Building a Legacy through Buy-and-Hold Real Estate Investing
In this episode, I interview buy-and-hold real estate investor Erin Helle. Erin begins by giving us her background and what brought her to this type of investing. She began her career in the military, first attending West Point Academy and then serving on active duty. Because her husband was also in the service, they knew that both of them being on active duty would be short-lived as they planned to start a family. She resigned her commission after about eight years of active duty to participate in the Army Reserves but was released when the Army discovered she had a heart condition. Upon leaving active duty, she began to explore real estate as a way to earn an income and be present for her family.
Since she did not have her own team at that point, Erin decided that any property requiring rehab wouldn’t work for the first go-around. Erin’s first deal, in May of 2018, was purchasing a newly constructed house, still in the process of being built. What she got was a completely rent-ready property, where she went directly from closing to meet her new tenant with keys.
Here I talked about how I had never heard of anyone getting into this industry by paying full-asking price for a newly constructed house, found on the MLS, but that is what is so great about real estate! There are so many ways to do it and be successful.
For her second deal, Erin pursued a flip property, which she and her dad did much of the work themselves. She talks about having learned so many lessons having to do with building relationships with contractors, budgeting, planning, and especially the selling process. The ability to close on the finished property proved to be a little difficult because of the demographics of the area that it was in. Erin knew she had so much to learn, felt like she had exhausted avenues for learning, and thought just getting in there was the best way to move forward.
Having a construction team upfront was one of the biggest lessons she learned from this project. When trying to contract certain aspects of this project out, she found that contractors would either not show up to bid the job, or would be awarded the job and still not show up. Erin also found that some portions of the job were way more costly than she anticipated and had budgeted for. Learning the timing and order of how the individual construction tasks were performed was also very enriching for her.
I then asked Erin what her primary investment strategy is and how she thought the current COVID-19 situation might affect that. She said she doesn’t plan to do any flips soon, but that she is always looking and open for new opportunities. She doesn’t think her rental market is going to be adversely affected by the quarantine situation and doesn’t think she will have to use any type of government assistance that may be available to her. I also shared my thoughts about this unusual situation and I talked about a video I saw that compared the real estate market now to the housing crisis in 2008 and how it was affected after 9/11.
I also wanted to find out how Erin finds her deals, so that is what we discussed next. She talked about the importance of KPIs (key performance indicators) and doing them consistently to see results. We discussed how her business model is more relationship-based than through paid marketing.
Erin then talked about the challenges of running her business remotely and how important it is to have a good team in place in each investment location. We talked about the necessity of a checks-and-balances system to keep everyone on task and doing good work. I commented that I could have an hours-long podcast on how to find, hire, train, and maintain a good team!
In regard to this, Erin talked about the systems she has in place to run her business. She said it is very simple, driven mostly by spreadsheets and contracts. This helps her to keep both herself and her teams on task and the expectations are very clear from the beginning.
I asked Erin what she would do differently if she could wipe the slate clean and use all the lessons learned to start her real estate business again, and she said she would not do anything differently. She believes strongly that any set-back she has experienced has contributed to the person she is and the business she is running.
Join Erin and me for a great interview featuring super actionable advice on both buy-and-hold and find-and-flip real estate investing!
Notable Quotes
“Sometimes the more you know, you can get in your own way.”
- Mike Simmons
“I learned what a release of lien meant in that [first flip property], so that was huge.”
- Mike Simmons
“It’s just resourcefulness, dealing with the situation and figuring out how to get through it.”
- Mike Simmons
“If you have the will to get there, you will figure out a way.”
- Mike Simmons
“Water finds a path.”
- Mike Simmons
“[Flipping] is not what I’m supposed to be doing. It is a way to make money, but it's not contributing to my end state.”
- Erin Helle
“I’m encouraging listeners to figure out what they want to do because that’s half the battle.”
- Erin Helle
On systems: “I don’t think you need to have a fancy system or pay for a platform, I think you can do it in a notebook if you wanted to.”
- Erin Helle
“I wouldn’t do anything differently. Everything that I have learned and every step I have taken backward has contributed to the person you see now and the business you see here.”
- Erin Helle
Links:
Level Jumping: How I Grew My Business to Over $1 Million in Profits in 12 Months
