Building wealth outside your agency with Chris Prefontaine

Announcer:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency Podcast presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid-sized agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. We’ll show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. We want to help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable and if you want down the road, sellable. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency and this one is awesome. We are going to talk about money, but in a way we have not talked about it before. But before I get into that, I want to remind you that we are literally giving away a, almost $2,000 prize every single month. We are giving away a free seat at one of our live workshops or a free seat of access to one of our on-demand workshops. And all you have to do to enter this drawing is leave a rating and review for the podcast wherever it is you download your podcast. So for many of you, it’s going to be on iTunes. For some of you, it’s going to be on Stitcher or on Google. All you got to do is leave a review, give us a rating, take a screenshot of that review because as I keep telling you, I don’t know who Biker Momma 109 is.

So a lot of times your user IDs are not in alignment with your professional name or your email address. So take a screenshot and send it to me. That’s all you need to do. And then we put you in the proverbial hat and we draw a name out every month and we give away a great prize. So you can use it yourself. You can send a staff person to one of our AE workshops. Someone inside your shop can use the workshop. You have a year to use it. So please don’t not take advantage of that opportunity. So happy to offer it as a prize. Happy to have you come to the workshop. I love meeting podcast listeners in person. It’s always fun to have conversations about how they listen and what episodes mattered the most to them, so really love that. So please go and leave a rating and review and we will reward you accordingly.

You only have to do it once and then you stay in the drawing. So, all right, let me tell you a little bit about this episode. So here’s the deal. I want many things for you. I want you to have a sane life. I want you to have a stable staff. I want you to have grateful clients, but one of the big things I want for you is I want for you to make a lot of money. I want your agency to be an ATM machine that funnels and fuels your dreams, your family’s needs, your team’s needs. And there’s no reason why that can’t happen. One of the big mistakes we make in agencies is we leave too much money inside our business. And when we leave a lot of money inside the business, we forget somehow. And this, by the way, if you’re a C-Corp, this is a little different, but most of you are LLCs or partnerships or S Corps.

We forget after a while that the money that we left in the business is actually our money. We’ve already paid tax on it. And so it’s Drew’s money. It’s not the agency’s money anymore, it’s Drew’s money. And Drew is in essence leaving it in the bank account of the agency for the agency to spend my money. And oftentimes what happens when you leave an excess of earnings inside the agency, you make bad business decisions. You keep staff longer than you should. You do lots of things that you wouldn’t do if you had to lend the money back into the business. So this is a whole different topic which we’ll talk about another time. But my point to you is I want you to get the money out of your agency and build your wealth outside the agency. And for many of you, one of the more attractive ways to do this, and for many of my agency owners who are already doing this, one of the key vehicles for building that wealth is real estate.

And so I met a guy, all he does is real estate deals and he partners with business owners and other investors. He does this stuff on his own, he partners with his family, but he’s built this amazing business on not only doing real estate deals but teaching other people how to do real estate deals. And when I met him, I started asking him questions about real estate. And what he was saying to me is that most of us if we’re investing in real estate do it wrong. And we do it wrong because we put our own other personal assets, our house, whatever it may be, on the line, we put it at risk. And there are ways that we can do this that are safer for our family. And that there’s a variety of ways to invest in real estate that are not just about buying a house or a commercial property.

And so I asked him if he would come on the show and tell us all about it. And he said, yes. So Chris Prefontaine is his name. I’m going to let him tell you a little bit about his background, but I’m excited to pick his brain for me personally and for you. And again, as you’re listening to us talk, I want you to hear my voice in the back of your head saying your agency should create cash that you get out of the business and you build your wealth outside of the agency. I want you to have a diverse portfolio. I don’t care if you invest in ponies or real estate or poppy fields. I don’t care, but I’m suggesting that for many of you, real estate is kind of high on your interest list, which is why I asked Chris to be on the show. So without further ado, Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Chris Prefontaine:

Well, thanks for having me. Pleasure.

Drew McLellan:

As you and I were talking about, off-air, one of the mantras of AMI is get the money out of the business. And so many of my listeners and AMI clients look at real estate as a huge opportunity, but it’s one of those things sort of like diamonds. I’m sure I could make money buying and investing in diamonds, but I don’t know how to look at two diamonds and know which one is good or bad. I think a lot of business owners feel the same way about real estate. They know there’s huge opportunity there, but they don’t know how to maximize or take advantage of the opportunity, which is why I thought you would be a great guest on the show. So give everybody just a quick snippet of your background in terms of real estate. And then I want to dig into the meaty topics that are a part of your new book, the new rules book because I think that outlines all kinds of different ways for us to think about real estate investing.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah, for sure. So I’ll date myself a little bit. I’ve done this for like 28 years now, so that gives you some perspective on my age, but Drew, just to give you an idea of where this came from, the book and everything, I’ve done everything from single-family building on single lots to multi-family to commercial, to raise the roof or we tear off a roof and go up another floor to new homes. So we ran the gamut and then I learned the hard way in 2008 with the crash why not to be on personal signatures in loans and things like that. And so we re-engineered the whole business in 2008 and that’s what we do today, which is buy on terms only. We don’t use banks and we buy everything on lease purchase, owner financing, things that don’t require banks. So I go to bed at night with a different calmness than I did pre-2008, let me put it that way. It’s a family company too. Just so you get a picture, it’s myself, my son-in-law, my son, and then a great support team. And we buy and sell ourselves and then we teach others around the country to do the same.

Drew McLellan:

So let’s talk a little bit about the buying on terms because I think for a lot of people they… I just had a conversation with an agency owner yesterday and he said, once I get $1 million in the bank, I’m going into real estate. And I said I don’t think you need $1 million to start. I know I didn’t start with $1 million. I still don’t have $1 million in the bank. I know that I didn’t start that way. So I think maybe you’re thinking is askew. So talk a little bit about this idea of being able to jump into real estate without visiting your friendly banker.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. You’re %100 correct. That person thinks like so many in that, okay, I got $1 million. If I buy X amount of properties, I put 20 to 30% down because that’s what they require then I can buy X amount of properties. That’s a little bit limiting. So we use two vehicles mainly. Lease purchase, we have a whopping $10 deposit built into a lease purchase. So if I’m going to buy your house on lease purchase, I’m going essentially pay your underlying debt if that number works for me. In other words, if that number is less than I can get on the market for rent or what we call a tenant-buyer. And I’m going to then at the end of that term, usually 36, 48, or 60 months, I’m going to pay off the underlying debt. Now it’s lower than day one so I benefited from that and I’m going to give the owner any equity we agreed to at the beginning if there was any. We protect it and give it to them at the end when we pay off their loan. Now, none of that required a deposit. None of that required a bank. The loan stayed in their name, I just paid it. And so we’re creating, I don’t want to say out of thin air, but we’re creating income literally from a $10 deposit. That’s the lease purchase route.

Drew McLellan:

Why would an owner do that? Why would an owner stay on the hook for the note if somebody else is paying it as opposed to having somebody… What’s in it for them, I guess?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. Great question. Students ask that. They’re, come on, why would a seller do that? Well, in no particular order, some sellers need debt relief. So I’m going to go bad to good. Some sellers need debt relief. They got a second mortgage payment. Some sellers divorce and need to get rid of it now without having a hassle. Some sellers frankly are in good shape; they just want more money. In a lease purchase they’ll usually get more cash out if they can wait. The only person this doesn’t work for, this is the easiest; if someone says I need or want the cash now to go buy another house for my family. I need this cash to go buy a house and I’ll even take less. Okay. We can’t help them. Everyone else, we can help them get more money out of the deal because the longer they go term-wise, I don’t care about price, I care about term.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Because you’re getting rent.

Chris Prefontaine:

That, it’s a monthly cash flow, but I’m also getting principal paydown every single month that goes farther. So sometimes homeowners just care about their number they’re getting at the end as long as they can wait. I care about pushing out as far as I can and getting that principal paydown.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right. Okay. So in your new book, because you’ve written several, but in your new book, you outline lots of ways that somebody can be involved in real estate and benefit from real estate investment without owning a commercial property or without owning a rental property all on their own. So let’s say I want to jump into real estate, but I don’t have the time, I don’t have the expertise to manage a bunch of properties? I don’t want to be a property manager. What are some of the ways that I should be thinking about real estate?

Chris Prefontaine:

Okay. So again, in no particular order, I’ll use my CPA and my attorney who know our business integrally, obviously. They’ll come to me every now and then. My CPA just sold his house and he said, hey, Chris, I got $165,000. I know I won’t make any money on it, where can you pocket it for me? Do you have a deal? And so we’ll look at what we have going on. We’ll propose two or three things. So he does a passive investment, he couldn’t care less. He knows our books. He knows how strong we are. And so he just does it passively. They could also dig into, like in the book, things like tax liens, tax lien certificates because they could have someone do that. They could subcontract that out, have someone hunt that down and just invest in tax lien certificates.

Drew McLellan:

So explained to us what a tax lien certificate is.

Chris Prefontaine:

Okay. So all around the country forever in the United States, different every county. If I use an example, in Illinois, I have a building there. In Illinois, if you don’t pay a tax for a long time they sell that tax certificate to an investor. That investor buys the face value of the tax and they’re guaranteed statutory interest. So what we talk about in the book, say I go in, I’m late on my taxes, I go and I pay it off, well, that person who bought that tax certificate gets the principal back plus a statutory, whatever it is for that state interest rate, guaranteed. I think it’s Texas, some states as high as 25%.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So let me just see if I understand this. If in Texas or some counties in Texas it sounds like, somebody has not paid their taxes on a commercial property, I could go in and pay their tax and so I’m absolutely protected, I’m guaranteed that I’m going to get not only my principal back but whatever their stated interest is. So as you were saying in Texas it might be 25%. So let’s say they owe, I’m just going to make up a number, $25,000, I go in, I give them $25,000, I’m guaranteed to get my $25,000 back plus a 25% interest kicker.

Chris Prefontaine:

Correct. Whatever it is in that state. Yep.

Drew McLellan:

So let’s say the building owner doesn’t come in and make good on their taxes, when do I get my money back or what happens next?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. This will get your attention. So different states are different. I’ll just give you some examples. So some states have a right to redemption. Like they’ll let the homeowner or the building owner come back after X amount of months or a year. Some of them are a year. So give them that long to pay it, but if they don’t at whatever that point is, six months, a year, some of them are deed states, you’ll own the property. You’d actually own the property.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So I pay their $25,000 in taxes. They go whatever the period of time is, let’s call it a year.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yep.

Drew McLellan:

They don’t make good on that and now I own the building.

Chris Prefontaine:

You own the building in some states. It’s crazy.

Drew McLellan:

Wow.

Chris Prefontaine:

And this has been around for decades. This is not new. It’s just that a lot of people don’t talk about it. So in the book, we have an expert on that because I’m not so naive to think our niche is for everyone. Right. So there’s all kinds of experts in there.

Drew McLellan:

So in other words, what I’m hearing you say is I could hire someone who has a depth of expertise in these tax liens. They could help me identify, based on the dollars that I have and I guess maybe where I live but it sounds like it doesn’t really matter, properties that I could pay the taxes off on. So what if it’s not a deed state? So again, let’s say they’ve gone a year, they haven’t paid back the $25,000 that I in essence have paid on their behalf, how long do I wait before I get the principal and the interest back?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. There’s still a cutoff because that’s when the government guarantees it. There’s still a cutoff date. It doesn’t go on forever. And you know that going in which state you’re in. And to your earlier point, a lot of this can be done online now, believe it or not. You used to have to go physically. And you do still have to on some, but some you can do online auctions for this. Okay. So let me draw the distinction. So there’s kind of a gap between what you said earlier like, hey, I don’t want to get in the trenches. I don’t really want to do that, I’m an agency owner and then full passive. Tax lien will be towards the full passive, but you’ve got to set someone up and get them trained. So there is some override, some overseeing. It’s not heavy, but it’s somewhat involved a little bit.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Or you have to hire someone who already has the expertise and for a fee, they would manage it for you. Yeah. Interesting. Right. So tax liens, is one. What’s another way that I can invest in real estate without wholly owning a commercial property and being a property manager?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. So aside from the passive thing, I say, well, you just get involved in a deal. There’s in the book, we talk about and some experts talk about the crowdfunding now no longer is there a restriction. And I’m not going to get to SEC stuff, but no longer is there a restriction for the small investor. The person wants to kick in $2,500, $5,000, $10,000, they’re not going to put it in $100,000, there’s vehicles for them now. And those are talked about in the book as well. So they can go on to these funds that have been approved by the SEC and they can invest little amounts of money like the old REITs or things like that, that you used to be able to invest in.

Drew McLellan:

And is there a name for those kinds of funds?

Chris Prefontaine:

They’re just private funds, but I’m calling the general concept crowdfunding because somebody will go online and they’ll do their raising of funds and you can get involved in that. Now, you probably want to know and vet that out a little bit, but there are some great ones out there. That’s why I started the passive thing with, hey, pick someone that you know, like and trust and go to them and say what do you have for deals that I can invest in?

Drew McLellan:

So I know you do this and I’m sure there are other people that do this. Let’s say somebody is interested in doing this and they don’t know anybody. So the very first time they’re even being introduced to this concept is with this podcast. So for example, if I wanted to do a deal with you, what questions should I ask you? I don’t know you from Adam. What questions should I ask you to vet? Because again, I’m not a real estate expert. What questions should I ask you to vet whether or not I should invest in something that you’re doing?

Chris Prefontaine:

There’s two things. I’m going to say the first one that will probably surprise some listeners first and then go backwards. The first one is its math. So if your investment is a low loan to value relative to the value of the property, I almost don’t care as long as the thing is not a shack. So you want to know things like value of the property, loan to value ratio, but you also want to know the person running it, their experience. I always say on our staff, with our niche, I always say, look, we’re in the trenches. We do deals. We’re not just throwing stuff around. So you want to know how long they’ve been in it and do a little vetting on them. And then the deal is just math in my opinion.

Drew McLellan:

So if I’m vetting them, this is a little like in our world, if an agency owner is hiring somebody to do SEO and the agency owner doesn’t know the mechanics of SEO, it’s hard to know what interview questions to ask, right? So same thing. So if I’m vetting someone like you in terms of, yes, I’ve been doing it for 28 years, are there documents I should ask to look at or is there some proof of success that should reassure me that this is somebody who really knows what they’re talking about? Like how do I suss that out?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. So I’m trying to flip the coin to see if I was interviewing you for that reason. I’d want to know, this sounds crass, but things that don’t lie like is there a BBB profile that’s accredited. Okay. So that’s a start. Like, are we hiding behind these things, important? Secondly, what types of deals were done? And then again, the deal itself is kind of like a standalone deal, always. If the person knows what they’re doing, it’s a standalone deal.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, because you don’t want to risk other property or other assets. Right.

Chris Prefontaine:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Okay.

Chris Prefontaine:

Right. So that’s it. I mean, on its basic level, that’s it for sure. Because look, put all the math aside even, Drew, wouldn’t you think that it’s a comfort level too, right? I can jump on a Zoom or have a coffee with someone and go yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what, my gut’s feeling it. You got to go by that until you do the gut check.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So I have some friends that put together their own buying group and bought a multi-family, like apartment building. How is what you’re talking about different than what they did?

Chris Prefontaine:

Okay. A couple of questions then. So did this group put their own money in and then that money purchased the apartment building and then presumably they hired a manager to run that?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Chris Prefontaine:

Okay. So I would say not terribly different because they didn’t go out and try to raise money. That’s why I asked you that question. They just did it with their own personal funds. Not terribly different except for they’re in the driver’s seat there and they just have a management company running it. So they are a little bit more hands-on there. And so they’re going to have some more risks and liability, obviously.

Drew McLellan:

Right. If the roof needs to be replaced, that’s on them.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah, or if it’s a lawsuit. If someone falls down, we’re in a very litigious society, right? So if something like that happens, it’s them.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Okay. So let’s go back to the deal then. So let’s say you’re putting together a deal and I’m like, okay, Chris, I’m going to pony up whatever, $20,000, $30,000, whatever it is, $100,000, whatever. What is the protection, somebody falls down the stairs of the apartment building or the commercial property? I’m an investor in that. So what is the protection for me or what kind of protection should I be looking for in that?

Chris Prefontaine:

One of two things depending on what type of property is. You absolutely need an instrument of protection. The instrument of protection could be if the property is owned, real simple, by a promissory note protected by a mortgage. Some people think they’re one and the same. A promissory note is just a promise to pay. A mortgage is an instrument that it gets attached to the property and clouds the title. That thing can’t sell without them coming to you and going, hey, Drew, we need you to get this thing released. Well, I’m not going to release it until I get paid. That’s simple. A lawsuit, a lien, and anything that came after, you’re what’s called a priority lien before it. So you want to make sure that the title is clean. The title is clean meaning there’s no other liens on it. And so that when you put yours on or your attorney put yours on and then it comes back behind you, you almost don’t care

Drew McLellan:

Because I’m going to get paid out first.

Chris Prefontaine:

Correct.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Okay.

Chris Prefontaine:

Correct. Super important. So example, this is a little bit more detailed. This will get you to the next level here. So we had a deal where it was an owner financing deal and we had a balloon payment coming up with a seller and the seller was getting older. And he said, look, I don’t want to give any more extensions. I kind of want to get cashed out and we said okay. And simultaneously we had our CPA come and say, hey, I got this money, I want to pocket it somewhere, I want a really good return. So we simply paid off the first lien and put a new first lien in front of it who could wait a longer time. That’s it. Very simple. We kind of just exchanged collateral there. That’s all. Just exchanged the loan.

Drew McLellan:

So what you did was you used the CPA’s money to pay off the seller.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah, the CPA became the new first position.

Drew McLellan:

Right. And so then you were basically paying him back over time.

Chris Prefontaine:

Exactly.

Drew McLellan:

He was in essence earning money over time because he wasn’t in a rush.

Chris Prefontaine:

Right. Exactly.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. All right. So we’ve got the tax lien, which is fascinating. We have this idea of finding somebody who’s managing deals and being able to put in as little as you were saying, $2,500 or $5,000 up to I’m sure millions.

Chris Prefontaine:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

What about REITs, are they still a viable option? I still hear people talking about them.

Chris Prefontaine:

I’m not an expert in it and even though I’m in the business I’ve never put money at it because, again, for me, I’m kind of the opposite of what you’re talking about. I want to be able to control it in some shape, form, or fashion. And some of those have gone broke because I look at that as a stock.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right.

Chris Prefontaine:

Here’s a fact. They hate when I do this on radio, but the stock can go to zero. My property can’t go to zero or even with a crash, it can’t. And so I’m much more comfortable with that. The stock market is, I’m going to probably piss someone off of this too, but it’s like gambling in my opinion unless you’re a big guy in the market.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So for you managing the deal and having an asset that to your point can’t have no value, that feels more secure to you.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. Because if you, A, buy it right and, B, push the term out long enough to our earlier conversation, you get a home run no matter what the market does.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Okay. So we’ve got the tax liens. We have the be a minority player in a bigger deal, which requires finding someone like you or someone locally who does this and who is taking investors in. Right.

Chris Prefontaine:

Sure.

Drew McLellan:

And I’m assuming because the dollars are low, you don’t have to be an accredited investor, right?

Chris Prefontaine:

No. As I mentioned it’s different now. Yeah, it’s different. And obviously, if you do a one-off deal with someone like if you and I were doing a one-off deal it’s not a “pooled investment,” it’s just one deal.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Okay. So what’s another option for me if I want to get involved in real estate?

Chris Prefontaine:

There are what’s called turnkey companies. Some really good ones. And what that means, Drew is if I was a turnkey company, I go out, I buy the properties, I get a renter in there, I get the cash flow stream looking attractive to an investor and then I offer that turnkey package. It’s all rehabbed. It’s got a renter in it. I offer that out to an investor. An investor comes in and buys that. And basically, the cash flow and the management of the property is run by the turnkey company. The investor just put the money in. So it’s like an offshoot of all of this that we’re talking about, but it’s specifically on homes that were just rehabbed and placed a renter in them.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So let me see if I understand this. So somebody goes out and buys a single-family home, in essence, flips it, gets it ready to have somebody live in it, all of the candidates. They create the lease, they put the renter in, and then they package that whole thing up and you’re going to buy that. You’re going to stroke them a check for $400,000 or whatever. Are you going to buy it all?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. You would actually buy it outright or you go finance it, fine, but you’re the owner of that asset. They’re running it for you.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. Because renters come and go, is part of the deal, then that they will keep it rented?

Chris Prefontaine:

Well, yes, but you can’t predict and they can’t predict that that will… They can have a pool of enormous renters but that doesn’t guarantee you that you might not have a one or two or three-month downtime. It’s like any other investment. So again, we went to the scale before, hands-on versus passive. So a little bit probably maybe keep you up at night factor if you have a rental that goes empty but it’s another avenue. There’s a lot of different ways to go.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, It’s interesting. Actually, I had a house that I wanted to sell to buy a different house. The market was soft, couldn’t get the price I wanted. So I ended up hiring a property company to rent out the first house and then manage that rental process and then I bought the second house and moved into it. So that’s actually how I got into real estate, it was the market was soft, I had a big house that I had raised my daughter in, she went off to college, I wanted to downsize to a townhouse. So I had this big house that I really wanted to get top dollar for and the market just wasn’t ready for it. So in other words I sort of did by accident what you’re describing, right?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. And there are some great companies. I just recently interviewed someone on my podcast, his whole story was interesting because he was working for a big company that supposedly was doing the turnkey, made a mess of the service, made a mess of the rehabs, didn’t do it by code. And he saw this and he said, wait a minute, there is a gap here in the industry. And he went off and now he does buy, rehab, all in-house. So you know you’re getting the quality and then he provides third-party inspectors. Just a whole different level of credibility and then moral and ethical service.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. And actually, now that you’ve just mentioned your podcast, this would be a good time to tell people a little about it and the topics that you cover because if this is a topic of interest, I’m barely scratching the surface in our conversation, but I know you dig into it. So tell everybody a little bit about your podcast and the kind of topics you cover and how people can find it. And then I of course have more questions.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. So it’s smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com and kind of like what we’re talking about now, a lot of podcasts will go with just their niche. So if they’re a rehabber, it’s all rehabbers, they don’t have anyone else on. So if you don’t like any other niches, that’s not for you. Ours is the opposite. Ours is what we’re talking about right now. It’s all different guests, all different ways of looking at real estate. And then we throw in there some other stuff that has to do with the mental side of things, right? The Dr. Joe Vitale’s who have been on and people like that. So we do have quite a mix of niches on that. We’re not so naive to think like I said earlier, that our niche of terms is how everybody should do it.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Okay. I have more questions, but let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and dig into this.

I’m going to take just a quick second and remind you that if you head over to the agencymanagementinstitute.com website, one of the things you’ll find there in our effort to support agency owners is some on-demand training. We know that many of you want to attend our live workshops, but for some reason, that doesn’t work out. Maybe you’re outside of the US or maybe you have little kids and it’s tough to travel or it may just be that our calendar and your calendar do not align. And so what we’ve done is we now have three courses that we either regularly or occasionally offer as a live workshop. And now we’ve got them in an on-demand training version. So you can now find a biz dev workshop, our agency’s new business blueprint course. You can also find our AE Bootcamp.

And our most recent addition is the Money Matters workshop. So all of those are available. If you head over to the website and you go under training, you will see on-demand training under that tab and you can check out all three of those courses. And obviously, those are courses that you can take at your leisure. You can get through the whole thing in a weekend, which I don’t recommend, or you can space it out over time. You can do it individually. You can do it with your leadership team, whatever serves your agency best. We just want to make sure that you know they are there and available for you. All right, let’s get back to the episode.

All right, we are back and I am on behalf of myself and all of you picking Chris’s brain on how we as agency owners can move money out of our core business, our agency, and create our wealth outside of the agency. And as I told you in the introduction, I think this is a critical thing for us to be thinking about. I don’t care if your agency is killing it this year or not. This is a long-term strategy and I want you to be thinking about how do you not leave so much money inside your business, but how do you get it out? And what do you do with it to grow it and protect it? Okay. So, Chris, we’ve talked about the tax liens. We’ve talked about the terms. We’ve talked about, sort of this third-party fixer-upper, really. Right. It’s like, I’m buying a house, I’m fixing it up, I’m putting a renter in, now you get to buy the package. What other things should we be thinking about as possibilities for real estate?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. What I was thinking as we took a break is you said earlier something about people being hands-on, remember, and I gave the analogy of being passive on the other side of the scale. But some owners, I notice this from other entrepreneurs in general, might say, well, my agency or my business is at a point where I have a little extra time over here, and so what if I did one deal a year. Me, like I’m the agency owner and I said, what if I do just one deal a year. I would do this. I would go into the free and clear market meaning homes in the United States that are debt-free. There’s about a third of them, believe it or not. We teach this and other people teach it, but you just need to know how to find them. And the reason I said one a year is, I’ll give you a metric. If you buy a house, owner financing that’s free and clear and you’re somewhere around the $190,000 and higher, let’s say $200,000 purchase price and you structure a term of four years or more, that’s a six-figure deal, profit.

Drew McLellan:

Help us understand the math of that because I’m sure you’ve got everyone’s attention with the phrase six-figure deal.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. So our deals pay three different ways, right? So on an owner financing deal, it’s using exact numbers, but round. We buy the home for $200,000. Okay. It’s owner financing. We put no or little money down. We then make monthly principal payments to that owner, let’s call it $1,000. It’s about right for a $200,000 house. And so if we structure terms of at least four years, we know we have $48,000 in principal paydown. Right. Just on the underlying note. Okay. So that’s one little payday. Then we’re going to go out and we’re going to put what we call a tenant-buyer in that home. That is a [inaudible 00:33:14] tenant. That is a buyer that needs time. They need time to fix their credit. They need time to save more money for a down payment, whatever their reason is. They need time. It’s a big market.

They pay us, that house probably $1,500 a month. So we just created another payday of $500 cash flow per month on top of the principal paydown and we bought the house for $200,000. We’re not going to sell it for $200,000. We’re going to sell it for somewhere between $225,000 and $250,000, probably in the middle there, somewhere. That’s another $20,000 to $40,000. You stretch this out for years, you’ve got yourself a six-figure deal. It’s that predictable. You want to go further for obvious reasons, but you want to go at least four years.

Drew McLellan:

As you said, I’m going to do a deal a year, are there people who are literally finding these houses, approaching the sellers, cutting the terms of the deal, finding their own renter, and managing all of that all on their own because that sounds like a lot of work.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. Okay. Here’s a good question because here’s the big distinction of why it’s not usually a lot of work. If I put a renter in there, a lot of work, headache, potentially headache 50% of the time. If I put a buyer in there, let’s say you’re my buyer, you know that you’re being treated like you pay like and you act like you’re a buyer. So you take care of everything at home. You’re not calling me for a clogged toilet. The only thing you don’t have is you can’t get a loan yet. And so we help you with a mortgage-ready plan, we don’t, a third party does, with a mortgage-ready plan to then purchase that home. In the meantime, take care of it. It’s your home. You just don’t have a loan in your name yet. And so we don’t get that call in between like you were the renter.

Drew McLellan:

So with the tenant-buyer, because you said, okay, I’m buying the house for $200,000, I’m going to sell it for $225,000 quarter or $250,000, are you negotiating that price when you put them into the house or you just know that the house is going to appreciate at that level? How do I know that I’m going to be able to sell it for at least $225,000, let’s say?

Chris Prefontaine:

You’re locking it upfront. And the reason you lock it upfront is really for you and for them. You give up upside on a trending market like it is now, flat or up. But the whole reason why a buyer comes to the table and says I like this program, I’ll give you X amount upfront, and that’s my payday one. I’ll give you a down payment, it’s non-refundable because they do lock in the equity if we have an upward market. If we have a flat they are okay. If we have a downward market because that’s probably your next question, what happens? Well, it gets to the end of the term and the tenant-buyer has a couple of choices. Right. That we can maybe extend it for them. So they can stick around, let the market correct or they can just come up with extra cash to cash it out or they can walk. And that’s happened. So they know it’s their option, nothing to do with us.

Drew McLellan:

So let’s go back to the upfront payment. So they’re going to put a deposit down just like they would if they were buying the house with a traditional mortgage, which is non-refundable. So if they walk from the deal, I get to keep that money?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. And this is a good topic because life happens. Right. So there are some investors out there that say, well, who cares if they do, you just put another buyer in it. We take a different approach. We say, okay, it might be true legally, but morally and ethically, our goal is to have them win. But do life events come up? Yeah. We’ve had all these, death, divorce, separation just because they’re boyfriend and girlfriend, all kinds of things that have happened, [job reloc 00:36:38] and they have to walk. And some have walked from $40,000. They have something bigger and better to go do.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. All right. So I could ask you a bazillion questions about all this, but I want to be mindful of our time. What mistakes do people make when they decide that they want to start dabbling in real estate? What are the things that we need to watch out for? What are the dumb things that people have done that we should avoid? And where are the hidden pitfalls in all of this because it all sounds kind of like magic, right? Like you put a penny here and a dollar comes out over there and I suspect that’s not always the case.

Chris Prefontaine:

You’re absolutely right. So a couple of things. If you’re kind of semi-passive and let’s say you did that owner financing deal, we just talked about. You just did one for the year, trying to make $100,000 extra this year. A couple of things, newbies and some of our students have happened. So on both sides of the coin, one is buying incorrectly because you’re anxious to get a deal because you just heard those great numbers like you said and you said I got to get this. Overpaying when they’re new. On the buyer side, not putting them through the proper screening so you end up with a glorified tenant. You didn’t get the buyer you were looking for. They’re never going to cash the house out. And if you do have a term with your seller, you got to respect that. You can’t just throw someone in the house and hope that it cashes out. So that’s a big boo-boo because then you’re going to act at the end of that term if you didn’t get the tenant-buyer cashed out. Taking out loans on property. Back to your initial thought on this whole real estate topic, taking out loans and signing personally; big boo-boo. You signed personally, you just put everything you and your family have at risk and everyone does it. It’s crazy. That’s a big mistake and that’s how you open the show actually.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I know you teach some of this stuff. So if somebody wants to become a student of some of these options, talk a little bit about how you teach it, but also where else can they go to learn this stuff?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. So there’s so much free information now as you know, right, between YouTube and podcasts, mine and others, that they can explore that. Because here’s what I say to people, forget agency for a second just say everyone, find a niche you like, maybe the tax thing that you and I talked about gets someone excited, maybe the owner financing one or two deals a year does. Find someone doing that niche. It’s in the book, it’s on my podcast, but it’s all over the internet. Just find a niche you like, then find someone in that niche that’s still doing it. Not 20 years ago and they got some cool theories, but they’re doing it today. And then just latch onto whatever their system or mentoring is. I’m sure it’s like your industry. If they do that with blinders on, don’t look left right or backward and do that for three years, so it’s a bit of a commitment, they’ll have a great experience. If you’re going to open a restaurant, I would say the same advice. Just find someone in the niche still doing it and latch onto them.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. And learn from them.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. What haven’t I asked you that I should have asked you? What questions do you get all the time that I haven’t?

Chris Prefontaine:

I didn’t clarify and right when you were saying that we could go on, I thought of this. So business owners will get this. Agency owners will get this. Every business owner loves what, cash flow, right?

Drew McLellan:

Right. Absolutely.

Chris Prefontaine:

It fixes a lot of stuff. So when you talk about the deals I just described really like that little owner financing deal with six figures in it, it created three cash flows if you think about it. It created now money, the down payment. It created monthly money and it created a backend. So if you think of staggering even a few of these deals, you get cash flow that’s predictable for the next… Put six of those together, you get cash flow for the next three, four or five years. You know exactly when it’s coming within reason and you could kick back and not do any more deals for a while.

That’s pretty cool. So that’s just a clarification point. As far as questions, you asked the main one, why the heck would someone do that? But we didn’t talk about why would someone do it on the owner financing front. They own no money. So why are they doing an owner financing deal with you? Well, why I like to fish in that pool is think about it, they didn’t pull any money out of their house so they probably don’t need it right away. They would have already pulled it out. It’s debt-free. So they’re usually, not always, but they’re typically very savvy financially. It’s how they got their debt-free and they can usually wait. So why would they do it? I can pay a premium on that $200,000 house if they were asking two for example. I can in my mind say if I’m going to pay $1,000 a month principal and I have four year terms, can I afford to give them an extra $3,000 or $4,000 or 5,000? It’s going to be eaten up in three months of principal payments. So in their mind, they got a premium on the house, A. B, they don’t have to claim any interest income, it’s all going towards the house price. So it’s a capital gains benefit and all kinds of stuff in there. But that’s why a debt-free seller does this. If they can wait, they get more money.

Drew McLellan:

So they, in essence, are going to move somewhere else and they know that they’re going to get their payday in four years, five years, whatever. Right.

Chris Prefontaine:

Over time and then a balloon. Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

And then can they trigger the payment early if they need? So if I’m 75 years old and I’m in great health and I’m financially fine and I enter into this deal. I sell you my house. You put the tenant-buyer in and all of a sudden I get sick and I need the cash. Can I get the money out? And if so, what does that do to me if I’m the investor?

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. Good scenario. Contractually, no. Let’s say it’s your house. Reality is you call me, we’re in year three of a five-year term. You say I got [inaudible 00:42:14], I got to get out of this thing. What could I do if I wanted to? I could go out as the investor and say I can either put an investment together and take you out, but I’ll probably get a discount for doing so because you need it today. That might be a good benefit for me. We do that. But other than that, contractually, no, they know going into it what they have coming up. So we do get that by the way, 70, 75, 80, they’ll go, I don’t want to be fucking around, I can’t do 10-year terms. So we do a [inaudible 00:42:39] and we get a better price. It’s okay.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. As I’m listening to you and part of this is like obviously, it all sounds super easy and fast when we’re talking about it in 45 minutes, are there circumstances where someone should not do this sorts of things?

Chris Prefontaine:

If they’re the seller, for example, are you saying?

Drew McLellan:

No, I’m saying if I’m an agency owner and I’m sitting on $50,000 or $100,000 or $200,000, whatever it is, is there a reason why what we’ve talked about today wouldn’t be a good fit for some people.

Chris Prefontaine:

Sure. You can look at both ends as you can say because agency owners like every other business owner, there’s different personalities so if they’re more like I want to or need to micromanage this, there are probably somebody that needs to learn how to do it over time and be in it themselves. Forget Chris, forget, Drew. I got to go do a deal. I got to micromanage this thing.

Drew McLellan:

So they need to become a Chris. Right. Because that’s what you’re saying. You like the hands-on, crafting the deal. Right.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. And by the way, I haven’t even [inaudible 00:43:44] this. It doesn’t have to be them eventually, Drew, just like we have the company set up here. My son and son-in-law run the buying and selling now. It was just me years ago. So just like [inaudible 00:43:54], you can get to that point. So that’s one reason. The other reason would be, I would tell people just like I tell my students, and you probably have a case of your own of this, but if someone had a total of $50,000 or $100,000, I would not say to put the whole $50,000 or $100,000 into just real estate. I don’t care how good it is. Right. So you might want to put, I don’t know, $20,000, $25,000, whatever the ratio is that you’re comfortable with going to bed at night. If it keeps you up at night, don’t do it.

Drew McLellan:

So all of this sounds a little like there’s no way I can lose my money, true or not true?

Chris Prefontaine:

Well, no. I mean, look, because life can happen. Right. In theory, could I get hit by a yellow bus, then you had to wait for your money for an estate thing to happen? I can’t tell you never is going to happen, right? I couldn’t say that about anything. But with real estate, if you have the security, worst thing you could have happen, is you have to wait some time to get that back out. Market crashes, you have security, okay, I’ll wait. I have security. I’ll sit and wait as long as I have my cash flow.

Drew McLellan:

Because I know eventually the market will correct and the house or the building or whatever will be worth what it was worth.

Chris Prefontaine:

Right. I mean, we could sit and theorize about the market. I had an economist on my podcast recently and we talked about this. But if we knew we’d be on the beach somewhere for good and we never have to worry about this, so no one knows that.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Well, what we do know is it’s going to shift, right?

Chris Prefontaine:

Of course, it always does. And so everybody thinks this way too. There is not a market, there’s not. There’s a whole bunch of markets. So as I look across the country now with all these different associates we do deals with, there’s pockets that are still cranking, there’s pockets that have leveled out and there’s pockets that have pulled back. Okay, great. You just need to know how to navigate in that environment. That’s all.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So are you an advocate of if someone’s going to embark in any of these things, whether it’s the tax lien which fields very hands-off or it’s the I’m going to buy from somebody who has no debt in the house and I’m going to put in a tenant-buyer and all of that. So that feels like to me it’s sort of the spectrum we’ve talked about in terms of how hands-on or not hands-on. Do you recommend that people do this in their own backyard? Is there an advantage to doing it locally or does it not matter? What triggered my question was you saying there’s some markets that are cranking and hot. So am I better off doing a tax lien in Texas, even though I don’t live in Texas or is it better for me to do it in my own backyard?

Chris Prefontaine:

Okay. So for tax liens, don’t have to be in your backyard. I can say that right across the board. For doing deals like we do, you have plenty of deals. I don’t care who or where you are, within about an hour radius of you and you probably will never want to drive past that because you don’t have to, plenty.

Drew McLellan:

And what’s the advantage of doing it locally?

Chris Prefontaine:

Well, okay. So we teach and we’re going to teach coming up how to do it remotely, but will you get more deals by building rapport the old-fashioned way, meeting at least once at the house? Yes. Will you be more knowledgeable of the property by going just once? Yes. So I think you give up a lot of deals by just trying to act remotely because some people want to still hide behind the computer and just have a magic button and profit spits out, but it doesn’t work that way. It’s not easy. You referenced this earlier. I will tell you it’s simple once you know it. It’s not easy. It’s simple once you know it. It’s not brain science.

Drew McLellan:

So if I am the guy that wants to sit behind the computer and have it just spit money at me, then I’m better off finding someone like you who is hands-on in the deal. As we were talking about before that, sort of crowdsourcing. I can just be a part of the crowd.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. You can do that.

Drew McLellan:

I’m going to probably give up a little something because obviously, you need to get paid for the effort you’re putting into it as well, but I’m going to still get a return that is all the things that we talked about, secure, can’t be like the stock market and go down to zero, but I don’t have to actually get my hands dirty.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yep. That’s good if you are going to be passive or there are pieces and states, particularly, where you can do everything online for that tax lie we talked about. Literally, it’s just online auctions. You can’t go live. So there’s things like that they can do and combinations and then everything in between. You can say to someone just like you could in your business, okay, we’re going to talk once a week and next week I want you to go do ABC. Just do that. Just do ABC and run that through for a year. So it’s things like that too. So all different kinds of concoctions there.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So what I’m hearing you say is, Drew, you can do this totally on your own. Go find a guru, read some books, watch some YouTube videos, listen to some podcasts, jump in. That’s extreme number one.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yep.

Drew McLellan:

On the other end of the spectrum is find a company like Chris’s, give them your $40,000 and you’ll get paperwork and you’ll understand what the deal is. And you know you’re going to make X percentage over this period of time and that’s I’m hands-off. And then there’s also the middle ground, which we haven’t really talked about, which I know is a big part of your business, which is I want to actually do it, but first I want to learn. So I’m going to become a student, an active student. A coach, like you, who’s going to say to me, okay, Drew, this week your job is to go look at five properties and figure out these seven things about each property. And then I come back and report and then you say, okay, well great. Now let’s look at those and evaluate which one will make… Like somebody could find coaches like you that would walk them through this process.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. And you can actually take the next level with that category. And you can take this in my niche, mobile homes, apartments, anything. There are people like us that do the deal with you. So you say, hey, I found a seller, but I have no idea what to do. I’m new. So, okay, I’ll call it. I’ll be on the phone; I’m calling the seller for you because we’re sharing in the revenue in this deal. So now you’re getting coaching hands on and you’re giving a piece of revenue, but you’re learning it forever. That skill set, that’s been by far the most successful because in my opinion in real estate, probably other businesses, there’s an enormous gap I call it between, hey, I go take a course, I go to a seminar and I actually got a deal I can do. There’s a gap there. So the hand holding helps.

Drew McLellan:

Great. Yeah. It’s like reading a cookbook versus making a five-course meal.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah. Side by side with a chef.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Or not. Right. Like I just have the book. Yeah. Okay. This has been fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. If folks want to learn more about the work that you specifically do, and I know you have a book deal for everybody. So tell people how to find you. We talked about the podcast. Tell them how to find you. And then let’s talk about how they can get a copy of your book absolutely free, including you’ll pay the shipping.

Chris Prefontaine:

Yeah, absolutely. So as far as digging into us more, I’m big on free because you shouldn’t dip your toe in anything until you do your own due diligence. Just go to smartrealestatecoach.com If they can deal with listening to me for another hour. There’s a free webinar there where I go through some of these deals and show numbers and logic. And then they say that’s pretty interesting and then they can just dig further on the site. And there’s a contact button there and everything. The free book, they can just go to newrulesforfree.com. And you’re right, we’re not going to say free, but oh, by the way, put your shipping credit card in. We’ll send it out. Yeah. We’ll send it out to you. I love to do it and love for you to go through the book.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. This has been great. Chris. Any sort of final words of advice for people who this still seems a little scary or they’re not sure what to do next? Any sort of parting wisdom that you want to give everybody?

Chris Prefontaine:

You asked some awesome questions. I think we nailed a lot of points, but I would just tell you that this is not new. Success leaves clues. Me, anyone else just took what was out there and kind of repackaged it and made it better. And so follow those, follow those clues. Again, it’s not difficult. Just a little bit of a learning curve.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Chris Prefontaine:

Thanks for having me. It was a great time and great questions.

Drew McLellan:

Thank you. You know what. That wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. I know this one was a little off the beaten path, but it really aligns perfectly with what we preach at AMI, which is I want you to own your agency because I want you to have your dream life. And I want you to create a life of plenty. And when I say a life of plenty, I mean that in many ways. I want you to have a life of plenty in terms of the choices, in terms of the freedom, but certainly part of that plenty is financial plenty. And we are huge advocates of it at AMI of building your wealth outside of the agency, getting the money out of the agency and putting it into other things and diversifying your portfolio.

And the things that Chris taught us today hopefully got you thinking a little differently about how to do that. What I love about his methodology is you don’t have to have $1 million to start. And all of us know that I don’t care if you’re a 25-year-old owner or a 55-year-old owner, our days are limited in terms of how much time we have to build wealth for ourselves and our family. And so why not start today and why not start small and start just sort of letting it build up outside of the agency. So hopefully this was super helpful to you. Many thanks to our presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They have an amazing offer for podcast listeners. So if you go to whitelabeliq.com/ami, you will see that they are offering some pretty cool things. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re an amazing company.

They’re actually an AMI agency that has built a sister company that white labels and wholesales design dev and PPC to agencies. So I can personally tell you that they are awesome, good, good people, but also they do amazing work that makes clients for many AMI agencies very, very happy. So go check them out at whitelabeliq.com/ami to learn a little more about them and to see what kind of offers they have just for podcast guests. So many thanks to them for making this possible. And many thanks to you for showing up every week. I am so grateful that you’re here. I love your emails. And I love when you come up and introduce yourself at conferences and things like that. So thank you so much. I will be back next week with another episode and another guest to get you thinking a little differently about your agency and how you can grow it and scale it to be more profitable and more fun and exactly the agency want to run. All right. I’ll see you next week.

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency Podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.