"Landlord for Life" Sean Morrissey, on Growing His Cashflow through Buy-and-Hold Real Estate

In this episode, I am pleased to welcome Sean Morrissey to the show. Sean began as a buy and hold real estate investor in 2003 with a two-bedroom condo in Hanover Park, IL. Having earned his Illinois real estate broker license in 2007, Sean survived the market crash and assisted homeowners throughout the Chicagoland area and opened Chicagoland Realty Group Partners LLC in 2011. Since that time, Sean has managed over 700+ rental transactions, 200+ homes, and owns and manages his own rental property portfolio in the western suburbs of the Chicagoland area. Sean focuses the majority of his time in growing and managing his real estate portfolio while hosting a podcast named Landlording for Life.

I am always so interested in how and why people get into real estate investing, so Sean started by sharing his background with us. He said he graduated from Purdue University with a BA in Restaurant Management and joined the Peace Corps where he worked in Western Kenya. When he returned home and began working in restaurant management, his dad introduced him to a book about using real estate investments as tax shelters. Sean started joining REIAs to talk to investors and landlords, and bought his first investment property in June of 2003 in the Chicagoland area.

I asked Sean to explain his experience with the Peace Corps and what led him to choose that before starting his corporate work life. He said he was involved in a student exchange program in college which got him interested in international travel and helping others. He was stationed in western Kenya at a technical college helping students work with computers and doing many community outreach projects. Sean said it was an awesome experience and he would love to go back someday soon.

I wanted Sean to explain what led him to get his broker’s license and what he considers the advantages are to do so for a real estate investor. His thought process was that he would have access to the MLS and more deals, and be a better investor. Sean said it made a lot of sense to pursue his license at that time because there was no Zillow or Redfin, which has made a lot of the property information public now. Until 2009, he was still working full-time in the restaurant business, so working more as a realtor initially helped him to figure out how he was going to transition to real estate investing full-time.

As Sean has had his own property management company in the past, we talked quite a bit about common mistakes made by investors when managing their own properties, size of portfolios, and why he sold his company. Sean’s opinion is that a newer investor should manage their own properties until they get over ten doors in their portfolio so that they understand the rigors of the job and learn from any mistakes made. He also talked a lot about what their criteria was for screening tenants, which is very helpful for those landlords who self-manage.

I asked Sean to explain why he has shifted toward an investor-centered model, rather than focusing on his brokerage work or continuing in the property management field. He went into great detail about the several ways you can benefit financially from buy and hold investing versus other types, and also the time and work investment of each.

Sean shares some of his struggles as a landlord, specifics about his business dealings, property management tactics, and so much more! You will not want to miss this fantastic, value-filled episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast!

Notable Quotes:

“Ultimately, it is through the experiences where you get burned that you learn the most.”