept getting floods in one unit, but we couldn't I mean, we were like, what is happening here? It was like, the same thing. Guys sneaking in. They're like, there's nothing wrong here because they're looking down the one unit. But Yeah. The unit that was dumping the oil, it was not their unit backing up. It was the opposite. So it was just such a pain in the ass, and you you're right. You spend thousands of dollars trying to figure these things out.

Grant Warrington: [43:16] Yeah. I was a property manager too. I managed over 800 units. I was a director of operations for a property management company, over 100 rehabs. And we had this unit, it was an eight unit, and directly in the center, in the closet, water was leaking. And there was no water above it. There was no pipes above it. It was like, Where is this water coming from? So finally I told the guy, It's gotta be this. Look on the outside of the building for any kind of pipe coming out. And there was. There was a vent sticking out, and it wasn't caulked around it. Here's what happened. Water was hitting that. It was running in 25 feet on top of the pipe, and then it would drip into the closet. Water just will drive you crazy. And yeah, that was on luckily we figured that out.

Mike DeHaan: [44:07] Yeah. It's crazy, the little things that you wouldn't even expect. Right? And like, that's also too why it's important to get like, multiple opinions from people. Like, if you know something's wrong, and you get a plumber or contract, he's like, No, I don't I don't know. It's just like, it was a crazy thing that happened. Well, it happened for a reason. If it happened once, it's probably gonna happen again, and it probably happened before you bought the property, but the sellers didn't tell you about it.

Grant Warrington: [44:30] Yep. And you have to understand, it's like I tell people, what do they call a doctor that graduates last in his class? Right? A doctor. It's the same thing with a plumber, man. Like, I've had arguments with plumbers and been like, dude, listen, I know what I'm talking about. I know you're a plumber, but you're wrong. Okay? You know how I know? I've done this 15 times. Right? I've also had to tell plumbers who are putting shark bites on. Oh, yeah. Hey, bro. I'm paying you to solder these pipes. Right? I'm not paying you to put shark bites on. Oh, well, you know, it was easier and whatever. I'm like, yeah, no. My handyman can do that. You need to do it the right way. Okay? So going forward, okay, going forward, I will do that from now on. So you can't be afraid to stick up for yourself. And especially do Google search, watch YouTube, educate yourself on it, and then make sure you ask questions, man, because they are just human beings.

Mike DeHaan: [45:23] That's definitely true. And I think as you get older, you realize exactly that. Everyone's just human beings. Everyone just wants to go home and Yeah. You know, hang out with their family and and do whatever, but they're there because

Grant Warrington: [45:33] that's their jobs. And here I know we're on this a while, but I always used to say when I would tell the guys that worked for me, he with the most confidence wins. So I would tell him, when you call the building department, be confident. Tell them, You have to have confidence, or they're gonna act like they're more confident, they're gonna win, So it's the same thing with a plumber. He's gonna tell you, Oh, no, no. I'm right. Here's why I'm right, whatever. That confidence scares people, right? Like, Oh, oh, okay. Guess you gotta go, No. Listen. And you gotta push back sometimes and say, I don't agree. I think this is right, or I think that. You know what I mean? He with the most confidence wins. Even when you're bullshitting. Even more so when you're bullshitting.

Dan Austin: [46:13] Even more so. Absolutely. Yeah. Cool.

Mike DeHaan: [46:16] All right, so next question, Grant. What is the number one tip you would give to a real estate investor looking to take their business to the next level?

Grant Warrington: [46:24] So the next level, I would level up, I would say, level up, always level up. Get started where you can, always level up. Even when you get into the five to 20 units, start looking at those 70 units, right? Whatever you gotta do, level up. There's power in ownership. Syndications are cool. You've heard a lot about that, but there's a lot of issues now with syndications, commercial loans. The other thing, one more tip I like to tell people is your property taxes are gonna go up the year after purchase. You have to remember that no matter what you're and where you're buying. Don't know everyone's state, but more than likely, 99% of the time, don't run your numbers on past performance. Your property taxes could double, and it could kill the deal. So keep that in mind. Totally. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [47:09] As everyone's learned over the last year, they not can double, they will double because Yep. Yeah. Significantly. Yeah. I have a I have a triplex that literally the property taxes are one and a half times what they I'm sorry. Two and a half times what they were when I bought the property in 2019. When I bought it, it was like 3,000. Now it's like 8,000 a year.

Dan Austin: [47:31] It's crazy.

Grant Warrington: [47:31] Yeah. And that's the problem. People don't even in buying their residential house, their realtor doesn't tell them that, and they buy the house. Everything's great. And then January comes, property gets reassessed, taxes uncapped, And their escrow their escrow is short, and now their payment's going up $800 a month. And when you get into apartment buildings, that number can be very significant. If someone's owned that property for thirty years, that property has not uncapped, and it will uncap when you buy it, and then it'll recap, and then just grow up incrementally, but it will adjust.

Dan Austin: [48:06] Yeah. That's a very good tip.

Mike DeHaan: [48:07] Yeah, awesome. All right, Grant, last question. Where can people find you, follow you, and reach out

Grant Warrington: [48:11] to you? You can follow me on Instagram if you wanna direct message me. Anybody's got any questions, I can't respond back with a book, but I will help you where I can. You can DM me there. But YouTube is where I suggest to really follow me there. Right now I got like 4,000 subscribers there, so we're building that up. The goal is to hit 100,000. So interested to see how quick we'll do that, but that's where more of me, and that's what I love about YouTube, I'm able to talk like this with you guys. Don't need to break it down into a thirty second clip, right? I can go in-depth on what I feel, and I always tell people, Hey, I'm an expert on my own opinion, You know?

Mike DeHaan: [48:51] I like it. I love that. Awesome. Well, Grant, thanks so much for being on the show, man. We really, really appreciate it. You guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode today. Go and shoot Grant a follow on YouTube. Check him out on Instagram. He's posting a lot of great stuff. And don't be afraid to reach out and tell him that you enjoyed the show and ask him any questions you have about small multifamily. Remember, people come onto these shows because they want you to engage with them. We're not just like all sitting in a vacuum. Everyone that's involved in these kind of things is very, very friendly. And if they didn't want you to reach out and communicate, then they would just sit at their home and not post on the internet. So don't be shy. Reach out to grant say what's up. Let him know you heard us on this show. And maybe he you guys could do a deal together or something. You never know. So awesome. Thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to guys next week.

Dan Austin: [49:33] Thanks Grant. Thanks.