Real Estate Bliss with Moneeka Sawyer

I am excited to welcome popular podcaster Moneeka Sawyer to the show today! Moneeka is the best-selling author of the book Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment. She is the host of Real Estate Investing for Women, as well as the creator of the Blissful Real Estate Investor Formula that shows smart women how to use real estate investing to retire rich. Moneeka's expertise, and joyous laugh, have been featured in over 50 podcasts, on various stages, radio programs, and TV stations, including ABC, CBS, FOX, and CW.

Moneeka first shares her background story. Her real estate story actually begins before she was even born. Her parents, after coming to America as newlyweds, found that their way to wealth was through real estate. They saved up and they got their very first rental property when Moneeka was just three years old. So, real estate has been a part of her life from the beginning. When she graduated from college during the recession, she struggled for a couple of years and started thinking about real estate. But, even though she saw how good real estate was to her family, she also saw her dad running around at two o'clock in the morning, having problems with the toilets, the tenants, the mortgages, and decided at a very young age that no amount of money was worth it.

One night, after not being able to find a job for some time, she was sitting at the kitchen table with her dad, talking about the stress of it all and he told her something that changed her life. Her father said: “You know Moneeka, everybody has stress, and everybody has money problems. Do you want poor people money problems or do you want rich people money problems?” And that is when she decided to follow in her father’s footsteps.

Moneeka then shares with us how she actually got started in real estate. She explains how she and her husband used the money that they got as a wedding gift (around $10,000) as a down payment for their primary residence and over the next four years, the house grew to $150,000 in equity. They then got a loan for $100,000 and used it to buy another primary residence and they rented their old house. Things were going so great after five years, they decided to sell it. Within the next couple of years, they bought three more houses with the intention to make it easy and joyful and her portfolio grew from there. She now owns a $12 million-dollar business in which she invested only $300,000 of her own money.

Moneeka then further explains her business model and what it looks like now. She started her business by buying the worst places in nice neighborhoods, she would fix them up then she would put someone in there who wanted to take care of the house, and she would train them on how to do that. That is how she created her system over time and is now only renting houses to executives. Moneeka also explains how she did start her business with a negative cash flow and how that was a risk she was willing to take because she knew what her ultimate goal was.

Lastly, we discuss Moneeka’s plans for the future and her expectations when it comes to the real estate market. She believes that real estate has been surprisingly stable. Even though she lost 50% of her value at one point, she was able to hold on to her properties, with the rents covering her expenses, and she made some adjustments and made it through. This is why Moneeka believes that with real estate timing the market is not as important as giving yourself the time to be right.

If you want to learn how to create a blissful life and career through investing in real estate, don’t miss this episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with amazing Moneeka Sawyer!

Notable Quotes:

“You know, Moneeka, everybody has stress, and everybody has money problems. Do you want poor people money problems or do you want rich people money problems?”

Moneeka Sawyer’s Father

“Unfortunately, I think most people get into this industry and their only focus is money and how to make as much as possible. What they realize is if your only motivation is money, you will inevitably become unhappy with the process.”

Mike Simmons

“How much sacrifice is enough to create the life that you really, really want? Happiness is the end goal for everybody.”

Moneeka Sawyer

“If everyone who decided they wanted to be a real estate investor or an entrepreneur became one, we would have 1000 times more because most people never get out of their chair and actually do it.”

Mike Simmons

“We have an entrepreneurial spirit, it is part of who we are. It is painful to be in corporate if you are an entrepreneur.”

Moneeka Sawyer

“But as business people, we need to make decisions that are best for the business and bring our spouses along for the ride in a way that they're comfortable.”

Moneeka Sawyer

“Courtesy, common sense, and respect both for and from your spouse are all big parts of the picture of bliss.”

Moneeka Sawyer

“When you start, you don't know what you don't know, and you get in there and make things happen.”

Moneeka Sawyer

“I did it backward. I decided what kind of renter I wanted for my houses and I started looking for houses that they would want to live in.“

Moneeka Sawyer

“These are decisions that people have to make when they're going into real estate: what is your goal, what is your risk tolerance, what kind of business are you looking to run?”

Moneeka Sawyer

“If you are in for the long haul, the cycles in the real estate market don’t matter that much if you bought right.”

Moneeka Sawyer

“My thing with real estate is timing. The market is not as important as giving yourself the time to be right.”

Moneeka Sawyer

“The market is never bad, it's whether or not you're adapting and adjusting what you're doing to the market if you're in a short-term play. As long as you're aware of the market, the market is fine.”

Mike Simmons

“When people get tied to one exit strategy and that's the only thing that can possibly work and then the market changes, they're in trouble. But that's on them, it's not the market. You know that the market is gonna change eventually.”