Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
Sandy Mackay [00:01:10] Breakthrough real estate investing podcast episode sixty-eight.
Rob Break [00:01:33] Hey there, guys. Welcome again to the Breakthrough Real Estate Investing podcast. We put the show together to inspire you and help you break through to the life that you want to live through the power of real estate investing. My name is Rob Break. Here with me again is Sandy Mackay.
Sandy Mackay [00:01:52] Arab things that are really awesome couldn’t be better.
Rob Break [00:01:58] That’s a good answer. That’s a good answer. Same here.
Sandy Mackay [00:02:01] Living the dream. That’s right. So even the DreamWorks Springs here, lots of action and real estate, things are moving, right?
Rob Break [00:02:09] Yeah, I think you know what? The main reason for my happiness is that I skipped right over all of that baloney, whether you guys just had last week
Sandy Mackay [00:02:19] I saw that as you
Rob Break [00:02:20] were, I was out of town, and it was fantastic. How much more perfect could that have been timed? And you nailed it, and we came back to spring, and it was all good. OK, so enough pleasantries, right? Let’s get into some stuff.
Sandy Mackay [00:02:35] Yeah, we’ve got a few little things. I know we got a great guest here waiting in the wings, so let’s get back to her pretty quickly. But where’s your people go? First of all, if they haven’t? Well, I guess
Rob Break [00:02:44] first of all up, if Sandy would stop talking, I could direct them to our website. Breakthrough Aria podcast Dot S.A. It has all kinds of things, but most like first and foremost, you can get all the info and bios on our guests and contact info on our guests. And you can also access each and every episode right from there. And no, not a lot of people do that because what was interesting is the other day, I didn’t know what was going on. I called Cindy. I’m like Cindy, I don’t know what’s happening here, but you know, one of our most recent episodes got like 20 downloads. What’s going on? Cindy says, Oh, it’s not up on iTunes. Some happen, though. Let me fix it. So as soon as it was fixed, they shot back up to her normal numbers. But that was kind of weird. I was like, what is going on? Yes, I guess everyone’s sick of us.
Sandy Mackay [00:03:35] You go over that year as well on that note, right? They are definitely out there. I think that’s an easy place for most people to listen to it. And those are of you on there. Always appreciate that five stars would be fantastic. Helps us get the show out there tomorrow, more and more people. And that really just helps our guests get their word out there and helps us really get more good content for everyone on here. So really would appreciate some more reviews on there. Have got a bunch and I’d love to see some more.
Rob Break [00:04:00] You know, Cindy, I wanted to do a little bit of a contest, but I don’t know what the contest should be, so maybe we could figure it out. Let’s just put it on the front of our minds here. I’ve got a copy of Ian Salvoes book Reynolds to riches a new copy of it here that I want to give away. Apparently, he can’t get it anymore, right? Amazon.
Sandy Mackay [00:04:20] So he did something now. I heard that. Yeah, yes, and I don’t know. I don’t get any details. But yeah, it is tough to get ahold of nowadays.
Rob Break [00:04:27] I was actually cleaning out my office. I have three copies of it here, so I wanted to give one away to our guests. We’ll have to figure out what we want them to do for it.
Sandy Mackay [00:04:36] So awesome. Yeah, I mean, we can if anyone hasn’t heard that one, I think that’s back or that’s way back in the vault. But what episode did we have him on?
Rob Break [00:04:44] Ian’s one of the first ones.
Sandy Mackay [00:04:46] Just looking it up. Episode 18.
Rob Break [00:04:48] It’s interesting, really? Wow. OK, yeah. And that was good. And yes, so OK. Well, we’ll think about that, and we’ll figure out what we want you guys to do. But now, you know, we’ve got a guest waiting here. Let’s get to her. And you know what? We’re going to talk about joint ventures with Mandy Branham, and this is something that you know, people ask about. All the time is how do I find joint venture partners? How do I structure deals? What do I do? So she’s going to crack open that nut, I guess, and give us all of the answers to this. And this is going to be super informative, guys. So. Mandy, thanks for being here.
Mandy Branham [00:05:25] Thanks for having me, guys.
Sandy Mackay [00:05:27] Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know Mandy. Shame on you. First of all. Second of all, she is a community leader in providing clean, safe and appropriate housing. She recently shared the stage that became real estate wealth form teaching about joint venture relationships. She’s featured on the Lifestyle Housing podcast, speaking on Becoming a market experts. She’s an avid promoter of the value of real estate as part of a diversified investment portfolio, and man is an innovator who is always looking for ways to add value to others. With a smile on her face and gratitude in our hearts, and I got really excited to have many with us here today and maybe anything to add to that brief intro there.
Mandy Branham [00:06:04] Yes, I sometimes leave people with a bit of a whirlwind in their mind. So if you’re making notes, start right now, I shake your brain up a little bit like a snow globe and just kind of think if this is how you were thinking before, here’s a few different ways. So sometimes people walk away with a brain full, so I apologize and you’re welcome in advance.
Rob Break [00:06:26] Yeah, it’s interesting. We’ve sort of got some myths that we’re going to dispel here today, too, so it’s going to be really fun and exciting. And, you know, thank you again for being here with us. Well, we talked about the business side of Mandy here, but why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you like to do?
Mandy Branham [00:06:44] I like to think real estate read about real estate, so I know I am a mother, a wife, sister, daughter, you know, all those kind of things. I love personal development. I read books. I attend Tony Robbins conferences and listening to audio. No books in my car all the time, so I’m an avid learner when it comes to how can I better myself, become a better listener, better communicator, better negotiator for all of my deals and all this stuff really benefits me. I love going to the gym in the mornings, walking my dog. Yesterday I did. We walk for water with my daughter through her high school, and I watched my son play in a ball hockey tournament. So, you know, I’m kind of that mom that’s always there, you know, if they want me there and if they don’t, because they’re too cool for me to be around now, then I’m not. So I just recently retired my husband from 20 years at his job, and he’s now working full time in our business. So. So we’ve built that up big enough to be able to have both of us working at it now. Yeah. So that’s kind of who I am outside of real estate now.
Rob Break [00:07:52] I don’t want to brush over that accomplishment because that sounds huge for you to get your husband out of his job. That sounds amazing. And both of you working full time in your own thing is really awesome. So congratulations.
Mandy Branham [00:08:06] Thank you. Thank you. It’s one of the scariest things we’ve ever done, which would probably be one of the first myths, right, that everyone says, hey, this real estate thing, I just want to do this full time. And when you’re actually in it full time, you’re like, Oh my gosh, like, what? What did we do here? And yeah, it’s a little bit of a different lifestyle, shall we say. Mm hmm.
Rob Break [00:08:26] Well, congratulations. Thank you. I guess in order for us to sort of gauge how much we can trust you, Mandy, because you know, like how do you know what you’re talking about right through? You should we should learn about your investing journey so far. Where did you start out?
Mandy Branham [00:08:44] So in 2007, we bought our first rental property and Larry, he had a lot of expectations for this property, and I had to meet all of those requirements in order for us to buy. So in 2007, we put a second mortgage on our primary residence. We bought a property. It was an eight-point two percent interest rate, but all the numbers worked. The tenants were in place. It didn’t need any current renovations. It was turnkey, shall we say. And seven years later, we went to refinance that. So in 2014 and we had this check in our hand for thirty-eight thousand dollars and I thought, this is cool, and it don’t get me wrong, that’s a significant amount of money. But it wasn’t enough to change our life. It wasn’t enough to be able to say, hey, let’s go on a vacation a year for the next five years, 10 years. It’s not enough to say, here’s my kid’s tuition. So I thought, how do I do this to make it worth my while? So we bought another property on our own and the mortgage broker just like took us through the wringer. It was, you know, I had to cash RRSPs in the final three days to be able to make this deal happen, like she was not educated, and I thought, there’s got to be a better way. And then boom up on the radio comes this coaching program. We went and we joined right away, so we got coaching. So that was 2014 that we joined, and at the time that we joined, we actually had three rentals. We had moved out of a primary residence and kept it as a rental. So we joined in 2014 with three rental properties, and over the next couple years we ramped up our portfolio to actually. Today I’m closing on two properties that’ll put us at forty-two properties, so minus three from one we had before we got started. So I’ve bought forty-one properties in the last three and a half years.
Rob Break [00:10:31] That is fantastic.
Sandy Mackay [00:10:33] So if you don’t know what you’re talking about, we confirm that.
Rob Break [00:10:35] Yeah, and that’s absolutely fantastic that you’ve been able to ramp it up like that in the last four years. So I guess to put a little bit of perspective on that. How does it start out from you? Decided to, I guess, you know, expand on this business now you’ve got three properties and how do you go about building that up?
Mandy Branham [00:11:02] Well, so when you’re searching, so some of my first advice to people is to be able to say, have you looked at and analyzed and called about 100 properties? And that might seem extreme, but it’s really not. So I was just in total purchase mode. I was looking at everything, running the numbers, asking all the same questions to all these different realtors. And I looked all around Ontario just to try and see which market was going to be the best for me. So when I realized that it was in my backyard that I liked the numbers and I liked the returns and I liked the purchase price when I done the numbers for one, it just kept there’s another one and look, there’s another one and there’s another one. And so because I was so ordered and organized in my process of finding property that it just kind of continued to happen. So we bought our first one, Larry Knight, and we did a flip to ourselves. We did a whole bunch of work to it. And I tell you, you know, Larry’s walking through the property and he’s got this like blank look on his face and all. He looks at me and he says, what do I do first? And so it really just he believed that I knew what I wanted done, but there was just so much to do that he thought, let me turn to you. What do you want me to do first? So in 20 days, we renovated that property, you know, pretty minor leap. We made thousand dollars and we refinanced. It went on to the next one, refinanced it and went on to the next one. So the magic comes when you’re in the criteria mode of looking for property after property. You start to realize that I can’t do all of these myself. I’m still finding really good deals, but I can’t do all of them myself. Whether that be for now my capital is tied up, it’s not going to be refinanced for six months or I can’t qualify anymore because the banks are asking me to have this, this, and this until my next one. And so it’s not automatically, but it naturally, it organically turned into searching for joint ventures. And I had people that were like, well, if you find this deal again, call me. And lo and behold, there I am. I found the same deal I called them. They said I found it. Would you like to come on board? And the answer was yes. So, you know, when you were searching and you’re doing all that right stuff for yourself, you always ask yourself, how can I buy this property? That’s one of my first questions. I always ask myself; how can I buy this property? And whether it’s your own personal financing, your own capital? Or do you automatically go to joint venture capital? Do you turn to private financing? Like what are your options? But no matter what, when you find a good deal, you say, how do I buy this property?
Rob Break [00:13:44] I like that. I like that. That is, it’s not. I can’t. It’s how can I?
Mandy Branham [00:13:52] You can wholesale it. You can sell it off. So if you find a great if it meets all your criteria, you what I sometimes say that I my hardest critic, so I’m looking at things that maybe others don’t. Maybe, you know, I have a different kind of outlook on properties. Maybe I’d pass them over. But if it’s a deal that I would do and maybe I can’t do it for whatever reasons or I choose not to want to be able to do it, maybe wholesale it. Either way, it’s still a good deal. Mm-Hmm.
Rob Break [00:14:19] Do you do a lot of that, or do you like to keep everything for yourself?
Mandy Branham [00:14:24] I keep as much as I possibly can.
Rob Break [00:14:27] Yeah, but every once in a while, you just like, define that you have too many and your so one off.
Mandy Branham [00:14:36] It’s not necessarily that I have too many, it’s that it may be the joint venture that I’m discussing it with. You know, things just aren’t necessarily going in the way that we would like it. And so instead of continuing to be joint ventures like one example I’m thinking of is, you know, they wanted to be the working partner, but yet that’s my role. That’s where my expertise comes in. And I just realized that this wasn’t necessarily going to continue to work. And so I wholesale this to them for significant wholesale fee and it was a win win. I mean, I still can drive by that property and think, why did I give up half of my equity? But yet the benefit of it is that I wasn’t starting off on the wrong foot with some joint ventures. They’re still really good friends. They gave me this chunk of cash was actually a fifteen-thousand-dollar wholesale fee, which allowed me to have a lifestyle for a certain length of time. That wholesale fee actually allowed me to leave my job like it was this chunk of money, so I’ll never regret that. So, yeah, no, I keep as many as I can for myself, whether that means that I just have to hire more guys onto my contracting company, able to complete the rentals that are required, or I give my partners a longer time line to be able to say, you know, typically I like to say my renovations have been done in three months, but now I’ve been saying three to six. So if it takes an extra month or two or three to be able to finish these renovations and I’ll continue to buy that property because it’s a good deal.
Sandy Mackay [00:16:06] And so you do a lot of joint ventures, obviously. What is important about getting involved in joint ventures, why should other people get involved in joint ventures and have them in their portfolio?
Mandy Branham [00:16:16] So for me, there’s so many different reasons why people should get into joint ventures. The biggest one is the fact that people have, which is odd to say, but people have more capital than they have time to invest it. And so they think, well, I’d like to be able to do this myself so that I can get 100 percent of the return. So keeping in mind that typically my joint ventures are 50 50. My partners are putting in financing and all the capital and renovation money, and I’m the working partner, I’m the expert. I’m finding the property, negotiating it, contract it, being the general contractor, things like that. So I don’t put any of my own money into the deal. So people have more money than they have time. Now I’ve got some clients, joint venture partners, and we could not even set up a phone call for a week and a half around their schedule. My schedule. I’ve got partners who are two police officers. You figure that schedule. They even said to themselves that they barely see each other, let alone see each other in the same room to have a phone call with me. And so, you know, people have this idea that they want to have 100 percent of their returns, but it’s going to take them a year to be able to invest only a portion of their capital. Whereas if they were to say, hey, you know what, for five years, I’m going to do a couple of things on my own, but I’m going to invest the difference into joint ventures. Then in five years, we can choose at that time, where is your life, what’s going on and what do we want to do with this property? But they’ve now had five years of appreciation and passive income where they have not even had partners from British Columbia. They’ve never been to see our properties here in my town. Not at all. They won’t even come up this way, and so they should never have to. So I believe that you kind of have to look at how do I maximize the capital that I have right now with the lifestyle that I currently have? A lot of people love their jobs. They don’t want to leave their jobs. You know, I have a speech pathologist. She doesn’t need to leave her job to be coming, do real estate full time like she loves what she does. But that doesn’t mean that she has time to be able to do real estate. So I take the time out, but I just.
Rob Break [00:18:28] Sorry to interrupt your thought of a brilliant idea for you, like a little bit of an extra thing, like a side deal to make you money because there is a ton of people out there trying to find joint venture partners, right? And they go, how do I find them? Where do I find them? What do I say? How do I talk to them? And the biggest thing is, I think explaining to them the biggest objection is, well, I could just do this myself. Why don’t I just do this myself? It’s like, it’s all those things you just explained. It’s the time, it’s the expertise, all of that kind of stuff where, you know, people, I guess with that greedy mentality. First of all, maybe it’s not greedy mentality, but more. Just what am I need you for? Right? If you like, if you were to put together some kind of a generic recording there, just explain to people the benefits of this kind of investing, like not something that said specifically what they need to do more, just the general benefits of investing when they don’t have the time. Something like that, I think, because you’re really good at explaining that.
Mandy Branham [00:19:34] Well, thank you. Yeah, you know what I have? Here’s a funny little story. I had some fellow coach of the coaching group that I’m part of. They sent me this really nice email and I thought, you know what? I’m going to give these guys 15 to 20 minutes of my time because they just really asked me in a nice way, and I value that a lot. So anyways, set up this phone call for eight o’clock on a Monday morning, and I’m chatting with these two guys and they’re getting everything ready, OK? And it wasn’t about them calling me to be joint ventures. They were kind of saying, how do they become working joint ventures such as me? So within this conversation, I’m going to say it probably went for about twenty-five minutes and 20 minutes into it, they said. So why would somebody joint venture with you? And I kind of said, well, you know what? In the seven months that it’s taken, you guys to decide on what structure you want. Think about your corporation. Think about your taxes. Decide which market you’re going to go in, who you’re going to put on tidal, where are you going to, you know, all this kind of stuff? I said all. I’ve bought 10 properties by then, so thank you. Like you can take as much you want. So in the end, he said, what properties do you have for joint venture deals right now? And I said, well, actually, I have to try triplexes that are under contract, and this is what I this is. A structure that I will do with them will refinance one to get us the capital back for the down payment on the other one, et cetera, and et cetera. So in the end, he sent me an email five minutes after our phone call ended and said, We’re in. We want both triplexes. So, you know the. Start out thinking that we’re going to do this on our own, but the leaps and bounds that they have to go through, so then, you know, when they get me, I walk them through the joint venture agreement that they now can use with any of their other partners. I walk them through the systems that I have set up. One evening, he said. I mean, we were doing I was doing insurance applications and setting up the bank account. And, you know, all these kind of things that maybe new people don’t understand are really required. And he sends me this email is a one liner, and he said, Seriously, are you a robot? Question mark. And I laughed and I thought, no, but this is what it takes to be an active Java expert is just everything kind of on here. And anyone can learn this. Like I always say, like, what I do is not rocket science here, but there are systems that are in place. And once you’ve bought those systems and then away you go, anyone can do this, so come on board. So there’s these guys, they’re learning from me and they’re still looking at other deals. And so they should buy other deals on their own. They don’t have to do everything with me. But what they’re grasping with me is, is the confidence is, you know, who are my survivors who are on my power team? Why do we continue to use the same power team? You know, when you’ve educated your lawyer as to what a joint venture is the first time? You don’t have to tell them what it is the second, third and fourth time because they get it. Now, when you go to the same accountant and she sets up your corporate structure, you know that’s an ace in your pocket. You don’t have to do that every time you set it up with your mortgage broker and you give them all of your, you know, your tea for your notice of assessments, all this kind of stuff, all you pretty need to do to them for the next property in the next property is get them current pay stubs and up to date bank account information. So you see that it does become systemize. But these newbie investors, they get caught up on every little thing. And if you can just hold an expert’s hand to walk you through a couple purchases, you can go off to the races running after that.
Rob Break [00:23:05] Yeah, I think and it’s not necessarily the lack of the knowledge that people have. It might more be the inability to express what it is that they can offer. I think a lot of times, right?
Mandy Branham [00:23:20] Analysis by paralysis. Paralysis by analysis with Simon Janani always told us, Love that man. And yeah, they just get caught up in the, well, one mortgage broker. Do I go to it? I’m like, you know what? You just heard from a phenomenal one. Remember the guy you met at the group? Why are we even questioning who to call? He’s the guy. If he’s standing in a group presenting, obviously, the presenter trusts him. The roomful of people trust him. He’s investor focused. Stop asking who and just go straight to this guy. But they just get stuck up on all the little things. So yeah, but after the first one, you’re clear sailing.
Sandy Mackay [00:23:58] Right now, there’s a great point from the power team is huge too and takes a lot of time to build that up. When you have it. People can leverage that through working with you, and it’s amazing. I think there’s a couple of people maybe listening right now who like there’s two types, maybe one person who’s got the money and would probably be great to connect with you and potentially work together. Maybe another type of person is sticking and how they want to do this themselves and how they would love to build on some JVs and everything. Or maybe they’re debating if they should or not. Why would that? Why would someone who wants to actually do the work and be the active investor? Why would they go out and get joint ventures? What’s the value for them to do that, as opposed to just trying to figure out on their own and keeping all the equity to themselves?
Mandy Branham [00:24:39] So this answer can go for both sides. 50 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing. So if you’ve got the capital but no time and you don’t have the time to go invest in real estate, then you get 100 percent of nothing. And if you’ve got all the time but no capital or you’ve run out of capital or you’ve run out of qualification space or you’ve got all this knowledge because you go to the group, you know you’ve got some skills in the contracting world, you’ve got some connections in the broker world, but you can’t buy because of various different reasons. Then again, you’ve got all this knowledge, but you can’t take action, so it’s like the perfect storm of people coming together. So, I mean, becoming a working J.V., it will say, or the joint venture expert is way more than people think it is. They’re like, well, you know what? I’ve got these. I’m a contractor, so I would be a great joint venture partner. You know, like it’s more than just having contracting skills, you know, you really got to know the market. So then there’s the other people that are like, I’d like to be a working partner, and I say, well, what have you been doing to become an expert in that in that field? Well, nothing. OK, well, have you analyzed those 100 properties? Know how many properties have you view this week? None. How many meetings have you gone to this month? None. And it’s like, well, how are you? Position yourself to be that working expert. So again, both sides are super important. But if you’re going to be a working joint venture, if I was in. Are viewing somebody to be a working joint venture. I had the capital; I’d be asking them those questions Where are you getting your up-to-date knowledge? Who are you following? How many properties have you viewed? So this is, you know, Mandy kind of giving a working joint venture a bit of a checklist to be able to. What are you doing today that is going to make tomorrow easier? So how are you continuing to grow yourself as a working JV expert now?
Rob Break [00:26:32] Mandy, here’s another question that I get every once in a while, just off of what you just said is, you know, you never once said there that they would have had to have done a couple of joint venture or, let’s say, even projects on their own. You never mentioned that. Yes. How many properties are below to view, how much analyzing they’ve done, how many groups they’ve been out to, where are they getting their education from, all that kind of stuff? We didn’t actually say, how many projects have you done right? Do you think that’s really important?
Mandy Branham [00:27:05] Yes, I do. 100 percent I do, but I look at it in a different way and I think, OK, so if I had sat beside this young kid one time and think Zack, he was at a meeting, he had a plan. He knew what he was doing, but he didn’t have any capital. He’s like twenty-four years old. That’s kind of understandable. Well, I think we all know a phenomenal wholesaler. I don’t know if I’m allowed to name bomb around, but it would be a good name bomb. But he’s a phenomenal wholesaler. You know, the Ivanishin, phenomenal kid. He’s killing it. He’s wholesaling. So what is the best way to be able to keep your finger on the pulse? You’re looking at properties. You know what the comparables are. You’re dealing with real estate agents; you’re talking to investors. You’ve got to be surrounded by investors if you’re a wholesaler. So you might not actually own any properties. But I would say to somebody, how many properties have you viewed this week? And they say, you know what? I viewed five properties this week. I’ve got one under contract. What do you plan to do with that one under contract? I’m going to wholesale it. So I would tell you that you can wholesale four to five properties depending on your wholesale fee. Boom, you’ve got enough capital to be able to buy your own property. Maybe you go in with somebody still this twenty-four-year-old, maybe he doesn’t have a great job if in college university. And he says, Look at I’ve got 40 grand now. I still can’t qualify for my own mortgages, but I’d be happy to put some money into the next project that we do. So now you’re kind of like a 50 50 financial partner. The only thing this young kid can’t do is to actually qualify for a mortgage. So I believe that, no, you don’t have to own any properties, but you’ve got to be so active that you shine for how active you are when those groups ask you when Quintin says who’s brought a deal to be able to share with the group? If your hand isn’t in the air, then to me you’re not an active joint venture partner.
Rob Break [00:29:00] Yeah, I gotcha. And you know, you’re absolutely right. And my point there was that a lot of people do ask me, and they come up to me and they say, I want to be the working partner. You know, I haven’t bought any properties yet. I had done any projects yet, you know, rental projects or anything like that. But I want to be the working partner and I want to find a joint venture partner is going to bring the capital, you know, and that’s one of the things you have to explain to them is that, OK, look as nice as that sounds. Why should somebody put their trust in you? You know, you have no track record to prove what you’re doing, and that is exactly the path that I believe somebody should take if they want to do that. And it’s the one that I took. It’s the exact path that I took was, you know, started out, had no money. So did some wholesaling, learned about what people were looking for, learned how to do like made contacts, became someone that people trusted in that world. And then I knew what I was talking about and then eventually was able to flip that around and start getting joint venture partners.
Mandy Branham [00:30:00] Exactly. You follow the path. You know, but it’s also not a bad thing to be able to say, Yeah, I have one property, I have two properties and you’re doing this on your own. So when I asked to mentor one time, how do I attract joint venture partners? He smiled at me, and he said, you already are. Just keep doing what you’re doing. People are watching. So, you know, that’s the point. You’re like, what are they watching? They’re watching that. I’ve just found another property that I’m renovating. They’re just watching that. I just refinanced over fifty thousand dollars. They’re just finding that that I’m actively looking, and I have three properties under contract right now. That’s what they’re looking at. So you just think if people are watching, what are you doing that they’re watching? So the other analogy and I you know, we’re all talking the same language here is what do you bring to the table? And for most joint venture active working joint venture partners, the point is that they know that they have value, but they just can’t equate that value to one hundred thousand dollars. So here’s a little bit of a Mandie issue. So like, you know, disclaimer here there is nothing perfect about this girl right here every single day. I’m learning like I had a phone call last week, Friday. I’ve never been nervous for a phone call. I was nervous, OK? And I got off the phone and I thank the gentleman for who I talk to because I grew within that phone call. So when I started off, I had a hard time kind of grasping that somebody would give me 50 grand. Why would somebody give me 50 grand? But I realized that I was bringing to the table the value of $50000. So the larger my project, Scott, you know, next thing you know, I’m buying two four classes that are that my partner has to bring $80000. So technically with closing costs was like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. And I’m thinking, whoa, like Mandy’s growing here now, I’m able to be able to see the value of myself bringing to the table. If they’re bringing one hundred and eighty thousand, I’m bringing one hundred and eighty thousand dollars’ worth of value if that’s kind of making sense to us. So, you know, the larger you go, you’ve got to be able to realize that you between your own two years is where the value has to be created, that your worth is worth somebody giving you that much money and they’re not giving you that much money. They’re investing in you, which is investing into a property which is investing into your education and all these other things. But so the continual daily learning is to be able to see where you bring value and how much that value is worth. So like right now, I’m working on a million dollars. I need to be able to see my own value worth a million to be able to say to a partner, Look, I’ve got this great apartment building type complex. I’m looking for a million dollars to be able to invest in that. I’m not there yet. OK, so that’s something that everyone can kind of take away and learn from.
Rob Break [00:33:03] Wow. You know, and we were talking about this before we actually started the show was just how we were planning on probably going off on some tangents here. But I believe we’ve definitely done that. I mean, we’ve got all kinds of information, so thank you for what you’ve given us so far. Awesome.
Sandy Mackay [00:33:21] Awesome stuff. I think I was going to I was going to mention one more thing that kind of came out there. I just wanted to because it’s something I think about a lot with training ventures is just the fact. And the reason to do joint ventures is just the fact that the access to money becomes huge and you can just raise money and they’re like snap of your fingers if you need to or if you want to. Once you’ve done enough joint ventures, once you have enough trust out there with partners and not, you can just become very, very, very easy eventually to raise money to raise hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars eventually. And I think just the more people you help create wealth for themselves, you can access money in so many ways and it just helps everybody make more money. It’s a cool thing and that comes through time and through doing a lot of joint ventures.
Mandy Branham [00:34:02] Yeah. Zig Ziglar says find a way to help the many for service to many leads to greatness. So, you know, if what we’re doing by providing people joint venture opportunities so that they can continue to be a doctor, a lawyer, a service provider, the beauty of them in the community. But you’re allowing them to create a generational wealth so that their children can go to university with no issues so that they can reach higher more comfortably. All these kind of different things than your service that you’re providing to a greater amount of people is so valuable.
Sandy Mackay [00:34:37] Huge. Yeah, serious. And so we mentioned you can maybe we have answered a little bit when specifically more, what should people be looking for joint ventures?
Mandy Branham [00:34:46] Right now before they need them, you know, you might be on property number three on your own and maybe easy financing gets you to five, maybe if you’re really creative and you structured it well, then maybe you could get to seven, but you’re easily at three. You should be looking for a joint venture partner before you need them again. Maybe you are at three on your own and you’ve got an extra four hundred five hundred thousand dollars capital still sitting in your primary race. You can’t even pretend to think that you can invest that in a relative quick enough amount of time without leaving your job and taking on too much all at once. So, you know, you might have three properties on your own still have $500000 cash. You might want to do another property on your own, but you’re going to invest the other two or three hundred thousand with a joint venture partner.
Sandy Mackay [00:35:37] So now your answer? No, I agree. The answer, so kind of like insurance or credit. Better to have it when you don’t need it rather than search for when you desperately need it.
Mandy Branham [00:35:49] The no on the working joint venture side, you know, people always say, well, do you find the partner and then find the property? And I kind of say it’s like what comes first, the chicken or the egg. I’ve had phenomenal deals, but no partners lined up. And so I, you know, either let that property go or I take a chance, which is not something that I’m suggesting to people unless you’re really ready. Remember, that first question I ask myself is how do I buy this property? So if I choose to remove conditions on a property that I know I will buy, I already have backup plans. So it’s either can I buy this myself? Can I turn to private financing? Finding a joint venture partner is just one of my other options, but if I don’t have the partner but I have the property, the other, it happens the other way around. Sometimes you’ve got this partner and I’ve had the partner and I can’t find the property it just whatever time in the market. Maybe some specifications at that partner is looking for. With regards to, you know, timelines or cash flow or purchase price, things like that. And I’ve got the partner, but I can’t find the property. The partner withers away because their cash is sitting there and they’re like, Look, it’s taking you two months and you can’t find me any properties. And typically a closing is another two months after we find a property. That’s four months that my money’s been sitting here not making me any money who way they go, right? So it’s kind of like this crazy balance. Actually, the entire real estate game is all about balance, but you need to understand that if you’ve got a property but no partner, which might happen or you’ve got a partner with no property, both of them might wither away.
Rob Break [00:37:27] OK, I agree. Definitely. Yeah, you need to be on the ball. So that is the lesson from that, for sure. Do you have a coaching program, right?
Mandy Branham [00:37:37] I like those, the two gentlemen that I brought on board for two triplexes, my coaching is rather to be able to say, come on board, become a joint venture with me, learn my systems, learn my power team how it all works, the ebb and flow of it, and instead of it actually costing somebody money for me to coach. And now I always think that there’s so many phenomenal coaching programs out there, but we all know the people that that buy the coaching but never take any action and knowledge without action is certainly doesn’t turn into wisdom. So I always say, come on board, it’s not going to cost you any anything. It’s actually going to make you money to learn my system. So and so I don’t actually coach somebody unless they’re actually a joint venture of mine. Like I do like 15-minute chit chats with people. If they ask me on a good day, you know, in the right way, then where we go from there.
Rob Break [00:38:31] Yeah, that’s brilliant. And I’ve done the same thing as well with people to, you know, because there are a lot of people that want to learn this kind of stuff. And I said, hey, let’s try adventure or something and I’ll take you through it all. So, yeah. OK, so I actually really like that. That is a much better way of going about it than actually having to do it. Hands down is far better than just sitting in a classroom atmosphere or getting some materials sent to your inbox and learning that way, for sure. So that is definitely the that’s why I’ve always said, and you know, I take tons of coaching courses and have over the years, and I spent lots of money doing that, and I don’t think that I’ve made any wrong moves as far as that goes. Lots of other people take coaching courses. I’m not going to take it away from them, but definitely going out and actually buying a property of being part of a project or something. Along that lines can give you the same amount of knowledge or a deeper amount of knowledge, even than reading all the books that there are out there, I’m sure. So you must have had some sort of snags along the way. You know, do you want to tell us about some of your worst moments as an investor and how you overcame them?
Mandy Branham [00:39:48] Absolutely. So if this is the value of listening to your podcast right now, I’ll share a tip that cost me sixty thousand dollars. And so for that, I share that with anybody that, listen, this is the tip that’s worth tens of thousands of dollars. So with the joint venture, there is this nasty little thing called the joint venture agreement. And it’s not nasty. It’s actually brilliant. I always talk to my people and say, look at we start our relationship, we start our joint ventures off with a relationship. You know, I don’t meet somebody on the first date and say, hey, let’s get married. We massage this. We find out what are each other’s whys? Are we find out if this is going to be appropriate for our timelines and our lifestyle and such and our risk tolerance and stuff? So we start off with the relationship. But on the other end of the spectrum, envision this joint venture agreement, which is a legal document drafted by lawyers, looked over by lawyers signed, you know, like all kinds of stuff. And where I say to people is that we meet in the middle, in the middle stage, we have this relationship and we have this document, but we’re just going to continue to be here in the middle, discuss things, you know, whatever. So one of my two, actually, we bought two properties together and beautiful properties. I mean, I’ve gone over their house for Christmas for drinks. I mean, I’ve got emails to say, Mandy, these are the best two properties we have. We can’t believe it. Thanks for sharing these deals with us. And I kept saying, please sign the joint venture agreement, please sign the joint venture agreement. And it comes up to a year and we we’re going to refinance the properties. The market was gone crazy. I bought the properties all up and running, and we refinanced these properties for one hundred thousand dollars each over and above what we had paid for them a year prior. So my portion of the equity should have been would have been on paper right there one hundred thousand dollars. They sent me an email and said, we’ve changed our minds. We don’t want to be part of this joint venture. You’ll hear from our lawyer. So in the end, I guess it’s not a sad story at all. Such a great learning lesson, but they paid me forty thousand dollars to pretty much leave them alone there with their two properties now. And the whole point was we did not have a signed joint venture agreement. So my tip? Sign the darn agreement. Just get it signed. Just get it signed. Because, you know, I don’t want anyone to be having gone through all of that work. And then a year later, five years later, whatever. I mean, everybody’s as nice as pie, but you know, you get advice from a lawyer that’s not a real estate lawyer that doesn’t even understand why there would be a joint venture agreement. And next thing you know, your partners could again wither away and say, that’s it, we’re done. So the learning lesson is to get that joint venture agreement signed. I signed side by side,
Sandy Mackay [00:42:51] when do you signed that agreement? Is it once upon purchasing the property or was there anything before that? I just only ask because I had a client recently. I read a few in the last year or two maybe that have got to the point of like very close to closing on a deal and didn’t have the agreement signed yet but had done all the work in the beginning to get the deal and same sort of thing. And the money partner ends up winning the bill.
Mandy Branham [00:43:17] Right? So there is a letter of intent that you can get signed to be able to say that we intend to buy this property. It is it’s a semi agreement with each other real estate. Yep, I agree that we’re going to buy said property in said town for said price and whatever. So or so that that the joint venture partner can actually go looking for a property with this signed letter of intent. Or you can sign the agreement. Typically, it doesn’t get signed until the twenty-four hours after closing kind of thing. No, you can sign it at any time and then just make it that it comes into effect twenty-four hours after the purchase and sale agreement has gone through.
Rob Break [00:43:59] Yeah, I’ve done that too. I’ve certainly not to the same extent but procrastinate until well after closing on getting some joint venture agreements finalized. And it is stressful.
Mandy Branham [00:44:10] It is I and I still have some, you know, I got a VP of acquisitions that I’ve taken on my team to be able to help me with joint ventures because she thought it was crazy that I didn’t have these agreements on. And I’m chuckling on her because it sounds like it should be black and white and straight forward. But it’s not. But I’m stressing to you the benefits of having it. As you know what? You need to apply for a mortgage, you need to get your insurance and you need to do the joint venture agreement. It needs to be on your list of things to do to be able to get that property ready for close, for sure.
Rob Break [00:44:43] So any others or is that really the main one I do?
Mandy Branham [00:44:47] I’ll quickly, quickly go. So we had this phenomenal property. It was a for sale by owner and all it said on the front lawn was for sale. For more information. Mail to this was in 2015. I did OK, so I mailed a letter off to this gentleman and old Mr. Murray called me back. He’s 80 years old to use this house for a cottage, and nobody in his family wanted it. He offered it to all of his children, all of his grandchildren, and nobody wanted to put the time in that needed to put the time into this property. He sold it to me for $50000. So I had three partners that actually withered away before the closing of that property to Larry, and I finally ended up being able to do it on our own. But you know, it took three people to say yes to it and walk away yes to it and walk away, yes to it and walk away before actually we ended up being the ones that did it on our own. So, you know, some people go, oh my gosh, there’s this one person, and they’ve just shown this hiccup of interest and they think they’ve got a joint venture partner, but they’re nowhere near it. You know, you have to talk to 10 people before you probably get one confirmed joint venture. So don’t be hard on yourself if you’re you know you talking to people and people sound excited and then then this is the one the wife says no, or the husband says no. And you’re, you know, there goes that joint venture partner. Or they go, oh, you need one hundred thousand dollars? I only have 50. There goes that joint venture, you know. Oh, we know it needs more renovations than you originally thought, and you’ve gone over their risk tolerance away goes that joint venture partner. So, you know, you just kind of have to go, OK, what’s next? Who’s next? Who do I call next? What’s my next option is not that it’s a no. When you have to stop, you just have to realize what’s next.
Rob Break [00:46:40] Yeah. And I think it’s important when you’re talking to potential joint venture partners to listen to the reasons why they’re saying no, like if it is, yeah, they didn’t have enough money or some of the other examples that you just gave. That’s fine, too. But there’s also the possibility that you don’t have a deal. So, you know, you got to be aware of the reasons that people are giving you and why they don’t want to be part of it, because if you’ve got something good, you should be able to find somebody. But then again, you know, at the same time, it’s hard hearing, no, but you do have to move on if you get a no. Absolutely. Keep on trying.
Mandy Branham [00:47:17] If anyone’s been part of a network marketing company like Welcome to the world of No’s, yes, next, right? So maybe that’s a good learning outcome of a multi-level marketing.
Rob Break [00:47:29] Now, what types of deals do you invest in? We’ve heard you say a couple of triplexes, and for Plex’s, that kind of thing is that generally the type. Properties that you’re looking at,
Mandy Branham [00:47:38] I specialize in single family conversions to duplexes and two to four turnkey units. So typically staying within the residential financing world of under four units, 80 percent loan to value.
Rob Break [00:47:52] Nice. And what area are you in?
Mandy Branham [00:47:56] I invest in Simcoe County. I’ve not gone into Barrie yet just because of Barrie numbers, but a really up today, two properties are closing in really midland permitting and dabbling into the Collingwood market.
Rob Break [00:48:09] So that’s more like what is considered northern and not really northern Ontario, but north of Toronto, Simcoe County. Well, I mean, hey, we’ve got listeners everywhere, Mandy. They don’t necessarily know where Simcoe County is.
Mandy Branham [00:48:25] See? Yeah. No, no, no. It’s not. None of it. It’s county. Yes. I don’t think we’re southern Ontario and know we might be southern Ontario.
Rob Break [00:48:34] Like, Come on.
Sandy Mackay [00:48:36] I think so. Yeah. Hour, hour and a half hour and a half, maybe north of Toronto, right?
Mandy Branham [00:48:40] An hour and a half to wonderland.
Rob Break [00:48:43] OK. Beautiful, thank you. Do you have a piece of him for advice? It’s always stuck with you.
Mandy Branham [00:48:50] Yes. Yes. I sat around this mastermind table one time, so I helped a mentor of mine buy a property, and he would always kind of said, If I give him a property, he’d pay me five hundred dollars if it was on MLS and if it was a private sale, it would have been a thousand dollars. So really, I brought him this deal and he could have given me five hundred dollars, I said. Jones said, you know what? I don’t want your five hundred dollars. I’d like to be able to come to your mastermind with you. And so he connected with the other people in his mastermind, and he said, you know what? I got this girl that just wants to come and see what we talk about, kind of thing. So I sit around this table and I’m in awe of the amount of real estate, the knowledge, the variety of projects that these people are taking on and all around the table. I just kept thinking success leaves clues like, why am I trying to reinvent the wheel here when these people are making it happen with this type of real estate or this financing structure or whatever it was? So you know what around you. Success leaves clues. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel here and think that you’re going to come up with this potential idea that nobody else has done? And you think if you want to have the success that somebody else has, do what that person does, don’t veer off from it. So that’s always stuck with me.
Rob Break [00:50:08] So and I think another thing that’s interesting to point out there of what you said was, like a lot of people when they’re first starting out, five hundred bucks is a lot of money, you know? Yep. So you chose to say, you know what? I would rather have an opportunity. I’d turn this into an opportunity rather than just a little cash out. And so that that was brilliant, actually, that act right there, probably, you know, to sort of say, OK, you know what? That five hundred dollars would be great but look what you got instead. This knowledge that you remember to this day.
Mandy Branham [00:50:42] It is it absolutely is. And just being in the presence of others. So your circle, so you know, this is on a personal development side. But we, Larry, and I, we are always. Who is my hobby? I mean, that’s the other side of me. But we always evaluate who is our circle of influence. Who are we talking to? Who are we spending time with? Who are we listening to? Who’s influencing us? And you know, we want to make sure that those people are success driven. You don’t have a broke mentality. You have a success. Have a relationship like an honest relationship. You know that they’re not doing things that we don’t necessarily fit well with within us. So whatever that might be. And so that we’re so if success leaves clues, you got to look around and say, who am I being influenced by right now? And if you are going to find real estate means a month and you’re talking to people about real estate and you’re listening to phenomenal podcast about real estate. And that’s what you’re putting into your mind and that’s what you’re talking about. Great. But if you are sitting on the couch, watching TV, listening to news on the radio, that’s bringing you down and whatever, you might not be getting to where you want to go because you’re not putting the right stuff into your mind, you’re not surrounded by the right people. So really evaluate on a on a personal side of things, really evaluate who’s in your life right now and do you like what they have? And if you do great, continue to be like them. And if you don’t, then maybe it’s time for you to get a new circle of influence.
Rob Break [00:52:17] Love it!
Sandy Mackay [00:52:18] Some advice. Fantastic. Well, this has been this has been great. Mary, how can people get in touch with you? What’s the best way?
Mandy Branham [00:52:26] Mandy Brenham dot com.
Rob Break [00:52:29] Mandy brand become very simple. Mandy Why PR and h a m dot com? Yeah. Awesome, Mandy, thank you so much. I knew that this was going to be amazing and that we were going to just get a ton of information. See things like this. It’s a lot different. You know, and we have a guests like you on where we ask a question and the answer just it’s just so filled with information. It’s not just here’s the answer. You know, there is just a ton of wealth and knowledge that people are going to get out of this. And these are the kind of podcasts and I really love to do just. But it’s all tangible, like they can grab on to every little piece of what you’ve told them and run with it and actually do something actionable.
Mandy Branham [00:53:17] So thanks again. I’ve heard that I’m a no B.S. kind of person. So if you’re looking for some honesty, sometimes you want to make sure that you can ask somebody, what’s your honest opinion and hear you say, are you sure your kind of getting permission to be able to speak what you need to speak and go for it because there’s no sense being a people pleaser in our world right now? You want to make sure that you don’t wake up and yeah, and not having been getting a true honest answers. So. So yeah, if I’ve offended anyone or said something and I’m not supposed to have welcome to my world,
Rob Break [00:53:47] no, I can’t imagine that you would have, though, because that’s what people are looking for with this podcast, I think. And I mean, maybe we were off the mark a little bit sometimes, but we really try to bring people on who actually share everything that they know, and they don’t sugarcoat it. It’s not rah or anything like that. So thank you again, Mandy, for being here. Really appreciate it. And we know how to get in touch with you. If anyone missed that, they could go to the show notes on their website and Mandy’s contact will be there. Cindy, how can people get in touch with you?
Sandy Mackay [00:54:20] Yeah, they can get in touch with me info and became real to Gqom. Or we actually have a new phone number, and our director can get in touch me a little easier this way. Two eight nine three eight nine six eight four six Awesome.
Rob Break [00:54:32] And people can reach me if they want to learn about second suites in Durham region. Also, we’re expanding into Peterborough. I work with rock star real estate now, so that’s really exciting. But if anyone wants to reach out and talk to me, they can get me at two eight nine nine two seven zero four six four. All right. Info Breakthrough Aria Podcast, Dot S.A. And I just wanted to mention Mandy. I think you’ve been a guest on the truth about real estate podcast. Yes, I have. Yeah, I was just on that show myself recently, too, so everyone should go check that out if they haven’t listened to that. It’s called the truth about real estate investing, and that is with Irwin Zito, and it’s a pretty cool podcast. Get lots of good guests on there as well, so check that out. OK. And everyone have a great day. We’ll see you next time.
Mandy Branham [00:55:22] Thanks, guys. Now. Now.