Close more deals while working less hours with Jenn Beadles

Resilience is one of the most important traits you can have as a real estate agent. There will always be ups and downs in the market, but if you're resilient, you'll be able to weather any storm.

Jennifer Beadles, Founder & CEO of Agents Invest, knows a thing or two about resilience. She's been in the business for 15 years and has closed over $250 million in real estate. In 2021 alone, she's closed over 215 transactions.

Jenn is passionate about helping agents close more deals while working less hours. She knows that the key to success is finding the right investors to work with.

(The following text has been transcribed)

Good morning and welcome to the Best Real Estate Podcast. You're going to find and I'm super excited to be here with you today. My name is Kim Hayden and I am the host of today's show. I'm excited to introduce a lovely girl from the warm state of Arizona. She is going to be chatting with us. Her name is Jennifer Beatles.

She's the founder and CEO of Agents Invest, and she is passionate about helping real estate agents close more deals while working less hours. When Jennifer discovered the power of working with investors. She soon earned enough to take control of her time and began investing in real estate herself. Through 15 years of experience. Jennifer, it has honed in on the craft of finding deals and working with investors and is now providing agents with the tools they need to scale up and build their wealth. Jennifer has sold over to hundred and 50 million in real estate, with over 215 close referral transactions in 2021 alone. Welcome, Jennifer. Wow. Those are some impressive numbers.

Oh, thank you so much, Kim. I am thrilled to be here with you today.

May I say, you look lovely. I love that Golden Globe. You can tell. Jennifer is in Phoenix. Is that correct?

Yes. Yeah, I'm like this. I just relocated to Phoenix. I'm originally from Seattle.

Oh, and you already have a tan.

That's right. Yeah.

Jennifer, to me, how long would it take for me to get a tan Well, the reason alone, to move to Arizona so. No, seriously. Have you seen yourself, like, healthier glows, sunny state or.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, every day we're outside in the pool and enjoying all the. Yeah, the sunny days.

Awesome. Awesome. So you've relocated, and that's actually a really scary thing for a lot of real estate agents. So it actually let's start there, and then we're going to go into the the principles and practices you have developed that, you know, now coach and teach that allowed you to move because a lot of agents are terrified of moving because your community is your business. So walk us through your move and then your principles that you've applied so you can continue to grow your business.

Sure. Absolutely. So I should mention, I actually retired from real estate sales in 2017.

Yeah.

And so, so I don't kind of tell the backstory there. I started in real estate when most agents were getting out of the business. So I got my license in May of 2009. And again, I literally remember agents walking out the door with their box of things saying, Good luck to you. There's no business here. And so I got started in a time where there's a lot of turmoil in the market. I saw the opportunity to serve the investor community because I would say a lot of the properties in my market or fixer uppers or cash only. And so again, I saw an opportunity where a lot of agents weren't exploring. So I went full into that, started serving the investor community. And I kind of call it what I learned while I earned right. And so I learned from these investor clients, of course, applied that to my own investment portfolio, but made a really great living doing that. I found that I could work with maybe 20 to 25 investors a year, and a lot of those investors would purchase between three to five properties each every year. And so in doing the math, you can imagine the high volume that I was able to do by working with a pretty small database of investors and kind of fast forward to 2017, I found myself with the entire database of investors. And unfortunately the deals no longer made sense in my market and in terms of what the investors were looking for. And I found myself at a crossroads as well as an investor thinking, well, where else can I go to get the returns that I'm looking for? And so I started building a network of investor agents all across the country. And I was an initial buyer at first and then I started referring my investor clients to these agents, and it was fantastic. We have a great story about an agent in Indianapolis. I purchased my first state deal with that agent. It was a brand new agent, but really we could speak the same language. I referred him to one client from California. That client bought ten properties in 60 days and essentially made that brand new agent. Wow. And he was rookie of the Year. And so today it's great. So I don't actually participate in the sale of real estate. And yet we've closed. Yeah. Last year it was like 218 referral transactions. So essentially I'm a matchmaker now between the investor and the investor agent. And it's a really beautiful thing because I'm able to help agents kind of build and grow their businesses and also add value to these investors so that they can continue to build wealth and also some location diversification.

Amazing. So this leads me to a question. So let's just go down a hypothetical road here. So I know of a young lady who has worked to get her license, so she's taking the course. I think it is very expensive to get the course. However, personality wise, she is actually far more I think she's actually more geared towards maybe the commercial side of real estate. Could this matchmaking work within like commercial investments also not just residential?

Oh, absolutely. I think that there is a kind of an opportunity right now where a lot of the commercial agents, the traditional the Marcus and Miller chaps, you know, the CBRE, a lot of the commercial brokerages, they don't deal and maybe 50 units and below is also going to be market dependent right depending on the price point. And so there's an opportunity, I would say, for residential agents to kind of break into the space that's maybe not five to 50 units that's not being served by the agent community. And yet a lot of investors are looking for those types of opportunities, especially as we're seeing 1031 exchanges becoming more popular. Of course, it's been around since I think the forties. But there's a lot of investors that are looking to exchange properties in maybe the coastal markets where they have a lot of equity, but maybe the landlord tenant laws are changing and it's not as favorable of an environment. And I'm doing this myself with my personal portfolio. And you can sell a duplex maybe in California, Oregon or Washington State and essentially trade in to 20 units or 30 units in the Midwest. And so again, there's not a lot of the commercial agents that are serving this area. And we're also seeing a lot of aging landlords that want to get out of these properties. And so I think there's a huge opportunity to serve both the investor and also target some of these sellers that are looking to sell.

Absolutely. So, okay, so I do understand the whole move from the coast type of thing due to costs and expense. And you know, they've had some upheaval over the last five or six years politically. So I do understand that it is going to be very interesting watching how when we look at politics and such, the shift in some of these states, because we're seeing coasters. So when you look at the coast, east and west, they tend to be more one way, whereas you look at the Midwest. So it's it's it that's going to be interesting. So when you're negotiating and you're moving into some of these spaces, what are some of the struggles people are coming across when you have mom and pop who have owned these 14 properties for forever but none of their kids want them or their kids are gone or whatever. And now they're selling to the big fancy person out from the coast. How do you walk in and put those sellers at ease? Like what can be the language around that? Am I crazy for even thinking that? But no.

Yeah. I mean, this happens every day. And so I would say that the sellers are essentially looking to get out. Right. And so they're essentially wanting to retire from being a landlord. And, you know, they're looking to sell these properties. Maybe some of the challenges that the agent faces and the investor faces, as a lot of times the owners don't have very clear financials. And so it can be a challenge to get a professional rent roll and what we call a trailing 12 months of profit and loss statements from these sellers. And so, you know, essentially we can underwrite deals just based on a rent roll and some pro forma numbers. And so that's pretty easy to do. But essentially, you know, I would say the conversation and the opportunity, again, for the agents is to start reaching out to some of those sellers. Certainly you know, creating a farm and or, you know, doing direct mail. Obviously, some networking. I think every single agent should host their own monthly meetup. That's that's a big kind of pillar to the training and the content that I teach. And so we host a meetup for the month one in Seattle and one where I'm in Scottsdale. And we get a lot of those sellers that come to those meetups. And they're kind of trying to figure out how to potentially exit these properties in a way that maybe is not disruptive to the tenants as well. A lot of these self managers that we find do have relationships with these tenants. And so it can be a bit of a struggle for them. And so, again, I think the opportunity is to serve those seller clients. There's a lot of opportunities even for them to get into a 1031 and do what's called a DST, meaning they can essentially defer the tax but not have the burden of buying another property and operating that because that's why they want to get out most of the time. And so I think what we're talking about here, Kim, is really having agents kind of consider what other tools they can put in their tool belt that would have them potentially stand out from every other agent. You know, there's over what, 2 million agents and why.

Yeah, 1.897 or something like that to last out. It's crazy. Yeah.

And growing and growing every day. Yeah. And so there's we're seeing this trend of a lot of millennials that are living in these high cost of living areas, potentially not buying a home but investing in other areas. And it's really interesting. I wouldn't say any other time. You know, I've been doing this for 15 years, but I've not seen, you know, this trend that's growing so aggressively of these younger people wanting to essentially invest in real estate and kind of have this plan B for retirement, while also, again, not necessarily buying in the areas that they're living. They might be working in tech.

Well, and I think I think the pandemic has shifted the way we think about where we live and work. And with StarLink coming online and getting more prolific every day in 24 months, you're going to be able to, you know, work for a company in San Francisco and be in the middle of the ocean right so. So if you go to Kansas, I'm originally from Kansas. So my brother in law owns like 19 properties and he's been in this game for a while and such stuff. But when I look at some little itty bitty towns in the middle of Kansas, right at some of these small towns have airports from way back. And then they and then the towns went through huge recessions and never rebounded but they have infrastructure. Yes. And you go in and buy a house cashout. Right. For like $12,000. Right. So what are your thoughts as somebody who's been in this industry for over a decade? You know, let's do a little bit of forecasting. I'm not going to hold you. And nobody out there is allowed to hold on to anything here. Let's do this in an alternate universe or perfect world. This is what could happen to these little forgotten towns throughout the Midwest. Tell me what you see there and if you were talking to somebody who is investing long term.

Oh, absolutely. So that trend has been in play for the last 24 months. So Tennessee, how high net inward population migration We're seeing a lot of people moving to these states that are also non income tax rates. Tennessee and on income tax state Texas as well Florida right there's Arizona where I'm at the top you know kind of inward population migration states. I tend to draw a one hour radius around the larger cities like Nashville, Austin and you know even Houston. Right now we're seeing a lot of kind of push into the suburbs as well. So I think we want to be careful about maybe the small towns where they have declining population, where there's maybe lack of job opportunities. Right. Wages have not been increasing. That means it's a little bit more of a risky play, in my opinion. There could be some money made on these $12,000 houses. I don't know what rents might be, but for most investors, I like that one our radius surrounding these large cities and finding these opportunities where we see population increases. So Clarksville, Tennessee is about 45 minutes north of Nashville, northwest of Nashville, and it's had a 50% population increase over the last like 15 years. And so those are the kind of markets, those are the kind of opportunities that I'm seeing in the marketplace. And it's really interesting though. I don't, I don't know that the local realtor population knows that they just see the population growing and thinking, great, this growth is fantastic. But I would love to see more residential agents say, I want to serve some investor clients and essentially put my market on the map and, you know, potentially close more business in their local market by maybe changing their language and conversation around the opportunities. So we're seeing a lot of that happening right now. So again, I spend a lot of time researching different markets, the trends of where the population increases are happening, where people are moving to and essentially trying to kind of get in before everyone else hears that. That's a great market to invest in. And I have another story of a friend of mine who lives in New York City. She recently just moved from Miami back to New York City thinking that she was going to buy a place, and spent a couple of weeks there. And so that won't be an option. The prices are so high. Rents are so high. And so just the other day, we were talking about her buying a house back in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and what she could get for that money there and essentially have her mortgage payment paid by the tenants on the other side. So we're seeing a lot of those kinds of trends at play.

You just used the term house hack. What is that?

Yes. So there's a couple of different ways that people or buyers can house hack away, No. One. So I call that the living flip. I have done five live-in flips and made over $1,000,000 by living in a property, fixing it up or remodeling while I was living there, living there for two out of five years, selling and essentially paying no capital gains tax on the sale of the profit. Right. The profit. So that's one way. Another way to house hack is essentially you could purchase a property, live in it. Maybe for you to meet that one year owner occupancy requirement. You could move out and then keep it as a rental and just cashflow it from there. But the benefit is by living there for a year, you can minimize the cost of FHA or VA if you have a VA loan. And so we've done that many times as well. And then the third option is buying a property and maybe it's a multifamily property or maybe it has multiple bedrooms and a bit of a five bedroom home and renting out either other units or other bedrooms and essentially having that mortgage payment covered. So essentially owning a piece of real estate, but living there rent, mortgage free.

Absolutely. You know, and we see that. So here in Calgary where I'm at, you're not going to get into a house now for under 400,000. So it's a very viable option. And we see a lot of like basements that are Swedish because in Calgary everybody has a basement, right? Due to cross lines and the movement of capital gains, Best states that people should look at. House hacking.

Oh I think any state could work for house hacking you could house hack in California. You could house hack in New York. It's just I would say that you're probably looking at different types of properties. You're looking for rentable space or the fixer upper on the live-in flip as I had mentioned, maybe the properties in the nice neighborhoods that aren't in the best condition. There's a lot of opportunities in the U.S. for renovation financing two or three K loans for owner occupants. And so I believe that everyone should house hack their first property, essentially buy that property again. Either 11 flip or rent out some of that space and essentially get that mortgage payment covered. Lived there for a year and then moved on and do it again, ideally it's a.

So in your program, this is this is the language that you're teaching real estate agents, correct? Okay. So what what do you how do you encourage or how would you advise a real estate agent who, let's say they have been ten years successfully grooming of farming their local market. They are, you know, residential specialists within a specific area. They've got a strong return, but they see that 20 year line coming and what are they doing for their future? What are some ways that they can actually start integrating and moving into the investment side?

Oh, I love that question, Kim. So first thing, I would love to see every agent start putting investor type content in front of their current database. So there's a couple of different ways you could do that. One is you could host a local meetup and an investor meetup. You can invite a local property manager to come speak. You can invite commercial lenders, you can invite investors from the community. I think sometimes agents are afraid of you know, they always want to be the expert and maybe they're not yet an expert in this space. Well, they can still be the host. And so, you know, again, maybe your database is thinking about this because my my thought is that most of our databases are thinking about it, but they might not be thinking they might not be thinking about us as an investor agent. And so start putting some content out in front of your current database and you know, essentially get into their minds while they're thinking about that. Right now, you can also host virtually so for some areas that maybe aren't allowing in-person meetups, then host a monthly webinar series and again, invite commercial bankers. You can invite CPAs, attorneys, property managers, and contractors. There's a lot of different topics that you can bring speakers in to talk about. Number two would be to start pitching some multifamily listings or rental property listings to your current database, again, showing them a path of building wealth through real estate investing and see who raises their hand. Again, I have a feeling that there's a lot of investors currently living in these agents' databases, they just haven't really had those conversations. And then I think the next thing is I would love to challenge a free agent to buy at least one investment property every year. And that's how I got started. And it completely changed everything for me. Again, I spent a lot of time learning from my investor clients what they were charging for rent, you know, how they use their leases, the property managers that they were working with, you know, the contractors. And so just by buying one investment property a year, it doesn't have to be a large property. It could be one single family home, it could be a multifamily property if you have those in your market and the numbers make sense. But one property a year, it really snowballs and it can add up. And so for somebody that's maybe looking to get out like me, I didn't when I got into real estate sales, I had no intention of being a lifer because Kim is, you know, being an agent and operating in sales and should be 24/7.

And it is absolutely. That's why I said I want to travel now. So I've retired, I've retired. So I had an I know what, to be honest, Jennifer, nobody had actually really talked to me about this. So I think a lot of real estate agents, a lot of real estate agents are really good at creating community. They're really good and I always joke that I'm an accidental real estate agent because I hosted events, I created opportunities, I supported the local scouts, I created moms and taught groups. You know, I was really front and present. They always joke that I was the mayor of my community. And in knowing this, I still didn't have the full understanding of investment and how money moved, I just knew how to sell the property. Right. So I, I find it fascinating that you're, you're talking about this at such a young age because I raised my children in this business. Right? So all they have seen is the hustle hard. Yes. So, yeah, I agree with you that that is you know, putting another level within the service offerings. So you have honestly an exit strategy most real estate agents have no exit strategy. Huh?

And really, that was the only reason why I was able to retire after only selling real estate for seven years was because my rental portfolio today pays all of our living expenses. And so we travel three to four months a year, essentially, we step out of the business and travel Europe or in different countries. And the only way that I'm able to do that is because of this rental portfolio that I built one property at a time over the years. And then we haven't even talked about the tax benefits of owning all of this real estate. So I find that a lot of agents are really successful and they earn a high income, right? Because there's unlimited potential and real estate sales. And then we have this giant tax bill. So the again, you know, there's so much opportunity when you own investment real estate to get, you know, depreciation and then again deferred taxes through 1031 exchanges and so that it's really just changed everything. And so again, one property at a time doesn't have to be a large property. Yeah. You can scale it from there but it makes all the difference.

Well and actually I would think the smaller properties in a good neighborhood are even better investments because you can rent them easier, right? Sure. That's what my brother-in-law specializes it is great little houses in our crappy little houses and great little neighborhoods that have good schools and good taxes. So that's what he is here. He has built an entire portfolio on this lease. I have two more questions for you. So I've written them down. What is foreign investment? So buying into? Do you advise or help agents set up so they can actually help people buy in Mexico or in Europe somewhere? I mean, it's Spain. They're basically you're not Spain that in Italy, they're giving away land. Right. So do you help people with that or is there anything within your toolbox around, you know, outside of the U.S.? Yeah.

So I think the United States is the greatest opportunity in the entire world for investment in real estate. There's no other opportunity. I've spent a lot of time in other countries researching this. And I spent a month in Italy last summer exploring these you know, three houses are $1 houses, €1 houses. And to be honest, Kim, you can't beat the yield that we can get in the United States. Now, we do work with a lot of international investors that are investing in the United States. And so I think that that's a great opportunity if you're from Canada, of course, we have a lot of Canadian investors that are investing in the United States. But in terms of, you know, helping clients invest in other countries, it can be quite difficult. There are some great opportunities, you say, in Vietnam and some of the Asian countries. And unfortunately, they don't allow foreigners to own real estate. Everything is on a 100 year, you know, land lease. And so there could be some opportunities in the Baltics. I spent a month in Croatia also researching some of the opportunities because they're still currently using the Kuna and not the euro yet. And that's coming in a couple of years. There could be some opportunities there. But again, right now in the United States, it's extremely easy for an international investor to own real estate in the United States and also get financing. That's something that's in most countries. As a U.S. investor, we don't have opportunities to get financing. It needs to be purchased in cash but for the foreign investor coming in, there is an opportunity with about 30% down to get financing terms.

Wow. Wow. That is something that you know what we'll have to actually look at collaborating on something further because I know Calgary you know Canada is very expensive right? So in our western south. Right. And I mean I just watch like you can buy a house for $125,000 in Wichita Kansas turn around or rent it. My brother rents for 1200 dollars a month so he's literally cash positive in five years on these properties.

Absolutely.

And I'm sorry I got Yeah. That doesn't happen in Calgary or in other countries. Yeah. It's a little bit harder here when it comes to investment we're up against now. We're seeing multi-million dollar billion dollar organizations like Zillow. We're seeing we're seeing a lot of companies now that are actually going into the affordable housing consumption. They're actually just sucking that entire market dry. How does the individual, who wants to have a portfolio of six to eight properties? How do they compete?

Yes, great question. So you mentioned there's a couple of different ways that an investor could get into this market, one as single family homes. And there's a lot of competition in that space. As you mentioned, the Zillow app, the hedge funds, of course, are buying multiple houses in a lot of these markets. And then you're also competing with first time homebuyers. And so that market is, in my opinion, very difficult to get into. However, I think the greatest opportunity is in that two to 50 unit space. That's actually my specialty. That's why I focus on small multifamily, small apartment complexes. And for me, that's the opportunity to get on with high cash on cash return. And then also, you know, essentially you can control the value of the asset because it's based on the net operating income versus the comp value. So in single family homes, your single family home is only ever worth what the neighboring properties have recently sold for. And so with a market shift, let's say you want to refinance, let's say that interest rates come back down and you wanted to refinance and your neighbor just sold for $100,000 and there are similar styles in size. Your house will likely appraise for $100,000 when you own an apartment complex. It's based not again, the net operating income. So as a good operator, you can essentially drive up the rents and then the value follows immediately and so again, I could talk for probably an hour about that and how it works.

And now Jennifer, I think there's absolutely a I think there's a trip to Calgary in your future for a conference here. We're actually looking at doing a real estate women and real estate live conference kind of here. And what you're talking about with foreign investors and opportunities. You know, there's a lot of opportunity that I think is being left on the table and you are speaking at the Realtors summit coming up. So you're part of that group that's going to be quite good. So if you are in real estate, you see this video, you watch, it's going to be up on our LinkedIn and such for the next few days. And then we actually then repurpose it into a full, full blown podcast and then do some promotion around it. The goal is, is that through the Realtors summit that we have as many different voices sharing as many different ways to successfully create revenue and put women in the driver's seat of our real estate, our economy and our communities. So I'm really excited to hear all that you're going to share. How can people reach out and find you, Jennifer? How can we get a hold of you?

Yeah, so our website is Agents and Best. And you can also email me [email protected] amazing.

Amazing. Okay, folks. So until next time. Next Thursday, I'm here every Thursday at 9 a.m. mountain standard time. We're talking real estate. And this is we're moving this into the best real estate podcast you'll be able to find and getting amazing voices like Jennifer to come in and tell us how real estate agents? We can operate a little bit better and be how as real estate agents, we can actually guide our clients better. That's the big one. Are you a leader? Can you actually help your clients become and grow the wealth they deserve? So again, until next time. I'm Kim Hayden. Be sure you like, subscribe, share a comment and we'll see you. On the flip side.

Jennifer Beadles, Founder & CEO of Agents Invest, is passionate about helping real estate agents close more deals while working less hours. When Jennifer discovered the power of working with investors, she soon earned enough to take control of her time and began investing in real estate herself. Through 15 years of experience, Jennifer has honed in on the craft of finding deals and working with investors, and is now providing agents with the tools they need to scale up and build their wealth. Jennifer has sold over $250M in real estate, with over 215 closed referral transactions in 2021.

Follow Jenn on Social Media!

@jenniferbeadles1