Episode 25 | Ben Welch | Military Millionaire Podcast

00:00 - 05:00

David:

What's up military millionaires. I'm your host, David Pere.

Today we have an exciting episode with Ben Welch of the millennial real estate investor podcast. He's a friend of mine. We're going to talk about some of the developments in Denver as well as some of those out of state investing.

His first deal was an eight unit deal halfway across the nation. So definitely check out some good tidbits in here.

If this is your first time listening, thanks for joining the community. This podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment. Show notes can be found at Frommilitarytomillionaire.com/podcast, now relax and enjoy the show.

Intro:

You're listening to the military millionaire podcast, a show about real estate investing for the working class. Stay tuned as we explore ways to help you improve your finances, build wealth through real estate and become a person that is worth knowing.

David:

Hey, what's up everybody's, it’s Dave military to millionaire. I'm here with Ben Welch and I totally, the millennial real estate investor podcast.

Ben:

There we go.

David:

I just talked to him about how I was gonna mess it up and confirmed it.

Ben:

Okay, so I have this running joke on our podcast that Dan gives me crap every time because I miss people's last names up, like 80% of the time.

David:

Awesome.

Ben:

Yours actually, I think I got, yeah.

David:

Ben, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Ben:

All right. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

David:

First in person podcaster.

Ben:

Yeah, here we go. I like to be the first to start the trend and actually sign a bad trend. More people should come visit you in Hawaii.

David:

It's an incentive.

Ben:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

So yeah. So my name is Ben Welch. I am an investor. I am from Denver, Colorado, and I invest in Memphis, Tennessee. I have a couple development projects going on in Colorado as well. And also, like Dave said, I am one of the hosts of the millennial real estate investor podcast. So that's me in 30 seconds.

David:

Wow.

All right. Well, and we didn't prep this, because I didn't ask him about all the real estate stuff he wanted to get into. I'm just gonna ask what kind of development are you doing in Denver? That sounds really cool.

Ben:

Yeah, so this was sort of a detour from what I've been focused on, which we'll see if that's a good or bad thing. But we have three single family homes that we're building, just just east of where we are.

So it's about 10 miles away. My previous investing had all been out of state. So this is kind of fun to actually have it close. So me and two other partners are building three single family homes.

David:

That's pretty cool. How did you get into that? You just stumble on some land? Or was it a?

Ben:

Sort of, so the three of us had had this idea for a while that we were going to do this because one, one of the partners is a general contractor. And he's been doing this in southern Colorado for a while now.

And we all thought and then the other partner is my business partner on the real estate agent side, because I also have my license in Colorado. So we all kind of stumbled upon this, like, Hey, we should kind of do what that one of our guys is doing down south closer to us.

Actually a funny story, the first time we tried to do this, we totally failed, but very successfully failed. So we bought this piece of land for like 198 it had just been dropped from 323 down to 190. Real prime area and we thought okay, you know, this was dropped 130k drop.

David:

Huge drop.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah. So we're thinking, if it's worth anything close to where it was before, and it wasn't selling, then we're good.

So we bought this beautiful piece of land, we were going to build a house on it. We were starting the home building process. And the day after we closed, we put it up on the market and just said okay, you know, throw out this huge number that if somebody takes it, we have no choice other than to sell it.

Well, somebody took it and clothes 3 weeks later, for like 100 grand more than we bought it for.

David:

Wow!

Ben:

Which worked out really well for our third partner because he was sort of the key financial partner in that one. We took a commission from it, we're all happy, walked away and on to the next one

David:

Flipping a piece of raw land.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

What's his name? Would you be proud of your tipster or Rei?

Ben:

Yeah, Seth Williams.

David:

He'd be proud of you. It’s his game.

Ben:

We like Seth. We've had him on the podcast too. He's a good guy.

David:

I got to meet him finally at FinCon. He's a good guy.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah.

David:

That's cool. Cuz you didn't have to do anything and with like raw land, I mean, no renovation. That's really cool.

05:00 - 10:00

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah, so I don't want to focus the whole time on land. But I do have this like, little soft spot in my heart for land. It's just like, you know, people don't understand how to judge the value of a piece of land. It's so hard because comps mean very little, you know, you can have this one that we did, you can be down the block, and have, it was a one acre piece of land that we had, you can be down the block and at the bottom of the hill, and it's worth half as much as the piece of land we had at the top of the hill.

So there are all these other factors going into it. And I think that, you know, for people who, like the idea of land, there's definitely something there. There's money to be made.

David:

Yeah, especially, I mean, the idea that you can change the zoning code and like triple the value of a piece of land, right?

Ben:

Yeah, yeah.

David:

There's a lot of and then there's a man was a Tai Lopez, it was talking to the next growth conference, the idea of if you see that a town is building, and you just buy land, and you just sit on, it doesn't cost much to hold on to raw land, there's no maintenance, there's, you might not make any money.

Ben:

Right.

David:

But then, you know, five years down the road, it's worth so much more than you put into it. And it's like you did nothing, right?

Ben:

Yeah, it's a speculative play. Whereas like, the rest of my investing is so steady and cash flow based that this is like, almost just some, you know, something fun on the side that if you can be speculative, do it. If you can't be if you can't afford to take that speculative risk. I would say, you know, for anybody listening, listening, that may not be the place to start.

David:

Yeah, I don't know the land is it because it is until you flip it or make some kind of, you know, capital gains on it. There's no profit.

Ben:

Yeah. Right.

Even if the taxes. Yeah, if the taxes aren't high. It's still a negative cash flow until you do something.

David:

Yeah. Absolutely.

What's so cool, so then you did that? And then you moved on to this other path with the three houses?

Ben:

Yep. So we sold that one. And then I decided I wanted to be part of the financial mix of this one, too. So basically, we have two financial partners. And then our third partner is running the whole show running the project. And we got a pretty good price on these three pieces of land in a subdivision that had been done 10 years ago.

And yeah, there were like, a couple houses, but 10 years ago was, I guess, we're 2019 now. So it was actually like 12 years ago, right before the recession.

David:

Yeah.

Ben:

So they made this beautiful neighborhood that was supposed to be full of custom homes, like 40 lots in it. And then two people built, and that was it. And then it just sat for another 10 years.

David:

Oh, yeah, I guess I would cuz Denver is definitely a market that took a hit.

Ben:

Yeah, we took a hit a little bit. And this is like outside of Denver enough, the metro area enough that I think it got hit worse out there.

So we came in, we got a decent price on these. And we'll hopefully break ground.

David:

What's a really cool strategy to have a general contractor as a partner with thanks a lot of people look into, like building or developing. And a lot of times it depends on your market. But a lot of times the numbers don't work, because by the time you pay the contractor the labor, there's a lot of places they it would cost there was so for me, there's a dupe I bought my duplex, the lot next door is vacant, it's like six grand, right? I'm like, Oh, great. I was gonna buy it. I started to do my research. Like it's gonna cost me more to build a duplex there than this thing cost.

Ben:

Yeah.

So I should just buy another duplex somewhere else.

Ben:

Right.

David:

Getting a contractor involved is pretty cool. But..

Ben:

I think it's the only way that would have worked for us. We've kind of run the numbers other ways to see if it would work out if we hadn't have done it that way. And I don't think it works.

So this way, you know, he has a cut, too. He's also one of the financial partners. So he has that cut, and he's lending his expertise as a GC. So everybody's incentives are directed the right way.

David:

That's really cool.

So what about Memphis? What do you do there? What's your strategy? Long distance? Because it's kind of funny that you say that you invest a long distance before you ever start moving short. A lot of people don't do that.

Ben:

Right. Right. Yeah. We should get into that too. I think, why people avoid long distance. The Boogeyman has got the book down. David David Green's book. Nice.

Yeah, so in Memphis, I own eight units, and bought those about two years ago. And it's been a ride there. So a lot of lessons learned. That was obviously my first investment. And I think, you know, there are so many good things. Sorry, guys. For anybody watching.

David:

Our super professional, really well planned podcast got interrupted by a phone?

10:00 - 15:00

Ben:

Oh no.

So yeah, I think so I went to Memphis for the purpose of buying steady cash flow rentals. And so far that's actually worked out fairly well. The reason I went to Memphis was we had a friend who was already investing out there, made it a little bit safer, gave me some kind of anchor of stability in Memphis. And he introduced me to his agent, his property manager, which ended up being one in the same person, and then contractors and everybody else, too.

So I went for cash flow there, bought this eight unit complex, which is kind of unique. It's actually four duplexes altogether.

David:

Oh that was cool.

Ben:

Yeah. And, you know, I went out there the first time I went out there, I believe strongly. And if you want to invest in a state, go show up there, like drive around the neighborhoods, get to know people. And the first time I went out, we had, we looked at about 35 houses the first weekend. And it is like a marathon.

David:

Yeah, it gets tiresome.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah.

David:

For agents probably like, Oh, my God.

Ben:

He's the man.

So he took me around to see 35. I found this one. And it was just like, yeah, this is it. It was a lot cheaper than everything else. It had some issues. But issues that are like the, you know, like, I think somebody, somebody on the bigger pockets podcast, a long time used to talk about how he'd take his kids into a house. And as soon as they smelled a bad smell in the house, the kids would say it smells like money.

David:

Oh, yeah. I know. I'm trying to figure out.

Ben:

It was like a real early one.

David:

He's one of the first 30 or 40.

Ben:

Yeah. So it's kind of like that, like I saw it and was like, okay, you know, these are solvable problems. And the agent also was related to the owner, related to the owners, married to the owner's son, who thought he was going to inherit the property, so the whole family did everything they possibly could to make the deal not happen. Which I think is another lesson for like, trying to get your first deal.

Sometimes, I could have given up so many times, and sometimes you just have to keep pushing.

David:

Yeah.

Ben:

Just, you know, make it happen after months, or whatever it takes.

David:

I think that's a big piece.

The whole you know, we talked about taking action. But you know, people get stuck in analysis, paralysis, but like, yeah, at the end of the day, it's not always an easy process. And you have to know that going in and know that this is what you want and push through that. That's the barrier to entry that makes real estate such a great investment.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

It's not like the stock market where you can go to TD Ameritrade like Click, click, click. Oh, man, I'm really there.

Ben:

Right. I mean, I suppose you could go out there and buy a $10,000 house somewhere and to stumble into it.

David:

Actually, I'm not gonna say a name but doing this coaching program, right. For those you don't know, I kind of started it. I'm not trying to plug anything but I'm running a beta test on a potential coaching program. One of the ladies she was like, called a neighborhood called a house and was just like, you want to give me your house? Can you not, the guy said, because it had been abandoned forever, right? And she’s like yeah, sure. But you can't give someone a house. She bought a $4 glass property for $1. And it's needed some renovation, but it's still like she's gonna end up being all in for like, half of what the property's worth. That's awesome.

Ben:

Wow.

David:

I’m like, I need you on the podcast to tell that story. Because that's hilarious. I was like laughing rolling on. What you did? Huh? You know, I don't know.

Ben:

Wow, I wonder what event sparked that.

David:

I have no idea.

Ben:

I'm not sure I would ever be brave enough to just start calling people and say, Hey, want to give me your house?

David:

I don't know that I'd ever even think. Like, that's your first house.

Ben:

That's amazing.

David:

It's out of state. And I'm like, Well, I'm talking about some craziness.

Ben:

Yeah. Bravo.

David:

I need to find a property manager for this house. I got for $1. I'm like, bro, how many dollars?

Ben:

Man refi out of that near you're completely positive.

David:

Pretty cool idea.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

Anyway, I'm sorry.

I went rabbit trail. Oh, duplex so or not duplex with the first house? Did it end up working out?

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

Okay.

Ben:

So, it's still working out.

It's been two years worth of lessons. I've never had a month where I've lost money on it.

David:

Looks good.

15:00 - 20:00

Ben:

So that's been a good thing, right? And that's kind of why I went multifamily in the first place because if three people move out, I'm still covering the mortgage and the utilities and everything.

So that's been really good. The neighborhood has turned tremendously since I bought it. And I, you know, I kind of was going for that to begin with. I knew where I bought, and I knew I liked the neighborhood. But appreciation is always just the icing on the cake.

David:

An extra bonus.

Ben:

Yeah, exactly.

So in the next probably six months, I will. So I bought 100 for all eight units. And I've put about 80 in total, since I bought and after this year will stabilize our refi and basically be able to pull all the initial cash back out.

David:

That's awesome.

Ben:

Yeah, so BRRRR method just longer than most people's BRRR method.

David:

Yeah, it's been a lot more cash involved to be able to do with an eight unit. I mean, you'll have a lot more cash flow when you pull out I would imagine then.

Ben:

Oh boy.

David:

Yeah, that's really cool.

So your first deal was eight units halfway across the nation?

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

That's pretty cool.

Ben:

Yep, in Memphis, Tennessee.

David:

Which is somewhere that you didn't really know anything about, except for a guy who knew?

Ben:

Yeah, a guy knew. And you know, the numbers look good, because it's a lot. It's the same as a lot of the Midwest that the price to rent ratios are so good, that basically the amount you're getting in rent compared to the price that you're paying for the house is so much better than as compared to like Denver, for example, you know, I might pay, let's say, 400 for a house that I'm going to rent for 1800. So that's like, you know, you're not doing very well, at that point, you're well under half a percent that you're getting back in, right.

David:

Whereas I paid 81,000 for a duplex full out for price, and it rents for 1000. And some change.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

So yeah, the Midwest is definitely a cash flow market.

Ben:

Yep.

David:

You'll never really appreciate I mean, you might, but not much. Yeah, like my property went up, like, $5,000 when the rest of the world's gone up, like 80%.

Ben:

Yeah. And that's the thing, like, I think, for investors, especially investors getting going, you have to figure out what, what you want out of it. If you want cash flow, and you're okay, with very flat appreciation, then great. There are markets for that. If you want to speculate on appreciation a little bit more then, you know, go to Denver and and cover your costs, make sure your cash flows a little bit. And then hope, I don't know,

David:

Yeah cross your fingers and...

Ben:

That hasn't been my strategy. But I think...

David:

Appreciation is good, I mean, there's good plays there. But yeah, you know, I don't know if you've noticed the trend on YouTube everybody's posting all the videos about the recession.

Ben:

Right, right.

David:

I'm like, fearmonger. Man, I can't hope for that recession I could not not until after you guys flip your family.

Ben:

Yeah, cross your fingers for about seven months from now.

David:

But you know, I mean, I could go for some cheap houses. But then again, in the Midwest, it really won't affect much. It'll still be roughly the same price for everything.

Ben:

Yeah, exactly.

David:

Which is nice. My appreciation curve goes like a flat line. So I’m okay with that.

Ben:

Right.

And the thing about the recession is, if you have rentals, and you're holding on to them for the purpose of cash flow, what do you care if we have a recession? I mean, it doesn’t matter.

David:

My rent doesn't actually go up, right? People move out of their house, they need a place to live. I say, sorry, you lost your house, but already have potential renters. So you're gonna have to give me more money.

Ben:

Yeah, I think you'd care if you own Class A properties, where you know, these people are, if you lose a job, then they move down to a class B, because that's what they can afford now.

David:

Yeah.

Ben:

But, you know, I don't know, you know, where you'd consider your properties. But mine are probably C plus properties. So I'm gonna have tenants no matter what if we get hit a recession.

David:

Exactly.

The same thought I had when Missouri recently voted for the $50 minimum wage. And everybody was like, super excited. And they're talking about how, you know, they all I don't want to say small minded, but all the people who don't understand finances, who can't figure out don't take this the wrong way, the people who can't figure out how to get away from a job making minimum wage, and they're just stuck in that trap.

Generally, the same people who don't understand that raising the minimum wage is not going to solve all your problems, because there's a lot of stuff that goes with that. One of which being that I'm going to increase my rent, because you can now afford more and the rest of the market is going up. And so I'm gonna end up making more money because I bought before the rent one.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

And so everyone was all everyone's you know, so opposite end of the spectrum, and I'm over here like, Well, I think it was really dumb to raise the wage but I'm really happy you did because I get to increase my rent next year.

20:00 - 25:00

Ben:

Yeah, exactly. It works out well, and that's why being a buy and hold investor. If you have a little bit of patience, and you're smart about what you're doing is such a good long term strategy.

David:

Absolutely.

All right, so we can talk about real estate all day.

I'm curious to hear what is, and this is a totally different question that we didn't prep at all. What is something? What do you think is like the biggest takeaway that you've gotten from running a podcast on real estate investing?

Ben:

Oh, that's a good question.

David:

I had another really good question. And then I realized I should ask you that one, we're not recording because I don't want to hear I don't think anyone wants to hear.

I was gonna ask him who his favorite podcast guest was. And if I could get their contact info so I could interview him, then I realized you probably shouldn't say that publicly. Because everyone else will get mad at me cuz I mean...

Ben:

I thought you were just looking for a plug back.

David:

Me. I was his favorite. I'll say it myself. No, no, I'm curious to hear because I've gotten a lot out of running podcasts. I'm curious to hear what you think is the biggest takeaway, because this is your second podcast.

Ben:

This is our second.

Yeah. So the first one we ran was purely entrepreneurial. It was called Ditching 95 and it's still out there. But we don't really do anything with it.

We pivoted to real estate, because that's what we needed to focus on. Both of us are in real estate, and my partner Dan Mackin who hosts the podcast with me, both of us are in real estate, we needed to get more focused in life more than we were.

And we were also like, denying all these real estate guests on our other show, even though that's like what we wanted to talk about anyway. So we had to, like split them out. So that's why we went to real estate. But in terms of it, takeaway from running a podcast, I think that, you know, if anybody's out there looking to start a podcast, if nothing else, it's an incredible way to network, with people like yourself, like, my wife and I are out here in Hawaii for a month. And I happen to be sitting in your office and like, you know, we've made a connection that we wouldn't have made otherwise.

David:

Yeah.

Ben:

And I think that that's been one of the coolest things about doing it.

David:

That's actually I've been thinking about that a lot this last week.

So people talk about, what's your end goal with the podcasts you want to sponsor? Do you want to? How are you going to monetize a podcast? And I honestly, I don't care if I monetize podcasts, I get to sit down and have a 30 to 40 minute conversation. maybe an hour I had one with Phil, the guy in the video I showed you earlier that's going to come out soon with us drinking a beer.

Bend:

Yes, yeah.

David:

We did a podcast. We filmed for like an hour and some change. And then when the recording went off, we talked for like another hour and a half.

Finally, I was like I'm late for work. It's been like three hours since I need to go. But 40 minutes of getting asked any question you want to ask. Yeah, like one on one with people that normally you wouldn't have access to? It's really cool.

Ben:

Yeah, it is cool in that I mean, that's the same thing that we've done all the time to, you know, what you guys see on a podcast, or here on a podcast is like half the conversation. Because usually you hang up and you're like, Oh, I have like 12 more questions. And it just keeps going for a while.

So, but that goes along with, you know, we asked this question on our podcast every time about what's a big unexpected benefit you've got from real estate investing. And it's funny, because the number one thing we've actually started saying you can't say this anymore, you got to come up with something else.

The number one thing we've heard from everybody is the biggest unexpected benefit of real estate investing are the people you get to meet. It's such a cool community.

David:

It is.

I joke, the fincon community I joke because I'm like, the reason I went into real estate is not for real estate. It's for the people that I was like, because I'm in the Marine Corps. And we're like them in my podcast, I can say whatever I want.

We're like the bastard stepchildren of the military branches. Not really don't take that the wrong way Marine Corps but we're like we isolate ourselves by sitting in a corner and being like, we're better than all of you. We're badass, right? We're like the guys drinking the beer doing it just right. That's like the persona, right? And I think we were in fin con. And all the real estate guys were like smuggling coronas into the ending award night my drinking beer. Everyone's all serious, like cheering for their favorite people. And we're like, drinking coronas? Yeah, not gonna be...

Ben:

Yeah enjoying life,

David:

Got told by the hotel. We weren't allowed to bring our own beer in so we had to go outside. Like, this is the perfect group of people for me.

Ben:

Absolutely.

David:

So I love it. Yeah, the real estate people are good people.

Ben:

Yeah, I think a lot of people are always afraid to like go to their first real estate meetup or, like start networking in the real estate community. And it's like, you know, cuz it can be intimidating to go to these people who are, you know, even a step above you in success in real estate, but it's just, it's not like that.

You know, once you jump in, once you go to a meetup, like, you run a meetup here out here and yeah.

25:00 - 30:00

David:

Yeah, I bring pizzas, some people show up with beer we hang out on the beach and yeah, Doug Nordmann. Like we were there the other day and he comes walking up out of the water because you've been surfing before the meetup started.

Ben:

So lesson number two, you guys should make it out here to join in on the meetups and the real estate conversations.

David:

It's fun.

Bend:

It's worth it.

David:

Sometimes we get like, last time we had this homeless guy come up, and I don't know what was going on. He, like, was trying to, it was weird. He liked that he ended up joining the conversation, though for like, 45 minutes. And he was talking about real estate, but he was like, like a whole group of people hanging out. And I'm like, but he came up to like, a, like, basically say, if you see something, say something, I see a bunch of weird people gathered under a light, you know? I’m wondering what you guys are all doing here. Like we are some dealing drugs or something. We're like, no, we're just talking real estate. He's like, Oh, can I join? Like, yeah, you just hung out with us the whole rest of the night. So drink, drink some beer, eat some pizzas.

Ben:

That's awesome. That's awesome.

David:

Yeah, it's an odd group.

Anyway, I digress. So I should probably at least ask one of my normal questions, right. Look, guys, you don't ever see this. Because it's on the screen normally, but it's even laminated like...

Ben:

Yeah, this is fancy.

David:

I'm a professional.

Ben:

I can spill all over it.

David:

Yeah. Except that I had all this so I can write my own notes. And then even my like, dry erase markers stay on it. So it didn’t work. I can't. I like you could tell there's like residue. So I finally gave up. I was like, I'm just gonna do it on the computer.

Anyway, um, so if a 19-20 year old walked up to you asking you for advice on real estate life, whatever. What would be your life lesson and your wise old age?

Ben:

Wise old age? That's a good one, though.

I think so. So I'm going to kind of two parts of this answer.

David:

We are gonna need one part.

Ben:

All right, well, you guys will be left with half an answer.

David:

There's the hook.

Ben:

You have to come back to find out more next week.

No, I think that this is tough at 19 or 20. But I think that you have to figure out what you want your life to look like, and what your goals are in real estate.

So you know, do you want to be active? Do you want to be a flipper, do you want to get your hands dirty, and be in it every day? Because there are so many different ways that you can go about being successful in real estate.

So do you want to be active? Or do you want to set up your base of passive cash flow so that you can go pursue other things in your life, and both ways are okay, but you have to figure out what your goal is? And then part two of the answer after you figure out what your goal is, is, you got to figure out what can move the needle today on that.

So like, I know that you've just read the one thing recently,

David:

I've read it at least twice, I think.

Ben:

Or reviewed it on your YouTube.

David:

Oh, yeah, I did do a review recently. It's a good book.

Ben:

So I think, like employing that mentality. And if you guys haven't read the book, go pick it up. It's awesome.

So figure out what your goal is, and then figure out every day what you can do, like what's the thing I need to do to move that goal forward.

So if I were 19, or 20, that's what I do. And I go sooner. this other thing I buy sooner.

David:

Yeah, people think age is such a disadvantage. In fact, this guy, I'm going through, like lawsuit stuff with or whatever he was, he was always he would always bring up how long he'd been in the business how experienced he was. And he'd say, you know, I understand that. You've only been doing it and, and he's never seen me, he doesn't know how old I am. And he doesn't know how experienced I am. But he figured out that I'm not as old as him. So he assumed that meant something. And I was always just kind of like, Alright, cool, man. Like, that doesn't matter. In fact, if anything, it's an advantage that I'm young. Yeah, me, I haven't done it as long. But if you're 20, then you start investing, like compound interest on your learning compound interest on your investment, you know, a 20 year old goodbye to properties 30 year note doesn't cash flow breakeven, and before they're retired have to pay off assets that are carefully, king. Yeah, whereas I'll be, you know, if I do that, now, I'm gonna be in my 60s, right? You know, 50-60s, whatever. It's a whole different ball game. That 10 or 20 years, so..

Ben:

Yeah, and you know, especially if you're at 19 or 20. Either way, you're in the disposition where most likely unless you're married really young, you're okay with living with roommates. So why not buy a house and have your roommates pay your mortgage for you?

David:

And if everything else fails, you're like, 20 years old, you can get back on your feet.

Ben:

Exactly.

Unless crippling is when you're 40. And your life falls apart. You're 20 you're supposed to wreck your life at 21. So why not do it financially instead of alcohol.

Ben:

Racket smarter than the rest of your friends.

I don't know.

30:00 - 35:00

David:

You're gonna end up in jail for bankruptcy, not drugs. It's so much better.

Anyway. I digress again, look at this, this why don't do interviews in person? talk too much. It's a good one here.

I normally ask, like, what makes the Ben Welch method of investing in real estate unique? And since I said that out loud, I'm gonna ask it anyway.

Ben:

Alright, so what makes the Ben Welch method of real estate investing unique.

David:

Or successful?

It's kind of like a spin off of the BiggerPockets question.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

I'm just not as cool as Beardy, Brandon, I only have the top beard.

Ben:

I got no beard. So I'm definitely not as cool.

David:

There we go. We're like the off brand, David and Brandon thing.

Ben:

There we go.

Um, I think that, you know, I think I've been able to see, you know, the little bit of success that I have, because I wasn't afraid to go out of state. And I think that a lot of people let that hold them back. Like today, you know, even with contractors, you can go on thumbtack and find people to do what you need.

Going out of state just isn't that big of a deal. So I think that that's one thing, and then just always looking for opportunity. I think, you know, keeping your eyes open for what's out there.

David:

Yeah, I think the fact that you're willing to develop something new in Denver, that's unique, not a lot of people developing on the smaller scale, I guess, like you meet the guys who do like development, and then you meet guys flip houses, but it's not. It's not very common, even nowadays, even with the market coming back up to watch. Like, like building seems to be a primary residence thing. It's not as common to be an industry thing. So it's cool.

Ben:

Yeah. I mean, we'll do a follow up in seven or eight months.

David:

I'm excited.

Ben:

And see how it goes.

David:

Yeah, and the market will have gone up 100% and he'll be a billion.

Ben:

That's right.

David:

For 1000%.

Ben:

With a “B”

David:

Yes.

Ben:

Offer three single families. I'll take it. I’ll wait for it.

David:

One neighborhood in Denver, where Jeff Bezos.

Amazon's gonna change their plan. Anyway, and he's not gonna get divorced. So he'll still be the richest man in the world.

Ben:

Right. Right.

David:

All of this will come true. And they'll make it to Mars before you want. If you're listening out there, Blue Angel or whatever the Amazon company is. I love you guys.

Alright, so what is one resource, book, podcast? Not your podcast. Not my podcast, we know it would have been my podcast. What's one resource that you think stands out from the rest in the flood of real estate business stuff?

Ben:

So I already said the one thing I think that is like, truly powerful in what you can do.

The other best book that I've read on real estate, that's not on real estate is Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss.

David:

I don't have it here. Because I have only done audible. I need to order it. I've talked about that book three times today to coaching students.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

I love that book.

Ben:

Absolutely.

I mean, like a life changing book, because it could be about your work. If you're in a W two. It could be about your relationships with your wife, your kids, whoever, like it's just a It teaches you how to how to listen. And how to understand people. I think that is really what it comes down to.

David:

Yeah. And then it teaches you I mean, I saved like four grand negotiating repair costs before I even finished reading the book.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

I was just using random stuff. In fact, it's funny. So I like long story short, it only needed like nine or 10 grand to fix this house. And so I asked for like 16 and some change, like some really weird number, right? They came back in like, 11.

Ben:

Yeah.

David:

I was like, oh, well, that's more than I need. And I was so in the book that I'm like, I can't just take their first offer. So I did a counter and it bumped it up. I ended up making, like $4,000 cash out of the deal without needing it for repairs, just because I was like, well, let's ask the question.

Ben:

Yeah, absolutely.

David:

And it worked.

Ben:

It teaches you the right way to go about doing that.

David:

Yeah.

Ben:

That will work. Like I've read other negotiation books that are kind of hard headed. Like I'm gonna just brute force my way through this negotiation. That's not what this is at all.

That one.

David:

What was the quote I said today I felt smart saying it now I can't remember it. That's how you know, smart that's what my head is now.

Oh, like do swap me to do the garage sale thing now for fun. And I was like, negotiating real estate is not nearly the same as negotiating flea market. People think negotiation and they think like, we do 10 I'm not going above 10 no, we got to do 10 How about nine and a half? You know, it's great. No, that's not sometimes in fact, sometimes in real estate, like giving them the dollar amount they want is the biggest play you can make because now they're happy and now you ask for something they're not expecting like a half percent off your interest or whatever and all of a sudden you're walking away. They're happy. You're Happy And you just made like the best play ever some abstract thing they wouldn't have even known.

I always like to joke about negotiating for the hot tub. Like, I'll give you the price you want but you're like no hot.

35:00 - 39:08

Ben:

Yeah, we just actually so for a client of mine, we just did that about a month ago.

We got almost all the furniture, hot tub, everything included, because we gave them their price. And my client was okay with the price and actually we offered 10 grand less.

David:

Yeah.

Ben:

But we gave by coming up to that price. And we found other ways to make it worth it. That's the cool thing about real estate you don't like you said it's not like being at the flea market. All I have is my dollar and your whatever you're selling me.

David:

Yeah.

Ben:

And that's it. Otherwise, you know with real estate though you have terms linked the terms interest, accessories, you know, whatever.

David:

I can say like my price your terms your price my terms and that's where you win.

Ben:

Yep.

David:

I'm if I'm if the price works at full asking price. You don't offer a full asking price. But you know, you offer low. They always say no. And then you're like, Okay, fine. I'll come up to your price. But and that, but and whatever you throw in there is almost always better than it's very important that yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Books. Huge. That's a good point. I think you're the first one to recommend that book. I love it.

Ben:

Yeah, it's a good one.

David:

Yeah. All right. So uh, before we wrap this up, anything you'd like to add? I should have been timing this. I'm sure this is probably gonna be like one of my longer podcasts because it's just easier to talk in person.

Ben:

Yeah. But that's all right. All right. Well, we'll wrap it up here.

No, I think that, you know, obviously our shows the millennial real estate investor podcast. So we believe strongly that more young people should be investing. And I think that that's the biggest takeaway. If you're young, no matter what else you're doing in life, you should start looking into this because it will do more for you to jump into the game smartly, and do whatever you need to do than if you're sitting on the sidelines, not building some kind of financial stability.

David:

I agree. I was going to ask where people can get a hold of him. We'll do that again in a second. But because he mentioned his podcast, I'm gonna I'm gonna go out and just say so. So for all my old salty military listeners, how do you define millennial?

Ben:

That's a great, great question.

David:

I was not the first person I believe who came on your show. It was like, just don't call me. Yeah, jokingly because I am. But I'm not. That's why I have the upper I'm going to start calling this my top beard, my top beard so that I don't look as young as I am.

Ben:

Yeah, I think that I mean, our definition of millennial stretches, we have many people in the gray area of millennial. I think that basically what it comes down to for us is, if you're like, I don't know, 35-37 or under, like, you should be doing this, you should be investing.

So who knows somewhere in that range? I don't know. 18 to 35. Right now.

David:

There we go. So that's that's all of you.

Majority of my audiences 24 to 35. So you're welcome.

Ben:

There we go.

David:

Alright, so where can people get a hold of you? Google millennial real estate investor.

Ben:

Yeah. So millennial-realestate.com is our website. Go in there for show notes, whatever. If you want to reach out to me directly. The email for the podcast is podcast@millennial-realestate.com. That'll go to Dan, my partner and I and we'll get it.

So yeah, feel free to reach out.

David:

I'll plug all that in the show notes.

Ben:

Cool.

David:

Awesome.

Well, thanks for being on the show. And in my guest room, place, Hawaii.

Ben:

That's right.

David:

Awesome.

Ben:

Thanks for having me, man.