Henry:
This is how to build your real estate investment team from scratch. You can buy the perfect rental property in the perfect area of town and still fail. Not because the numbers were off or the market changed, but simply because you didn’t have the right people in your corner. Real estate investing is a team sport. You cannot do everything yourself, and you probably don’t want to either. Whether you’re investing in your own backyard or thousands of miles away to stay in this game, you need people that you can actually trust. So today we’re giving you a step-by-step blueprint for building your own real estate investment team from scratch. There are four core players every investor needs, plus an often overlooked fifth member that could give you the biggest benefit of all. We’ve heard countless stories of investors getting burned by bad contractors or ripped off by property managers, but stick around and we’ll show you exactly how to find the right people for the job, keep them, and leverage their expertise to fast track to financial freedom.
What’s going on everybody? I am Henry Washington and I’m here with my co-host, Dave Meyer. Today, we are talking about how to build the team that will help you be a successful real estate investor. We’re going to go through the core four members of your team, the agent, the lender, the property manager, and the contractor plus a bonus plus one. And we’re going to talk about where you can find these people, how to evaluate these people, and how important we believe they truly are to your team. So starting off with the agent. Now we labeled it as agent, but what we really mean is investor-friendly real estate agent because all of the things I’m relying on them to do require them to have an understanding of how real estate investing works, not just buying and selling real estate in general. So you have some pretty good tips, in my opinion, on how you determine if a real estate agent is a good investor-friendly real estate agent.
You care to share?

Dave:
Yeah, I got all sorts of stuff that I’ve done in the past, but I think the frame of reference you should use when evaluating an agent is kind of simple. Do they know more than me about this market? Can they teach me something about real estate investing in this area that I don’t know? And Henry and I have been investors for a long time. We have our own expertise, but I’m not an agent. I don’t know what’s selling at what price bands, how much people are selling, what the right bid strategy in certain neighborhoods are, what finishes or features that you should have to command the best resale price or the best rent. And so when I go to a market that I’m considering investing in, I try and ask really open-ended questions at the beginning. I tell them a little bit about myself, say, “I’m Dave.
I do passive investing. I like these kinds of investments. Here’s my budget. Here’s the stuff I’m thinking about. Here are my priorities. What would you do if you were me?” And I’d say 80% of them can’t answer that question. Any good experienced investor-friendly agent will be like, “Okay, Dave, you’re kind of similar to these three other clients I’ve worked with. They’re succeeding in these neighborhoods with this asset class at this price point. And I think you could fit in there.” That to me already gets me warm to those kind of people. And I think that is probably the most helpful screener question. After that, I ask a lot of more logistical questions, but I’m really just trying to feel out can I be a better investor because they’re on my team or not?

Henry:
I’m just looking for, do you have an understanding of A, what kind of exit strategy it is I’m talking about, and where within your market do you think that this would potentially work? Or if I tell you something about my buy box or about what I’m looking to do, I also want to hear, have you thought about maybe going over here after I’ve heard what you’re thinking about, heard how you’re wanting to make money? Because now you’re putting your market expertise and you’re marrying that with my buy box and my strategy and saying, “Hey, you might consider these areas of town as well.”

Dave:
Once you do that though, and kind of assess their ability to get your mindset, there are some specific things that you should probably look for. Deal flow is high up there because anyone can look at the MLS, but a good investor-friendly agents will have either their own off-market deals and pocket listings or will know someone who does direct-to-seller marketing and can arrange meetings, has networks with wholesalers. That kind of deal flow, super, super valuable because investing is competitive. And especially if you’re investing out of state, coming in as a new person and being like, “I’m going to find great deals on the MLS from 10,000 miles away,” probably not, but your agent can. That’s super important.

Henry:
I also like putting this person first because if you find a good investor-friendly agent, they’re typically going to have a solid network and they’re a great place for you to build out the remainder of your team because they should have lenders that are great on speed dial. They should know who the good property managers are in the market. They should have contractor relationships or know other investors with contractor relationships. So it’s a great place to get started building your team.

Dave:
One last thing, because this one grinds my gears when agents can’t do it. Yes. It’s like you got to understand what rent comps are too. That one is sometimes like what’s rent? And they’re like, “Oh, let me ask someone.” I’m like, “Come on. You got to at least have an idea.” Give me a ballpark.

Henry:
They have access to the data.
I mean, they have access just like they have access to run sales comps. So a good resource not a lot of people are using. But in the same vein as access to data, I like that my agent helps me keep a pulse on what’s really happening. So being able to understand that, yes, we have 3,000 homes listed for sale right now, but for our area, we need somewhere close to somewhere between four and 5,000 homes on the market to satisfy the demand. Meaning we’re still at a place where if it’s listed and it looks good and it’s priced right, it’s probably going to sale. The other metrics I like that my agent helps me with is number of showings it takes to typically get an offer.

Dave:
I love that metric. You taught me that metric. It’s such a good one.

Henry:
Yes. It gives me a little more peace of mind than just average days on market. I feel like I have more control over that metric. If I know on average nine showings equals an offer, now I’m thinking, well, what can I do with my listing that will increase the amount of showings that I can get? Because the more showings that I can gets me more offers. It’s just a math problem.

Dave:
Do you just track that yourself or your agent does?

Henry:
Yeah, my agent tracks it. Yeah.

Dave:
That’s awesome. What about other things? Are there any red flags with agents that you have?

Henry:
Yes. I’m a big communication person, so I need an agent who’s willing to communicate with me in the way I need to be communicated with. So I like to dictate that on the front side. If you don’t answer the phone or don’t call me back within a reasonable timeframe, it’s not going to work for me. The amount of business that I am potentially sending to this agent is a big deal.

Dave:
You just eliminated 98% of agents on

Henry:
There

Dave:
From possible teammate status.

Henry:
So I just dictate that on the front side. If I’m going to work with somebody, I say, “Hey, this is how I need communication.” If you can’t communicate like this, I totally get it. You run your business the way you feel like you need to run it. We just probably aren’t a good fit. So upfront communication style conversations are hugely important to me. What about you?

Dave:
I got some red flags.

Henry:
I bet you do.

Dave:
One is the overly optimistic appreciation number. That to me signals you probably work more with primary residence buyers, which is totally fine. But the, “Hey, just buy this and you’ll build equity over time and it’ll appreciate and it’s a great investment.That’s not good enough.” And then the second one, maybe it’s more of a green flag if they do it right, but it kind of bothers me when a agent sends me a deal and hasn’t done any analysis themselves. It’s like, “Oh, here’s a property.” I’m like, “Well, fuck, I could have looked that up too.”

Henry:
Why? Is

Dave:
This important? What do you like about it? Sell it to me a little bit. Not in an overly optimistic way, but why should I spend my time looking into this deal? What about it is good? What caught your eye as the agent that separates this from something else? So if you can’t do that, I guess that’s a red flag also.

Henry:
You want an agent who’s put some thought into what it is that they think you need. And

Dave:
So

Henry:
They’re trying to deliver what they think you need, not just, “Hey, let me send you this, and if you’re interested, I’ll make a check.”

Dave:
Yep. There’s an agent I’ve been talking to in Chicago who does a great job of this. Every week she sends out a list. She looks at every on-market deal that comes on, every new listing, and evaluates them all for cashflow and opportunity and value add, and sends out a list of all the good ones that week. I’m like, “That’s a great agent. That’s a great investor-friendly agent. I will double check all those numbers. I will check the neighborhoods, but you have spent time thinking like an investor on every property that came out this week, and now you’re making it easy for every one of your clients. That’s a good agent.

Henry:
All right. So before we move on to our next team member, Dave, where do you think a good place to find investor-friendly agents is?

Dave:
I got two. First, biggerpockets.com/agent. We can connect you with an agent for free. Really great investor-friendly agents there. Second one, I don’t know if I’ve even told you about this yet, but at BPCon, we’re doing a team building networking event this year. It’s going to be really fun. We’re going to do a regional thing where we’re going to get property managers, lenders, agents, and investors all in one room, and then we’re going to break it up by different individual areas. So you’re

Henry:
Going to build teams in the room.

Dave:
Yes, building teams in the room. It’s going to be super fun at BP Con this year. So if you want to come to BPCon, tickets are still available. Go to biggerpockets.com/conference and check those out or biggerpockets.com/agent. But these are free. Ways to build your team, to interact, to meet a couple. We should have mentioned that too. Talk to a couple no matter what, even if you love the first one. Go talk to three or four. Get a sense of different people’s personalities and flavors. So those are great ways.

Henry:
Biggerpockets.com/agent for the agentfinder. Awesome. How do I know it’s awesome? Because I actually used it when we did

Dave:
The first

Henry:
Cashflow roadshow to find an investor-friendly agent in the markets we were going to, to help show us properties. It worked like a charm. I had investor-friendly agents calling me immediately. Second place, title companies. Underused readersource. Call a title company. Title companies close real estate transactions all day. They know exactly who the investor-friendly agents are because they see them at the closing table selling deals or helping investors buy deals. Ask them if they have any investor-friendly agent recommendations. I guarantee you they do. Good job. All right, moving on to the next team member. We’re going to cover which is the lender. This is the money. I think most people think this is the most important team member, but that’s just probably because they don’t know where they’re going to find the money to buy these deals. I think the lender is the least important team member.
There’s literally lenders everywhere. Open your door. Sorry, lenders. Open your door, walk outside, you’ll find a bank. They probably want to lend you money as long as your deal’s decent. But it is important because you need the money. And there are so many different types of loans. And I think where investors screw up is they don’t understand the different nuances of what different loan products provide and how to marry the loan product to the deal that they’re buying is where people struggle.

Dave:
We talk about quote unquote lenders, and sometimes you are actually interfacing with the person whose money it is. A lot of times as an investor, you’re actually talking to a broker who is just arranging the loan for you. The money is coming from somewhere else. So it’s a lot more about the personal relationship and their ability to walk you through products because they’re not really the lender at the end of the day. They’re kind of a concierge helping you find the right product. And so if they’re not good at that, they’re not worth anything. So that’s where I really concentrate my time.

Henry:
The things that you need to think about when you’re looking for a lender to help you to be on your team is understand your financial situation. How much cash do you have available to put towards buying a property? Different loans have different down payment requirements. They have different fees. They have different interest rates. So you need to understand what’s your cash position and how much of that cash are you going to allocate towards putting down onto a property that’s going to differentiate which type of loan you might use.

Dave:
And

Henry:
Then just understand the different parts of the underwriting that a lender does. So the more you understand about the different parts of underwriting, the more educated conversations you can have and the more you can start to understand the language of the lender and what they’re saying. So go and learn what amortization means and what the different amortization periods are. 30 years, 25 years, 20 years are very typical. Go and study interest rates, know what they are and what loans tend to have what interest rates.

Dave:
It is not the lender’s job to explain that to you. They probably will try, but as an investor, it is your job to know how loans work. Yes. And number two, and I might piss some people off here, it is also not the lender’s job to make sure you are lendable. That is your job. The other thing about lenders is every conversation with lender is going to go great if you have money and good credit, and good deals. It’s going to be easy. That’s the thing honestly to focus on because then finding a lender once you got that is no problem.

Henry:
Absolutely. Every lender will want to lend to you if you’ve got some money in the bank, you’ve got good credit, and you’re buying a phenomenal real estate deal.

Dave:
That is

Henry:
The best way to find money for your deals, for sure.

Dave:
And that is in your control. I’m not saying everyone has a ton of capital, but I’m saying going for a loan that you have money for. So that doesn’t mean you have to have a million dollars in the bank. But if you’re going to go for a house hack, do you have 10% so you can cover closing costs and everything? If so, that conversation’s going to be easy. That’s not going to be a problem. If you go in there and like, “I have no money, how do I buy real estate?” You might not like the lender because they’re going to probably give you some hard truths about your prospects of buying a deal. So I think a lot of people think lenders are superheroes, and it’s like if you have the right pitch, you’ll get the loan. It’s pretty rigid. They have criteria, they have standards.
And yes, there are fringe cases where you could shop around from different things, but finding good deals, being credible, having a track record, those are the best things you can do.

Henry:
When selecting a lender, the things that I’m looking for are communication and customer service. I think this gets very confused, and I think lenders are some of the people that get confused about this. And that is that your lender is the service provider. You are the customer. And oftentimes we as the borrower treat the lender as if they’re doing us a favor and that we need to jump through – That’s such a good point. I know. All of these hoops and do whatever they say so that they may please give us some monies so that we may go buy it.

Dave:
They night you.

Henry:
Right. And it gets very confused because they hold the dollars and you think I need the dollars, so I’ll do whatever they ask. That is not the way this relationship works. You are the price.

Dave:
Oh, thanks, man.

Henry:
You’re very welcome. Especially if you are buying a good deal and you have a decent credit score. They want your business. So try to find a lender who is willing to communicate with you and help you understand your loan. So yes, we do want you to understand a lot of these things going into it, but if you’re talking to a lender and they seem like they’re bothered by having to explain these things to you, like you’re wasting their time, you’re not a customer.

Dave:
Move on.

Henry:
Move on. They’re everywhere. You want one that it sounds like they want to work with you. They’re trying to explain things to you. They seem like they want your business. Great. And then again, communication style. They need to communicate with you the way you want to be communicated with. If those two boxes are checked and they’re willing to explain their loan products and you’re smart enough or have done enough research to understand what types of loan makes sense for the deal that you’re buying, I think you can find yourself a lender, no sweat. Literally not a problem. And lastly, if you want to find a lender, recommendations, some other investors are always a great place to start, as well as again, a title company. What are they doing all day? They’re closing real estate transactions. They’re literally reading through lender mortgage docs on a daily.
They know who good lenders are. They know who bad lenders are. They know which ones they never want to work with. They know which ones have good interest rates. Great place to start talking to a title company about what lenders are lending in the area. Now we’re moving on to the illustrious property manager, which is a very important team member, but it’s not just a team member you can hire and then set it and forget it. This is somebody who’s going to be operating your business alongside you. And I feel like this is where investors lose a ton of money. They hire a property manager and then everything just happens inside of this black box. They don’t know what’s going on. And then all of a sudden they look at their P&L at the end of the year and they’re like, “I didn’t make any money.” Well, you didn’t manage your property manager.

Dave:
Yeah. I think I have just two pieces of advice here. The first one is how big are they and how important are you to them? And I know this sounds a little bit weird. No,

Henry:
This is important.

Dave:
It is, right? It’s like I’ve worked with large property managers and I am a small fish to them. And then they rightfully spend all their time on their big clients. If I was them, I’d do the same thing. I don’t begrudge them for that, but that doesn’t work for me. So I need to find a property manager who I am important to. And that usually means a small to mid-sized boutique, sometimes family run, sometimes new property manager trying to get up and running. And that comes with trade-offs. They probably don’t have an admin staff. There’s trade-offs to that. But for me, that is maybe the most important thing because managing your property manager is super important and setting clear expectations is important. And if it’s a giant company and you’re like, “I actually want to do it this way.” And they’re like, “Yeah, you have six units with us.
This other person is 600 unit. We’re doing it their way.” It’s a little bit different. The second thing is sharing a philosophy about property management. I know you and I have talked about this a lot, but I am a long-term investor. I think a lot about maintaining my properties, being proactive about maintenance, being proactive about tenant satisfaction, being proactive about communication. And if they can’t do those things, I am out, hard out. Because to me, the hardest thing to find in a property manager is proactive maintenance and proactive tenant satisfaction. Someone who thinks ahead and says, “That’s going to break. I need to fix it now before it becomes a problem.” It’s a hard thing to do when you’re managing a ton of units. I totally get that. It is a hard thing to do. Even when I self-manage, it’s a hard thing to do.
But having someone who is trying to do that at least, and they’ll miss things, but trying to do that, super important. Same thing about tenants. Listening to them, realizing, understanding if they’re satisfied or not satisfied in the unit, if they’re not trying to come up with a solution because I want to keep tenants and I want a property manager who cares deeply about the tenant experience and that they’re happy in their home.That to me is so, so important. And when I talk to property managers about that and say that to them, they’re like, “I love that, but every owner is the opposite of that.” Which was interesting for me to hear because I kind of assume people are more like that. But those are kind of deal breakers for me.

Henry:
No, I think that’s great. I’ve told you before, one of the reasons I really liked my property manager and selected them is because when they talked to me about their business, they never referred to the tenants as tenants. They always referred to them as residents. They wanted them to enjoy living in their residence. I feel like there’s always this negative connotation sometimes with the word tenant, like somehow you’re less than because you’re

Dave:
Renting. Yeah, I hate

Henry:
That. Absolutely. It should be no negative connotation around it. We don’t have a business without them. And so I like the way that they just kind of set the tone with even how they refer to the tenants or the residents within the business. I though that was great.

Dave:
Totally.

Henry:
Good property managers are hard to find. It’s going to be a challenge to find them. You’re probably going to go through two or three of them before you find one you really like, and then that may not even last forever. So the high level things that I’m looking for are how are you incentivized? Are you incentivized for the wrong things or the right things? In other words, a lot of property managers say that we keep all the late fees.

Dave:
No, no, no.

Henry:
That tells me that you’re incentivized for people to pay late because if they pay late, there’s an additional fee and then you keep that fee.

Dave:
Yeah,

Henry:
So bad. No, that’s not how I want my business to be set up. I don’t want you getting paid more when my tenants pay late. That’s absurd.

Dave:
100%. And a good property owner, manager, landlord, whatever, if someone’s late, you should have a conversation with them. Why are you late? Figure something out. If you’re making money off the late fee, you’re probably going to let it go for 10 days and be like, “All right, I made some money,” which just puts the tenant in a bigger hole. Late fees are not a revenue stream. It is not a revenue stream. That sucks. I don’t like that.

Henry:
And the same thing with turnover. So this is a nuanced thing. This is why you have to ask your property manager how they make their money or what dollar from your tenants goes to who. For a turnover, if you have a property manager who gets paid more money every time they lease somebody up, then they’re never incentivized to help you have long-term tenants. 100%. Because they don’t make an additional lease-up fee when a tenant moves out. So in other words, your property manager is incentivized to turn tenants out of your unit, and tenant turns are the biggest cashflow killer there is.

Dave:
Probably because property managers charging one month rent to lease up a unit is the worst deal in all of real estate. It’s so bad. I mean, you can find ways around it, but I hate that. But you’re so right. You’re incentivizing them to have turnover every year. They make more money than keeping tenants. It’s terrible. You can’t have that. And I’ve found better property managers will have a renewal bonus where they get a little bit of payment – There you go. For keeping it. There you go. Love that. There you go. I will pay you to create mutual benefit. Yes. You get money, I win because the tenant stays. The tenant wins because they’re staying in a unit they’re like, “You win, you’ll get a bonus, and you also don’t have to manage a turn. Let’s incentivize that behavior.”

Henry:
Yes. You want property managers who are incentivized for things that are positive things for you. If you win, they win. So they’re incentivized to help your business to run more effectively. That’s the scenario that you want, not the opposite.

Dave:
Incentive alignment with all of your team members is just so important.

Henry:
If you hire a property manager, you’ve evaluated them, you think they’re good, and you trust them, let them do their job.

Dave:
Give them a leash, yeah. Get

Henry:
Out of

Dave:
The way. It’s a hard job.

Henry:
Stop trying to bring in your guy to go do all the little fixes because it’s going to save you 20 or 30 bucks here or there. Let them hire their people. They can get them in there faster. They can get the unit turned faster. Yeah, it might cost you a hundred to 200 bucks more than if you hired your guy, but they’re going to be done in three days and your guy hasn’t showed up yet.

Dave:
Put yourself in their shoes. Just imagine I’m the property manager and Henry hired me and he is like, “I trust you, Dave, to manage my units.” And then every time I do something, you get second-guessed on it to save it. And it’s going to totally disrupt my entire process. And the thing that I do for all of my units, which might be 300 units and Henry’s are 30 of them, that’s not a trusting relationship. The trust has to go both ways. And if they aren’t meeting your expectations, that’s a different story. But you have to know that by hiring a third party, you are not going to have the most efficient cost structure ever. And that’s okay. That’s kind of the point of hiring someone else is you’re hiring it out.

Henry:
All right, we’ve got more team members that we want to discuss, but we’re going to jump into those team members right after the break. All right, we’re back on the BiggerPockets podcast. Dave and I are talking about building your team. All right, here we go. This is the one. This is the one where people struggle. This is the one that I wish I knew more about before I got started. Good contractors are hard to find. Contractors can be hard to keep. Again, it’s this relationship you have to manage over time. There are literally thousands upon thousands of dollars tied to these things. And here’s my general take. A lot of contractors are good ranch turners and not necessarily the best business people. And I think that that’s where a lot of the hangup comes in. So with contractors, where have you had the biggest struggle?

Dave:
I have had struggles with contractors all over the board. But I think that the thing that really breaks down is when there are unclear expectations of scope, I think is probably the biggest thing. Where you think you’ve communicated something clearly, the contractors agrees on a price and a timeline, but there’s some disconnect between what the contractor thinks is going on and what you think is going on, and then everything just melts from there. Once that happens, everything falls apart because you’re pissed because things are late and it’s costing more. The contractor’s pissed is like, “I did what you said.” And I’m sure there’s mutual blame there, but that’s where I feel like the challenge is.

Henry:
Absolutely. That’s 100% where my head was. It is expectation versus reality. And I’ve just learned the hard way over time that you truly have to document as much as humanly possible. If it is a brand new contractor relationship and you are new to investing, get as much down on paper as you can. Because when you’re brand new, you don’t know what you don’t know in terms of managing your renovation and expectations on what you think you’re supposed to get delivered at the end of a project versus what that contractor thinks they’re supposed to deliver to you. So you kind of have to go overboard for your first couple of projects in terms of over communicating to your contractor about what work you think needs to be done. And so the way I typically handle this is I will write out a scope of work and oftentimes I’ll say, “Hey, I got a budget of X.” Now I may not be telling them all of the budget that I have because I don’t want them to use it all, but your contractor should have some guide rails around what money you have to spend on this

Dave:
Project. 100%. Yeah. Right. But I agree with you. Don’t say it all of it.

Henry:
So if I’ve given them a budget and I’ve given them at least a high level scope of work, oftentimes what I ask of my contractor is to say, “Hey, this is the budget that I have. This is the scope that I have. Help me understand what I’m missing through the details of this.” Because I could say, “Yeah, I want to spend $5,000 on drywall.” They’re going to know, “Well, Henry, I looked at this house. It’s 2,000 square feet and every room needs new drywall. This isn’t even close to enough.” And so all the little nuanced things that I’m not thinking about, that’s where I need them to help me with the bid. And so if you’re brand new, I’d give them a high level scope of work, and then you give them the budgets and the guide rails and then say, “What is it that I’m missing in this scope of work in order to get this done?” That’s just going to help you understand how to write better scopes of work in the future, but it opens that line of communication between you and your contractor.

Dave:
And do you use this to evaluate people when you’re selecting them? You’re giving the full scope of work to people before you hire them?

Henry:
Yes. That is a secret I learned as a newer investor because what was happening was I was inviting contractors out to look at a property and a project and I’d talk to them a little bit on the phone about it, but then they’d get there and I’d either have one of two things. They’d get there And they go, “This is way more than I’m comfortable doing.” And then they’re upset because I wasted their time and then I still had to go get another contractor out there. Or they’d come out and it’d be the opposite. They say, “This isn’t enough.This is too small of a job. I’d have to charge you too much for me to make this worth my while.” Yes, exactly. And from now, I do a high level scope of work. I don’t get down to the details. I’m not counting screws and nails.
I’m just saying room by room. In this room, paint floors, trim in the kitchen, new countertops, back splash, and light fixtures. And it’s super high level, room by room, what I’m wanting to do. And then I send that up front and say, “Hey, I got a project, 123 Main Street. Here’s the high level scope. Would you be willing to come bid this job?” So that way they can look at the scope of work and be like, “Yeah, this is absolutely something I’d be comfortable doing.” Or, no, I don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole or this is too tiny for me. I’m too busy. And then you save yourself a lot of time on the front end.

Dave:
Yep, absolutely. That’s great advice for how to select them. I got to drop some hard truth on the audience here though about finding contractors. There’s no trick. There’s no secret. There’s no trick. There’s no secret. There’s

Henry:
No secret.

Dave:
There’s no secret to do it. You’re going

Henry:
To fall on your face, guys.

Dave:
Sorry. Yeah, there’s no magic bullet. This is just part of the job where you grind. Sometimes I feel like we talk a lot about systems and process on the show as we should. It’s super important, but there are some areas of the business where you just got to put in some effort and finding contractors is just one of those areas. It’s 100% a relationship game. James is giving good tips about he pulls over on the side of the road when he sees people. That’s great. But ultimately it’s about managing a relationship. And then honestly, the best way to find a good contractor is find one and then they’ll know all the other good contractors. So when you find one, treat them like gold, pay them on time. I tip contractors sometimes, depending on the situation. But if they do an exceptional job, I tip them.
Then they pick up my phone the next time. Then when I say, “Hey, do you know a plumber?” They’re like, “Yeah, I know a great plumber.” And I’ll tell them that you tipped me, so they’re going to call you. Don’t nickel and dime a great contractor.That’s the game. And it’s similar to property manager. It’s similar to deal flow. This is a lifelong thing. It’s part of the journey of financial independence and real estate investing. If you’re unwilling to do this, go buy turnkey properties and invest passively. This is just part of being an active investor.

Henry:
It’s not just finding them, it’s keeping them. And one of the best ways to keep them, you’re right, is pay them a fair wage for what they’re doing and pay them quickly. The sooner you pay them, the better because then they’ll prioritize your jobs and your phone calls. If they know when Henry calls, he’s going to have work and I’m going to get paid as soon as that work is done. Versus somebody else is going to call, they’ll do the work and then they’re chasing them for three or four weeks trying to get paid. And then you have to manage that contractor relationship going forward because oftentimes what happens with me is I’ll have a good one. They’re doing good work. I’m paying them for them. And then by job three to five, I start to notice costs for the same thing are creeping up.
They’re just creeping up a little bit, price over price. Sometimes –

Dave:
It just happens.

Henry:
It just happens. They see that, hey, they think you’re the guy with the money. You gladly paid me $3,000 for this portion of a job last job. It’s $3,500 this time. Yo didn’t see it. Maybe it’s 4,000 the next time. You got to keep an eye on those things as to what they’re charging and why. So for me, it’s just communication. I’ll never tell a contractor, “Hey, I’m not paying you that for this.” I’ll say, “Hey, I saw you charged $8,000 for flooring in this house. And two houses ago, you did one very similar square footage, same flooring, and it was about six grand. What was the difference between those two?” And they’re either going to tell me a difference that makes sense or they’re going to make something up or they’re going to say, “Hey, I’ll adjust that price.” That’s as deep as I get.
I’m not like, “Oh, you’re trying to gouge me on my prices. Oh, I’m not going to work with you anymore. Adjust the price and let’s keep it moving. If not, then I’ll find somebody else to go do the flooring.” But you got to pay attention to those things. So I’m telling you, I’ve had contractors, when they started working with me, they were driving a F-150 and by job five, I was like, “Where’d you get that F-350 from? I don’t know.”
You. It’s like, “This is my truck.” In all seriousness, just keep an eye on the bids, track it, ask questions. It’s not rude to question a bid. If your contractor makes you feel like you’re a butthole for asking them about the bid, you need to move on.

Dave:
This is just, you’ll learn. Just don’t be afraid. I think that’s the kind of thing. It can be intimidating. Contractors know their business. So when you’re first starting, you’re probably going to come at a disadvantage of knowledge about what things should cost. The only way to get better at that is volume. Just take some reps, talk to 20 of them, talk to five plumbers, talk to five HVAC people. You will start to understand what the true value is and talk to other investors and what they pay for things. That’s how you really start to understand what the real value is and whether you’re willing to pay a little up for higher service or better timing or better communication. You want to go the budget route with caution, but just that’s how you really learn and you got to do it.

Henry:
Err on the side of over-communication always. And then keep all of your bids, whether you go with that contractor or not.

Dave:
100%. Because

Henry:
Every contractor bid is data to help you get smarter about how to even understand what kind of work a property needs and how much it’s going to cost. So if I were you, I’d keep all your property bids, I’d load them into Claude or ChatGPT and have it break each section down and try to give you a cost per square foot for every trade. And just keep that as a running data set that you have so that when you get more contractor bids, you can kind of just compare it to the other ones and say, “Hey, in comparison to the contractor bids I’ve given you in the past, does this seem high? Does it seem low for paint? Does it seem high for interior paint? Does it seem low for flooring? Does it seem high for flooring?” If you’re keeping track of all those bids, AI can help you better understand not just how to evaluate what a rehab costs, but to validate a contractor’s bid.

Dave:
Great advice. I like that a lot.

Henry:
All right. Before we wrap this one up and give them the final bonus, where do you like to find contractors? For me, I found my best contractors. The best contractor relationships I’ve found is literally through other investors recommending good contractors and through driving for dumpsters, finding people on. I’ve found roofers and plumbers and cabinet guys just going to jobs and talking to them and seeing if they do work on the side. Those are the two places I found the best relationships.

Dave:
For sure. Yeah. That and agents. Agents have helped me.

Henry:
Yes.

Dave:
Again, networking is by far the best way to do it.

Henry:
The other way I’ve found good relationships is by asking the guys at the pro desk at Home Depot or Lowe’s which contractors they enjoy working with the most, and they’ll have some good recommendations for you.

Dave:
All right. This has been a long episode, but should we do the bonus?

Henry:
Yeah, let’s do the bonus. What you got?

Dave:
All right. I’ll say this quickly. I just think finding people in your own area that can help you, give you feedback, maybe even give you contractors, deal flow, so important. I’m going to give you a little bit of advice about this. I think the ideal mentor or person you should target is two years ahead of you in your investing journey. I think a lot of times people reach out to me all the time, want mentorship, want to go grab a beer, talk about deals. I like doing that stuff. But if you’re brand new, my frame of reference, not because I don’t want to help, I just can’t help you that much. I am doing different things in my career at this point, and I am not the best person, but someone who just did their first house hack or just did their first burr and are moving on to their second one, that’s someone where you can offer mutual benefit.
And those are the relationships that are most valuable is where you can help each other. I want to help someone and then maybe they send me a deal. They tell me about a great contractor that they work with. Something like that. I’m not asking for that upfront, but you want to be close to this person in terms of your goals, your stage of investing. You don’t want to shoot the moon. And I think a lot of people miss that. And the best way to do that, real estate meetups. I would say at biggerpockets.com. Go to biggerpockets.com. We have millions of people on there that are trying to do this. Meetups, BPCon, that kind of stuff. Go find someone you vibe with. It doesn’t have to be the perfect person. Just someone you enjoy talking about real estate with, that’s going to be super valuable.

Henry:
I’d call them almost an accountability partner because then the help that Dave’s asking for just kind of comes naturally. If you meet an investor, you vibe with them, you’re doing similar things, maybe they’re a little bit ahead of you, maybe they are a little bit ahead of you, but they still have some experience.
Just say, “Hey, once a month, let’s hop on a call. Let’s talk about what we’re working on, 30 minutes and move on.” Just establish that relationship. And then in those conversations, that’s when you can say, get that feedback. Hey, I looked at A, B, and C or one, two, three. What do you think about this? The relationship that you have with other active investors can literally save you so much money. 100%. And just having someone with a different set of eyeballs look at your deal or listen to what your strategy is going to be because they maybe have done something similarly or they know somebody that’s done something similarly and what went well and what didn’t go well.This can be a lonely business because a lot of your friends don’t do this. You need some investor, friends, accountability partners that can give you a temperature check on deals or strategy or maybe help you stick to your goals.
Because sometimes I’ll find something that could be totally profitable, but would derail me from my goals or strategy, which are there because they’re leading me towards a lifestyle that I want real estate to provide me and not just chasing the shiny object or the quick dollar over here, even though it might make me money. Is it the best use of my time? Is it getting me where I want to go? I need the people that can tell me those things.

Dave:
It also just makes it more fun. Real estate investing should be fun. And as Henry said, it’s lonely. Having a buddy who does real estate with you makes it all more fun. And the whole thing in real estate is how long can you stay in the game? And if you can make it fun, you can stay in the game a whole lot longer. So find a way to make it fun. It doesn’t have to be all your friends. You’ve probably heard me rant about how I hate that thing about your network as your net worth and you should only have friends who are rich. I hate that. But have some friends who are investors. I think it’s helpful to have that part of your peer group and find people you like. It’s great. It’s some of the more rewarding relationships I have in my life.
I’ve met through people in real estate. It’s great.

Henry:
That’s very true. Present company included.

Dave:
Yes. Yes, rents forever.

Henry:
All right. Well, Dave, thank you so much for chit-chatting with me about building a team. Hopefully you guys found good value in this. These are all team members that Dave and I have hired, fired, and hired again. So hopefully

Dave:
You can

Henry:
Learn from our experience and go out and don’t be intimidated by this. This is all something that if you’re going to be successful, you’re going to do it anyway. So hopefully this will help you do it more effectively and efficiently. Thank you so much, Dave, for sharing your inputs. And thank you so much everybody for listening. And we’ll see you on the next episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast.