Ashley Kehr – is a full-time real estate investor, she runs the educational and entertaining Wealth From Rental Instagram account, and is the mom to three boys, talks to Neil Henderson, the host of The Road to Family Freedom podcast. Ashley Kehr talks about how she got involved in real estate investing, using a line of credit and refinancing, house hacking and travel hacking, setting up two property management companies, building a robust investment portfolio, and using her time wisely.

Post-Interview Analysis 

• Key Lessons Learned:  Figure out what you have to bring to the table for real estate investment: time, money or experience.
• How did they acquire their knowledge or what knowledge did they need to acquire? She built up her knowledge regarding customer service when it comes to managing tenants. 
• How much money did it take to get started? She brought her time and experience to the table with an investor that had money so she was able to come with zero money down. 
• How much time does it take now? Now that it is up and running she spends about 20-40-hours-a-week but she has since sent that work to a third-party manager. 
• Could they do this strategy from anywhere in the world? The answer is yes but not really because she is working on a project and she has to stay connected to her properties.

Episode Highlights:

• Schedule a video chat with Neil Henderson at roadtofamilyfreedom.com/connect
• What was the ‘a-ha’ moment that got Ashley Kehr interested in real estate investing? 
• How long after working as a property manager was it before Ashley bought her first property? 
• What were the numbers on Ashley’s first real estate deal?   
• Work in the real estate industry before you dive all-in investing to make sure you enjoy it.    
• Ashley talks about the house hack for her 21-year-old sister’s first house.  
• She explains how she has been using a line of credit and refinancing.  
• What does her portfolio look like currently?  
• Ashley explains setting up two property management companies. 
• How did she convince tenants to switch from paper checks to online payments?   
• What projects are next for Ashley Kehr? 
• It took five years for her to build her portfolio.  
• What has been the most frustrating part of being a residential real estate investor?  
• How did she get involved in traveling hacking and utilizing her business for it? 
• What does she believe is the most valuable skill to be successful in real estate investing?   
• Is there anything that Ashley Kehr would do differently? 
• What advice would she have for someone getting into property management?  

Books and Resources Mentioned:

• The Road to Family Freedom: roadtofamilyfreedom.com
• Ashley Kehr: Instagram
• Bigger Pockets Forums: biggerpockets.com/users/echopm
• Book: Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer

I say the three time, money and experience there's other things too. But those are the three examples I always use. And if you're missing time, for example, then find a partner go out and find someone who has whatever you're missing to get started. And I think someone who takes the time to actually figure out if they have what it takes to do real estate, and if they think they're missing something takes the time to reach out to a partner and find a partner is really important. I'm Neil, and I'm Brittany,

we are a family on a journey towards financial and location independence. Each week, we interview successful real estate entrepreneurs about their chosen investment strategy, and rated based on how much money it took to get started, how long it took to educate themselves, how passive it is, and whether or not they could do it from anywhere in the world.

Welcome to the road to family freedom. If you like our show, the easiest way for you to give back is to leave us a rating and review on iTunes, head on over to road family freedom comm slash review for links and instructions on how to do that, and we would be so grateful. All right, and that thought of us Let's hit the road to family freedom.

Hey, guys, Neil, here. Before we get to this week's show, I want to make you an offer. You can do a video chat with me. It's completely free. There's no pitch is not a sales pitch. I don't have any kind of a mentoring program. I'm not selling anything. This is literally just a way for me to connect with other real estate investors. And being a working, working dad with a son at home. This is much easier for me to do than trying to go to a couple of real estate meetups a week. So again, if you're interested, anything you want to talk about, if you're an experienced investor, brand new investor, we can talk about anything and everything you want to talk about with real estate investing. Just go to road to family freedom.com slash connect and fill out the form there to schedule a call and I look forward to speaking with you. So let's get to the show. Greetings, friends and families. I'm Neil, you're listening to the road to family freedom podcast. I'm flying solo this week as Brittany is out of town. But we have a fantastic guest. Our guest this week is the wife of a dairy farmer. She's a mom to three boys health and helper, and a full time real estate investor. And she runs the educational and entertaining wealth from rentals account on Instagram. Be sure to check out her birch here it is not to be missed. Ashley Carol, welcome to the road to family freedom.

Thank you very much. And that was quite the introduction.

I was I was looking through wealth of rentals. And I was like, Oh my God, this has been fantastic.

Lady, you enjoyed it. Yes.

It was great. It was great. Okay, so you can you talk to us a little bit about sort of what the aha moment for you was when it comes to real estate where you were like,

yeah, I

think this is what I want to do.

So I started working as a property manager per time, I managed a 40 unit apartment complex. And I just saw the investor I was working for, you know, he had residential commercial units. And I saw how it was pretty much passive for him. And you know, the cash flow that he was making each month. And I approached his son and like, why can't we do this. So that was kind of the aha moment as I like actually was in the business and saw the financials and saw what it took to buy real estate. And I did a lot of refinancing with him. So I saw like the power of using leverage, and just all those things combined was really the aha moment. But you know, being the boots on the ground really helped me learn that this was the path that I wanted to go.

Gotcha. Did you own any other rental property before you started working? Working as a property manager?

No, no, I hadn't. I had no experience. I was I graduated from college with a dual dual degree in finance and public accounting and lasted six months at a CPA firm before I quit, and I was just going to be a stay at home mom on the farm. And then I received this opportunity. And I said yes. And I went from 20 hours a week to 50 hours. It was a great learning experience, for sure.

And then how long after you started working as a property manager? Did you buy your first property?

Two years then? So I managed a 40 unit apartment complex and some commercial units for two years. And then I took on another 40 units. So as a total of 80 units by the end of two years. And that's when I decided to purchase my first duplex. Gotcha.

And let's let's because we always love to start off with people's first deal and kind of talk about how they got into that deal. Give us the numbers on that.

Sure. So I used my boss's son as my partner, and he had the money and I had the experience so made a good partnership like that he would be completely passive and I would manage and take care of everything. So the first property we purchased for 74,000, we had to do some cosmetic updates in one apartment. We ended up renting it out for each unit $600 a month. And what we did from there was we then put a, we refinanced that a cash out refi and took that money to buy another duplex. And so we kind of did the burst strategy, by rehab, rent refinance, repeat, but we just did cosmetic rehabs at first, you know, nothing big, just maybe new cabinets or vinyl plank flooring, little little things like that paint. And so we did that for about three duplexes and started to look for bigger stuff. Gotcha.

And then so you're you're all in for 74 or more, like, let's say 85, put

in five grand and four updates and stuff. And then we actually, we held it for five years, and we just sold it this past winter for 105,000.

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. So you're able to when you did the cash out refi, were you able to pull out all of your original capital or just most of it? All of

the original, we bought the second one. And then we actually did it, transferred it into a portfolio loan with the second one and used equity in both of those to buy the third property.

Gotcha. And with with any of your burgers, because you're that's primarily where you're doing is all almost all burgers, correct? Yes. And then Have you ever had ended up with having to leave money in to Uber at all? Or have you pretty much

there was, um, six unit, it was three duplexes on one lot. And we actually did owner financing on it. And he we paid 30 grand down, and then he held the remaining for a year and we paid interest only payments on that. And when we refinanced we actually got out just enough to pay him off. So we didn't get that 30 grand back, which is, which is fine. Yeah. But um, we're at least we had enough to pay him back. So

yeah, and that's the thing, you know, we have, we've done a couple of burrs now. And you know, they're part of it is just experience. And you know, it's also that just real estate's not real estate in the real world is a little different from spreadsheet real estate. Right. And, you know, but even, you know, if you end up with a little bit of money left in the deal, it's still you got, what, $30,000 in equity, and you've got $8,000 in the deal, and it's cash flowing asset. And, you know, right, just turn around, do it all over again. It's just really,

yeah, so we didn't get to, like, pull out as much as we wanted. But now we're making more cash flow, because our, you know, our mortgage payment isn't as high because it didn't take as much money.

Well, I love I love what you did with that you. And I don't know whether this is intentional or not. But you worked for two years in the business before you actually went out and tried to do it. I don't know whether that was intentional or not. But it's something that I always encourage people almost with any profession, you know, before you go out and like really try to make a career out of it. Get a job doing it or with somebody as an intern, find out if it's something you like, and if it's not, then you know, you've made some money. And you know, you've spent some time figuring out what you don't want to do.

Yeah, I 100% agree with that. Mine was not intentional at all, I, I got lucky, say to have this opportunity. But I I tell people all the time, if you want to get started in real estate, you know, you can, there's actually a person that follows me on Instagram and she actually lives kind of close to me. We met at a couple meetups, she quit her it job and now as a maintenance coordinator at a property management company because she wants to get into real estate and I just think that is so awesome. Yeah. I mean, there's so many entry level positions within real estate that it's easy to get into that kind of career field, you know, a realtor or you know, maintenance type or maintenance coordinator or leasing agent, you can do that as a side job on Sundays. So I agree that either getting a job in real estate or house hacking are the best ways to get started.

Yeah, that's how Britney and I got started. Was that with the house acts Oh,

really? Oh, cool. Yeah, I'm jealous. I had to live through my sister. I made her.

I know, I've heard the story verse. No. Okay, so, so you have never done a house hack. But I love this story of what you did for your What? 21 year old sister?

Yes. All right. So

tell us your story story.

Okay. When she graduated college, she accepted. She had a she had accepted a job but it wouldn't start for about two months and it was a part time position as a radiologist technician. So with just her letter saying that, you know, she had a job coming, she was able to get an FHA loan, and we together purchase a duplex for 134,000. So my part of it was, I gave Heard the downpayment, I gifted her that money. And we became 5050 on the deed, so we both own the house. But she heard the FHA mortgage is in her name only. So she benefited because she's living in the upstairs unit right now, the people who live downstairs are paying her mortgage completely, and my sisters living there for free. Yeah. And then I benefited because I can't buy a house for only 3% down, so or three and a half percent down. So it's kind of a long term game for me, because I'm building equity in the house as the tenants paying down and it's an appreciating area. And my sister is getting to live for free. So it's benefiting her also. And she's not. And she's also building equity. Yeah. So it's a little different strategy that we need to do where it benefits both of us. Oh, yeah.

And you said, I've heard you say that. She's, she may do it all over again. And another year?

Yeah, yeah. So she had to live in the house for a year. And that year is up. So she's been looking and now we are trying to look at financing options. Do we, you know, switch the first house into conventional get or another FHA loan? Or do we just do this one, conventional. So, yeah, we've been running numbers on different houses for that. But she's all over the place where she wants to live next. We're trying to focus on that first.

Well, and it's, it's, it's a strategy I have a lot of young cousins are now in their early 20s. And a lot of them live in really, really expensive markets. And I keep trying to tell them, okay, like, expand your horizons, don't stop looking. You're living. If you want to stay in an expensive area, you're probably not going to be able to buy a house for just you. It's just not I am sorry. So look at ways to can you buy a three bedroom, four bedroom house, and rent out the rooms? And a lot of them go out? I don't I don't want roommates. And I was like, Okay, well, well.

Yeah, I think that is so great. I have a friend in Denver and one in Nashville that both do rent out by the rooms. And those are both expensive markets. And yeah, they've done very well with them.

And Britney and I have done a very non traditional house hack, and that we actually rent out a guest house at the front of our property on as a short term rental. Oh, cool on so and it's been phenomenal. I mean, it's what got us into real estate, right? It pays our mortgage plus on a very expensive property. So it's another avenue that you can look at, it doesn't just need to be a long term rental, if you've got an auxilary dwelling unit on your property, or if you live out in the country, and you've got you want to put a tiny house on there. Look at the local laws, obviously, you know, a lot of municipalities are not so friendly to short term rentals. But it's a it's a great option.

So

I'm curious when you bought your property, was that already there? And did you know I

was wanting to do that was already there? We had no idea that was where we're going to do? Yeah, it was originally I envisioned it was going to be my man cave. Yeah. And that idea died within about two hours of us buying the property. Right. All right. And then we actually set it up. It's just a really nice place mainly for my in laws to come and stay. And we appointed it. It doesn't have a kitchen or laundry facilities. So it's not really done. Then we work as a long term rental. And right what we set it up very nicely as like as like a little hotel room. And my mom, probably six years or so ago, brought me this article and she's if you ever heard of this thing called Airbnb, she says maybe you could stick your your your casita up on Airbnb. And yeah, I was like, all right, sure. So we took some pictures of it, and stuck it up there. And we were we were 80% occupied within two months.

Wow, that is awesome. So you need to give your mom a 10% Commission.

My mom has been great. She's actually even wants to invest on some of our deals with us. So my mom is

awesome. It's really cool.

So So that first deal for you, you actually came in with it with zero money down? Correct. I just want to make sure I'm right.

Yeah. So you brought the expander. While Yeah, since I use my own herbs. When I first started out, I didn't use any of my own money. And then when I took on my second partner, we put in money 5050 on a deal and now I've been using a line of credit to purchase everything, and then refinance and just pay the line of credit off.

Gotcha. And for maybe some of our our listeners who may be new to this about how lines of credits work and how you use them to buy real estate. Can you sort of talk to us about how you make use of that line of credit?

Sure. So we live on a dairy farm and there's three houses on the property. One was my husband's grandparents house and that's where we actually used to live. And then we built our own house. So we moved to our our new house. We did we did the house was paid off the farm one and we put a commercial mortgage line of credit on It. So it's acts just like a home equity line of credit would where you can pull off it at anytime there's a certain amount you can pull off, and you pay interest only payments on it. So ours acts like that. But we had to file it as a mortgage, so we had to pay mortgage tax on it. And this was just to get away. Most banks will only give you the Line of Credit on Your primary residence. So this was how our bank went around that and did the commercial mortgage line of credit. Gotcha. So anytime I'm purchasing a property, I'll say the property is 70,000. I'll pull off 70,000 off the line of credit, I make interest only payments until I refinance on that property and pay the line of credit back off in full and then start over again.

Gotcha. That's exactly what Brittany and I are doing with our HELOC. Yeah, yeah, buy buy a property for 60. You know, there's 35, and rehab costs, and ARV is, you know, 130, you go and you go to the bank and say, hey, I've got a property worth 130. I'd like to get a long term mortgage on it. You turn around, pay it off and do it all over again.

Yeah, yeah. Love it. wash cycle. Yeah,

yeah. Yeah. So you've used a lot of partners on Have you pretty much used a partner on almost every property you've bought now?

No. Well, I started out with one partner and we did a lot of deals together. And then I took on a second partner, where we have a duplex and a triplex together, the duplex we did together was a no money into it deal, we use a actually an unsecured loan from the bank, so there was no collateral or anything. And that's because that loan to actually purchase make a cash offer purchase on a property. And then was soon as we close, we refinanced and then appraised for a lot more than we purchased it for. So we were able to even put some money into our pocket on that deal. And then we bought a triplex together. And we each put in cash for that ourselves. So just kind of nice. Having something you know, that's free and clear, I guess. So we didn't put money into that. And then I have a duplex with my brother that I bought for like $20,000. And for Christmas, I gifted him 25% of that house one year for Christmas. So I'm partners with him. And then I'm partners with my sister in her house. Gotcha. And I have several duplexes on my own, too.

So as somebody who has not yet done any partnerships on single family homes, residential real estate, how, how do you structure? How have you structured those deals and those operating agreements.

So the first partner, we created an LLC together, and we put in the operating agreement, which anyone can get one of those from an attorney. And I actually filled in like specifics. So like, I am responsible for the management, I control the money, I make the decisions. My partner is the money guy, he actually we wrote in any money he put into the LLC, he would be paid back with a loan payable. So each month he's receiving principal and interest payments from the LLC for money, who's put into the deal. And then we're both 5050 Equity Partners in the LLC. Gotcha. So and then we also have a buy sell agreement. So like if one of us wants to sell gives the other one the opportunity to buy. And then we also have life insurance policies on each other. The LLC is the beneficiary of those life insurance policies. So if my partner was to pass away, proceeds would be used for me to buy his family out, so that I would then become 100%. Owner, and vice versa, he has the same on me. So there's no, I don't have to worry about, you know, running the LLC with his family, and he doesn't have to worry about doing it with mine. So that's something I always recommend that everyone does is get the life insurance policies, because you might be in a position where you can't afford to buy the family out, and then they can sell to someone else or you're forced to be partners with them.

And do you recall about how much that cost you to set all that up?

So for the LLC in New York State, it's a, like a $200 filing fee, maybe another $100 and publication fees. And then for the operating agreement, I don't I don't think that was more than $100 for the attorney to do. She just has a draft of it. And she's actually sent it to me. So now any LLC I create, I just fill in the blank, send it to her. Okay, it looks good. And, you know, I've done so if your attorney will do that, that will save you a lot of money and that's great, too. And then for the life insurance policies, they're about, you know, 90 bucks a year for each of us.

How are you both about this Same age.

Yeah, he's two years older than me. I wonder

how that would work with someone who's a little bit older? Or if it's if there's a cuz I'm familiar with the key principle, like life insurance that sometimes they'll do that where they've got somebody you know, in a business, right? Yeah.

And the business. Yeah.

No, that's great. So your portfolio is up to 32 units now, or is it more than that?

Nope, it's 32. All our residential except for to our commercial units. I recently bought a four unit building with two residential upstairs and two commercial downstairs. Gotcha.

And you self manage it God love you.

Actually, not anymore.

Oh, congratulations,

February 1, I handed everything over to a local property management company. Wow. It's very hard to control that. It's been really nice. We're still like getting a lot of stuff switchover because I've still been working for that other investor managing his ad units too. So I wanted to kind of get out of them focus on more of my stuff. And so I got him introduced his property management company. I just love them so much. I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna give them my units too. And so it was like, kind of sad, but it's working out great so far. That's good. Well, I

wish you luck. We were property management on all of ours, mainly just because they're all the way across the country.

Yeah. Yeah.

So well, that just like throws so much of that. However, you you did DIY management up until February 1. So

yeah, so I created two property management companies, one for myself, and one for the guy that I was working for. And I mean, when I first started working for him, there was files and boxes and like a spreadsheet where you'd put physical check marks the person payer Oh, yeah, I came a long way.

Yeah. Now. And so when you were, let's look back a little bit because I want to, I want to lay this out for people who maybe want to do you know, their own property management? What did the day in the life of a full time property manager look like? For you?

Okay, yeah, that's an interesting question. I'll give you like when I first started, and then what it was like, No, kind of the last days how different it was. But when I first started, I worked in a little tiny office in the one apartment complex. And my time was flexible, like, it's not like I needed to be there nine to five every day, which was really nice about being a property manager, because you're on call, I had to carry two phones, I had a cell phone that was just for the tenants to call. And I would take every single call, I never miss a call. And it's it got very overwhelming and very stressful, just trying to be available 24 seven, trying to schedule maintenance people by myself with just you know, the resident calling me and me, you know, having this stop whatever I was doing and call, you know, a technician, or a plumber, or whatever. And then so I started looking into I got pregnant with my second son, and I wanted to take maternity leave. That was somewhat less stressful. So then, the seven years I did this, I never had anyone that would like, cover me, I guess. So I always was the manager. And I started looking into property management software. And that's just when everything became so much better. So I actually started using at folio for the investor I was working for and then build them for myself. And so tenants started paying online, I wasn't, and I mean, at checks just for the other investor entering at checks every month, it was, you know, a very time consuming. So now I'm paying online, and then that would automatically enter it into the bookkeeping. All my payables started using bill pay through the software, maintenance requests were each of the tenants had apps, they could put their maintenance request in through the app, and it would get sent an email gets sent right to the maintenance guy, you could tax from the software, they could sign leasing agreements electronically, and it just really streamlined everything and made it easier. And then I took on, I had my boss's daughter actually start working with me. And she would scan all the payables in and scan all the documents in for each tenant. And that really made us paperless, too. So as I'm on the go, I can just I can look at my phone and pull up information or respond to something on my phone. And that was kind of my big goal was to make it so it was remote. And I and I did that I accomplished that. And then when I had the opportunity to take over the property management company takeover everything I I decided to do that.

Yeah. And were they already obviously they were already familiar with the systems that you were already Using Correct,

yeah, so they actually had the same property management software bill Diem that I did. So that made mine an easy transition.

Yeah, my I come from a family My father was a landlord back in the 80s. A really frustrated landlord. Yeah, primarily because he got into it. Because back in the early 80s, you could shelter a lot of your W two income with real estate. Until I think there was a law, a tax law passed in like 1986. That totally changed it. And he was held by his own admission, he was a really terrible landlord. Yeah, just you know. And the last straw for him was he had a guy who was kind of a low level mobster here in Las Vegas, who was always paid in cash. Always paid late. My dad was always having to chase him for the rent. Yeah. And then eventually, like, his wife left him, and then he just stopped paying all together. That's fine. You know, I took my dad, you know? Yeah, that's nice. And you know, went probably let him not pay rent one month, and then you know, right. Right. Took him another month to get him out. And, and then yeah, it was like, No more, no more. So nowadays, it's so much better. Like I can already tell that somebody who you know, who takes up property manager nowadays, as so many, so many systems available to them? How did you convince because a lot of old school tenants will maybe not be so up for switching from checks to online payment? How did you incentivize them to to make that switch,

we did have some that never made the switch, like they still send checks in, which was fine. But to get them to switch over, we actually at full yield. The software has a customer conference every year. So myself and the investors daughter actually went to that the last two years, and they do a great job at like, giving you ideas to incentivize people. So we did like giveaways. So sign, if you sign up this month, for electronic payment, you can win an iPad, or you know, a book or whatever, you know, a $50 gift card to Amazon, like the prizes varied. But we had a lot of people sign up for that. And then once we had completely switched over to like the software, anybody that moved in, had to it was mandatory. So we still have people up there lived there for 10 years that still mailed the checks then but those are the two things that helped was incentivizing. And then having people that new people move in making it mandatory for them to

love that idea. That's, you know, you know, you don't it's gonna cost you what at most you had a $500 iPad. And you know, you only bought one of them, and you make it a contest and they get an entry. It's a great idea. I love it.

Yeah. And to save time not having to, you know, open, by the time you go get the mail, open that envelope entered in, go to the bank deposit.

Yeah.

So, you know, I've heard you talk about how you have your kids helping you look for properties. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you how you employ your children to help you look for properties.

So my kids, my kids are trained to look at how many meters are on a house because they really love multifamily. So they're trained when we're driving around, they're trained to look oh, there's two, there's so look for the gas or electric meter. And no, one time my son even said, Mom, we should buy that house. And it does. It looks really old. Let's make it. But um, yeah, I've had and now that I'm not really doing property management, they won't be as much involved. But they A lot of times, I would do my own cleanings. And they would come with me and you know, dust or sweep or whatever. But now I'm working on rehabbing a commercial unit. And they actually helped me install the vinyl plank flooring. Every time I needed a new piece, they drag it over and send it in place. And it's great. That's great.

So how so now you've got property management off your plate. What, what's next?

So in the commercial building that I'm rehabbing, I'm rehabbing one commercial unit. And then the other unit, I have a coffee shop going to I think, and they are going to do the rehab themselves on their unit. And then the upstairs there's a two bedroom, which attento tenant is in there now and she wants to stay. And then I completely gutted the one bedroom apartment. So I'm working on those right now. And then in the commercial unit downstairs. My one partner and I are actually opening a liquor store in the building. So pretty interesting. Yeah,

yeah. Dude, are you having to deal with like liquor licenses and things like that?

Yeah. So like in New York State, it can take at least six months. Yeah. So we started the process in November I believe, and we're still waiting. But gives us time to rehab it and the unit nice

and do you think you're going to are you going to continue buying residential real estate or We're gonna pause for a little while

I'm actually looking into out upstate New York property taxes are really high. And I don't want like, you can buy a duplex here for 20 Grand 40 grand, you know, the the barrier of entry is very low, but every year you're paying on that $20,000 duplex, you're paying 20 $500 in taxes. So I want to look for, you know, even if I'm paying 100,000 for a duplex out of state, but only paying, you know, 800 here and taxes, yeah, because I can always pay it once I pay that 100 grand off, that's gone. But up here, there's still that 20 $500 Forever, forever.

Are any of your properties paid off? Or are they all you have leverage on all of them?

I have some of them paid off one with a partner, one with my brother and then the commercial property. I just bought it off to

gotcha. How when you were when you had a greater deal flow? What was your deal flow? Like? How did you go about looking for properties?

So I found a lot on the MLS is pretty much 50% MLS and the other 50 word of mouth. I bought two duplexes from friends that were selling, I've sold the three duplexes and only in two of them were two friends and the other one was on the MLS I sold but mostly word of mouth is people say, Oh, well, I know you invest. Are you interested in looking at my friend's property? Or this person selling that? And I actually bought 13 units from one investor? Oh, wow, that was like how I built a lot of my portfolio.

Gotcha. And what, you know, I've never really found out what period of time are you talking about? How, how long is it taking you to build this portfolio?

It's been five years my I purchased my first one in 2014, the winner or end up 2014? Yeah,

gotcha. So what has been the most hair pulling frustrating moment for you? When it comes to being a residential real estate investor? You say

one of the reasons that I decided to switch out of property management was the disputes between tenants. I felt very much like their mom. But that was just like, the worst part for me was the like recently was I just seemed like I had a lot of tenants fighting over, you know who parking spots or one lady would, you know, call and leave me a message at 1am saying that the kid next door was coughing too loud, and she could hear it through her wall. And you know, and I just I got really aggravated by that. But when I first started out, I would have to say that it was frustrating because you rely on maintenance people a lot if you're not an I wasn't doing any of the maintenance myself. So it was really frustrating to me because I wanted to be the best property manager that I could I wanted the residents to be happy I wanted to you know, make the investor money but I felt really bad and upset sometimes when people would you know get frustrated and mad at me because the this maintenance issue wasn't resolved correctly or I couldn't get the plumber to come there right away or something, you know, things that I didn't have direct control over. That was really hard on me in the beginning. Gotcha. You know,

I've some of my more experienced real estate investor friends that sort of issue small multifamily that's the exact complaint that they make is that when they've had a duplex triplex or four Plex, they feel like they're babysitting the tenants who are always at each other's throats.

Right, you know, right.

Whereas if you got a single family home, you're probably not gonna have as big a problem with that. But Right, exactly. So that's the trade off if you're thinking of everything,

even in like the big commercial like the 240 unit. apartment complexes, like I think a lot of the mindset there is you have lots of neighbors, you don't have control over where you're right and love duplex triplex. I think more it's gonna be more single family, but it's not.

Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. So, you know, one of the questions we always a big thing for us was you always ask people, whether or not they could do their strategy from anywhere in the world once it's up and running. Now you have now very definitely, you've handed off your property management to someone else is, how long do you think you could leave your portfolio without having to be in the area?

Right now? I couldn't because I'm helping with rehab. But before I bought this, this building, I could have been gone for a long time without even with still doing the property management. I everything was set to be done remotely. So the I mean, that was very nice. But even if I did travel or go away, I would have to still answer the phone. I'd still have to check the app. I'd still have to respond to email so it's not like I could go away and disconnect. I still have to be connected all the time. So I think that's very different. Like, yes, I could work remotely and for a very long time, but I still had to work constantly. Yeah, to take care of those things. So that was a big reason for me to give up the property management. I built it to where I wanted it. I enjoyed traveling a lot the past year, but now I want to enjoy traveling without my phone. Yeah. So but yeah, once this rehab is done, if I don't take on another rehab project, because I'm using this rehab to like, learn how to do things, I want to be more aware of construction. So I can take on bigger rehabs and not do them myself. But make sure when I hired out that that person is doing it correctly, yes.

Yeah. No, I that's so important that you that's one of the things about doing this stuff by yourself, as you know how long it takes, you know, what's into it. So when you ask a contractor to do it for you, and they quote, you owe me $35,000 you go, No, that's not gonna be you know, yeah, yeah. Got materials, and labor's there's no way it cost that much. You know, so no, that's great. Now, you're you are, you're a big travel hacker. I know that. And I love Brittany, I love travel hacking. Talk to us about sort of how you got into that. And if there's any strategies you've used to sort of build those miles with your real estate business at all?

Okay, yeah. I don't remember exactly how I've learned about travel hacking. I think it must have been something on Instagram I saw and I did a lot of research on the points guide calm and different websites like that, like chuza. Phi has, I think, like the chase Gatlin, maybe, series, something like that. And so I just start doing a lot of research. And I think that Chase Sapphire was my first card that I tried out. But now what I do is, I don't really use my Oh, so I have a bunch of LLC is for my real estate business, I have LLC is with each partner. So I open business credit cards within those LLC. So that has helped a lot like being able to open a lot of cards because of those LLC. So about every couple months now, I'll open a new card and one of the LLC is and I can with us doing the rehab. We have a lot of expenses for that right now. Yeah. And then for my husband's dairy farm, we have over 100 cows and they eat a lot. So we have a grain bill that ranges between six to $9,000 a month. Wow. And so about a year ago, I said, you know, you should ask them if they take credit card, and they do so every couple months, I'll open a new card and he'll put the green bill on the card and we'll pay it right off. And so that's how we've gotten a lot of our points is doing the signup bonuses, and then putting, you know, one large expense on it that we would have anyways. You know, we're not out there looking for expenses. Yes. To get those points.

Yeah, you know, it. That's the thing I try to remind people is one keep it simple. Keep Yeah, there's some some my travel hacker friends are a little crazy. But for me, I just try to keep it as simple as possible. And you know, it's like, Listen, I'm spending this money anyway. Right? Might as well get some rewards for it. I pay I pay the credit card off in full every month as

that's so important to have that.

Yeah, don't do it.

You have to be able to do that.

Yeah, I have a very sad story about a property manager that I met at a travel hacking conference, who he managed. He was a property manager for Hoa. And he had something like 2000 units that he managed, wow. And he paid his entire maintenance bill every month on his Amex platinum. And he said me and my wife go around the world in first class four times a year on that, until one day is bookkeeper said, you know, we've got all of our maintenance costs go through the same maintenance company, but they're all in different bills for each property. Why don't we consolidate them into one bill and it will make it so much easier. And even Oh, god, that's a great idea. Well, a month later, the owner of the maintenance company called and said, Yeah, you can't pay with a credit card anymore. Because for him before he didn't notice. It was you know, 12

all the different bells. Yeah, different

bills. But once it was one big bill, he's like, yeah, we're not doing that

service fee. Oh my god. So

Alright, so back to real estate investing. What do you believe is the most critical skill for someone who wants to get into let's call it bur investing with small multifamily needs to develop themselves to be successful?

I think the first thing is to develop what skill you have that is drawing you to real estate investing, you know, do you If you're good with money, or you have money, or you have time to invest in real estate, or you have, you know, knowledge and you want to grow that knowledge, whatever think develop what you why you think you would be good at real estate investing. And then, if you call, if you have everything you have time, I say the three time, money and experience, there's other things too. But those are the three examples I always use. And if you're missing time, for example, then find a partner go out and find someone who has whatever you're missing to get started. And I think someone who takes the time to actually figure out if they have what it takes to do real estate. And if they think they're missing something takes the time to reach out to a partner and find a partner is really important. Because a lot of people get stuck with, oh, well, no, I don't have money, I can't invest in real estate, and then that's the end of it. Or, you know, I'm too busy, or I don't know anything about real estate. But here's, you know, 50 bucks, someone just recommended, but I'm not gonna buy. Yeah. So I think if you take the time to actually learn about real estate and figure out what you need to do to get started that that's just the first step right there.

Yeah, well, and if you don't have experience, if you've got time, and you've got, if you've got time, then find a way to offer that time to an experienced investor that has money, right, bring that, bring that value to them. If you've got money, find a way to bring that money to an investor who's got time and experience. And if you've got an experience, find a way to bring that experience to someone who's got money and time.

Yeah, exactly. And then as your if you want to get started right away, do that. Or if you want to go by yourself, I guess, that you can learn, that's easy, the knowledge is a hard thing, you can save your money, you know, budget yourself, get on, you know, financial freedom journey and listen to Dave Ramsey. And save. So there are all three of those are things that you can do on your own, it's not impossible that you don't have to have a partner, but you can get started faster with a partner. But you can also achieve all three of those things. I think time is the hardest thing. And I've actually been working with Steve Rosenberg who's been coaching and mentoring me on, you know, making sure that my time is, you know, everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, but it's how you use them. And so he's really helping me be productive and not waste time and tracking, you know, everything I'm doing so that I do have more time to do the things that I want to focus on and learn and then, you know, more time with my family. And he's really showing me I do have that time. I just need to use it wisely.

It's something Brittany and I struggle with constantly. And I don't think we're all that great at managing it. To be honest. You know, we're both we're both working full time jobs right now. And we have a son, and we're doing a podcast state and you know, it sometimes feels like we're, you know, I I see her right before we fall asleep at night. And I'm like goodnight. So, so if you could hit a magic reset button and go back and beginning your investing journey over again, with what you know now. Is there anything that you would have done differently?

Hmm, that's a good question. I think that so I bought three duplexes. And then I took a break for a year where we built our own house. So what I would have done was I would have stayed in our old house longer, that was already paid off and invested more about more rentals, instead of building our house and waited to build our house. That's what I would have done. Or I would have, like even done some sort of house hacking with, it would have been kind of hard to do. But I guess we could have rented out a bedroom, but my husband needs to stay on the farm. So we never could have really gone and bought a duplex and lived there or whatever. But maybe we could have built the duplex instead. But cows don't know

castles Do they?

Yeah. So that's the only thing I could think of is we would have put off building our house and lived in, you know, a paid off house longer.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And what advice would you have for someone and maybe this is redundant. What advice would you have for someone who's looking to get into, let's say property management,

you'll cry a lot. But you really have to develop tough skin. And there's a great book out there. It's called hug your haters. Because no matter what you do, property management is very customer service to the owners and the tenants and I was very lucky the investor I worked for was you control everything you do everything and you know, I wasn't he didn't oversee me at all. I just did everything. And so I didn't really have to worry about like keeping him happy. He was happy as long as the cash flow kept coming. But um, for the tenants I it was it was very difficult for me at first but this book, hug your haters it just taught it's a lot about customer service and Just kill, kill people with kindness basically. And so it took me a while to develop that. And I definitely have grown into a better person because of it more patient, more professional, it definitely took a while to get there, I would become easily frustrated. And I would get upset when you know, a resident was, you know, mad at me or upset with me or unhappy with living there, you know, it reflected directly on me because I was managing this building myself, and it really got at me for a long time until, you know, I kind of put, you know, I kind of separated myself from it more like just, I'm gonna do whatever I can for you. And just like, you know, really kill them with kindness and not let it get to me as much. And I just tried to be more understanding as to you know, they're living there, this is their home and stuff like that. So it took me a while to work on that, like, the personal interactions with the tenants took me a long time to develop. And it's hard because people, people are complicated. And not everybody is not as not everyone is as good as managing money as we are.

Yeah. And everyone is fighting a battle that we know nothing about. But you still have a business to run. And, you know, and tenants, people who are bad with money are usually have gotten really good at at explaining why they can't pay for something.

Right? Yeah.

I'm sure you have to, as a property manager, you have to learn to be empathetic, but also, yeah. Also very strong and firm. And this is, this is what needs to happen. Otherwise, you got to move. Yeah,

I learned a lot to blame things on the lease, like, Oh, I'm sorry, it says in the lease.

Well, and a lawyer would probably tell you Good answer.

Right, right.

Well, Ashley, thank you so much for sharing with our audience today. If any of them wants to reach out to you and learn more about you Where would be the best place where they can do that.

They can find me on the bigger pockets forums, I have an account a membership on there. And then also on Instagram, I am at wealth from rentals. And every Wednesday starting in March, you can hear me co host on the bigger pockets real estate rookie podcast.

Oh, good for you. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. Very good for you. So Alright. Well, thank you so much for being a part our show today.

Thank you very much for having me.

Okay, that was Ashley care from wealth from rentals on Instagram, I highly, highly recommend that you spend the time and go check out her feed on Instagram. It's very entertaining and very educational. And you really get a feel for a lot of the nuts and bolts of managing a small multifamily portfolio highly recommended. So for me, what was the key lesson learned from this, I would say that you need to figure out what it is that you have what it is that you're good at, that you can bring to the table for real estate investing, you know, she talked about time, money or experience. Well, if you've got time, but you've got no money and no experience, then find a way to bring that to an investor who's got money and experience. If you have money, throw it away to bring that to someone who's got time and experience. And if you got experience, find a way to bring that to the table for somebody who's got money and time. So I love that advice. I'm not sure we talked a lot about that. But I'm not sure we've ever had it spelled out quite so well as that. So listen to that, again, what she said it's great. The key piece of knowledge that she needed to acquire to be successful. I think she said it was customer service when it comes to managing tenants. And she brought the book, hug your haters, which I recommend, we'll put that in the shownotes. But the idea that you tenants are complicated, and a lot of them are not the best at managing money, and they're going to complain, they're going to do things that annoy you. And but you need to keep your head about you. And you need to find a way to answer the same question the same way every time. And she talked about pointing to the lease. I'm sorry, we can't do that. It's not an Elise. And that's very important lawyers, real estate lawyer is going to tell you yes, that's the right answer. Because you don't want to get into get into a situation where you give one tenant something and then you that tenant turns around tells that tenant well they gave me that when I didn't pay and then they come and you just get into this death spiral. So how much money did it take her to get started? It didn't take her any money because she brought her time and experience to an investor who had money and she was able to get into that deal for no money down. Love that strategy. How much time does she spend on her real estate endeavors now that it's up and running? You know, it's a little bit strange because literally two weeks ago, she handed over her property management to a third party manager but it's Sounds like she was doing about 20 hours a week, I would say I was a 20 to 40 hours a week because she was managing her own portfolio plus the portfolio, the 80 units for the apartment complex that she was working under. But she since handed off that to a third party manager, and now she's sort of focused on project management for a mixed use commercial building that she's bought. But once that's done, you know, I mean her a lot of times probably going to get back to her so and could she do this strategy from anywhere in the world? The answer is yes. But two caveats. One is right now she's obviously, you know, working on a project where she can't leave that. And then too, she said, Yes, back before when she was a property manager, she could work remotely from anywhere in the world because the systems that she had set up, but she did have to stay connected. She couldn't disconnect. My guess is she probably couldn't go away on a two week cruise, she could be somewhere where she had access to her phone, and the internet. dope. We appreciate Ashley taking the time to talk to us. Check out her Instagram feed on wealth from rentals. And that's all this week, but let's hit the road. And if you like this podcast, we would really appreciate it if you take just a few minutes and leave a review for us on iTunes. It's really simple to do. Just go to road to family freedom comm slash review for links and instructions. Thanks for listening. We're doing this all again next week. Until then, safe travels.