Using Creativity To Survive a Falling Real Estate Market with Noah Evans

Noah Evans: [0:00] I remember laughing. I think I was talking to a business partner. I was like, dude, this is crazy. Like, how do you lose in flipping? Like, if you just buy the deal right, how can you lose? Because this market can't drop more than 4% a month. I mean, declines happen slowly. Literally,

Mike DeHaan: [0:13] I'm

Noah Evans: [0:13] not even kidding you. Ninety days after me saying that, dropped like 20%.

Speaker 3: [0:18] Welcome 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: [0:41] Alright, guys. Welcome to this episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. Today, we are interviewing Noah Evans from the chasing freedom podcast, who is also a flipper, wholesaler, all around hustler. He's now buying boutique hotels. He's doing a bunch of different things, and we had a really great time interviewing today. Because he's one of the people that we've had on this show that like, is making things happen. Yes. The things that he has started to, I guess, add into his business to overcome some of the challenges with the market, to just sort of shift his priorities, they're not the kind of things that you can just go and learn from a YouTube channel or some other person. He's actually like a true innovator in the space, and I love to hear all this stuff.

Dan Austin: [1:24] Yes. He's exactly what I call a problem solver, and anybody that's a problem solver will be successful at whatever they do. Doesn't matter what you're doing. It could be real estate, you could be working in corporate America, like it doesn't matter. You're a problem solver, you're going to be successful at what you do, and throughout the whole episode, you gotta list the whole thing, because like, there's all these little nuggets of like, I didn't even think about that. Converting garages? I why didn't I think about that? Mhmm. You know? He's like talking about renting land to chicken farmers. I mean, everything in Under the Sun is in this episode. It's pretty cool.

Mike DeHaan: [1:51] It is. Yeah. And like the perfect thing, I think that just sort of represents who he is. He talks about this flip that he was about to just lose horribly on. Like, he was gonna lose all of his money plus like $5,060,000 dollars of his private investors money. And instead they were able to manufacture this whole situation at this property where they're going to be net cash flow in like $1,500 a month.

Dan Austin: [2:15] Just sick.

Mike DeHaan: [2:15] You know, and sure their cash will be parked for a little bit, but instead they just have a sick asset they're gonna be able to make some sweet cash flow on. Yep. And the way that he went around it is not a way that 99.99% of people would ever have considered.

Dan Austin: [2:27] I wouldn't have thought of it.

Mike DeHaan: [2:28] No. I I wouldn't have even. I feel like we're usually pretty creative. So Super smart guy. Awesome guy. So enjoy the show with Noah. Absolutely reach out to him too. And you know, check out his podcast. He's doing some great stuff over there, as well as on his social media. He loves when people engage with him just like I do. So go ahead and hit him up on his Instagram. Besides that, please share this with anybody who has any interest in real estate investing or just like likes to hear a source like hustle and who does it? This is like the time hustle culture is kind of an all time peak. This is a great episode to share with anyone that can appreciate that. Besides that, go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/ free to get our free five step guides are generating off market leads. You can also go to store.collectingkeyspodcast.com. And you start checking out some merch, which we have officially released. By And the time this show comes out, it's probably gonna be a couple months old at this point, but you should still go and check out.

Dan Austin: [3:20] We're gonna have some sweet merch though. Go check it out.

Mike DeHaan: [3:22] We have a bunch of stuff on there. So go and check out store.collectingkeyspodcast.com. Anyways, enjoy the show with Noah. It's a great one. Enjoy. Alright. We are here with Noah Evans from the Chasing Freedom podcast down there, not too far from us in Boise, Idaho, Nampa, Idaho. It's all kinda same thing.

Dan Austin: [3:41] It's all Idaho.

Mike DeHaan: [3:42] People down there are always very specific about which one they're in.

Dan Austin: [3:45] The entire state has one zip code or area code. Right? Two So zero it's all the same. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [3:52] He gave sometimes feels that way. But Ozno, it's super excited to have you on here, man. For people who don't know who you are, kind of what your background is, give us a little intro, see sort of where you came from, what you're working on now, and what your business looks like. You got some great

Noah Evans: [4:05] stuff going on. Dude, absolutely. First off, thank you guys for having me on the show. It's sometimes weird for me to try to flop the seat.

Dan Austin: [4:11] Yeah, there.

Noah Evans: [4:11] Yes, you know? Because I just have so much fun digging in and asking questions and learning about other people too. But yeah, so a little bit about me. Guys, less than five years ago, was working on a corporate job trying to climb the corporate ladder. And it was kind of out of necessity. I met my wife in undergrad. We moved to Washington, got married, moved to Washington, and she started her career to become a physician and doctor. And so I lost all my connections in Utah. I had awesome offers to go help people around their businesses and stuff like that, because that's what I was passionate about was business. And I went and worked enterprise around a car. Fast forward a year and a half in that career, I had quickly just outpaced the scale, and there wasn't really much left for me. What was next was gonna require me to move all around the country, and they capped that at like $150 a year. I'm like, this is crazy. That's never gonna be enough, nor is that the lifestyle I want. I don't want someone else telling me when I have to travel, and when I have to leave my wife. So I started coming up with a plan to get out, bought my first house hack, and within a period of two years, grew a portfolio of about $2,300,000 worth of real estate that's spread out between Boise and Indiana. So November may not sound like a huge amount, but in Indiana that goes a really long way.

Mike DeHaan: [5:25] Mean that's basically a 40 house portfolio, I'm pretty

Dan Austin: [5:28] sure, in Indiana. You know, half the city.

Noah Evans: [5:31] Yeah. Couple fourplexes, couple triplexes, couple duplexes, so it's all smaller stuff, but that gave me a really, really good baseline. And over the last two and a half years or so, I flipped about 50 houses. It was fun, right? I learned a ton, but I also learned that flipping has its time and it has its place, at least for me and the lifestyle I wanna live, and it was a great stepping stone. It gave me the capital I needed. It gave me the foundation I needed to show investors that I am serious. I'm a seasoned investor at this point is what I would say. And I kinda got my feet wet, and I understood the basics and kinda went through it and failed a lot, lost some money, and made some money. But all the investors were always made whole. So that was the cool part. That's huge. And yeah, so now we're kinda transitioning out of that, and I'm gonna hop off the hamster wheel flipping here in the next couple months.

Mike DeHaan: [6:22] Yeah, so let's go into your flipping background, because, you know, I know you got some crazy stories there, especially just looking at where you're based. So, I guess to go from you said you're in Washington to go to Boise, was that for your wife's position job or Yeah. Yep. Okay.

Dan Austin: [6:36] Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [6:36] Exactly. And then you got into real estate down there. Did you where you saw enterprise and you like quit? Were you kinda doing it like on the side? Like how did you get into buying properties in Indiana? There's kind of a lot to unpack in the middle there.

Noah Evans: [6:49] Yeah, let's unpack some of that. Yeah, so I had timed it perfectly where I started the buying process of a house, while I still had my job at enterprise, I could qualify

Dan Austin: [6:57] for a

Noah Evans: [6:57] Very freaking

Dan Austin: [6:58] nice. There you go.

Mike DeHaan: [6:59] Smart. See, I did it backwards. That's a pro tip right there. Yeah, yeah. I quit first and then started buying houses. So definitely, if you're listening to everybody do what Noah did, that's the much smarter way to go. Yes.

Noah Evans: [7:08] And you know, I still own that house, that first house that I bought, and it cash flows almost as much as the entire portfolio in Indy. Nice. Because I bought a 50% debt three years ago in Boise, Idaho. We appreciated about 40% So since now we're losing some of that. The rates are still the same and the rents are still the same. So I kind of timed it. I left the job as soon as the bank had approved the loan. I probably left three or four days too soon, and I was really worried the bank was going to go do one more verification on my employment and see that I was no longer employed. But thank goodness, I don't know if they didn't double check or the double check didn't come through as, Hey, he already quit, but we cleared. So we bought the house. And then at that point, was kind of It was like a breath of fresh air to be like, Oh, wow, this is like the first step of financial freedom. Because now once my renovation was done, my tenants, my first tenants ever, were gonna pay for my entire mortgage. Nice. So right there, I just eliminated the biggest expense that most people have, which is the rent or the mortgage. Right. And we live cheap, man. I mean, our cars were paid off. Me and my wife's undergrad student loan debt was paid off. We just didn't live beyond our means at all, which is a huge tip for becoming financially free or independent is you can't live paycheck to paycheck. You're never going to get ahead by doing that.

Noah Evans: [8:25] For sure. So that was kind of the first step was getting a house hack complete, and it's also to me the safest way to step into real estate, because what's the risk? You're paying rent no matter what.

Mike DeHaan: [8:36] Yeah, So

Noah Evans: [8:37] if your mortgage doesn't end up being much more than your rent is, you should go for it. That's my opinion. You have a lot of room to mess up. I could have been wrong on my rent numbers for the downstairs unit. I could have been wrong on my renovation numbers. All of those things could have been okay. Because at the time, I mean, I don't think that this exists for people now, I but was paying $1,300 a month for rent, and my mortgage payment was on the eleventh. That awesome? I actually was saving $200 even if I made my whole mortgage payment. I can't remember where

Dan Austin: [9:01] you said it, but somebody said like, even if you're renting, you're paying a mortgage, just someone else's mortgage.

Mike DeHaan: [9:05] Yeah, That's true. And it's basically a mortgage with 100 interest, honestly. Exactly.

Dan Austin: [9:11] 100% interest. Yeah.

Noah Evans: [9:12] Yeah. That's so true, man. And within about a month of me buying that first house, I jumped right into flipping. I actually was a private money lender for a contractor out here who needed $30 to complete a renovation, and I got 20% for doing it.

Dan Austin: [9:25] Nice. That was

Noah Evans: [9:26] a big risk for me because that was every I literally didn't have the money to pay the mortgage on that one. Sorry? I did it down below.

Mike DeHaan: [9:33] You serious? You gave like all of your money to this contractor to flip this house. You couldn't pay your own bills.

Dan Austin: [9:38] Oh, man.

Noah Evans: [9:39] Why don't you just go

Mike DeHaan: [9:40] to the casino at that point, dude? Honestly, to how most contractors are, you probably would've had better odds.

Noah Evans: [9:45] I know. I mean, we did some things to minimize the risk, right? Like I released it in draws, so it wasn't like I wired We 20 wired $4 up. It's a small rehab. It was a two bedroom, one bathroom house. And I drove through the house almost every single day and took pictures because I wanted the credit for being a part of the flip. Yeah, that's great.

Mike DeHaan: [10:03] There you go.

Dan Austin: [10:03] I get it.

Noah Evans: [10:04] So they finished it quick, I got my, I think I got, I don't know, maybe $9 back. That was crazy.

Dan Austin: [10:09] That's a good deal.

Noah Evans: [10:10] That would've taken me three months to make net enterprise after taxes, insurance, everything else was taken out. I just did it passively. Wow. I just moved money around and made that. That was wild to me. And once that happened, it just happened so fast. I mean, our market is part of that, right? We appreciated almost 20 a year during those two years while we flipped like crazy. Sure. But I mean, we went from one flip to three flips to I think at our peak we had 17 active projects. Wow. I was ready to pull my mirror out. That's had a good morning those nights. Yeah. And then the market turned hard, man. It turned really hard. I remember laughing one time, and it's just kinda like you ride that high horse for too long sometimes, and your ego gets in the way, and you think that it's all you that's driven the success, and you forget that there's sometimes some external things that are not because of you that are going your way, right? And I remember laughing. I think I was talking to a business partner. I was like, Dude, this is crazy. How do you lose in flipping? If you just buy the deal right, how can you lose? Because this market can't drop more than 3%, 4% a month. I mean, declines happen slowly. Literally, I'm not even kidding you.

Noah Evans: [11:16] Ninety days after me saying that, dropped like 20%. Yep. Yep. And then continued to drop like another 20% over the next ninety days.

Mike DeHaan: [11:23] So all I'm hearing right now is that the housing crash is your fault because you jinxed it.

Dan Austin: [11:27] You jinxed it.

Mike DeHaan: [11:27] Everyone was doing good. You had to say that joke, and like you caused the whole thing.

Dan Austin: [11:31] You ruined it for all of us.

Noah Evans: [11:34] Viral episode. I'm just gonna get a bunch of

Dan Austin: [11:37] Episode over. Yeah. Episode. Yeah.

Noah Evans: [11:40] Yeah. So got some cool stories too. You know, once the market started to tank, I was sitting on probably 13 active rehab projects. And I was like, Oh, man, what am I going to do now? Because we already see that there's no way we're hitting our projections on what we thought after repair values of these homes were. And we're not done with these rehabs. I'm like, Do we list it now and hope that somebody else takes it over? And it's like, what I would say is if you only have one or two, well then your goal is just to hurry up and finish them. But with 13, there's no hurrying up to finish it. What am I gonna I can't just go hire more crews temporarily, Right?

Dan Austin: [12:18] Right.

Noah Evans: [12:19] I can't give away to a GC or try to onboard outside, outsource the GC work because that's gonna cut into the profit further. So we literally just We make calls to all of our investors. This is something super important. If anyone else is going through what looks like active losses, you have to be honest with everybody around you. Because I kept a great reputation. I mean, I'm past a lot of this now. I'm not holding any of those houses. Everything's in stable long term holds, or been sold, and we capitalized on the loss. But the minute I saw that things were trending downward, I called every single investor personally. I told them, Hey, this is not normal. Our market's dropping really, really quick. My flips are sitting longer. I don't think that we're going to get out of this one unscathed. I think there's going to be some losses. I don't know what that's going to look like, but I'm not going anywhere. You're not going to watch me disappear, and I'm going to make sure you get your money back. It may be a year or two out, but I'm going make sure you get your money back. Every single one of those investors was willing to work with me. Nice. And not one of them ever said I didn't give them the room to say, Hey, you're a dishonest person.

Noah Evans: [13:21] You misled us, or You brought None us to a bad of them ever blamed me. And I think most of them probably still gave me money today.

Dan Austin: [13:28] That's great.

Mike DeHaan: [13:29] Yeah. I love that. That's one of those things that you see so many of these people out there on Instagrams talking about using other people's money, raising money. No one ever talks the risks of that. Right? Because you know, you would even built all these relationships. What's your risking right there? Say everyone teaches that as like a no risk way for them to flip houses. You're risking other people's livelihood. You know, it's their retirement funds. It's the equity on their homes. Especially when it goes, takes out a HELOC to give it to you, you're gonna go lose that money. You're putting that person in a terrible spot.

Dan Austin: [14:03] A very terrible spot.

Mike DeHaan: [14:04] And like, I think the biggest thing is, A, you have to be aware of that risk, and B, if stuff does go weird, just be honest. You know, and so many people don't do that, and they try to pop smoke and go somewhere else. I mean, there was a young kid just kind of in between where you're at, we're at down in Tri Cities, who was all over social media up here, who, I don't know, he's probably like in his early twenties, 24, 25, was in a kind of a similar situation to you where you have like 10 or 11 flipped going on. He felt like he was invincible, lost a ton of people's money, just disappeared, filed bankruptcy, and then he like is now getting sued by all these people in the community, and it just has his reputation destroyed forever.

Dan Austin: [14:43] Yeah. You're never gonna get those No. That money again.

Mike DeHaan: [14:45] Yeah. Yeah. Mike and I

Dan Austin: [14:46] had a similar situation last year where, like, we came to the realization, as the market was turning, that we had a $500,000 kinda just poof away from Between investors calling their money back, and flips not working out the way we want them to. And part of that was us being conservative in nature in how we operate our business, because we are so protective of other people's money. And so I love the way you approach that. It's like honesty, integrity, open communication. It's like, I will get your money for you. It's just not gonna be on the schedule that you wanted. Not enough people do that.

Noah Evans: [15:17] And it's uncomfortable, man. It's super weird to like You know, because it almost messes with our identity. Mhmm. Think as the more involved you get in real estate, the less involved you get in everything else, because it's very consuming, right? It kinda just

Dan Austin: [15:29] So consumes

Noah Evans: [15:30] now it's like my vacations are involved with real estate. Friends are all in real estate. My conversations, I mean, you guys run a podcast, I run a podcast, you guys are probably guests on plenty of podcasts. All we talk about is real estate. And so, yeah, I don't know. I just feel like it's so much better to get out in front of it and just be truthful. And like you said, it takes a decade to build a reputation. It takes one, Oh, I'm gonna try to slide this one underneath the table, or one slide of hand, or one misuse of someone else's money to completely ruin your reputation. You're done. That's it. Nobody's gonna trust you. I guess I'll share a funny story too about how reputations get brought up even when you don't think they're going to. So I made a subject to offer here for a luxury home in the Downtown Boise area. I didn't necessarily want to flip a luxury home, but it's kind of a cool way we set And they were super nervous, rightfully so. They're trusting me to do a lot. Well, come to find out, husband and wife were splitting up. That was kind of the frustration here, and why they were ready to dispose of the home and do something else. I agreed to take over the mortgage payments, and they had to put a lot of trust in me. I didn't hear from them for a couple days, and finally I reached back out and asked if they needed anything else from me. And they go, Hey, no, we're actually ready to move forward.

Noah Evans: [16:49] The wife was dating somebody who was a partner with somebody else who lended me money in the past. Oh, wow. I could have lost a future deal not thinking there was any correlation by making a poor decision to not pay somebody back. Yeah. But instead, that person had great things to say about me, and I closed another deal only because of that.

Mike DeHaan: [17:07] That's awesome. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [17:08] Mean That is a great story.

Mike DeHaan: [17:09] That is a really good story. And and I mean, especially in small towns, man. Like Boise I I don't know how big Boise is. I think it's similar size, like, kinda Spokane County. But, like, they're Yeah. Very, you know, half million to a million person range. We are these or even a little bit smaller, I don't know where we're at. But they're, like, these weird, big, small towns where there's like an abundance of people that live in these areas. But everyone is like one or two people removed from everybody. Yeah. Everybody knows each other.

Noah Evans: [17:36] Yep. You know? So true.

Mike DeHaan: [17:38] And stuff like that comes up very regularly for us too. We've had situations like we're going in you know, we we bought a house here from a Gonzaga professor. We're both Gonzaga graduates. And one of the reasons we're able to get that deal done, there was a bunch of other people involved, was because he was like, oh, he's like, well, who is your professors? And was able to like loop around and be like, yeah, these are good guys. And that gave us credibility. Whereas, you know, even if even in the past, if we'd been like dirtbags at Gonzaga, he would have been like, no.

Dan Austin: [18:05] Yeah. It would have come around.

Mike DeHaan: [18:07] It would have come around at some point.

Dan Austin: [18:08] So, how did you here's my question. So, how did you pivot then? You know, you're seeing the market going down, down, down, down, and you're calling investors like, hey, it's not looking good. What did you do?

Noah Evans: [18:18] Yeah. So, I mean, I I did my best, my absolute best to just kick it in the hyperdrive. First off, we shut off I mean, right or wrong, I don't know, but I got out of it. So the first thing I did was I shut off market because I knew for a fact that I was like, Dude, I have to stay disciplined, and I'm a deal junkie. And if something comes across my desk, I'm gonna buy. So I was like, I have to take that off the table. I can't buy any properties. So I agreed with myself, just made a deal to deal with myself. Hey, dude. You're not buying anything else until you have nothing else on your plate. So that was step one. Step two was to go finish these as fast as I could. And one of the things I hadn't been previously doing was visiting the job sites on a regular basis because I didn't need to. And so I started going back and visiting the job sites on a regular basis. And I was gonna make sure that every dollar was spent were going to be spent. So we just tightened down on our budgets, trying to speed up the rehabs. And then in all reality, some of them we just couldn't get out of. I lost $75,000 on a home in the North End, which is kind of this little premier fancy little neighborhood in Downtown Boise. I had a big old farm that I thought was just going to be this cash cow of a flip. I was supposed to paw $120,000 out of it.

Noah Evans: [19:26] And it didn't sell at all.

Dan Austin: [19:29] No. No.

Noah Evans: [19:30] It was listed all November, all December. I dropped it to my breakeven. I dropped it. I had maybe $40 of my own money in that one. I dropped it to where I'd lose all my money, but my investors get back all their money. I had just cashed out on the $70,000 loss on the other one, and I started looking at this one. I go, okay. We're not selling to where I'm the only one losing money. I don't want to bring any more money to this one, but I think I can cash flow on it. So I called up the investors. I said, Hey, look, the house isn't selling. You guys already were aware. We're probably going to take some losses. I have a better idea. I qualified for a loan on it. I just had it appraised. It appraised at $495,000 and it wasn't signed for 04/20. So I'm like, We have equity from what our breakeven is to what I just appraised at, and that bank's gonna use that appraisal, so they're not gonna go back and try to say it's worth less. So I was like, Let's step in, let's lock in the equity, and let's close this, and let's just see if we can get it to cash flow. And if we can't, then it's a land bank play, we'll hold it for five or six years, hopefully Boise doesn't continue to drop still

Dan Austin: [20:24] Yeah, over right.

Noah Evans: [20:26] So we ended up placing a tenant in the home for $18.50 a month. We're gonna throw up three RV pads on the property. Those are rent out for $500 a month. And then we've got a pasture in the back with a barn. We're renting the barn for $800 a month, and we're splitting up the pastures into three lots. We're going to rent the pastures out to people. I got the weirdest inquiries, man. Someone wants to put goats out there. Another guy wants to do chicken, like a bunch of chicken poop. So what type of problem tenants I'll have? I have no idea, man. This is going be a whole new realm Dude, that

Dan Austin: [20:59] is hustle. You're gonna start leasing out land to chicken farmers. Yeah. I've never I mean, this is hustle, dude. That's like protecting your investors' money at all costs. Yeah.

Noah Evans: [21:08] Yeah. I just don't wanna lose, man. You know? Like Yeah. And it's a cool little house, and there is a future play on it where we could split the lots in the future and actually build more houses. But like I said, until everything's stabilized and there's no more concerns, I'm not buying another property to turn. Yeah. So, build, or whatever. But yeah, so that one, by the end of it, our projections now are the mortgage payment's $2,600 a month. So just between the house and the barn, we actually break even. Nice. So the RV pads and the plasters are cash flow. Nice.

Dan Austin: [21:35] That's killer.

Noah Evans: [21:35] We're probably gonna make $1,400 a month by the time it's all stabilized. That's

Mike DeHaan: [21:39] awesome. Which is

Noah Evans: [21:40] gonna be cool.

Dan Austin: [21:40] That's good money.

Mike DeHaan: [21:41] That's awesome. I love the creativity and the hustle on that. That's something that is so understated, like, importance of that in this business. And that's honestly, think that's a big reason a lot of people can't cut it is because they listen to the traditional method of like, oh, you need to have your box and just stay in your box at all costs, which honestly is kind of bullshit if you're gonna be a off market real estate investor because, you know, real estate is perfectly inefficient in the way that every deal is different. Mhmm. There's always different situations with the people involved. There's Every property's different. Every valuation is different. And if you're not willing to do stuff like that, to get yourself out of a weird situation, you're gonna lose. You're always going to end in a net loss at the end of the day. Even if you do well on the print up. Yep. You know? And we've, yeah, we've had our fair share of like stuff like that that we've done too, which has gotten I really

Dan Austin: [22:31] mean, you gotta come up with like creative value adds to properties. Mean, I feel like we've been hitting above our weight class in a lot of situations just because especially when we first started out, just because we're willing to adapt and create something out of nothing. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [22:45] Especially when you're starting. That's a great way to make money is by doing trying to figure out something weird that all the guys that have been around forever don't wanna deal with because it's not worth their time. Because it's not worth their time doesn't mean it's not worth your time. Totally.

Noah Evans: [22:56] Yeah. A 100%. And I guess one thing I realized in that too is I got so comfortable being a flipper, but I stopped looking at making multiple exits on some of the properties I had, and those are the ones I took big losses on. Yeah. The ones that I had multiple exits on, fine. I live in one of my flips right now that I just went and put a conventional loan on. That's another thing is keep your credit good. No matter what position you think you're you're in or how much cash you have, make sure your credit's always good. Because I get to still qualify for loans. I bought another This personal home has 2,000 square foot shops in the back. I rent both the shops out, and it covers half my mortgage.

Dan Austin: [23:34] Thanks.

Noah Evans: [23:35] So, I I don't know. And now, I go back into flipping at any point, or anyone listening, I would just be more careful to make sure that your flips have more than one exit. Like, the people that are buying Airbnbs with the only intent to Airbnb it, I'm like, dude, you go look at the other side

Mike DeHaan: [23:51] of it, man. Don't even get us started.

Dan Austin: [23:52] Don't like

Mike DeHaan: [23:52] That's like, we hate on that so hard all the time.

Dan Austin: [23:55] Yeah. Every episode, we have to bring that up. Sorry, audience, but it's so true.

Mike DeHaan: [24:00] Take it from Noah, who's actually doing deals. You know, the the guy on the Instagram who told you, just go buy properties at Airbnb and it makes everything work. That's a bunch of bullshit. It's not not how it works.

Noah Evans: [24:10] Because it's all good until it isn't. Right? I know. Until the till you actually did the house list for the mayor, and they're and they shut down Airbnb's in the town. Totally. Right?

Dan Austin: [24:17] Yeah. Right? I mean, not no joke.

Mike DeHaan: [24:18] Yeah. Anything like that that has a third party that can completely destroy your entire business, that is like, you know, a a private third party. Like the economy, sure flipping houses, you get influenced by that. But when a private third party can say like, our algorithms doesn't like you anymore, that's a dangerous game to play. See you. Goodbye. So Awesome, man.

Noah Evans: [24:37] Yeah. I I always like making comparables. Like, to me, buying an Airbnb where the only way it cash flowed was by Airbnb ing it, and you couldn't cash flow on a long term rental, it'd be like the equivalent of buying a long term rental, but the city could come in and tell you at any given point in time you're no longer allowed to rent your house out.

Mike DeHaan: [24:54] So basically buying in California.

Dan Austin: [24:57] California, exactly.

Noah Evans: [24:58] California, yeah. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [25:00] Oh my gosh. But that's a real thing though. Yeah. And with Airbnb, it's the same same problem. Totally. And flipping, to your point, you gotta have that multiple exits. Mike and I have preached that so many times. And man, I would say that when we've lost money, it's not because we didn't have multiple exits, it's because losing money was better than the other alternative. Really?

Noah Evans: [25:18] Yeah. Yeah. One more cool thing I'll share. The last three flips I did, I did something specific on all of them, and it gave me an extra exit strategy even though there was no land play or secondary unit play or whatever. I converted all of the garages into art studios. Oh, interesting. Now that doesn't always work. I would say in a traditional suburban neighborhood where everybody has the same three or four or floor plans, I wouldn't do that. But mine were all alley loaded access garages that were really of no value as a garage. They're hardly big enough to fit a Toyota Corolla, let alone an actual SUV that somebody So we took all of them and made them these cool little hip trendy rooms and added heating and cooling. I never added plumbing. I didn't wanna go through that expensive process of trying to get water out there and a drain and everything. We would sheetrock it. Sometimes we'd leave the rafters exposed and do spray foam insulation. One time I did a cool glass roll up door. We had paint, throw in a vinyl plank flooring. And then when we go to resell, we have a couple options here. One, we get to advertise as a detached office space, which during COVID and this whole work from home movement, and these people that want this new freedom of being able to stay home or whatever, that's really cool. Because now for them, they get to be away from the kids and the family, can still get their work done, can even have clients come over now because most of these garages were detached from the house. But then also, it's like one of the buyers ended up using it as an at home gym.

Noah Evans: [26:43] Slides the door and he works out at home. For Airbnb, one of my partners ended up keeping one of these houses with this. We set these up specifically to be a detached room for Airbnb. Nice. Oh, nice. Because that extra bedroom for Airbnb's can add a lot of a lot of value when you can sleep eight more people in that room because we normally double stack bunk beds in those.

Mike DeHaan: [27:01] Yeah. Or or even like a house hack. Right? Like a house there a young house there could go buy that, live in the garage, rent out the main house to like a family, you know, that wants to live on something like that, and that's a pretty sweet gift right there.

Dan Austin: [27:14] Yeah. It's just it's just maximizing every little bit of space you have is what it is, and the hustle of that is I'm getting, like, excited. I'm like, oh, yeah. Gotta go buy something. I pack it apart and make an art studio on the back.

Noah Evans: [27:26] I keep you riding on the nobles and have this. Yeah. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [27:30] Those are always our best deals, though, to like increased value add on square footage. Yeah, we've

Dan Austin: [27:34] done like garage conversions. We've done that.

Mike DeHaan: [27:36] The garage conversions, tons of basements, actually like opening up small bedrooms and things like that to create better living areas. Those things go so far and most people don't even consider them.

Noah Evans: [27:46] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome, man.

Mike DeHaan: [27:48] So let's go into what you're doing now, because I know you've made a pretty big leap. You went through all the ups and downs of flipping, and what I would say was the easiest market to all of a sudden the most punishing market out there with the way that Boise's flipped over. How much is it down over there now? About 40% maybe in some areas?

Noah Evans: [28:04] The last time I checked, we're down like 37%. Crazy. Year over year. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [28:10] That's hardcore. So is it a good time to buy a house down there as far as primary rental or primary residence?

Noah Evans: [28:17] I mean, just based off of, I guess it would depend on the strategy. I would say if we could know if rates were gonna go back down to the fives in say three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine months, I would say, yeah, it's probably a great time to buy. Because you're gonna buy, you're not gonna cash flow for six months, then you're gonna refund. Yeah. Yep. Everything just seems so rocky to me, and normally I'm a very risk tolerant person. But lately, I've been feeling more risk averse, and it's probably just because I just got my butt handed to me and lost Right? For someone that hasn't lost money, that's probably a little bit more gun hungry right now and wanting to go, yeah, it's probably a good time for someone like that.

Mike DeHaan: [28:52] I

Noah Evans: [28:56] personally would only be buying stuff right now that still cash flows at 7% debt. The cash flow is at 7% debt, and then you can freaking refi at five, dude, you'd have earned yourself an extra 300 or $500 a month.

Dan Austin: [29:07] Then you're good.

Noah Evans: [29:07] I would do that. Agreed. But I would say if it's got a cash flow day one.

Mike DeHaan: [29:11] Yeah, I can agree with that.

Noah Evans: [29:12] Yeah. So one thing I realized is I left my job because I wanted the freedom, but then the more houses I flipped, I lost my freedom, because then I was stuck in it. It took me a year to wind down my flipping business from the time that I ultimately decided I wanted to stop. It took a full year to wind it down. I'm still dealing with some of those properties. So the path got me further ahead, but it didn't quite take me where exactly where I wanted it to take me. Then flipping ended up being a little bit more of a job. I was kind of stuck in it, couldn't leave it when I wanted to, much like I couldn't leave my job when I wanted to. I had to set up things outside of it to leave, and I just lost a little bit of the freedom. So now I'm sitting there going, Okay, well how can I transition? I built a great skillset, I built relationships, I have a fundamental foundation of knowledge inside of real estate. So I started looking at like, I own some rentals in Indiana and here, and that's ultimately, to be honest, what really saved me from going under, because it paid all of my expenses while my income went like that. Yeah, right. And if you're watching I'm sure you guys air a YouTube video, my hand just dropped off again. Yeah.

Noah Evans: [30:14] Well, my rentals saved me. And so I'm like, Well, I'm going double down on rentals then. I'm just going to go keep buying rentals. And I'm not like an overly wealthy person. So for those listening, I'm still going to go use investor money to buy these rentals, but now I'm good at what I do. I can manage the rehabs. I can find good deals. And so that's where my value is going to come from. And I'm going to take other people's money, and I'm going to earn equity inside of these deals because I'm the one that can put them together. Right. And so it's the skill set that ends up paying me. So for those of you that maybe wanna get into this, or go down the same path I'm going down, develop the skill set first. That's what's gonna get you there. Pick a niche. Like, Hey, I'm gonna become the best freaking guy ever at finding fourplexes in my market. Then you can find investors to go help you buy those fourplexes. You guys can go do it together. But yeah, I'm going go into boutique motels and small multifamily deals where we can do a hybrid model of both long term tenants and short term rental tenants. It allows me to have stability, but also get a play in some of the ups and downs of the short term rental market. Notice I said down because it's not always up.

Noah Evans: [31:11] You know? Right? Like you guys said, there's gurus out here just talking everything's fine and dandy earning $10 a month off of a single family home. I'm not buying it, man. Think it takes more work. Does. Yeah. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [31:22] No. That's cool. So I guess boutique hotels, what does that mean? Like, what is it?

Noah Evans: [31:27] What does it And why? Dude, I love that question. And I'll tell you a couple reasons. So in the last couple months, when I decided to shut off marketing in the flip company, I put the sales guys on marketing for Airbnbs, and we were gonna go buy a bunch of single family homes in Indy and Texas and start Airbnb ing stuff. And I gave them a list of 40 markets to underwrite, and the data we got back was pretty scary. So out of the 40 markets, maybe only 20 of them had very, very limited STR restrictions. For example, Vegas had a restriction where you can't have an Airbnb within 150 feet of somebody else's Airbnb. Oh, wow. Oh, jeez. Well, dude, my strategy is rehab. I'm gonna rehab in and out. Right? So I'm gonna go rehab a house. Six months into the renovation, I found out my neighbor just popped up his freaking house on Airbnb and didn't even move out of it. And now all of a sudden I can't do it? That's not worth the risk, right? Another crazy market. Charleston, South Carolina, I think it's like a little beach town. It has some of the best cash flow numbers for revenue to purchase price that I could find. But yet, Charleston has a block. If you're looking at the map, the block is literally the size of your fingernail that actually allows short term rentals for non owner occupants. Mhmm. And if you're an owner occupant, you have to stay in the home while other people are there as guests. Oh, nice.

Mike DeHaan: [32:51] You have to babysit. She needs you the finger.

Noah Evans: [32:54] So the single family route became too risky. Like we talked about earlier, I just wasn't willing to take the risk. So then I was like, okay. We're gonna have to change this up. What would allow nightly rates no matter what and the zoning can't change? And I was like, hotels. I'm like, well, I'm not no multi multi millionaire. I can't just go buy hotels. Right?

Dan Austin: [33:13] Yep.

Noah Evans: [33:13] So I was like, okay. I passed old crappy motels all the time. I see these old junky ones, and they just are all run down. Half the time, they're a site for moving drugs or just weird stuff going on at all times. Yep. And I passed one one day on my way to work, and I was like, Dude, that's it. I'm gonna start calling these old crappy motels that nobody else wants to buy. I'll do extreme value add. We'll turn them into these cool little trendy places to stay. And it's a specific vibe that we're looking for. Right? It can't just be something on a main road where all they have is a parking lot and 12 little studio units. I'm looking for very unique properties that have the aspect to allow people to come enjoy, to be safe. It's a clean environment, and you can add amenities to them. I can't add amenities to a paved parking lot. It's got to have more than that, right? So we actually locked one up in Waynesville, North Carolina. It was five minutes outside of the downtown area, and it was 20 doors for a million bucks. Oh, that's pretty good. It had been sitting on market for two hundred plus days. And I know why. Mean, when I started reaching out to the agent trying to close this deal, I mean, took six months just to get a conversation going with this guy. Just a slow responder. Right? And the owner had no motivation to sell.

Noah Evans: [34:29] But eventually, we got the deal locked up, and some of my partners that were in that deal actually ended up assigning it to them, and they just took it and closed it. They actually just closed, I think, like two weeks ago, sorry, last week on that one, which was really cool. Nice. But the essence of that property is it's all built into a hillside. You can walk the downtown, but you have the privacy of the woods. It was spread across seven buildings with a massive lodge. So there's so many things that you can do there. And the city specifically allows for long term stays as well. So you can put long term renters in there for stability. Oh, nice. So it is a perfect one. Right? That's a no brainer.

Mike DeHaan: [35:08] What did the rehab look like for that to turn those into long term units? Right? Because, like, a hotel room isn't gonna have, like, a full kitchen.

Noah Evans: [35:15] Yeah. Correct.

Mike DeHaan: [35:16] Yeah. So, like, you have to go and and add all that sort of stuff. Like, see, I I guess, not even just like you go pop in a full kitchen. There's utility requirements. There's electrical requirements. You know, there's a lot of modifications I would imagine that have to happen.

Noah Evans: [35:29] Yeah. A 100 there's a lot of due diligence to do on these because a lot of it is calling up the city and finding out what is or isn't allowed. If that thing only allowed short term stays and and we weren't allowed to do any type of long term tenants, I don't think we would've taken that one down. The risk is probably still too high. Too high. But the fact that we could fill the whole thing up with just long term tenants if we wanted to is perfect. Other essence of that property was that a handful of the units already had kitchenettes.

Mike DeHaan: [35:53] Oh, okay.

Noah Evans: [35:54] We didn't have to have kitchenettes every single room. Some of them were actually considered more so like apartments. Of them were cabins. It's just a very unique property set up perfectly to do this. Right? Here's an example of another one. So I don't have this one under contract yet, so I'm not gonna release the location of it. But I've got another 20 unit boutique motel in a cute little vacation destination town, which that part I don't like as much. I wish it was a little closer like urban or suburban areas. But it's three separate buildings. It's already up and running. There's actually guests coming in and out. It's just not being ran very efficiently. But all of the rooms already have sinks and mini fridges inside the room, plus a suite bathroom, meaning they all have a jetted tub. So they're larger rooms. So something like that on the rehab is not that bad. They've already got a kitchen sink. I just have to figure out how to add a stovetop in. Well, probably larger fridges. And now I've got ready to go little efficiency units. So those are pretty cool. That's interesting. I like that.

Dan Austin: [36:53] I like the whole redevelopment aspect, taking an older asset that just needs to be repurposed. It's still a good asset. You just need to do your due diligence to understand what you can do, and what the market will bear, and then just rock

Noah Evans: [37:05] and roll with it, man. I like that. And the competition's way less, man. I mean, Mhmm. Every single time I bid on one of these 10 plus unit little multifamily properties, I'm just getting outbid by people who are just buying their cash flow. Right? They aren't really looking at the metrics of the deals, but they have $600 to put down. That's not my style. I don't invest like that. I'm creating equity. I'm just buying into something. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [37:26] Yeah. How do you do due diligence on, like, the long term potential? Because I go there gonna be unique properties too. It's not like you can just go and see what every other one bed, one bath in the area is renting for. Like, you have any concerns about the longevity of that? Like, when, if, big if, the housing crisis, quote unquote, ever sort of subsides and people no longer have to be in the little, tiny, makeshift hotel apartment? Yeah, I

Noah Evans: [37:54] think that's a great question. This is more of a gut feeling. I don't necessarily have data that backs this up. I look at all the people I grew up with, right? And I'm still pretty young. I'm at the end of my 20s. Nobody I grew up with owns a house. People don't want the liability of owning houses anymore. And then until interest rates change, man, I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. People that are buying houses, not seven percent are generally doing it because they have to.

Dan Austin: [38:17] Right. For sure.

Noah Evans: [38:18] Yep. You got to get a five bedroom house because you got a bunch of kids, or you have dogs that you're not giving up, so you need the yard, you're just going to buy it. Or they're medium to high income. And so, I guess the trend I see is I don't think that the millennials and the generations that come before us are going to want to take on any more responsibility anytime in the near future. Yeah. The average age of getting a house now is like 34 years old. And that's crazy because I I felt like was like, Dude, if I don't have a house by 24, I'm a freaking loser. That's not not true at all, but that's what I felt.

Dan Austin: [38:52] Yeah. Not true at all.

Noah Evans: [38:53] So, I think the trend for more freedom and not being tied to a specific place, and especially with all these new ways to make money and AI being dropped, and I think there's gonna be a lot of people taking on creative roles rather than corporate roles. And with all of that comes them not wanting to be tied to something. So I guess the longevity of it, and until these trends change, I'm not super worried about that. A lot of that's gut. I mean, you're making me wanna go do more research.

Dan Austin: [39:17] Right. Mike likes to ask those hard questions. Yeah. I kind of tend to agree with that because I actually had this kind of epiphany. It's not really a a unique epiphany, but I was like, renting doesn't have have to be bad. Like as investors, we talk about how being a renter is kind of bad. Right? Because you're paying someone else's mortgage, you're missing out on the equity buildup. Yes. But what if you are a real estate investor and you own properties, but you're also a renter. Right? You may rent because you want the mobility of it. You don't like, dude, I don't like taking care of my house. Like, I pay someone to mow my lawn. Like, I don't wanna have to paint the outside. I'm not doing it myself, especially now that I have a full crew that works for me. That's that's what they're doing that shit for me. Right? So you but then you layer that on top with it started with the millennials and with the gen z's, it's happening just as much if not more, where they don't buy into the trades, so they don't have skills to maintain these properties or to have the desire, to be honest. I mean, the the day of mowing your lawn and getting excited about the backyard barbecue is kind of over for a lot of people, just the way that It already is over.

Dan Austin: [40:15] I hate that. Right? Exactly. Right? But you know, but you

Mike DeHaan: [40:19] know what?

Dan Austin: [40:19] It it is not the way of it's not necessarily the American dream anymore, so I can get on board with your your gut feel there where there's probably gonna be renters, and then maybe there is more room, even in non urban environments for those studio type apartments with unique Yeah. Living

Noah Evans: [40:35] And the other thing I've noticed too, this is making comparison to the mountain towns around me, which are the same mountain towns around you guys because we're not that far apart. Are you guys familiar with McCall? Oh, yeah. Love it.

Dan Austin: [40:46] Oh, yeah. Silver City.

Noah Evans: [40:48] Single time I've tried to do a development or a project in McCall, they push these unrealistic things where they want me to create so much workforce housing that I can't make money on my project. I need to go up there with government grant money or something and just build them a 50 unit apartment complex that's all for workforce housing. So, I mean, that is actually something that scares me more in these smaller towns, is the less and less housing options are available because more and more people are not air being their properties instead of renting it to the locals. Those businesses in those small little destination towns, they can't afford to pay their employees what they need to pay them so those employees can afford to live in the town to work there.

Dan Austin: [41:27] For sure. Yep.

Noah Evans: [41:28] So that scares me more, right? If there's nowhere for anybody to live who's supposed to work in those towns and be waitresses and waiters at those restaurants and keep the fun little canoe shack or bike rental place or snowboard shop open, that scares me. We're watching this happen in Jackson right now, where you go into Jackson sometimes and you're trying to get into the restaurants or whatever, and there's nobody to serve you, man. There's like one person helping like 20 tables.

Dan Austin: [41:54] Yeah. Wow. There's no labor.

Mike DeHaan: [41:56] I grew up in Bozeman, Montana back when it was like a quiet little town. And Bozeman, Montana is huge now just in terms of how it's grown. Average price point houses like over 900,000. They're all second homes. And then what's going on there is exactly what you're talking about. You know, they have nobody to staff any of the department stores, any of the, you know, the restaurants, any of like just like the little things that are necessary for society to run. They don't have them. And it's gotten so bad that the city actually just built this apartment complex for all the teachers and like the city staff to live in that actually, you know, allow the general infrastructure, the school system and stuff to run. And what they're doing is they are subsidizing it. K? So but how it's being subsidized is all the teachers and, like, the staff, they pay a percentage of their salary as their rent. K? That goes back to the city.

Dan Austin: [42:46] And it's basically section eight for like working people.

Mike DeHaan: [42:49] It's basically section eight. It is for people that have like legit degrees and careers and things like that, and are and are extremely necessary for the area. But the problem is that that too is because it's tied to a percentage of their income, if they they can't actually save money even if they want to because it always goes up depending on how much they make. Wow. So now what's happening is you're having all these teachers and these people instead living in RVs, or mobile homes, in the middle of the city. Literally, just in the middle of the city, there's these RV parks that have sort of popped up that you see in shitty parts of Seattle. Or like, you know, here we have like a one called Camp Hope for all the people that's like a run down like drug haven. These are actually like, you know, the people that get up and they go to work, and they like have like their little vest that they wear to go teach fifth grade, but they live in a freaking RV, across the street from the post office. It's wild. That is really wild.

Noah Evans: [43:44] Yeah. That's so funny. Like, okay, now we're seeing the same trends in different towns. Right? Yeah. I flipped a cabin in McCall that we turned into a short term rental. I ended up selling it. But a dude who was coming to service the hot tub, I was trying to convince him to be my full time maintenance guy just for my property. I was like, Hey, we'll keep you plenty busy. There's lots of things that go wrong. It was on a couple acres of land. And he's like, you think I could move my trailer here? So he too, working at the hot tub shop up there, all these cabins hot tubs, was living in a trailer Living

Dan Austin: [44:15] in trailer.

Noah Evans: [44:15] A $100 a month because he can't afford $2,000 in one for a studio apartment.

Mike DeHaan: [44:21] Yeah. Yeah. Crazy stuff.

Noah Evans: [44:23] That's that's probably more the concern is like, man, if there's not affordable housing options for the people who work there, those towns could disappear. Yeah. They could. And like people that are investing there in vacation rentals and those sort

Mike DeHaan: [44:33] of things should be concerned about that. It should be. Because a lot of them I've heard I've heard people say this. They say, oh, well, the people that use my place, they don't aren't affected by that. They are because all of the desirability of that location will go away when there are no services, when there's no restaurants, there's no grocery store, there's nothing for the people to actually draw. There's no draw. Sure. There's wilderness. They could also go to the wilderness that has a grocery store. You know, that like has things to Yeah. Do outside of

Dan Austin: [45:01] Oh, that's funny.

Mike DeHaan: [45:02] Anyway. So awesome, man. Well, good stuff. I I love the uniqueness, I guess, of everything that you've done. You're like a true hustler. And that's where encounter a lot of people in this space that I feel like are actually making things happen. Right? So it's so super cool thing. So we're gonna go into the end of the show here, we always have the same three questions that we ask everyone that comes on the show. The first one, which is always the group favorite is what is the craziest real estate investing story that you have? This can be a big win, can be a big loss. The only rule is you're not allowed to talk about finding a dead person in a property.

Noah Evans: [45:36] Hey, that's a good rule, brother.

Mike DeHaan: [45:37] I don't like those stories. That was what everyone had when we first started doing this, Ben. I was like, okay, we gotta cut this off at some point.

Noah Evans: [45:44] Dude, I've got a really good one. This is bringing me way back. I haven't even thought of this memory because I tried to put it behind me. I'm a very passionate animal. And so I got a tattoo of my first dog right here on my arm. You can see it because I got a sweater on and stuff like that, but animals are a big part of my life. It was when I lived in Washington and I was getting my feet wet and wholesaling. So it was before I moved to Idaho. And my lead source was I had just done driving for dollars and then mailed them. I was only doing one thing. I only had $3,000 to put in the marketing. And I was like, This has to work. Luckily, ended up closing a deal. It wasn't even from the letters, though, but I'm getting off topic here. But one of the leads I went out to, we're walking the property and I'm like, Oh, dude. People are only $120 for their house. And I wasn't even good at comping properties. Thank goodness the neighbor's house had just sold for $2.40. So I'm half the company thing. The neighbor's house sold for $2.40. So I'm sitting here thinking like, dude, this is finally gonna work. I'm gonna make a bunch of money on this assignment. Until they took me into the garage. And in the garage was a bunch of chairs and wood all batted up in an octagon. It was

Mike DeHaan: [46:51] about no. Four feet

Noah Evans: [46:53] I'm not gonna go into more details. But once I saw that, and I looked at the rest of the property, and I looked at the people, and I personally got a little scared for myself because I was like, Okay, I just found something illegal. You can't do this. And now I'm here by myself. And at the time I didn't carry because Washington's not an You have to go through a whole class, go get your concealed carry, and I don't you don't have to do that. So I was like, You know what? I'm gonna pretend like everything's all good. I'm gonna finish up this meeting. And then I had to do the right thing and report them rather than taking down the deal.

Mike DeHaan: [47:26] Yeah, right. Wow.

Noah Evans: [47:27] And that was hard, man. It was hard to find what I found. Was pretty disgusting And to I was pretty angry. There was a part of me that wanted to throw this guy's head through the wall because you see it online and you get mad and you're like, I wish I could find that person. Well, I actually found them. I really dude, I really wanted to hurt them.

Dan Austin: [47:43] Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [47:45] And I apologize. I can tell you're tapping around it, but it was basically a dog fighting situation is

Noah Evans: [47:51] what you're saying. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, And I just couldn't do it, I was like, I need to do the right thing. So I called the police instead of taking down the deal. And maybe I could have done both. I don't know. But I didn't wanna be involved in that. I didn't want to me, it felt like bad juju. So, like, dude, I'm out.

Dan Austin: [48:05] Well, hopefully they went to prison for a long time. I don't know what the repercussions or something like that is.

Mike DeHaan: [48:09] The whole house was condemned. Was it really?

Noah Evans: [48:11] The whole house was condemned. Yeah. It was on my way to work because I still had my full time job at that time. And I used to pass it if I went a specific way to work. And I would say within the next week, everybody was taken out. The whole property was fenced off. The police put up a chain link fence for deeper investigation.

Dan Austin: [48:29] Right.

Noah Evans: [48:29] It was pretty crazy, dude. Yeah. I mean, that town specifically is very well known for it was Yakima, Washington. Been the worst place I've ever lived. Yeah, that's It's not just well known for gangs, and the amount of dogs I pulled off the streets there is crazy. Probably twice a week. The local animal shelter there told me I no longer had to go through the front door. They're like, hey, just go through the back door. You know how to sign the animal in. Find an empty kennel. You're good to go. Wow. Holy shit.

Dan Austin: [48:58] That's crazy.

Noah Evans: [48:59] Pretty sad. Yeah. Crazy. That is bad. That's rough.

Mike DeHaan: [49:01] I mean, gotta say I'm I'm impressed that the Yakima PD jumped on that. We had we had a whole situation where we had this apartment and, like, these kids were being Ugh. That was so bad. Terribly abused in this property, man. And to get tell you what, to get law enforcement involved was a commitment. We spent so much time, and like they had these eight kids that were like locked into this room, like padlocked in there with like a mattress

Dan Austin: [49:26] and When like walked in the unit, like I

Mike DeHaan: [49:28] and I walked to a

Dan Austin: [49:29] lot of units, I had to hold my breath. I could have been there longer than thirty seconds at a time. It was that bad. Yeah. They were living

Noah Evans: [49:35] in That was in Yakima?

Mike DeHaan: [49:36] No. This was in Spokane.

Noah Evans: [49:38] Yeah. Oh my gosh, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [49:39] Yeah. But but point being that Yakima jumped on the dock and we couldn't get Spokane pee to do shit about these kids that were in A really, really bad spot.

Dan Austin: [49:47] Totally getting abused. Totally getting abused.

Mike DeHaan: [49:49] Yeah. And so

Noah Evans: [49:50] I don't know if this helped, but I had a video because I was videotaping the whole property, and I just didn't turn it off when I was in the garage. Oh. So I turned in the I turned in video footage. I don't know if that made a difference, but I'm like, dude, I think they were fist upon quicker to kids, man.

Mike DeHaan: [50:03] Yeah. We had we had photos and stuff that we sent over, and we finally got it cleared up. We had to, like, get the grandparents involved with the mom, because it was a super abusive dad sort of situation. And, you know, it finally got taken care of. But it took a long time took like literally months to get through it.

Noah Evans: [50:19] That's wild. And now that

Mike DeHaan: [50:20] side is crazy. It's unfortunate, but I mean, I'm glad you were able to at

Noah Evans: [50:24] least shut it down. Yeah. Yeah. It was hard to walk away because, you know, that deal would have made a huge difference for me. But it's just like, it's a principle thing, you know? You have to stick to your principles. If know something's wrong, man, it's like, it's not worth the money.

Mike DeHaan: [50:35] Yeah. Agreed. Alright. Second question. What is the number one tip you would have for either a new investor looking to get started, or a small time investor looking to take their business to

Noah Evans: [50:47] the next level? Dude, I love this question. That's such a that's such an intelligent question, by the way. And I think there's one answer. To understand this simple thing. You're going to pay for your education no matter what. You don't escape payment. You either pay by hiring someone to help you that knows more than you do, a coach, a mentor, or someone in your market that's killing it, whatever it may be, or you pay for mistakes. And I've paid both ways. And I can tell you that in hindsight, if I could have, I would have much rather just paid through mentors and access to people who know more than I do. I guess the third way you pay is through partnerships, which I also highly recommend. One thing I didn't mention, I worked for a mentor for six months. It taught me a ton about the business. Did I make a lot of money? Absolutely not. Did I learn way faster than I would have on my own? 100%.

Dan Austin: [51:37] Yep. Awesome. That's a great answer. The best answer I've heard in a long time.

Mike DeHaan: [51:41] That is that and I think that is the best way that you have phrased that response. A lot of people say get a mentor, you know, people say like, just get started, whatever. But that is super, super valid. And you know, and you're completely right. Anyone that tells you that you can just do this for free and figure it out, there's not gonna be any sort of payment anywhere is a buyer. I guess that's not how anything in life works.

Dan Austin: [52:01] Low and no money down.

Mike DeHaan: [52:03] Yeah, right.

Noah Evans: [52:03] That's a funnel. If you hear that,

Mike DeHaan: [52:04] man, it's a funnel. Yeah. Right. You know, trying to get you into their yeah, into their free webinar that they recorded two years ago. Yep. So awesome. Alright. Last question. Where can people find you, follow you, and reach out to you you'd like them to do so?

Noah Evans: [52:17] Absolutely, man. So we post an episode once a week on the Chasing Freedom Show. That's everywhere you can find podcasts. But primarily where I think most of our listeners are is Apple Podcasts or Google Play. So you can listen to other podcasts. Not quite as good as your guys' show. I'm getting there.

Mike DeHaan: [52:32] I'm still listening to

Noah Evans: [52:33] some fun podcast episodes. And then I'm really active on Instagram. So if you wanna get to tell me on a more personal level, I post both business and personal stuff on Instagram. So give me

Mike DeHaan: [52:43] a follow there, yeah, we'll get connected. Awesome. Cool, guys. Well, definitely check out Noah's show. He is a wealth of knowledge if you can't tell. And, I mean, he's one of the few people we've had on that like is truly, like, doing creative stuff. You're approaching things through a different lens. You didn't just read the playbook and now you're spewing it for everybody else. But you actually are, you know, an innovator in the space, I think is super awesome. That's huge compliment. Yeah, yeah. So so thanks so much for coming on show me. We really, really appreciate it.

Dan Austin: [53:11] Yeah, man. This is fun.

Mike DeHaan: [53:13] Yeah. And alright, guys. Well, thanks so much for listening to this show. Please share it with all of your friends and absolutely go check out Noah's show and reach out to him. Like I'd say with a lot of people, we do these things because we want you to reach out to us. So go hit him up on Instagram, subscribe to a show, shoot him a DM, do whatever. If we didn't want you to talk to us, we wouldn't do these things. We would go and hide in the closet and like in our rooms like everybody else. So don't be shy. We love to engage with all of you.

Dan Austin: [53:37] Yeah, of course.

Mike DeHaan: [53:38] And share with all your friends too. It's a great way for them to learn and get interested. Besides that, guys, if you want to start getting off market leads, please go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free. You can get our free five step guide to start getting off market leads for yourself. And you can enter the top of our funnel, and you can hear about stuff that we can offer you afterwards. So you should definitely go and check that out. And besides that, guys, we appreciate you all. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to y'all next week. See

Speaker 3: [54:09] podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.