The Brutal Cost of $50M in Real Estate by Age 31

20:17We were talking about wholesaling and Maxwell Maxwell was the big thing at the time. You know, that Facebook guy, the wholesaler. And my aunt was wholesaling in Houston. My 60-year-old aunt was doing Houston wholesaling and making good money of 100 grand. I was like, okay, well, if she could do this, I mean, I should be able to do this. And so I got a PropStream account at the time and I was playing on it in San Francisco and I was living there. And, you know, I went down for San Diego 4th of July of 2019 and my cousin and I were sitting there in Coronado Island. I said, you know what? I'm just going to quit my job.

20:46Like, I just think I can do this. Like, why can't I do this? These people that have no sales training can do this. Like there's no reason why a person like me that has a bunch of sales training can't find a way to get somebody to sell me their house or whatever, right? Knowing nothing about real estate. So went back to the office that next Monday, quit my job, packed up my little Z3 BMW and drove back up to the mountains and grabbed my computer and got a CRM and a list and started cold calling and shooting text messages. What year was that? It was 2019. 2019. Okay. Yeah. I've kind of made that transition and then started doing wholesaling and understanding about list stacking and like, you know, buy this up from PropStream or go down the city, get the code violations, you know, we'll do all that stuff.

21:26The water shutoffs, like I found how to do all that stuff. And then I'd go to IDI, which I think is a red velvet company or was, you know, I'd go to them and buy the data direct from them rather than getting it from these other places, because I felt that sometimes that data wasn't the best. So I wish went to direct to those guys that developed a relationship with them. And I was stocking a bunch of lists and, you know, I got my first house within like a week or so. I think it was as a mobile home, I did a wholesale for about$27 ,000. And at that point, I knew I was hooked. I was like, okay, well, if I can do this, then...

21:55And I got an assignment contract to Wedgwood at the time, which if you're familiar with them, they're a large institutional buyer. At that point, I just started really working with a lot of other flippers in the area doing deals. And I was selling to these guys and wholesaling to them. And they were getting their loans from Civic at the time before Civic sold to now became new CB3 and all that stuff. And their banker called me and said, hey, Nick, you know, are you interested in finding deals in Las Vegas? So, oh, sure. Why not? And so I got on the phone and started talking. His name is Dave. He's like, well, my other partner, Dave is, you know, is I'm the banker and my other partner doesn't know his construction.

22:29Would you be interested in doing deals with us? And I said, sure. I flew down there in November. I think it was like a Thursday. I took a flight and just flew down to Vegas from Reno, met these guys at a coffee shop. And those guys are still today, my principal partner, seven years later. So that's, that's how that started my relationship with them. And then And around March of 2020, we formulated our partnership during when COVID started. And we started together because they had the background of how to flip the properties and the construction. And the other one, and I did my first flip. That was when I really screwed up.

22:58I did my first flip and I didn't really know what I was doing. They were kind of helping me through it while I was transitioning to becoming their partner. And the other one, new lending and kind of like the financial markets and how to stack capital stacks and like how to create these structures for us to raise capital. And started in March of 2020, you know, COVID shut down everything. thing. And we started just aggregating data. And I was just working on my computer a bunch and trying to get all the data into one place to start shooting off marketing. And we just hit it right. I started doing marketing during that time period when everyone was freaking out.

23:25Bought a bunch of property at a very low point. And we started just flipping a bunch of those. At that point, we were doing probably about 30 wholesales and flips a year, probably about half and half for the next probably couple of years. And then that kind of turned into us having an office where I had a bunch of employees doing cold calls and a lot of stuff in an office as an acquisition team. And then the market started to turn and, you know, financially, I was a little bit overstrapped on payroll and these other things and people weren't buying wholesales anymore and the market got really challenging.

23:52So that was the first time that I had to let go my whole entire staff and downsize and, you know, removed myself from the office. And around that time, you know, financially, we were still buying the good ones. You were selling the ones we didn't really want. We bought the ones and we were doing burrs, right? You know, we were buying them, renovating them, and then flipping them into our portfolio. Top money got tight and I just decided, well, we need to kind of finish these assets of the first, you know, bulk assets. So I shifted my virtual staff that was at the time doing all acquisition to doing asset management and having them do the rent collection and all that stuff.

24:23And I went back up to Reno, flew back up to Reno and started swinging hammers for a year and a half. I started working on job sites with my guys to finish the jobs with my partners and I, and while trying to still look for other deals at the time we owned some property in South Carolina, but South Carolina was still kind of like, Hey, let's just finish this stuff over here and get this stabilized. And then we'll start our focus back at our other assets that we owned at that time in that market. Got those done. It was a painful year and a half. I was on a lot of job sites doing stuff. And then right around when Mike Calvey called me to come work for VigorPockets at that time in November.

24:56At that point, we were looking for the markets. We already kind of invested in the South. And the way we started doing that is we were looking at other areas that had similar census data of Reno, Nevada, around from you know there was a big gentrification and change that happened in reno somewhere in denver and so you know how can we find markets that are like that but 15 years too soon or 10 years too soon how can we get in now where the rents are you know relatively low and can be increased and opportunity is still high i mean we really landed on south carolina and it's been just a really good gold mine for us since then and so fast forward two and a half maybe three years from then we you know have bought another probably 300 and something apartments and then there are 10 buildings or nine buildings or so, and, you know, scaled out that whole operation out here with onsite, you know, team members was still the backend office that I built from the original.

25:40We have our 10 full-time Venezuelan staff that handles, you know, the rent collection, the evictions, the reporting to government municipalities, because we do have some PVV contracts in section eight contracts, all the way to the short-term rental team that does all the backend stuff there and coordinates with my two on, you know, in the U S maintenance men that do go around in our vans and our trucks to handle any of the work orders or calls. I have a head of finance now, a head of director of community and a head of construction that are all US-based plus my two principal partners. So that's kind of the short abbreviated version of how we went from wholesaling to this.

26:13It's been a gradual step up. It took me many, many years to get to that place where we started to acquire a lot of assets quickly. In the last 18 months, we've acquired seven or eight buildings. So it's really started to speed up. But it took me five years of really trying to figure out how to do asset management and how to do it virtually with the staff overseas so we can really have a lot of scalability. Just to summarize, what I'm hearing is we've had a wild ride over the course of your career in terms of sales gigs, putting it all on block in a new profession in wholesaling. We've had huge wins.

26:45We've had huge losses that have wiped out certain parts of your position or resulted in you having to shut down companies or lay off people. and where we're at right now is 50 million in South Carolina, primarily real estate holdings in your company. You have a sprawling team with some on-site and some international to manage the assets, and you are physically on-site four or five days a week, most weeks of the year, to manage these assets and get them performing at this point. Is that right? Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, yeah. So what's next? What's the end goal for all this? I feel like I won a gold medal just in the mail, right?

27:21Now I want to see it through. You know, we finally have got over that hump from the real estate investing standpoint where the hardest thing is scale, right? I think because scale can be dangerous in a lot of ways if you don't do it correctly. We've seen that happen with a lot of different operators that are out there. But it can also be very helpful, right, when you have the economies of other assets that can help kind of, you know, reduce your time in that, you know, day in, day out work. So I want to continue to grow the organization. You know, it's more about how do we build a company that can withstand the time and continue to grow a learning organization that will grow and buy more assets.

27:54And I think the greatest thing that I can do for my business now is be as little as involved as possible from a day-to-day operation. If I can continue to step back, train good people, hire good people, and have good processes, right, I can build a very awesome platform that can scale continuously, right? And so for me now, that's the goal is how do we continue to add on more assets, train and hire great people that want to be here while also protecting the bottom line assets that we have and not over leveraging because we want to get aggressive. So that's kind of like the next thing for me is a continuation of what I've been doing for seven years.

28:31The goal when I started with my partners seven years ago or six years ago in March of 2020 was to buy large multifamily. Maybe I'm not a 300 unit type building that we're buying in, but I still feel like we're buying medium to large size multifamily for the most investors. And, you know, now we're here. And so the goal now is how do we not, you know, screw that up and continue to provide good results for our investors and our partners and, you know, build a platform that can withstand the time. Because ultimately, like, I have long range debt on all these assets, 30 year notes that are, you know, HUD financing.

29:02So I have good debt and like we got to make sure we, you know, manage those assets correctly for the next, you know, 5, 10 years. So the fun is just beginning. You know, it's just for me, I finally have gotten to a place where I can sleep at night knowing that we're going to be OK. You know, it was a lot of weeks, a lot of years of like a lot of working two jobs, you know, to make it work. It was painful. It was very hard. I'm fascinated to have you on the show here today because I think that what you're doing is not what people who listen to BiggerPockets Money want. On the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast, I think there's a lot of folks that are pursuing various versions of what you're doing.

29:35But at BiggerPocketsMoney, I think it's like, whoa, that sounds terrible. I think a lot of people are listening and seeing. And it sounds to me very stressful. It sounds like there's huge operations right now that are not yet paying off in a way that is commensurate to the scale of the property management business. And everything is very illiquid. at this point in time, there's a huge potential payoff, but there's no doubt in my mind, you went through a real hell to get to this point here in 2026. And hopefully the next few years bring the returns and the rent growth and those types of things that, you know, the market should bear with lower supply coming online the next few years.

30:11And that should kick in and stabilize things. But I can only imagine this has been a brutal period in your life here from a work-life balance perspective. Is that fair? I mean, brutal or not, just, you know, a lot of times I would think there's something wrong with me. Why would I want to do these things that weren't multiple jobs? But I don't know. I think a lot of people that you look at that want to create something, for me, it was never about the money. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I could have just stayed in my job and probably could have made good money doing that, say, in the NFL and did those things.

30:37For me, it was about creating something that I was my, that I created, right? And so this has just been an evolution of my creation and my partner's creation and guidance. My partners have played a huge impact on allowing me to stay tough and stay kind of, you know, solidified and crystallized with the vision, right? And to make it through. You know, real estate is a get-rich-slow game. You know, it takes time. It's an investment that you cannot cheat because it will come get you with debt or however you want to, right? It just takes time. It's a slow asset. So it's been extremely challenging, but I look back on even the small amount of money I might be making on a monthly basis, you know, off of my current assets that I have.

31:17When you look at that, you know, it took me three years to build something that I now have, you know, a recurring income source that is very, very, you know, this has been happening for a couple of years now of the income that's coming my way. The biggest reason why I've probably taken more pain on than I could have, you know, probably than I needed to was because I was trying, I'm trying to scale, right? Like, I did not really try to go to grow even more, you know, didn't maybe need to buy that extra truck or that extra van to get the maintenance guy going. You know, you may not have needed to buy that new computer or get the new guys hired or a new person that was going to help us get to that bandwidth.

31:50But so, yeah, I would agree. I think for the average user that is looking to diversify and do those things, this is the extreme case of that, you know, I would say. So. Nick, it seems like this has been a real struggle. And again, it seems like you're handling it admirably in the sense that you're on site in the maintenance room right now as part of your weekly routine here to make this work. And there is real promise that things could work out and the business could drive significant equity growth over the next few years and their scale can come in the future. We've heard a lot about syndicators in general being in a big pickle in today's environment.

32:26And many of them have raised 10, 20, 20 times as much as you have in terms of assets under management and equity raises. Your situation, what I think is interesting, is it seems like your physical presence on site and the ability to make day-to-day decisions is likely going to be enough, it seems like you think, to see this through and get to a reasonably good outcome in your portfolio. But if the scale was 20 times as large, would it have been impossible? Would it have wrecked the business to some degree? Yeah, I mean, this is why we've grown very methodically. I could have grown a lot faster, a lot sooner.

33:00You know, the capital's not been a problem for me to raise. We have plenty of money that's there for us to go buy a lot more assets. I think the hardest thing to do as an operator, at least for me, is to balance the scale with the velocity of, you know, the velocity of scale by wanting to buy more deals and being aggressive because I want that, because I want to speed up the process, but also understanding that, you know, I need a good foundation to build off of. I think a lot of syndicators that do it and they go zero to 5 ,000 units relatively quickly or 1 ,000 units relatively quickly have not learned the lessons on how to truly operate the assets that are out there, right?

33:36Like they're not as present on the properties. They're not really truly operators. They don't know what to do, what happens when something goes wrong because they hire a property manager. They hire a construction manager. They don't, they're not there. They're not present. And I think this is part of the reasons why I've tried to take my time and be involved in a lot of these things and scale out correctly is just because I want to be here for the next 30 years. And my assets, you know, that I have stabilized have shown that, When you're buying assets for$30 ,000 to$40 ,000 a door and putting$20 ,000 to$30 ,000 into them, and then they're revalued at$120 ,000 to$150 ,000 a door, you have massive equity gain.

34:10That does not happen if you're not here, right? You have to be here and present to make it happen. And I think that that's what's happening with a lot of these syndicators. They raise money when it's very easy to do and very cheap. And they relied on the model where they hire a property manager and they're just not there. And I think that's what's happened with a lot of these groups. And so my advice to people that are investing is you really got to take a time to look at, does the story make sense for the operator you're working with? Have you seen a gradual buildup from where they were at before?

34:39And what's happened when things have gone wrong? Because that's the operator you need is because it's always going to go wrong. The deal is always going to not go right at some point. There's going to be a problem. If you don't have an operator who really understands how to fix it or how to make it right, that's where a lot of these deals are going bad. And then a lot of them also bought on pontificated rents. You know, I buy work-class housing that is based off of the Section 8 and FMR from the federal government. A lot of my units and kind of that base rent, I'm not competing against an A-class or B-class asset that there's 100 ,000 of them out there right now.

35:09Because everybody's trying to rent their units that are A-class assets. So it's a different model. So I think that that's the biggest thing I would look at, you know, as a user and as a listener. It's like if you are going to look at an operator, you make sure you really take the time to get to know that person. And sometimes it may be better working with someone who's smaller, who has more of a slower growth than it is a larger operation. There's great large operations that are out there, but they also have different incentives, especially fee-based incentives.

35:36Nic Morales:So I have a question for you. You are buying these larger buildings and there was a rate increase recently. Well, not recently anymore. It was like in 2022 that has caused a lot of operators to falter. How have you fared with the rate increase? And do you have any properties that you're in danger of losing or having to give back to the bank or sell at a really low rate just to get out from under those? Yeah. Luckily, I'm happy to share my REO, but I am not in that situation. So I got fixed rate debt on a lot of my stuff back when I was doing it during COVID. That time period, I didn't have floating rate debt or debt that only had a five-year balloon on it.

36:14So I was able to avoid a lot of those issues. And a lot of the assets that I've bought in the last 18 months, you know, are predicated on rates that are current rates that are now. So it hasn't really affected me. But majority of the operators that are in that position, it's, you know, it's tough to see. A lot of that stuff is typically in that A-class market. And it's in stuff that, you know, they were pontificating on rent growth rather than rent concessions. And it's challenging at least a lot of those units. And so in the world-class housing space, like, we have more people reaching out than we have units available.

36:43You know, we can do a whole turn of an asset of 30 to 90 units in 12 months, plus lease up, you know, at a new rent that has a completely new value as we've completely renovated the units. Because we're taking old housing stock that is dated, bringing in new LVP, new flooring, new cabinets, new windows, new HVACs. And then we're going out and renting that same unit that would have maybe been$600 in a one bedroom to$900. So your theoretical jump is a lot less. And that's currently where the market is at right now on a lot of these things through Section 8 and other platforms. So they're truly are affordable, which we also can use different tax strategies to be able to remove our taxes in South Carolina and other states as we're offering truly affordable assets.

37:21Nic Morales:So how did you get fixed rate debt? So fixed rate debt, you can go through agencies, Freddie, Fannie, HUD. It just depends on what kind of vehicle you're looking for. What's the term on these? So the term with agencies, so like Freddie, Fannie, you're typically looking at like a five year balloon on those ones. But if you go to HUD, you can have a 35-year AM or a 30-year AM with the whole time fixed at that 5.75 % or 6 % rate. You do have a 10-year prepaid penalty. But if you're holding long, it doesn't matter. Because I've already gotten my value out as I'm buying low, refining at a normal, now a new value rate at 65 % to 70%.

37:58And I have a fixed rate debt for the next 30 years, essentially, if I'm going HUD. Yeah. So, Mindy, that's what you're asking here is you think that a fixed rate loan means a mortgage, right? 30-year fixed rate, low interest rate mortgage that you'd use to buy a house. That's not the product Nick is using here. He's using an agency loan, a government agency loan, but it's got a five-year balloon on it. So with the agencies, it's a five-year, but if you go HUD, which I do have multiple HUD loans, it's a 30-year fixed rate loan.

38:23Nic Morales:With no balloon? No balloon. Okay. That was my question is, how did you get that? You went HUD. How do you get a HUD loan? These are five or more units, right? It depends on the originator, but I believe the majority of the HUD loans and agency loans, they have minimums on dollar amount typically. They're going to want stuff that's over$2,$3 million on a loan amount typically. That's kind of like the smallest for their small balance programs. But yeah, HUD has plenty of options. They're non-recourse loans as well. They're fully assumable if you wanted to sell them to somebody else. And those rates are anywhere between 5.75 % to 6.5 % just depends on when you lock right.

38:58And that's current rates that are right now.

39:00Nic Morales:Those are on units that are five or more units, right? These aren't four and under that qualify for... On a normal fixed rate loan on like a normal one to four, you could get probably similar rates at a local bank. It just depends on your credit and the asset itself and all that stuff. Yeah. So what I understand, and I am not in this space at all, I was very fortunate to lose money in syndications before everybody else did. And I got out of almost every syndication that I was in before all of these rate changes hit. But there's a lot of syndicators, former syndicators or syndicators who are trying desperately not to, but that are losing their properties.

39:36Nic Morales:Their properties are either going back to the bank, deed in lieu of foreclosure, and now the bank owns them, or they are having to sell at a deep discount. And I'm just wondering how you were able to get fixed rate loans when they weren't. Yeah. A lot of times when they go into an acquisition, I'll make it very simple, is that sometimes the acquisition loans that they go into, they're either using some kind of what's called bridge to perm. So they're using a short-term loan that could be two to four years. their pro forma, their numbers were based on them getting a higher rent amount to then get this new value to then get a new loan.

40:10Or they had fixed rate debt or maybe a perm debt that was not fixed rate, excuse me. And it was either a floating floor. So they have a floating rate loan or interest only loan that's floating based off of the SOFR and it can go up and down. So that's the problem is that a lot of these syndicators, in my opinion, and Scott, you know a lot of them as well, is like, I believe a lot of them had a constant rent increase on these assets and that there was going to be constant demands. And when that demand shrinks, you know, they're going to have to get more concessions and get more aggressive, which means their NOI is going to be worse, which means their end value is worse because it doesn't cashflow anymore, which is why a lot of these users are getting their stuff back.

40:51The difference is when I'm buying an asset, I'm buying an asset at a severely discounted rate anyway. I'm coming in and I'm buying it, You know, it's underperforming. It's not good. And we're buying it on a fixed bridge loan for 18 to 24 months. And once I stabilize and I've done the renovation and now done the lease up, I'm going back out and I'm getting a fixed rate loan at that time. I think a fixed rate, 30-year mortgage, plus dude is taking the call on-site from the slightly below ground, hot as hell room, whatever that looks like here, on-site, moved on the operations, is really the tell here, right?

41:27I think if we were having the same call with somebody who bought properties around the same time as you, and they're in their air-conditioned office on the eighth floor of not the building that they bought, and especially if it's not in the same city as the buildings they bought in, And I think you just write it down to zero as an LP in a lot of cases. Like, I'm out. Like, that's a terrible sign for me. And I think that that's got to really rankle you pretty badly. These guys, some of these guys are making way more money than you personally. And that is going to be a disaster. Sure. But the reality of it is the reason why that is, Mindy, and the reason why it is, Scott, is because they make fees.

42:02They don't care what they buy. They don't care. They have no vested interest, a lot of them. They take their 1 % fee on the acquisition. They buy a$5 million building. they just made 50 grand. They asset managed it. So now they get another two to 3 % a year on the asset management of the overall value of the rent. So like the structure that they have is vastly different than the structure I have. I have a higher equity split. I have no fees. So I have a huge upside to see that the asset makes money. I'm also personally guaranteeing on the loans. So like the structure is vastly different, you know, than a lot of these syndicators who are raising capital and were great capital raisers, but they're not truly operators.

42:38They weren't truly into the game long-term. They were truly, in my opinion, wanting to make fees. You know, it's like a lot of these groups, they can say they were making no money on the rents, but they are also making money on the fees every single month. You know, so that's why they're making a bunch of money and they're driving a nice car while I'm sitting here in a hundred degree weather in the swamp, trying to make the asset make money because I make money on them, which is why for me, from a capital standpoint, it's been very easy to raise capital because is my LPs know that if they don't make money, I don't make money.

43:08I'm very aligned with them. I have every reason to want to make sure the asset makes money, which is why I spend my time out here. I think the biggest thing is that my platform is built for the next 30 years. A lot of these syndicators were built on raising as much capital as possible and executing it on assets because that's where they make their money. In terms of the real estate, I basically did the exact opposite of you from a real estate investor's perspective, right? Like instead of going out and building a real estate empire, I worked my job at BiggerPockets and grew through the ranks there.

43:39And today I own 19 units, six of which are paid down, you know, the remaining 13 of which have low interest leverage on there. Do you ever think like, should I have taken that path instead of the scaling with tons of partnerships path here? Or how do you think about that, those dynamics? Like there's the Chad Carson school, which I'm fully in, in the, in Chad Carson, small and mighty. And then there's the big boys game that you're playing here with, you know, lots of real estate partnerships and all that. What do you think? To answer your question and to the listeners, there's no wrong answer.

44:08It's all depending on what you want to do, you know, and like you can build what I did. I'm not smart. I'm not that I'm just hardworking. I think that's about it. You know, I show up every day and I do what I got to do to make it work. And I think that you can have a big platform and someday my game will come and it will, it will be there. Like I said, my one, my gold medal, It's just in the mail, you know, and I just got to see it through. But I don't think there's a wrong or right answer. I think for me, I could sit here and look at a rear view mirror, but that game isn't here in real estate.

44:35You know, you got to continue and like anything in investing, you could have put more money in Bitcoin and made a hundred million dollars. I mean, sure, of course, like, wait, I know you don't, you're not a big fan of Bitcoin, but I mean, either, but I mean, for everybody, it's a different route and you can do it however you want to do it. As long as you stay consistent. And I think that's the biggest thing out of all these things is you stay consistent and methodical with it and the doors will open for you to do it. There's times I definitely didn't think I was going to get here, but I did. And we've gotten here.

45:01There's been definitely days where I'm like, I wish I would not have done it. Or why did I create this monster? But at the same time, you know, looking at all the assets and kind of they're all making money. It's a good feeling to do that, not just for myself, but my partners, as well as my stamp that I could create something. I think my reasons were very different than just wanting to go make a lot of money. For me, it was more about how do I create something that has a savings, essentially for me, a reverse savings account in a way where I can really go put a lot of sweat equity into something and get that higher value at the end or while the asset's performing.

45:34When you're done with the phase of rehab here, I think as you quote it, the swamp or whatever, what do you want your Tuesday to look like in 5, 10 years? I think it's, like I said, a continuation of what I'm doing now. It would be a different swamp, a different deal, a different, you know, more people on the team. Hopefully, like I said, I think for me, it's about, it took a village to get here and I want to continue to cultivate the village with the team and that I have and give my other younger team members opportunities to not feel the pain that I had to go to acquire the assets that I did.

46:04I think that's the goal for me is that as my partners will continue to step out over the next probably five to 10 years, how do I bring up the next group of guys or next group of entrepreneurs that want to be a part of it with me? Because I don't want to do it alone. I have no interest to go walk that path alone. I didn't have to do it the first time, and I wouldn't want to do it again. For me, it's more about the team and building the staff and the employees, less about doing an individual deal. I think, you know, I love sales because you get to make things that have quick decisions, right? You get to have some byproduct from that.

46:39You get to make a commission or whatever it is. You get your outcome quick. This has been my longest and greatest sale of my life is creating my company and my team because it's a constant thing that I've had to go back to. The word you used over and over and over again when I asked you what you want is build. You never used freedom. You never used retiring on the beach, you know, or whatever with that. You said build. You said it over and over and over and over again. And that's what people don't get is that there's a lot of people out there that are awesome, like Nick, that are trying to build big businesses.

47:10And the pursuit of that is the interesting thing here. I think that that's hard for a lot of BiggerPocketsMoney listeners because they don't register that. Not everyone, but a good portion of the audience, they just want this concept of enough and then kind of to do whatever we want with the rest of the day here. And that's not how it works for a lot of people like yourself that want to build and make something huge, big theirs. And those are all ways you've described it. And I think that's really fascinating. And I'm excited to see what you do end up building over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, Nick.

47:42So thank you for sharing this with us. Yeah, appreciate the time. And yeah, I would say for the listeners, like, there's no wrong path. Everybody takes their own way. And just because you're not building a big platform doesn't mean you're not building something that's big in your own life. So big doors swing on little hinges and little actions make big things happen. So that's all my story is all about, is taking the little thing every day. You are getting a crazy education in real estate. And I hope that your gold medal arrives in the mail soon here and isn't delayed too much longer here. I'll be waiting for it with the fire on.

48:16I'm sure once I get it, I'll change the goal, as I have done many times. Awesome. Where can people find out more about you, Nick? LinkedIn is the best place. You know, I'm an anti-social media guy. I have no social media as I stay here in the swamp, being in the weeds. So if you want to connect with me, LinkedIn, BiggerPockets as well, you can find me. But that's the best place to find me. And I'm happy to connect. And if there's anything I can do for anyone else in their story or questions, I'm an open book. I'm reachable. Awesome. One last question before we go. What is on the docket? What happened today or what's happening tomorrow?

48:46Like what's the current to-do list for Nick? Today, you know, it's a combination of all days. It was a bunch of different meetings. Most of my days now consist of doing meetings and organizing with the staff, right? And just understanding and having problems solved. So today, that's what I dealt with a lot of today, as well as looking at a couple new acquisitions we're looking at. And then tomorrow is just a continuation of the same, you know, go back and get 1 % better and continue to execute and deliver for myself and my partners and the team. Well, congratulations on what you've built so far, Nick.

49:16Thank you for sharing the story here. Thanks for sharing where people can find out more about you. And best of luck over the next couple of years as the thing starts to take off.

49:22Nic Morales:Thank you for your time. And we'll talk to you soon. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for the time. All right, Scott, that was Nick Morales. And that was an interesting recount of his real estate journey. You don't normally hear people be so honest about the downside of real estate. What did you think of his show? I think that that$3 to$5 million net worth, net of liquidation value on that portfolio came with a pretty high cost. Yeah. I don't know that I would have quit the NFL if I had known this was the other alternative. I think it's a real struggle, and I think that he's gone through the hardest parts of real estate investing that I can imagine, right?

49:57With the wholesaling business, it got no trouble believing that when transaction volume, like everyone talks about interest rates making things harder to buy. What happened was transaction volume just cratered. So if you were in the lending business from 2021 to 2023, you saw the market evaporate 70 % on you. If you were in the real estate agent brokerage, you saw transaction volume get cut in half, right? Because the lending was hit even worse because there was no new loans for new purchases and nobody's refinancing the 3 % interest rate mortgage they had in prior years. So you lose refinancing and new origination volume in the lending environment.

50:28On the agent side, you lose the transactions. Wholesalers, basically agents, form a similar service to agents in transacting properties, although they do it without a license in many cases. And that's a very challenging environment. So I got no trouble believing that. That business was hard there. I got no trouble believing that flips and wholesales were very, very profit in the months and years leading up to that turning point as well. So what a brutal gauntlet Nick has gone through in this story to get to the point where he's at now. That$3 million to$5 million, he's probably got several more years in the swamp in South Carolina before he can actually realize that and reap the benefits if that comes.

51:03So there's good odds, but that's not guaranteed. So that's a real price to pay, and I think the story of this is that this is real. This is, I think, more real an example of what it takes to get to$5 million by 30 in real estate than maybe other instances that counted equity in the buildup to 2021.

51:20Nic Morales:Yeah, I agree, Scott. I appreciate him sharing exactly what he's going through because there are so many people who just share the highs of what their story is and they don't share the lows. He showed us the bunk bed that he's sleeping in. He showed us, I mean, you could see the fan going. I believe there was no air conditioning in that unit. Well, if there's no air conditioning, then he had already previously sweat out all of the perspiration because 100 degrees, I don't know how he would have, it was a five o 'clock-ish local time. So maybe it was a little cooler at that point. But yeah, that's a tough day.

51:52That's a tough day every day, four or five days a week, 2 ,000 miles away from home.

51:56Nic Morales:That is a tough day. He's slogging through it. I do hope that he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. The gold medal. The gold medal is in the mail. It's just coming real slow. Well, best of luck to you, Nick, and we really appreciate him coming on and sharing this. We'd love your thoughts on the YouTube channel about this path. And I think this is what entrepreneurship in the world of real estate investing looks like, right? There's the passive-ish end, the more passive end, the less active end of real estate investing. And then there's the more active building a business realm. And we clearly went on the far side of that spectrum here today.

52:27Nic Morales:The very active end of real estate investing. All right, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. Well, before we go, we have to remind our listeners that we have a new website, biggerpocketsmoney.com, where we have all sorts of resources for our audience. How much do we charge for this website, Scott? It's free only. Free only information at biggerpocketsmoney.com slash resources. You can find templates and calculators, all sorts of things to help you on your journey to financial independence. So we're done talking, but you don't have to stop learning. You can hop on over to Bigger Pockets Money and find all sorts of awesome things, including a link to sign up for our newsletter.

53:06Nic Morales:You can sign up at biggerpocketsmoney.com slash newsletter. I send that out once a week, a couple of blog posts and information about what's going on in the FI world. The best way to support BiggerPocketsMoney, because we do make money here at BiggerPocketsMoney, is to use one of our fee-only partners in the advice-only or comprehensive financial planning space on the website. You can find those at biggerpocketsmoney.com slash FI Pro. We certainly do make money if you use our partners and find them through our website. So if that ever comes up and it's time for the professional help with your portfolio and financial planning or taxes or community to join, that's a great way to support BiggerPocketsMoney if you found the show helpful.

53:44Nic Morales:All right. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen, and we're going to hit the road, Firebelly Toad.