Skipping The Small Stuff And Buying 500 Doors By Age 31 With Michael Wagman

Michael Wagman: [0:00] Wish I knew that sooner because I thought I had to do it all myself. I probably could have been in deals sooner than that fifteen month period had I known I didn't have to do it all on my own. Right. Well regretted at all because now we're in a position where we get to control the deal. Now if you're the person who gets the deal under contract and control it, then, you know, you can command the lion's share of anything, but the deal can't happen without the money.

Speaker 2: [0:22] To the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:45] On this episode of the Collect and Keys real estate investing podcast, we have Michael Wagman, who is a young investor who has built a $70,000,000 portfolio consisting of 500 units at the age of 31, like dank. You know, usually, I'm like the youngest guy, but this guy's crushed as a young age. And he's pretty interesting because he actually like tried a lot of the smaller scale stuff first, had to do a wholesale, tried to do a flips, and I actually didn't really have a lot of success with it. And then just decided to screw it, I'm gonna go bigger. And then over the course of a couple years, he's built a really impressive portfolio. In this episode, he goes into all sorts of details about how he built his team, how he finds deals, kind of how he structured his whole business. And if you are someone that wants to go big with what you're doing, and you want to, like, change chase these larger assets like he has, there is definitely a lot of good information for you in the show today. So please enjoy it. And don't be afraid to reach out to Michael if you have any other questions or comments or you wanna engage them at all. Seriously, he's super nice guy. Anyways, if you wanna start learning how to find off market deals, you can go to clickandkeyspodcast.com/free and check out Dan and I's free five step guide and start turning off market leads. That'll get you started right away. You can use it to chase residential stuff like Dan and I do or start chasing large stuff like Michael Wagman does. So anyways, guys, go get that free guide at collectingkeyspodcast.com/free. Aside from that, please share this with anyone who might find it interesting.

Mike DeHaan: [2:10] Anybody who wants to get into real estate, anyone who wants to buy assets, or even dislikes hearing interesting stories from interesting people. This episode has a little bit of something for everybody. So thanks so much everybody, and enjoy the show with Michael Wagman. We have Michael Wagman, who is a previous flipper, now big time investor with 500 units and $70,000,000 worth of real estate in his portfolio at only the age of 31. So, Michael, well done.

Dan Austin: [2:36] Young and yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [2:37] Young and welcome to the show. I know you're younger than than both of us, which sucks because I feel like I'm usually the young guy. But I just turned I just turned 32 like last week, so I'm older than mid thirties halfway over. Yeah, right. Yeah. So awesome, man. Like, that's that's pretty impressive growth. So I guess what's your what's your story? And I was actually be put a lot together.

Michael Wagman: [2:56] Thanks for having me. Guess. Do you want to hear about before flipping or starting from there?

Dan Austin: [3:02] I do because I feel like it's gonna be super intriguing.

Mike DeHaan: [3:04] I want to hear about the whole thing, man. Well, yeah, I mean, show up with gauges and tattoos. I absolutely wanna hear about what what it was like before you got into the business.

Dan Austin: [3:13] Is that insane clown posse in your background? I can't see is like a clown or something?

Michael Wagman: [3:17] Einstein bag barrel. Okay, I can't see it.

Dan Austin: [3:20] It's like a little blurry. There you go. Nice, dude. Hell, yeah.

Michael Wagman: [3:23] So I grew up in California. I went to school out there. And when I graduated college, I mistakenly just thought that there would be jobs waiting for me. You know, it would be

Dan Austin: [3:34] that simple. Me too.

Michael Wagman: [3:36] Yeah, my degree was in global studies, international relations. And I was like, this will be great, you know, degree, I felt like it wasn't worth the piece of paper it was written on. But anyways, I actually went back to LA. And I was looking for jobs for probably six or eight months and couldn't find anything and just decided to jump ship. And I moved out of the country and I lived in Israel for three years. And when I was over there, because it's like high-tech capital of the world, there's more startups per capita than anywhere else. If you can speak English, and you can sell over the telephone, you're basically infinitely employable. So I pretty quickly found myself working in high-tech sales for like SaaS companies and making really good money for 22 year old. I did that for about three years. And there's kind of this cycle there where, know, a lot of startups come and go. And what a lot of people do is you work at one for a year, maybe the product doesn't work so well anymore. And you jump to another one, increase your salary little by little. And I did that for about three years and had a little pile of money saved up. And I had a decision, I could either jump to another company and do this all over again. Or I could move back to The US and try and do something with the money I saved up.

Michael Wagman: [4:45] And while I was in Israel, my mom had moved to Florida like a lot of older people do. And in Florida, you can buy a house for less than $100 in California. I can't even buy a room for that much. So basically, ended up moving to Florida, and I bought my first house. I was watching too much HGTV at the time, and I thought I could flip better than these guys. I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning.

Mike DeHaan: [5:11] Yeah. So what age were you at about this time? 25? Just three years after what twenty twenty five? Okay. Yeah. So you buy your first house and that was a primary residence? Like, did

Michael Wagman: [5:20] you just buy? Two bedroom one, one bathroom house in Daytona Beach, Florida cost $66,000. I paid all cash for it. All of my own cash. I had never heard of other people's money at this point. Right. And I just knew I wanted to flip a house. So that's exactly what I did. Okay.

Dan Austin: [5:38] So did you actually move to Daytona Beach?

Michael Wagman: [5:41] A little bit south of there. But yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Great little town.

Dan Austin: [5:45] Okay. Good party. Good party city.

Mike DeHaan: [5:50] All all I know is Florida has been super mixed every time I've been there. It's either like retirees or it's like real questionable people or it's party town

Michael Wagman: [5:58] and there doesn't really seem to be a whole lot in between. Yeah. No, that's that's exactly what driving on the roads in Florida is like, they're either

Mike DeHaan: [6:04] going in the in the

Michael Wagman: [6:05] 60 or they're going 90 and they're joking. So That's great.

Mike DeHaan: [6:09] Yeah. Yeah. So okay. So how'd you find that first deal? So I saw the market?

Michael Wagman: [6:13] It was on market. Yeah. Because I had never heard of wholesalers. Had never heard of I had never heard of bigger pockets. I literally was just watching HGTV. I was 25. And I thought, well, I might as well get my real estate license since I don't, you know, know anything about real estate. That's how it'll work. And I just became a realtor and found the house and bought it. Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [6:35] So how how'd you know it was a good deal? I didn't. I didn't. Love it. You're like, I could sell that

Michael Wagman: [6:41] one for more. Was everything about my early success was just sheer stubborn ignorance and willful, you know, desire to succeed. I bought the house. I knew it was rundown. I knew it piece of crap. I knew kind of how comps worked, but I'm sure that my estimation of what the ARV would be was totally off. And all said and done, I put about $20 into the renovations. I was into it for about 90. I think I sold it for 117. And I walked away with $13 profit and six months worth of work. And I did all the work with myself in one handyman too.

Mike DeHaan: [7:17] Oh, yeah, $2 a month. I mean, you know, that that yeah, that that's that's not the worst though. So I my very first property I flipped it was kind of a similar situation, but I had a money partner. And I spent five months and I made $4.5. Yeah. But you know, thing is though, at least you made money. And it's this is like the number one, I guess, tip that a lot of people give that come on this show to new investors is to just jump in. That's exactly what you did, you know, and that's exactly what I did. That's what Dan did with his first investment. Dan's first investment property before I even got into real estate was this like college property that he bought. And he actually let me live there because I just moved back to this area. While he like DIY adding a basement with all these bedrooms and stuff to this thing had, you know, kinda had an idea what you were doing. Can you

Dan Austin: [8:06] believe that? Looking back, I mean, not YouTube University, everybody says YouTube, but you're right. It's like, just jump in and do it, and that's how we all get started, and that's how the most successful people get started, because what happens is you, a lot of folks might say, and I've ran into these people, they're gone, I only made $13, I just gave up, that wasn't worth my time. It's like, that was a, you just said you got a college degree that wasn't worth the paper that's on it. You got paid $13 to get a college degree at flipping houses. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [8:32] Yeah. What's even worse than that guy who makes $13 size on worth his time is the guy we see this a lot with new investors, especially last year, they're like, Oh, I don't want to buy anything if I'm not gonna make at least 35,000 or I'm not gonna, you you know, make, a 25% ROI. It's like, you haven't even done any job. You have no no right to be making such bold claims or or having a a criteria like that.

Michael Wagman: [8:54] Well, the second house I did, I was motivated after the first one, so I did exactly the same thing again. It took another six months and I made $30 on the second one. So Oh, there you go.

Mike DeHaan: [9:04] Total $3 in

Michael Wagman: [9:04] a year is kind of, you know, you could work a regular job or you could do that, but getting paid every six months wasn't working for me. Right? So that's when I had to start learning about other people's money and listening to bigger pockets and sort of getting an actual education on it. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [9:20] Perfect. So you started, you know, that gave you the little bit of the bug a little bit, you decided you're gonna start learning. So I guess what were the action steps that you took? Because I mean, obviously, at this point, we're still really, really far away from your current status of 500 units and $70,000,000 portfolio. Right?

Michael Wagman: [9:35] So I mean, the action steps at that point was listening religiously to the podcast. You know, I mean, everywhere I drove all day long, listening to all the old episodes, really taking it upon myself to get an education and just Uh-huh. You know, I stuck with it. I ended up moving all across Central Florida. So I was in Tampa Bay and I was in Orlando. But the next smartest thing that I did after flipping for a while is I actually house hacked. So I bought a four unit building and I lived in one of the units. And that was probably the greatest decision I ever made to steer me down this path. Awesome.

Dan Austin: [10:06] That was kinda your first foray into understanding kinda the idea of passive income I'm assuming.

Michael Wagman: [10:11] Yes. It was. Because I was living for free and then I ended up buying another two duplexes and renting those out long term. So I had a little eight unit portfolio going in the Tampa Bay area. So was

Dan Austin: [10:23] that directly because you started educating yourself, you probably listen to bigger pockets, you probably learned house hacking, is that kind of where that started? Was that like that pivotal point in your life?

Michael Wagman: [10:30] So I was making enough money from the flips that I was just just completely obsessed with real estate. So I tried to do everything I was acting as a realtor for all my own deals. I tried being a realtor for other people. That sucked. I tried wholesaling. I mentioned that to you guys that sucked. I moved out as a four unit building, and I did Airbnb with that unit too. So I was just like, let's try every single avenue of residential real estate investing that we can. And then eventually, I started learning about multifamily and that really got us to where we are now.

Mike DeHaan: [11:02] Yeah. Okay. So you went through the whole process of, you know, you said, wholesale, all of it sucked. Like, what part did you not like? Was it the sales process? Was it just dealing with like, weird people? Was it like the how expensive it was? Like a lot of people don't like the shady nature of wholesaling where you're like, you know, assigning these deals for for profit and it's not always necessarily clear to the sellers. Like what was your biggest issue?

Michael Wagman: [11:25] Should clarify, I never had any success at wholesaling. I definitely do it for like a couple months.

Mike DeHaan: [11:32] Yeah.

Michael Wagman: [11:32] And definitely an element of okay, you know, the weird people was a big deterrent for me. And I don't know, I think I just had a bigger vision than going into some real redneck backyards. Don't know. I thought it was more glamorous at the time. It deterred me.

Mike DeHaan: [11:51] No way, man. It is it is like the I'm in the trenches.

Dan Austin: [11:55] Gotta be in the trenches.

Mike DeHaan: [11:56] It is like the frontline trenches of real estate investment, man. The stuff that we've put up with on like a regular basis is outrageous. I mean, even even like with people that are somewhat put together, you know, like we're currently dealing with this the situation right now where we had, like, a off market deal that we bought. And now we're like, it was like a seller finance deal. And now we're having to go head to head with, like, all these, like, legal things with the seller because they don't want us to sorry, that the holder of the notes, they don't want to sell the property. And so it turned into like a whole freaking nightmare. Right? Or like we wholesale the deal last week, or a buyer. This was on them. This is their fault. They did not swap the locks the day the deal closed, and they showed up on money to start working and the seller's son had moved in.

Dan Austin: [12:41] Sellers do that in off market. They show back up. Yeah, it's honestly the truth. You got to board this shit up.

Michael Wagman: [12:47] Well, I know what state that was in. But you know, squatter laws can be really rough depending where you are.

Mike DeHaan: [12:52] Yeah, we're in Washington, dude. It's about as rough as it gets up here

Dan Austin: [12:56] as bad as it gets besides California, maybe.

Mike DeHaan: [12:58] Yeah, cool. So yeah, so you kind of did your your licks. Then by the time you got into multifamily, I guess, what's your portfolio look like at that point? Were you financially free? Because like multifamily is tough, it takes a long time to start getting a paycheck from that.

Michael Wagman: [13:13] I moved to Arizona in 2020. Obviously, pandemic happened. It was crazy year for a lot of people. I'd already kind of started educating myself, getting the bug about multifamily by that point, but everyone was freaking out about their jobs. And I was just sitting back collecting checks for my rentals. I was like, okay, this is the answer. I need to dedicate some time, figure out how I'm gonna do this. And then the market started appreciating like crazy. I wish I kinda wish I hang on to my properties a little bit longer, but I ended up selling all eight units and walking away with a decent amount of cash and I used that as my seed money to get to where I am now.

Dan Austin: [13:47] When you say seed money, was that you were actually putting things under contract or just to start the actual business of multifamily? Earnest money. Yeah, because Gotcha.

Michael Wagman: [13:56] You gotta have earnest. That's right. Gotta have earnest money. And I did a mentorship, I paid for it. You know, I I'm grateful for that because I met my business partner through it. And, you know, here we are now two years later, but I think all said and done, from the time I started learning to about multifamily to actually closing on the first deal was probably fifteen months later. So it was That's all. That's a long lead time. Yeah. It was May of Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [14:23] I mean, it's a long time. But I mean, seems about on par 21. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Okay. Do you wanna share the mentorship that you used? Yeah, it was our mentor.

Michael Wagman: [14:32] They're kind of the biggest, the oldest, they've been around the longest, all the rod cleaves of the world. They're all like Dave Windell disciples. So I can say good things and bad things about it. But at the end of the day, what I'm the kind of person where if I pay tens of thousands of dollars for a mentorship, I was never gonna let myself fail. There are tons of people who do mentorships who, you know, pay the money and they never even get out of the LOI phase. That was just never gonna be.

Dan Austin: [14:57] I made it work. Take some capacity too.

Mike DeHaan: [15:00] And that that that's every group too. I mean, you know, even looking at like GoBundance. Right? There's so many people that come in there and they, you know, pay their $10 for the year and they don't actually network with people. They don't go to any of the micro tribes, they don't do anything with their pod, they don't go to any events, and then lo and behold, they're surprised when they don't get anything out of it.

Dan Austin: [15:18] Exactly. They they get mad about they get mad the program wasn't good enough. There are definitely some fly by night programs that aren't worth your money, but there's quite a few out there that if you put your time and effort into it, you will get out of what you put into it.

Mike DeHaan: [15:30] Yeah, and it's important you find ones that are doing stuff you want to do as well. So like you want to do multifamily, so you found a group for that, you know, people that want to like find off market real estate or like sort of real estate business. That's what Dan and I's into investor program is about. Right? It's about setting up marketing systems doing all that sort of stuff. But if someone came to Dan and me

Dan Austin: [15:46] and was like, Hey, I

Mike DeHaan: [15:46] want to learn how to be a mobile home park investor. Like, Yeah, we're not those guys that are gonna do that. We're not even pretend to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Dan Austin: [15:55] So I wanna go back real quick to this first deal that took you fifteen months. What did you do? So you you obviously joined a mentorship program. What did you do for fifteen months until you got that first deal under contract?

Michael Wagman: [16:06] Well, it was a process. So the interesting thing about my mentorship is that when you're in it, they're telling you, you can do everything. You can, you know, go talk to the brokers, underwrite all the deals, source all the capital, do all the asset management, arrange all the finance, like you can do it all 100% by yourself. And the truth is that almost no multifamily deals work like that. In fact, if you're completely green, you cannot just get into a multifamily deal unless you're paying cash. Because in order to get the loan in the first place, you have to meet liquidity, net worth, and experience requirements. So it's really a team sport. And I had a couple things going for me. One is that I had the the earnest money to be able to put down, And I had some capital connections, and I had some sponsor connections. And then when I met my business partner, the things that he had was area knowledge, underwriting expertise, and broker connections. So we kind of came together and really complemented each other in that way. Because before that I was flying around, you know, I was flying to Tennessee and South Carolina and Georgia and all these different places looking at deals. But I had no real area knowledge or expertise or anything like that in any of those markets. And with multifamily, it's so specific, you need to understand the sub markets so well and in order to get the broker relations, you really have to milk that for a while and know all the brokers in a given market and get them to you know, know, like and trust you and believe in your ability to close. So he had all that and you know, it just came together synergistically.

Michael Wagman: [17:37] Perfect.

Dan Austin: [17:38] So you say you had capital connections, I'm assuming that means you knew people with the money that could you could raise money quickly? Exactly. And then as far as sponsor go, can you explain what a sponsor is for these types of deals?

Michael Wagman: [17:50] So a sponsor is basically somebody with enough experience schedule of real estate and meets all the requirements of the loan, which typically for multifamily loans or commercial loans means you have to have a net worth equal to the value of the loan. In the case of our first loan, I think that was about 3,000,000. And there's also typically liquidity requirements as well, which can be different. So in order for you to be able to get the loan in the first place, somebody needs to have your back who's been in this industry already. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [18:21] So that's interesting. Yeah. So you truly is a team sport. Yeah. You brought in the broker connections, you brought in the capital, you brought in the sponsor, which is really, it's great to have the experience on your team, but also you just have to have it from a lender, from a lending perspective.

Michael Wagman: [18:35] Right. We were very lucky in the sense that the guy who actually got us the loan was willing to sponsor us and so that's the person I knew. Oh. Oh, that's So it really worked hand in hand. And to this day, he's still on like 90% of our deals, like Nice. He's our guy.

Dan Austin: [18:50] Yeah. You give him a position, I'm assuming, a general partner stake in the equity?

Michael Wagman: [18:54] Yeah, well, it's it's a really sweet gig if you're in a position to be able to sponsor loans, but you're also taking a huge risk because typically a sponsor will ask for somewhere between like 20 to 40% of the general partnership. In our case, it was 30 for the first deal, you know, and they don't really have to do a whole lot, but you can't do the deal without them. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [19:14] Right. Then the deal goes south. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [19:16] Right.

Dan Austin: [19:16] That lender's knocking on their door. Exactly.

Michael Wagman: [19:19] Right. So there is there is quite a bit of risk involved. If you don't trust the people. Yeah. If the people who are so green and you don't trust them to get the job done, so he took a risk off us. Like, I think it paid off well

Dan Austin: [19:29] for him. Right? You're still here.

Mike DeHaan: [19:31] Yeah. What all it all just goes back to that triangle that you need for every real estate deal. Right? You need the money. You need the knowledge, you need the hustle, right? And everyone that can, you know, think provide one of those things, you can get into a deal thing, provide more of those things, you obviously have a larger piece of the deal. So are all those connections you made were all those through that group? Or did like how many of those did you establish beforehand?

Michael Wagman: [19:51] What do you mean? Like the the business partners or the financial connections?

Mike DeHaan: [19:55] Just like everybody. Like, I mean, that's a pretty large sort of pot of people to have.

Michael Wagman: [20:00] That is a true advantage of joining a mentorship is that it's not really about the education. It's about the network. Met some amazing people through it, the sponsor I met through the network, the business partner I met through the network, a lot of our current partners on different deals we've met through the network.

Mike DeHaan: [20:19] Yeah, absolutely. And I think that can't be overstated enough as well. I mean, you know, Dan and I, the first wholesaling group that we were a part of, I mean, we've done flips with people in there, like we do loans to people in there, like some of I would just couple of them, I would call some of my best friends, even though I've only met them in person a couple of times. I've just connected with them on enough different things. And, you know, we're just like minded enough that, you know, we get on super, super well. But no, that that's super cool. So then, you know, you've built, if you made your first purchase in May 2021, you've bought quite a few in a relatively short period of time. Like what's your goal with all these properties? Are you trying to like, stabilize them and sell them? Are you looking to keep these long term?

Michael Wagman: [21:01] Four of our seven deals are traditional value add syndications. Those always have pretty much a five year exit strategy, but anything can change depending on the markets. You know, if we get really good interest rates again in two years, maybe we'll do refi out in three years and, you know, give all the investors their money back. You can you can kind of change it. Typically, build it on a five year exit model. But then we also have two development deals like ground up development, one commercial redevelopment that we're doing right now too. And so those are all built on longer timescales.

Mike DeHaan: [21:32] Okay. So just for somebody who's listening that might not know what that means, can you explain like a value add syndication is?

Michael Wagman: [21:39] Absolutely. So we are looking for properties typically about a 100 units or more that are, let's say, a c property in a b area. We maybe the owner hasn't raised rents in the last couple years. Typically, wanna find it where market rent is, let's say, you know, 900 for a two bedroom, but all the two bedrooms there are still at 700. In that instance, you could just do a play of getting the rents up to market, but you could also do a renovation play. So we go in and we have a business plan because all of commercial real estate is based on cap rate and NOI valuation model. So basically, what you can do is either lower your expenses or increase your income and you directly impact the value of the building. So basically, we go in, we have a five year business plan, we say, we need 5,000,000 to purchase this property, we need another 2,000,000 for the renovations. We're gonna go out and raise $7,000,000 over the course of five years. We're gonna get 50 percent of the units renovated, get them up to this rent, we're gonna do all these improvements to the exterior. During that time, we pay the investors a cash flow return from the rents. And then at the end, they get all their investment back plus the appreciation. Perfect. It sounds pretty simple. Yeah.

Michael Wagman: [22:54] I know.

Mike DeHaan: [22:55] It sounds real simple. Yeah. And that is something that you hear a lot of, I would say, investors of larger assets say is that, you know, it's really if anything is actually easier than doing residential real estate just because the players are so much more sophisticated. And the process is, you know, I guess, a lot less emotional for everyone involved.

Michael Wagman: [23:14] Well, I I can tell you about the deal that made me start changing my mind in the first place about residential is the last flip I ever did. Yeah. It was probably the biggest flip I had ever done. I think I was into it for like, three fifty or something at the time, it felt really heavy. And after, you know, a renovation that took two months longer than it was supposed to, and then I get it on market and day one on market, I get a full price offer. And I'm ecstatic because I think I'm about to make a $100 profit on this. Like I can already see the dollar signs in my head. And sure enough, the realtor was an idiot. The buyer was an idiot. The realtor didn't condition their buyer as to what sort of things are normal or to be expected on an inspection report because this I mean, this house had been touched top to bottom. Every single thing in the house was new. But of course, the inspector comes back and says, oh, you don't have like a grounded outlet over here or whatever. You know, just stupid little things like that. Buyer freaks out, bails. And then over the course of the next, I think it was five months, I continue to just see all that profit slipping away. The asking price gets lower and lower and lower, you know. And I think instead of making a $100, I made like 35 on it. And I was just like, this sucks, you know, because somebody oh, that's what somebody else down the street sold their house as like for $50 less than what I thought I thought they should have sold it for. Guess what? Now my house is worth $50 less.

Dan Austin: [24:41] Oh, no, it's your it's your new comp. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [24:44] Yeah, man. Yeah, that that's tough. So, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And I've heard similar from other people. So but I mean, like, the number one thing that I think scares away people from doing multifamily stuff, and I mean, even us

Dan Austin: [24:56] at this point as well as

Mike DeHaan: [24:57] finding the deals. Yeah, right. So and that's number one thing everyone that listen to this will ask is, how do you find them?

Michael Wagman: [25:03] It's really hard right now. I can tell you, you know, so I said it took fifteen months to get the first deal, it took another six months to close the second one. But then once those doors were open, we closed like five deals in the first six months of this year. And it was just rapid fire. It was crazy. It was insanity. And then we haven't closed anything since July because the market started changing and, you know, cap rates were insane, interest rates got insane, we're just kind of sitting back right now waiting because I mean, I don't know a lot of people who are actively doing deals right now, it's a little bit crazy.

Dan Austin: [25:36] It's tough, yeah, it's tough out there. So I'm guessing, so you said once you did your first deal, the floodgates opened. Now are you using the same broker relationship in the same market or are you actually going to several different markets? How's that working?

Michael Wagman: [25:46] So we are in most for all our multifamily, we're in New Mexico and Texas.

Dan Austin: [25:51] So Okay. Albuquerque, Las Cruces, San Antonio, Dallas. Okay. So kinda generally the same market areas but once you I guess, I point to is once you like did a deal, it sounds like you proved it out and then you got experience and then you got respect as well and people are you probably got more shots more shots at goal as Mike would say.

Michael Wagman: [26:10] The first deal is the hardest and there is absolutely an element of it, you know, confidence building. Once you close the first deal, this is no longer something that you talk about doing, this is something that you actually do. And once brokers know that you've closed the deal, then they have confidence that you can close on theirs too. Right? Because there's a million people who are trying to be first time syndicators right now. I'm sure of

Dan Austin: [26:31] it. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [26:32] Yeah. I think that could be the same said the same across every kind of real estate business too. I mean, even wholesaling, like, the hardest deal that we ever did was our first wholesale transaction, which took us five months, like $25,000 in the hole, I made $7,500 on it. Like, I'll always remember, because I closed this guy via email, she was like a dentist, you know, and he didn't want to talk on the phone and want to text. I'm emailing him back and forth. And I remember say I text downs like, Dude, I think I got our first deal. He's like, No way. Like, I'd literally like how? Like, that's impossible. But then after that, like, literally a couple weeks later, we got three more. Right? And then all of a sudden, now have this rap sheet, you can go to other sellers or, know, you can go to even buyers and trying to dispose stuff. You can say, well, these are all the properties that we've done, maybe that much more credibility. So I guess for someone who was looking to get started, though, or, you know, let's say by the time this comes out, this this episode will probably come out in probably January. So we could be in a completely different market condition by then. Right? Who the hell knows? What would be the number one piece of advice you would give for somebody who's trying to find multifamily deals?

Michael Wagman: [27:35] So I would spend a lot of time getting good at one or two things. And it doesn't have to be, you know, broker relations, it could be broker relations, but it could be raising capital, or it could be, you know, just yeah, sourcing the deals, whichever one, just get really good at that one particular thing. Because if you can raise a bunch of capital and that's all you focus on, there will be people with deals who need that and are willing to give you a slice of it. I wish I knew that sooner because I thought I had to do it all myself. I probably could have been in deals sooner than that fifteen month period had I known I didn't have to do it all on my own. Right. Well regretted at all because now we're in a position where we get to control the deal. Now if you're the person who gets the deal under contract and control it, know, you can command the lion's share of anything, but the deal can't happen without the money either.

Dan Austin: [28:21] So Yeah. That's great advice because like, my mind naturally goes to like, okay, I need to find a deal, I need to figure out how to get a bunch of money, I need to figure out how to manage the asset. Need I I I I but you're saying like, no, just get good at one of those things. And then put it out there in the that you're going that you're good at that thing. And then other team members will come around you.

Michael Wagman: [28:41] Yeah, this network through a lot of things. You know, it's funny. Before I mentioned how my college degree wasn't worth a piece of paper it was written on. But now I end up going to a lot of conferences. And in college, I got really good at drinking and socializing. At the end of the show.

Dan Austin: [28:58] It's worth something.

Michael Wagman: [28:59] Yeah, paying dividends, right?

Mike DeHaan: [29:01] Yeah, you just network that out of yourself and good things will happen. Meet people. That is super valuable. One thing say about real estate and finance guys, they typically do they typically like to drink. They typically like to gamble. And they'll always have like some sort of recreational activity they have, you know, for some that's like golfing, something that's like mountaineering. There's always like a big mountaineering crew or something. Then this sort of line of business. I don't know why. But if you can hang like that goes a super long way.

Michael Wagman: [29:27] It does. And I mean, it's, it's been funny for me because you know, I'm like the 31 year old guy at the bar who's got like, maybe a bunch of like slightly less social, like older gentlemen behind me and I got them lined new shots and things like that.

Mike DeHaan: [29:41] So well, nice. There you go. That's funny. So now very cool. So I guess, know, with the market turning, what's sort of next for you here over the next little bit? Well, so before actually, you

Michael Wagman: [29:56] know, the name of my company is nimble capital group. And we definitely stay true to that name. Because even though multifamily is our bread and butter, we're doing a couple of different things. We have two ground up developments, one of which is actually 20 single family homes, which we plan on selling about 15 of them and keeping five for a little Airbnb village. We're also looking at partnering with some other we have some some people up in Michigan who are just absolutely crushing it with Airbnb's and lakefront properties, and we might be partnering with them. So we're doing a little bit of everything. We have a retail building that is a really interesting model. I'm just learning a lot now about how triple net leases work and and all commercial retail and doing lots of interesting things and just staying nimble, staying on our toes and always looking for multifamily deals. Are just not penciling the way they used to at the moment.

Mike DeHaan: [30:48] Yeah, that is definitely true. And that's true across all real estate. So awesome. Well, right on, Michael, you've done a lot of stuff in a very short period of time. I mean, it's super inspiring. And you know, know Dan and I we've we have a pretty decent residential portfolio, but we've talked about getting the multifamily for a while. It's definitely inspiring to look at what you've done over the past couple years. So yeah, so to wrap up here, we're gonna dive into our end of show questions. First, which is always a crowd favorite. What is your craziest real estate investing story? It's gonna be a crazy seller, this can be a crazy transaction, it can be a big win, whatever

Michael Wagman: [31:21] you got. Yeah, I mean, there was the time I was wholesaling in Florida. And I have quite a few actually, now that I think about it, but I definitely walked into a house that had an entire family and camping in tents in the backyard. That was an eye opening experience for me. When I bought the four unit building, the unit that I ended up moving into the person who was living in it was a hoarder. So dealing with a hoarder unit the first time was really interesting. Took a very long time to get the smell of cappy out of there. Yeah, walking multifamily units, you see some stuff. One unit was just like the guy was like a professional graffiti artist, but he graffiti the entire inside. And it was almost cool.

Mike DeHaan: [31:59] Oh my god.

Michael Wagman: [32:00] He could have filmed the music video in there, know, but you see drugs and see a lot of stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [32:05] Yeah, so that that order house you bought they leave anything? Mike?

Dan Austin: [32:09] Mike's like, Oh, did you eBay or anything?

Mike DeHaan: [32:11] Well, now every now and then you find stuff like we did one this year, order house and they left two sets of fully functional washers and dryers.

Dan Austin: [32:20] Oh, they did. We're gonna about that.

Mike DeHaan: [32:22] Yeah. Our guys went and scalped a

Dan Austin: [32:24] bunch of there's like snow blowers, power tools. Baseball bat with our sales guy's name burned into it. That was wild. Literally.

Mike DeHaan: [32:34] Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff. Yeah, our guys, they like text us to like, can we just like take this stuff? Like, yeah, go for it.

Dan Austin: [32:39] I don't want it.

Mike DeHaan: [32:40] We're just gonna throw it away.

Michael Wagman: [32:41] And money.

Mike DeHaan: [32:41] So like, yeah, selling out Facebook marketplace, you know, we have a friend down in Texas who he found a briefcase, a briefcase, a suitcase full of like, sex toys made out of Home Depot products.

Michael Wagman: [32:54] Want to reuse those? I don't know. No,

Dan Austin: [32:58] you don't. They were pretty close.

Michael Wagman: [33:00] I saw the picture.

Mike DeHaan: [33:01] So yeah, yeah, I'll text it to you afterwards. When you want see the picture, you can DM me on Instagram, and I'll I'll send it to you. But cool. So next question. What is one tip you would give to somebody who is looking to get started in real estate investing or who wants to take the real estate investment to the next level?

Michael Wagman: [33:16] The biggest tip is just never give up. Because, you know, there's so many ups and downs with real estate. But if you just don't stop doing it, you know, even when it seems, you know, really hard, I promise you in three years, you'll look back and be really grateful that you didn't stop. I love that advice. Mike and I are

Dan Austin: [33:35] always telling people like, when you look back, you're are it's unbelievable. As long as you're consistent, you showed up every day how far you can go. It's just crazy. Yeah,

Mike DeHaan: [33:44] we're all selling that to ourselves like literally right to this this interview. We were on a call and we really have a couple of dogs that we're trying to figure out though, you know, we have like 250,000 tied up into. And realistically, we're going to be stuck holding on these properties right now, we can't sell them. And it sucks because we're expecting to get that money back plus profit. But at the same time, we're like, you know, the long term game, just refinance, rent them out, even just making a little bit of money. Hopefully, sometime in the future, we'll be able to get a windfall from it. But at least it is protected in quality assets. That's what we bought them. And, you know, there is going to be some sort of shelter there, you know, at least versus inflation or absolutely,

Dan Austin: [34:22] yeah, and let it's better than a $250,000 loss.

Mike DeHaan: [34:25] Yeah, they'd spend a $250,000 loss. And yeah, yes, I mean, if it's a saves account, it's gonna be you

Michael Wagman: [34:30] can have 250,000. Thankfully, I never lost money up till this point, but I had to I came really close a couple of times and you go you get faced with that reality and you're like, oh, shit, if I lose money on this, you know, you get should I stop? Never. Don't stop. Even if you lose 250,000, you'll make it back.

Dan Austin: [34:46] Show up every day, be consistent and continue to learn too. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [34:51] So alright, so wrap up, where can people fall along with what you're doing and potentially reach out to them if you'd to do so?

Michael Wagman: [34:58] So I'm actually just now back on social media for the first time in, five years. I don't like social media, but for business purposes, marketing purposes, it is a necessary evil. So you can find me on there. Instagram is nipple capital group. Our website nimble capital group dot com. I just made a tick tock. It's Michael underscore ncg. Very active on LinkedIn. You can just look up my name. Facebook, you can look up my name.

Mike DeHaan: [35:25] I've never even used my Tiktoks. My VAs have because they're trying to push people towards my Instagram. It's probably why I don't have any followers. Also to the problem I have with TikTok is because when you when you started up, especially it's like, I'm like a 30 year old male, you know, as you're white, you're a hehim, you're doing whatever. Right?

Michael Wagman: [35:42] Oh, yeah. It's a Chinese fireworks.

Dan Austin: [35:45] It is. They want everything.

Mike DeHaan: [35:46] And I put all that in. And then the first thing that shows, the only thing it ever shows is girls shaking their asses. The algorithm's so good. It's getting deep into your life

Dan Austin: [35:54] cortex and saying, know this is what

Michael Wagman: [35:56] you want. I

Mike DeHaan: [35:57] don't like need that every day on social media. It's not good for my marriage, it's not good for my

Michael Wagman: [36:02] mental health. Problem problem is that the algorithm is really good. So at first, you're a guy, it will start showing you, you know, thought clips and just, you know, sexy girls everywhere. But if you actually learn your interest, then it gets scary good and it starts recommending really good videos like of things you're actually interested in, and then you get lost in it and it's horrible. I don't

Mike DeHaan: [36:22] like that great advice. Yeah. So, I'm hearing is it'll go from just being like a diversity of women to being women that are only my type, shaving and shaking their asses, so I definitely don't even wanna go there.

Dan Austin: [36:33] Your look look likes of your wife and you're like, what the hell? Are you are medicine? Aren't you?

Mike DeHaan: [36:38] Yeah. Right. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Michael. So awesome to hear what you've done. It's a short period of time. If you guys enjoyed this show and you want to hear more, please go and subscribe to this podcast, or if you listen to your podcast, and go ahead and share it with someone who also wants to buy $70,000,000 worth of real estate and 500 units in two years, just like Michael has, because that is quite an impressive feat. Besides that, guys, go ahead and leave us a five star review. And you can go and check out the instantinvestorprogram.com if you wanna learn how to find off market deals just like Dan and I do. So aside from that, thanks so much for listening everybody, and talk to you next week. Thanks for listening everybody. Please make sure you subscribe and leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, please make sure you go and you share this with other people within your network. We are really trying to grow this thing, and the best way for us to do so is by you telling other people to come check us out. You can also follow us on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invest. Dan is at investor man Dan. You can follow the podcast at collecting keys podcast. And if you wanna learn how to make real money as a real estate investor or you want to grow your already existing real estate investing business, please go and check out instantinvestorprogram.com and book a call with either Dan or myself, and we will see if you'll be a good fit. Thanks for listening, everybody, and talk to you next week.

Speaker 2: [37:59] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.