Obtaining Time Freedom Through Strategic Real Estate Investments – Bill Hamel

 

 

Bill Hamel  00:00

If you’re gonna wait for that perfect deal to come around, there’s only 20 people that would have bought that deal. To get into one of those great deals, there has to be a little bit of uncertainty. That’s where that education comes in. Being confident in what you’re doing. Welcome

 

Greg Lyons  00:16

to the passive income brothers podcast.

 

Tim Lyons  00:19

Here we take the fear out of real estate investing using real life stories of everyday successful investors. Let’s go. Welcome to another episode of the passive income brothers podcast. My name is Tim Lyons and today I’m joined by my brother and co host Greg Lyons, it was a buddy, Tim,

 

Greg Lyons  00:34

the word is thankful. Thankful to be here on this podcast. thankful to have bill on the podcast, and thankful all around us the day before Thanksgiving. And I for one, you, we just have so much to be thankful for. So I’m happy to be here today and just have another great episode on board Air,

 

Tim Lyons  00:53

dude 100%. And I’m going to stack on top of that by saying that I can’t believe it’s actually Thanksgiving. I mean, I literally feel like this year has flown by. And I think I say that every year, but especially this year, I feel like I was just doing my 2022 goals like a couple of weeks ago. And it’s just crazy how time flies, but I am thankful for all of our listenership. I mean, we’re coming up on a year Greg, of having this podcast and to say that we’re almost at 30,000 downloads 95 five star reviews, it’s insane. And we didn’t think there was gonna be like five people that were listened to this podcast. So I’m thankful for the listeners. I’m thankful for your support. And we are so close to having 105 star ratings. And if you’re listening to this podcast, you can hit pause, just do us a HUGE favor by continuing to listen and give us that five, whatever kind of honest rating and review that you can give us. It really, truly helps us to rank higher helps us to get better guests and helps us all around. So we will continue to serve you but we would love a little and we’d be thankful for some support. With that being said, I am thankful grateful that we have none of the bill Hamill today joining us on the podcast. And Bill and I and Greg, I’ve been trying to kind of like circle date for a while now. But we finally got it. day before Thanksgiving. So Bill, welcome to our show. How you doing today, brother? I’m

 

Bill Hamel  02:13

doing excellent. And congratulations with the success on your podcast. It sounds like it’s doing fantastic now that you’re I think you said 51 episodes and I agree with you guys, we’re we have a lot to be grateful for here we are right before Thanksgiving. And it’s amazing what we’re able to do in the real estate space. And there’s a lot to be thankful for.

 

Tim Lyons  02:35

So do your 100%, right. I mean, we’re recording during the weekday, right? I mean, how fun is it to be a podcast host and be able to record with other people on weekdays where I used to be punching the clock nine to five, whatever. So anyway, with that being said, Bill, what I think resonated with your story early on when I first met you was that you’re in New Yorker, right? And New Yorkers don’t invest in real estate. It’s too risky. It’s too hard. We don’t trust anybody. We don’t trust anything we don’t trust the process

 

Greg Lyons  03:01

will be expensive, way too expensive. Yeah. And

 

Tim Lyons  03:05

then you told me like your story. And I heard you on other podcasts. And I got to meet you at a few conferences. And I was really kind of blown away. So could you take a little bit of time and just kind of tell us like, how did you get started in real estate? What have you been up to? And then kind of what are you up to now and we’ll dive into that?

 

Bill Hamel  03:21

Yeah, the funny thing is New York City is the center of the universe where you guys are from upstate New York getting towards Albany, not so much. We are different worlds, and so many people in other areas of the country. They say, Oh, you’re from New York, and they assume I’m from the big city. You have the big city. And then you have 95% of New York, which is basically upstate. And I appreciate you asking how I got involved in real estate. It was basically as an average college student, and working at a restaurant. I just came off of a breakup where I was on the wrong end, and I’m left saying my gonna do with my life. All I’ve been interested in doing is having a good time. 21 years old, hanging out with my friends in the city of Albany. They went to SUNY Albany, St. Rose, I was going to the local community college and I read a book. And it was on No Money Down creative financing. And it blew my mind. before I was even through that book. I was so taken by those concepts on how you could build so much freedom and wealth investing in real estate. I was off looking at properties. Yes, I was 21 Dumb and I tend to get way ahead of myself at that early age. I bought the first property that I looked at, and yes, it was a mistake. I asked my My brother to partner up with me. And he knew the city of Albany and he chose not to invest with me but stubborn. I was going to make this happen, my best friend, Greg decided, sure I’ll partner up with you. And we bought this property. And boy was that a learning experience, we bought a property and what we call the war zone. And we got a crash course on how to manage a property and how to manage difficult tenants. It all worked out, we built a small portfolio medium, small, larger properties over a long period of time, self managed, we were swinging the hammer, we were leasing, we were construction managers, we did it all. And looking back, realizing the value of your time and focusing on things that are a needle mover items, things that really make sense. As far as growing your business, we made a lot of mistakes. But over the last several years, focusing on things that are much more important to grow your business is what I’m doing finding big deals, raising money for big deals and being an owner of my business.

 

Greg Lyons  06:17

That’s a great introduction. And we can all get bogged down in the small parts of our business that don’t really move the needle and making sure you have enough business cards, cleaning out your inbox. And sometimes you realize that if I keep doing this day after day, I’m not going to move the needle. And for a lot of our listeners who are passive investors, moving the needle for them is being in surgery, billable hours as a lawyer, an engineer doing the things that they can do to make that high salary and invest passively. For you it was swinging the hammer self managing wasn’t the best use of your time, I will say that your partner back in the day, Greg has a wonderful name. So I’m so happy that that whole thing worked out. But anyway, I think when we look at the parallels from when you first started to today, creative financing, it may be sneaking back into people’s lexicon, especially active investors. And just if you can do a second on what creative financing looked for you back in the day, and wouldn’t look for me look for an investor now.

 

Bill Hamel  07:27

Well, I read that first book, it was no money down for the 90s by Robert Allen because I had no money. And that first property were able to get into an FHA type finance deal. That’s a softball for people who are just walking by that first property. We’re going to live there by this two family what they call now house hack. But we did not move into that property because it was not a neighborhood we were wanting to live in. But we took that first property. Well, as far as cashflow, really getting that crash course, the second year, that’s what we did we realize the importance of location, location, location. So educating myself or ourselves. And we got into a neighborhood in the city of Albany that we were very, very comfortable with, moved into that first floor, rented out the second floor to friends. And we were off and running, building that portfolio, but still continuing to learn the hard way. We rented out that second floor to our best friends. What a mistake.

 

Tim Lyons  08:34

Yeah, no, I mean, I love that because it’s hard to knock on the door and be like, Dude, where’s the rent or a year later being like, Hey, fellas, we’re gonna move it up to market rents here. So we’re instead of paying whatever 700 Now it’s 750. Right? It’s hard to have those conversations. So what I really took away from that first kind of explanation how you kind of got started, though, was the ready fire aim mentality, right? And for the people that aren’t familiar with a ready fire aim mentality, a lot of us can get stuck on anything in life. But when it comes to investing, especially real estate investing, you’ll hear people talk about analysis, paralysis, right? I’m going to analyze all these deals, I’m going to analyze everything to death. And I’m never going to take action because I’m just not so certain. I don’t have 100% certainty to make the next step or take that action. And what happens is that you lose motivation, you lose momentum, and then you’re like, you know what, real estate’s too risky. It’s too hard. I’ll just go back to my passive investing in my Vanguard ETF funds and that’s good enough, and I’ll be average at best. But for people like yourself, like I just love to know that psychology behind, I read a book. That’s amazing. I’m gonna go do it now. And people call it failure or education, like buying a house in a war zone. That could have been a total failure. Right? And that could be the end of your real estate career, but you made it happen, right? You got that education piece. It sounds like it worked out and you took that education and you moved on to the next deal, and then to the next deal. And that’s kind of how it works, you know pretty much anything in life but especially in real estate investing. So with that being said, you said that you were doing all the things you were swinging the hammer, you’re leasing your acquisitions, financing everything. Looking back now, realizing that your time is so valuable, what would you have done back then to buy back some of your time? And what would that have looked like?

 

Bill Hamel  10:25

Buying back some of my time would have looked like focusing on finding deals, we were good at finding deals. So after the first three properties, we just bought, what we say retail just buying two families, they were on the multiple listing service. And we were able to buy that third property, no money down because we found a friend that was interested in lending us that downpayment, money. And then property number four, continuing to educate myself, I discovered foreclosures, distressed property. So property for 567 on and on, probably up until 11 or 12, we were buying smaller one family, two family homes using this construction, rehab style financing. What I have realized over time, there’s different loan products that are available, they don’t always stay consistent over time, banks are always resetting depending on their appetite, further lending and different economic times bought for a three or four year period of time, I had a mortgage originator that really educated us on this construction rehab, where we were able to buy something inexpensively put 20 $30,000 into it. And that finished value was so much higher while we’re making 2030 40% sweat equity. To answer your question, I wish that we were getting some contractors involved at that point. It was a bit early to have a staff and a payroll and all of that, but to get some people to do that work for us, because what we had been doing was buying a property closing. And then we would work on this for three months straight. My focus was working on this physically for three months straight. I wasn’t even thinking about the next deal. We would get it finished, rented and eventually refinance. And then I would look for that next deal. So that slows your growth. If we were able to utilize that, who not how concept utilizing handyman and subcontractors. I should have been finding that next deal

 

Greg Lyons  13:02

consistently. Yeah, the WHO not how is once that lightbulb goes off. It’s life changing for a lot of people, and you do get your time back and all those things. So those are great lessons to learn as you’re coming up. But I think you’ve learned every part of the real estate industry, self managing construction, what to look for. So I think that’s really important and valuable. But now as you’ve grown and you’ve grown your portfolio to focus on finding deals is really important. And we’re probably in a recession right now, or careening towards one at the beginning of 2023, depending on who you listen to who you talk to. But with your focus on bigger deals, do you see an opportunity on the horizon to purchase bigger deals as we get into 2023 and being in a quote unquote, recession?

 

Bill Hamel  13:56

I do. I love that value add rental growth template. As long as you know interest rates are a line item on the underwriting. So whether we’re getting three and a half percent interest or 6% interest if a deal comes across my desk, and it has it’s a fair deal for the buyer and seller, but it has that huge upside potential. And you plug in that financing if you’re still able to generate reasonable returns. I’m a player the interesting part of where we are now. It’s that dynamic on the shortage of rental housing. And that’s what keeps a lot of us very, very bullish. And if the deal still underwrites and has that upside potential. I’m a player because it’s still very feasible to fill your units very quickly. at a decent rate.

 

Tim Lyons  14:56

Yeah, I want to stack on top of that. I have become I think we have done Um, all of us, all three of us have become macro economic nerds right over the last X amount of years, trying to get our hands around where interest rates going to be why they this is what’s going on how does money work? What does a forecast look like? What are the trends in rental housing? Obviously, wherever you’re investing, you have to be hyperlocal. Right? You can’t look at a report about the US housing, it’s going to be crashing. I mean, like, what does that mean, right? Bill’s in Albany, we’re down here in New York, Greg’s in Virginia. So being hyperlocal. But really knowing that data, right bill, I mean, like, we can make these decisions in a box, and we can’t make decisions with our gut, right, we have to be relying on the data and the stuff that I’ve been seeing. And I don’t know if you want to just jump into but when I’m looking at data, there is a severe housing shortage in the entry level home space, right? Nobody the developers out there, they’re not incentivized to build entry level homes, because there’s not a lot of markup, and especially after COVID with supply chains, right, that buzzword supply chains and the lumber prices, and nobody wants to work for less than 35 miles an hour anymore. There’s no incentive, there’s no margin there to build those entry level homes, yet, were becoming more and more of a renter nation. So really, like that’s a really big bullish piece of my thesis sounds like yours as well. So you want to jump in after that? Yeah.

 

Bill Hamel  16:24

And when so many people who have been around for 1015 years or so experienced that massive pain from that 2008 2009 recession, builders, specifically developers, specifically where a lot of them were bankrupt. And that was something that I think has curbed development at this point, were so many learn that way, and they’re just on the sidelines at this point. So I think that the single family market is now curbed. And that’s going to bring a lot of those people who wanted to buy a home into our apartments. Also, if we had such a shortage of new rental buildings being built, and half of those builders are now on the sidelines, that’s going to continue that housing shortage, and people need a place to live. And if we’re in, I found it’s funny, I’m in the Tampa area of Florida, and that’s super hot rental growth area. But even in Albany, New York, it’s been the same. It may not be as much potential as that Tampa area. But it’s typical to buy a building where average rents are 1000 or $1,100. And we’re increasing rents to 1516 $1,800 with the right purchases.

 

Tim Lyons  17:57

Yeah, I mean, it’s really doing your homework, right. And I encourage everybody to don’t just listen to the pundits on CNBC or the mainstream media, I really encourage you like I use a resource called altos research. And altos does a weekly shot of how many houses are on the market, what’s normal, right? They and the guy does a phenomenal job of breaking it down. And I think we’re just a touch under 500,000 single family homes on the market where a normal quote unquote, normal market is around one to 1.2 million homes would be an average, functioning, working market. Right. So realizing that we’re so far below that number right now at 500,000, or thereabout. And then just the discussion about developers being on the sidelines right now, right? The interest rates, the carrying costs are sky high, people are hitting pause and their projects, if they are building they’re building Class A type units with amenities that don’t really lend itself to the renter, the average renter out there, so all these things contribute to your investing thesis. So book though, I want to just take it back one second. For people that are skeptical about creative finance me being one of them, because I’ve never done it before. But after hearing somebody named pace Morbi give a phenomenal presentation at the multifamily mastery five conference in Orlando that all of us were at. A couple of weeks ago. I was on fire. That was on Sunday, he was one of the last speakers usually people are darting for the doors on Sunday afternoon at a conference and people were jammed into the conference or listening to pace more we talk about creative finance. So can you kind of give us like a little overview of like maybe what is creative finance? How does it work? How could somebody with no money or a little bit of money, kind of get into this little space? How powerful is it and how it maybe you can even give us a high level overview of a deal that you did where you use creative finance. Yeah,

 

Bill Hamel  19:50

creative financing. It’s all based on your resources. We all have a different life. We all have a different journey. We all have a different set of resources that we build up over time, or that you should be building up over time. And as I bumped into different properties, you say, how can I make this work at that point? Okay, what are my resources? So this started back, I don’t know, late 90s, early 2000, where if I buy this property for this amount of money, the downpayment is going to be this, how can I get that downpayment money? Can it be credit cards? Can it be a credit line? Can it be a private lender, can it be a partner, et cetera, et cetera, and then being resourceful with those resources, but the math has to work. So if you’re buying a property, and the bank is lending you 75 or 80%, you have that principal and interest. And then however, you’re able to do creative financing to fill that down payment closing cost improvement gap. If once you run some scenarios on what the debt is going to be fully financed, if it’s a great location, has great floor plans, a property that you can manage with ease. If those rents exceed the total expenses, it checks the boxes, it’s a done deal, no money down. And seller financing is always a great way. There’s so many different scenarios, a story on how many 2005 2006 Because I’m also a real estate broker. And I had that mortgage originator who introduced me to the construction rehabs early in my career, she referred me to one of the owners of that mortgage company. He had a property manager that got into a motorcycle accident. And that manager was managing 14 units down in downtown Albany, and was not unable to manage the properties. So at that point, he became a seller. She referred him to me. He interviewed me to sell his properties. I was just going to broker this deal. After a week we had it under contract, someone from California was going to buy it, and it fell through. But at that point, I realized okay, this was Stu prospect was going to buy it for this amount of money. And over the last week getting to know this property. I fell in love with it. It was rehabbed in the 80s townhouse units, brownstone, high level people renting these units. So I start running them. I had been doing creative financing for a while now. And at that point, first, I got the listing. Because I was competing against other agents, I said, Tom, what I can do for you, if you give me this listing, knowing that you don’t have a property manager, I’ll manage the property for free as I sell it for you. That’s what got my foot in the door. Then I started running numbers after that first deal fell through where I’ll go to the bank gets 75 80% first mortgage, I’ll ask Tom the owner to hold 10% seller financing. And then I’m the real estate broker. At that point, I said, Hey, I’ll pay you what the last guy was gonna pay. But I’ll take my 10% Commission as well. So now I got 80% from the bank. I’m baking in my commission. I’m getting 10% seller financing. The rents were more than the expenses. It didn’t cash flow much. But it got me into that deal. That was when I went from owning twos, threes and fours. Now I owned a 14 unit down in a very, very prestigious area in Albany. And then I realized scaling, but also just using those same concepts. How can I creatively get into this deal? Because I don’t have enough money to do the deal. You

 

Greg Lyons  24:20

know, that is brilliant. And that is I think the best real estate investors are the ones that get creative. And it’s not always straightforward. The one thing you’re missing in your story is it may not have cash flowed wonderfully, but the tax benefits you receive that year were outstanding. So that really juices your returns without seeing that dollar for dollar return in your pocket. Your returns get juiced from the tax benefits, that’s for sure. You’re a great example of kind of being out there and networking, right. So many people are spreadsheet jockeys, their Zillow heroes all over the internet. Really Working by spending time in front of their computer where as you learned about construction rehab loans from one person, you’re networking and finding a 14 unit that someone else wasn’t able to close on. It can be kind of overlooked how important mentors and partners are, in your journey from Greg, your first partner when you were 21 years old, all the way up to now syndications and so forth. What role have mentors and partners played in your real estate journey.

 

Bill Hamel  25:30

And I didn’t take advantage of coaching and mentors nearly enough, early on, I’m so guilty of learning things by reinventing the wheel, I had this habit of thinking I could do everything myself. And if anybody gets one takeaway from this podcast is that as we all hear, over and over again, especially in the larger multifamily, larger commercial space, it’s a team sport. If you try to do everything yourself, you’re going to struggle. And this was my result, I built a nice portfolio, 4045 buildings, 250 apartments over a long period of time, self managing, trying to perfect an imperfect double property management business. And I tried to become an owner, not the operator of my business. But it was so late in my career where I just couldn’t get myself removed from the business enough. I had great employees, they were very capable of doing their jobs, but I would not allow them to fail, fall down, get back up, learn and run the business. I would not allow that to happen. And that is a huge error. And what happened to me in 2019, was very abruptly down in that center Square neighborhood of Albany. I had a property manager that had just resigned after two years, some maintenance staffing issues, which was typical, and we’re down there doing some service orders and I have a maintenance guy that runs to Home Depot never comes back. Here I am 530 At night, fixing an old wooden historical window in an Albany brownstone going old school. Probably 4748 years old. I had done very, very well on this business, but I’m fixing this window. That was a long drive home I pulled into my driveway texted my brother who was a partner in one portfolio, my partner of drag on another portfolio and I texted them basically saying, I’m effing done. I’m done at that point. We decided to sell all of our small properties that we built up over many many years, get out of the property management business. And now I was going to do what was a limiting belief of mine over the years scale up into larger multifamily properties. With proper education listening to the Jake and Gino podcast and Grant Cardone and proper coaching at that point, realizing that was just a limiting belief. I had a lot of experience in this business, you build a team, you have resources, you’re resourceful. What we found out is you don’t have one or two people who own this 100 unit complex. It’s so common where there are a 568 people who are general partners on this 100 unit complex in a syndication model with passive investors who are funding the deal to make that deal happen. The big limiting belief is thinking that you had to be this super substantial real estate mogul to own 100 unit complex

 

Tim Lyons  29:09

to what you said right there was gold, right? I mean, for me, it was my identity. Right? It sounds like he was like first of all, you had a come to God moment where you’re like, Dude, I am done. Right. And our mentor Gino, Barbro. He was talking about this past weekend he was talking about getting his wife’s hair dryer at the pizzeria and like sweating the pipe so they don’t freeze during like the bomb cyclone that hit New York a couple of years ago. And he was like, I’m done. What am I doing? I’m on my hands and knees and I’m sweating pipes with my wife’s hairdryer like, I want out. I’m done. Right. And I think we all kind of have that. Some of us have it earlier than others. Some of us never have it. But when we do have it, we realize that there’s a ton of resources out there. There’s podcasts, there’s books, there’s conferences, there’s coaching, there’s mentorships and when it comes to limiting beliefs, you think you were I thought I had to be this great Grant Cardone type real estate mogul. Want to get involved in this? And here I am. I’m Tim, the fireman, Tim, the ER nurse, and we are well over 6000 units in less than three years. I mean, that is insane to me, I have to pinch myself just to say that out loud, right? So this is a great point that you brought up bill, you were active in the business for a long time. And then you had that moment where you’re like, you know what, I gotta scale up, I need to buy back my time, there’s a better way to do this, right? I’m gonna make a pivot. Can you just kind of tease out the benefits of that passive investing that you were talking about buying these bigger deals? And what that means for time, what that means for lifestyle, what that means for cash flow versus being the guy in the arena, taking these deals down?

 

Bill Hamel  30:41

Yeah, it’s a great question. And it took so long for me to build up that portfolio. And once I pivoted away from property management and decided to get into larger properties, it was a matter of focus. And I realized this six months a year after I did this once was no longer focusing on property management seven days a week, I’m now focusing on finding the next deal, and then raising money on some of these next deals. And it’s amazing that I believe in like a year and a couple of months, I had purchased close to 200 apartments, that would have taken me 15, that took me 15 years to purchase that many apartments, I did that in like 15 months. And the numbers reflected, yes, we’re in we were in a blessed time, not thinking that COVID was actually going to present opportunities. But it did, you have this massive rate of growth. And if you got into the right deal, you’re able to compound those benefits and add massive value to these properties. So that was a big factor. But once again, that gets back to also your people who get into analysis by paralysis, if you’re gonna wait for that perfect deal to come around, there’s only 20 people that would have bought that deal. To get into one of those great deals, there has to be a little bit of uncertainty, that’s where that pro forma comes in. And that’s where the education comes in. That’s where knowing your market, knowing the rental growth, being confident in what you’re doing. Because for you to get that deal, there is some uncertainty to these deals. And you have to take advantage of that uncertainty to get that potential.

 

Greg Lyons  32:41

You can’t script everything out, right? It’s one of those things where you could perform or things to death. But it sounds like some of your deals, you hit the perfect market cycle, and you’re able to sell it good times. And and you know, that’s part of real estate investing is, do you limit your downside, but take advantage of some of the upside. And that’s either through great property management, or that through a market cycle. So, again, so many different ways to make money in real estate. And sounds like when you’re in it long enough, you’re gonna find those opportunities, you’re going to take those chances, and things have worked out for you, Bill, that is for sure. So great story and really appreciate your time. So we are going to segue into our final three questions that we ask every guest and this one is especially relevant being in a recession, if you will. And what do you say to people when they say investing in real estate is too risky?

 

Bill Hamel  33:39

Well, what’s the alternative? The alternative is way more risky than investing in real estate, look at the stock market. I didn’t diversify my entire career I what what they would call had all my eggs in one basket. And it did well for me. Even when I was self managing and building that portfolio. I built a substantial amount of wealth, having all the eggs in one basket. What I did do I attendance fortunate and unfortunate. I was well in control of my investments. I was managing these investments. So at that point, I sold a lot of the properties. I was no longer self managing. I did a lot of 1031 exchanges in New York and in Florida. But then I took people’s advice and very wise people’s advice you have to diversify. So what did I do? I spend a lot of my capital gains and put it in the stock market. And it’s done. Okay. It had a run up. And then I gave it all back. Where if I put that money into real estate, I would have compounded even further don’t get me wrong, there is still a happy medium. You still have to like like I have 80% of my portfolio in real estate in this part of the market cycle? Yes, you need to have some liquidity. We’re getting into a recession, a lot of uncertainty. So you do want to have reserves liquidity in case of some of this uncertainty. But you have stock market. You have crypto, I don’t even I don’t understand crypto. I know crypto is suffering at this point in time. But the deals that we get into tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m looking at 20% annual returns, I don’t care if it was in a market two or three years ago, or if it’s in the market in 2023. I’m not doing a deal. Unless I’m going to say 20% annual returns for our investors.

 

Tim Lyons  35:54

No, I totally agree. I mean, I always talk to investors every day, right? Not in the firehouse. And it’s the same thing, right? And I always tell them like listen, real estate moves like a barge, right? Like, if you’re looking for that zooming speedboat of like returns, I’m not your guy, right? I mean, then this vehicle and this horse and this jockey, this is not gonna ride you know, you gotta go find something else. Because it was like a barge, but I sleep very well at night because of that, because there’s capital preservation at the very least, right? I mean, it holds value. So and in times of some lean cash flow, there’s ups and there’s downs. But at the end of the day, it’s a real assets producing, it’s a stream of income. If you understand business, you understand EBIT, you understand how to run a business, like you’re just buying a stream of cash flow in commercial real estate. So, but yeah, I sleep very well at night, knowing that the capital preservation, I don’t have to wake up tomorrow, open my phone and see that my 6000 units went down by 40%. Like, it just doesn’t happen like that. Right. So I love that. So Bill, our second question, you know, is from our mentor, Robert Kiyosaki, and went to the uninitiated, he can sound kind of crass, sometimes they don’t understand his books or his logic. But he says savers or losers and debtors are winners. So what does that mean to you? Well,

 

Bill Hamel  37:06

that means that use debt, at your advantage, consumer debt is stupid period, if you’re gonna go buy material items, and get consumer debt, like flashy cars, and all of the other material items that dpca That stupid, if you’re gonna use debt for appreciating assets, like real estate, that’s smart, we’re able to buy a $10 million property with $2 million, or $2.5 million. That is the power of leverage. And also properly educated, being confident in what you’re doing, you’re able to hedge any risk. And as you were saying, Tim, you can sleep at night, we know that we’re able to operate this 60 unit or 100 unit where it’s not going to fall apart. If we all have challenges, it’s impossible to say that you can run every deal seamlessly. But we’re measuring monthly. And when we have challenges, we come up with solutions to the challenges reset and move forward.

 

Greg Lyons  38:21

No doubt, no doubt as a great answer there and using real estate as that vehicle to leverage just exploded wealth for generations now. And you know, taking advantage that is really important. Bill, our third, third and final question is from another one of our mentors, Jim Rohn. And I think this was especially good for you giving your kind of education in the I guess, the school of hard knocks of property management and all that coming up. And Jim Rohn said formal education will make you a living self education will make you a fortune. What does that mean to you? Wow,

 

Bill Hamel  38:57

wow, self education to me started reading that real estate book, and that was life changing for me. Sure. Did I make a mistake buying that first property? Absolutely. But it got my foot in the door. It allowed me to continue to educate myself still realizing that book had so many very valuable concepts. When you’re able to utilize leverage, you’re able to buy not only one building, but you’re able to buy 1020 30 buildings over a period of time. Have tenants paying your bills, and the appreciation potential over time. The historical graphs don’t lie. Real estate is the best way for average people like you want me to build any amount of wealth and security we want. And I don’t want to say it’s almost like society, society brainwashes us to go down this path. into a W two job.

 

Greg Lyons  40:02

That’s true bill. Yep. Timoteo No,

 

Tim Lyons  40:06

I was gonna say I love that I am. Yeah, I mean, there’s so many ways to skin a cat, right? We covered a lot of ground today creative financing, no lower No Money Down syndications commercial real estate one to four units, FHA loans like, Greg and I didn’t learn this overnight, Greg and I and Bill certainly didn’t learn it overnight. But it was getting that education, right, maybe 70% 80%. And then taking that action, right? It’s having a goal, knowing where you’re going, why you want to be doing something, and then taking that action. And then over time, if you keep on following the checklist, and we didn’t create right, Bill, everybody kind of done 100 before us. But if we’re just ripping off and duplicating how other people created success, so anyway, you dropped a lot of knowledge on us today, I feel like we only scraped the surface. But do love your experience, how deep it is. A lot of questions that I get, though, from investors or people that listen to this podcast are Tim, what are some resources that we can dive into? So would you just like shout out besides the collecting real estate podcast that features Bill Hamill? And obviously the passive income brothers podcast? What are some other resources that you have used on your journey? Yes,

 

Bill Hamel  41:16

thank you for talking about the collecting real estate podcast. But we also do a collecting real estate meetup every first Thursday of each month in Albany, New York. And these are things that I didn’t take advantage of when I was a busy, busy property manager, I had a degree of success. I thought I was doing so well. I didn’t need the network. I was just plugging away on a daily basis. But over the last three, four years, realizing the importance of networking, getting in that proximity of like minded people. And for me, I want to be able to give back as much as I can with people who are less experienced than me to avoid making a lot of those same mistakes I did, but at the same time, maybe learn from some of my successes as well. That’s

 

Greg Lyons  42:07

so true. Bill, if people want to learn a little bit more about you, how can they connect with you?

 

Bill Hamel  42:12

You can call text me 518-857-9251. You can also email me at Bill at Hamill realestate.com. And also find me, Bill Hamill, at Facebook, they’ll Hamel on LinkedIn. I’m active every day over there and I’d love to talk.

 

Greg Lyons  42:38

So if people can find you, they’re doing a really bad job. i That’s it. That sounds like dude,

 

Tim Lyons  42:43

I love people that throw out their cell phone numbers. I mean, that is just That’s telling people I want to connect, and I be on your side. So I love that. Greg, did you have one more thing worth talking about? Yeah,

 

Greg Lyons  42:52

you know we are in the day before Thanksgiving here when this podcast is going to drop. And as the listeners know, I am living in Charlottesville, Virginia. And a tragedy happened here with the UVA football team where Lavelle Davis Jr Deshaun, Perry and Devin Chandler lost their lives in a tragic, tragic shooting. So I wanted to give a shout out to UVA football, the UVA community, the Charlottesville community and to the families of those players that they rest in peace. And that was a really, really tough part of living in Charlottesville. It’s a great place. But boy, we’ve had a little bit of bad luck. So I hope hopefully those families will be able to find closure. And a fourth UVA football player Mike Collins, who was shot but survived. It looks like he is going to be discharged from the hospital soon. So I hope he hopefully he gets well. But just keep on fighting the good fight. Love the people around you because you just never know.

 

Tim Lyons  43:54

UVA is definitely has a special place in our hearts. So our thoughts and prayers to the UVA family. And all that said Thank you, Greg for that. So this has been a great podcast Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to spend about an hour with us. And we look forward to serving you all next week. Thank you for listening to another episode of the passive income brothers podcast. We would be grateful for your support of our podcast by giving our show a five star rating and review and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. Don’t forget to take inspired action after listening to this show, so that you can start building out your passive income streams. Finally, head on over to city psycap.com to connect with us and find out more information about how to get started passively investing in real estate