rewrite this title From No Time or Money to Doing 6-Figure Real Estate Deals (With 8 Kids!)

Ashley Kehr:What if you spent 15 years doing real estate deals without ever realizing you were actually a real estate investor?

Tony Robinson:That’s literally what happened to today’s guest. She’s been buying off-market properties, living in them, fixing them up, and then selling them for massive profits for over a decade and just recently figured out there’s an actual name for this.

Ashley Kehr:Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. My name is Ashley Hare.

Tony Robinson:And I’m at Tony J. Robinson. Let’s give a big warm welcome to Beth. Beth, thanks for joining us today.

Beth Decler:Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to share.

Ashley Kehr:Beth, give us the real quick version of who you are and what does your life look like day-to-day?

Beth Decler:I am a mom of eight and we are a small scale farm in Michigan. My husband, Tommy, and I, we do a lot of different things, homeschooling, running different on farm businesses. But I guess I’ve realized recently, like you were mentioning, that we’ve kind of been unintentionally flipping farms, which is not a typical real estate niche that you see, but it’s what we’ve been doing. So I figured might as well share our story.

Ashley Kehr:So you had said that you had always dreamed about investing in real estate and what was stopping you even though you find out later on that you actually were an investor the whole time. Why didn’t you intentionally become a real estate investor?

Beth Decler:Money, mostly. I got married very, very young. We had our first baby at 20 and 23 and so definitely we’re just scraping by beans and rice. We did manage to save up enough money to buy our first house that we lived in and that was pretty much all that we could stand to afford at the time. And we didn’t have extra income to invest in properties. And I kind of let that stop me for a really long time and used all of my eagerness to invest in real estate to just learn as much as I could. And thankfully I did because eventually I realized you don’t necessarily have to have a bunch of money to be able to invest into properties or to make money off of real estate. But that was the primary roadblock. And then of course, as our family grew, we have eight children.So as more and more of them came and we started homeschooling, time was a huge factor for me, not having time to figure out what deals were there. That was a big one too that I had to work through.

Tony Robinson:Beth, I mean, you just hit on probably the two biggest challenges for most rookies who are listening is either A, a lack of capital, B, a lack of time, or C, some combination of both of those. And yet you’ve been able to still invest in real estate. Why weren’t those things actual hindrances to you building a portfolio?

Beth Decler:Well, and I mean, we’re self-employed and this is kind of the same problem I see with people that want to start a business. They have these limitations, but really what your limitations are is that they’re opportunities. They’re opportunities to problem solve and to find alternatives. And I think that I had been put into this box of when you buy real estate, you have a traditional job that you get financing for and you go through a real estate agent and it’s this very kind of box of how a transaction works. Over time, I just realized there’s a hundred different ways to buy a property, both in finding the property and also in financing the property. And once I got deeper into learning kind of those creative methods, that’s when things really started to move quicker for us.

Tony Robinson:And you hit on one piece, right? I was just like getting over that mental hurdle of like, “Hey, there are other ways to put the deals together and to finance it. ” But I think the other piece is that the time component. I talked to a lot of aspiring real estate investors and they oftentimes find themselves stuck in this loop where the reason they want to invest in real estate is because they want more time freedom, but yet the reason they haven’t started investing in real estate is because they don’t have enough time. And when you break it down to them like that, it’s like, okay, well, something’s got to give. Either you’re just never going to have the time or you’ve got to find the time to be able to eventually get the time. You have eight kids, which is a phenomenal achievement. I lost my hair after my first one, so I can’t imagine having eight times over.How did you find the time amongst growing a family to actually do what is necessary, not just to go out there and find the deal, but to do it in a creative way as well? How did you find the time?

Beth Decler:Well, I think it’s more about adjusting what I thought the timeline for investing in a property was going to look like, because it wasn’t a quick process. I mean, this is like 15 years of really just this whole entire journey and that’s from learning to making the first deal and the next one. So it’s not that I necessarily found more time to do it. It’s just that what little time I did have, I was consistent with. And so I probably would spend two years underwriting properties and looking at deals before I would find one deal. Whereas other people, it’s like, well, you have to make an offer every day for 30 days. That’s just not the pace that I moved at. And slow and steady does move the race. So you have to eat an elephant one bite at a time. All of those cliches are there for a reason.So we haven’t done a crazy amount of deals, but I’m constantly kind of looking at things so that way we are moving even if our progress is slower than what people think it should be.

Ashley Kehr:Now explain to us what a live-in flip is. So what is the strategy that you have been doing over and over again?

Beth Decler:So live and flip. It’s really fun, by the way, when you have eight kids and you are buying a property to be your primary residence and then you are doing renovations and updating it in order to increase the value and sell it for a higher price. And that is basically a summary of what it is. So all of the properties that we have flipped have been ones that we have lived in as our primary residence, made improvements to. Sometimes they are major massive improvements. Sometimes they’re not. They’re just cosmetic paint and things like that. And then we’re selling them for profit.

Ashley Kehr:What is the typical timeframe that you’re staying and living in these properties? And are you taking advantage of not paying taxes on it because it’s been over two years?

Beth Decler:Yes. So literally the first three that we did unintentionally ended up being right at that two to two and a half year mark, which is the sweet spot. You want to be there two years to avoid capital gains on your profit. But again, that was not intentional. That was just kind of how life moved us. So our first property was, it was two and a half years. Our second one was two and a half years. Then we had one that was a bit longer. We were there for five years and that one did need a lot more work, but the gain on it will be when it sells a lot higher too. And then our most recent one, we were there for just over a year, about 14 months to closing. So that was a unique, shorter one.

Tony Robinson:Beth, are you guys doing the renovations yourselves? Are you hiring it out? Did you have that skillset of renovations beforehand? I’m just curious, while you’re living there, how are you managing the actual rehab?

Beth Decler:Oh yeah, we’re doing it because we’re crazy and what’s a little more chaos? Yeah, I would say 99% of the stuff we do ourselves. We’ve definitely hired out things like major electrical overhauls. I’m trying to think gutters just because we don’t have the equipment for it. There’s a handful of things that we will hire out, but anything that’s cosmetic, flooring, tri, that’s all in our wheelhouse as far as skillset. And of course the more you do it, the better and more confident you get at it.

Tony Robinson:But was it in your skillset to begin with or was it a skillset you developed as you guys were going through this process? And if the latter, how did you start to build that skillset? Because there are a lot of folks who were listening who liked the idea of, “Man, I can get into a live-in flip for less capital and I can live there for a few years and really take my time, but I don’t know how to swing a hammer.” So how did you build that skillset?

Beth Decler:Yeah, I would say we did have the skills. Both of us are fairly handy people. Again, everybody has challenges though. If you don’t have the skills of being handy, lean into whatever skills you did have. We were handy, but we were also doing it with a bunch of little people at our feet. So we had to gain the skill of doing it while we had a bunch of people there and keeping it safe because a work site isn’t necessarily family friendly. So even though we didn’t have the challenge of not being handy, there were still other things that we had to work around. So don’t let that discourage you.

Ashley Kehr:Now we’re going to take a short ad break, but when we come back, I want to talk about the money on these deals. So how much were you able to profit living in these properties for a couple of years to five years? We’ll be right back after a short word from our show sponsors. Okay. Welcome back. We are here with Beth. So Beth, these live and flips that you had done, give us the numbers on them. What was the average amount that you would make on a property tax-free and then what would you do with it? Was this money you rolled into the next property? Would you invest it? Would you blow it on a Lambo? What would happen?

Beth Decler:Oh, we’re definitely Lambo people. They do really well on the farm. No, our first primary residence, we bought for 104,000. We sold it two and a half years later for 134,000. So there really wasn’t a gain in that when you factor in realtor fees and that kind of thing. But all of the money we did get back, our down payment and such, we did roll into the next property and that one did have a decent gain on it. We bought it for 150. We did not do really very many major renovations. I painted the entire house for sure and we put in some flooring in the basement in a finished area that was like it was finished. It just didn’t have flooring. So that one we ended up selling for 215,000 and part of that we reserved for savings. Part of that got rolled into the next one, which was a … This was kind of like an in between farm property.We bought a little 800 square foot house in town. That one I think we paid 65,000 for. And we did some massive renovation on that one. I was pregnant with our fifth child at the time and I always joke that we … 800 square feet sounds crazy, but we never had the 800 square feet because one entire room was like materials in the chop saw and all of that kind of stuff. And that one did not have a massive gain. I think we sold for 89,000, but we lived there. So it’s kind of one of those things where if you’re flipping a house that you don’t live in, your holding costs are a lot higher, but even if you don’t profit much, you still basically lived for free for the year. So that was fine. Next house we had bought for 166. It is currently on the market right now for 450.It is not sold yet, so I can’t say what the gain’s going to be on there, but it will be in the low force. I’m pretty confident in it’s just waiting for the right buyer. And then the last one was we bought it for 320. We lived there for 14 months and sold it for technically 450. It says 460, but they had a $10,000 concession, so 450. So that one was pretty close to that second one as far as gain. I think really after realtor fees, we walked away with like 65,000 in profit, which I thought was great for a year’s worth of …

Ashley Kehr:And is that after your rehab costs too, the profit of the 60?

Beth Decler:Yes, it is.

Ashley Kehr:Yeah, that’s great. In a year, extra 60 bucks, you lived in the property.

Tony Robinson:Beth, let me ask, because I mean, you rattled off quite a few properties and we got the understanding of how you’re buying one or using the proceeds from one to help you purchase the next, but how are you actually finding all of these deals? Because you mentioned a lot of them are farms. I’m just curious, what’s your pipeline for acquisition?

Beth Decler:Yeah. So that was again, another thing unintentionally I realized we had formed the habit of buying off market properties. So four out of the five properties were off market deals that I found. Definitely strongly prefer that for multiple reasons, but a big reason why we gained so much on those was just because we bought at a very, very good price. When you’re buying off market, there’s a lot more potential to negotiate. I think getting something that is lower than what you would have on the MLS. Even right now, the market’s kind of hard where we are, which we’re feeling with the house that we have listed on the market right now. It just takes longer. So off market has been our go- to for finding things.

Tony Robinson:So what is your actual process for finding these deals off market? Because I think for a lot of investors, off market is kind of like the holy grail of getting better deals. Once it hits CMLS, oftentimes there’s a premium associated with that. Yeah, just walk through your process. How are you finding these off market?

Beth Decler:Yeah. I mean, we’re not big time, so we’re obviously not sending mailers or having people cold call people. They all have been found in different ways. So the first one was Craigslist, which is like, I don’t even know if that’s alive anymore, but it was at that time. We found it on Craigslist and the couple needed to move out of state and didn’t want to list with a realtor. Sometimes people don’t want to list with a realtor just because they don’t like them or they had a bad experience and that was kind of their story. So that was how we found that one. The next one was on Facebook Marketplace, which was kind of a unique story. It was actually the daughter-in-law of the family that owned it that was listing it for them. And then the third one was we had been looking for property and I had put it out there into the world, into the online space and posted, I think it was a local Facebook group was where a lady saw that I was looking for something and she reached out to me based on my post.But I had told friends and family just it’s better to have multiple people listening and looking for stuff than just me. And then the final property where we’re at currently was a pocket listing from a local realtor. I had seen it sell and had tried to buy it when it sold and I knew it was getting flipped. And so I was able to connect with the realtor that they were using to kind of guide them through their decision making process of their flip and get it from them before they finished the project. So

Ashley Kehr:You actually bought the property before they finished flipping it?

Beth Decler:Yes. So that one it’s a crazy story. It was actually a tax auction that we had bid on and lost and that was the first time we had ever attempted to buy that way. And it was a total hoarder situation. It ended up being an actual blessing that we lost it because it would’ve taken us … I mean, they took 14 or 15 40 yard dumpsters worth of trash out of the house and barns because it’s a farm and it’s just so much stuff. We’re still finding trash in the yard. But the investor that bought it on auctionCame in and I mean, they had it cleaned up in a couple days. They just had way more manpower than we would’ve had. And by the time we got it and negotiated buying it, it was kind of a blank slate. The house had been gutted down to studs and it was kind of the perfect situation because yeah, there was a lot of work to do, but it was like kind of the fun part of the project putting it back together. But getting this financed was a challenge because it wasn’t a financeable house in traditional terms. We had to negotiate seller financing just to get it closed and they would’ve had that issue with anybody in the state it was, but I think they realized that was their best option. Well,

Tony Robinson:But first let me say, I did check and Craigslist does still exist and they’re actually hiring right now, which is crazy. So if anyone wants a job for a network engineer, Craigslist is looking for one. But going back to the financing piece, because that was actually one of my questions. You mentioned early on that you didn’t have a ton of capital to go take these deals down. How have you guys structured your loans in a way to actually get your approved? Because I think you even mentioned before we started recording that at one point you had like three loans going at one time. You mentioned seller financing. What other levers are you pulling to help you actually get qualified for these properties?

Beth Decler:Yeah, that has taken a lot of creativity and just patience. So we have had traditional loans. Our property that’s for sale right now that we bought for 166, we did take out a second mortgage on that as a down payment in order to buy the next property that was the best way to get financed for that. And then we had to have a co-signer on the loan as well. My parents thankfully were willing to co-sign on our crazy ideas. And then with this property, we had to get seller financing, which they did not want to do, but I think they realized, like I said, that they didn’t have another option. Nobody was going to be able to finance it if the house wasn’t livable, which it’s not when it’s gutted down to studs. And so that was kind of our route for that one. And then now that it is livable, we have refinanced it in an agricultural loan because it is a farm and that is a little bit more unique when you have property and you can base the loan off of the income of the property and the income potential of the property versus having to do a traditional home mortgage.

Ashley Kehr:Tell us more about this. We’ve never talked about this before, this type of loan product. I think we’ve touched on USDA loans in rural areas, but never like an actual agricultural loan that is based off of the income of the farm.

Beth Decler:Yeah. There’s a company, I think they’re Midwest based, Greenstone Farm Credit is their name, but they are the one that the loan is through and yeah, they will base things off of, depending on the acreage, we have 40 acres here and I would say out of the 40, probably 35 of it is what’s considered tillable or usable land. They also factor in the value of like the barns, is there a well, is there different things that are going to help make the farm work or make income and things like that. So they do still run credit checks and you still do have to have some type of collateral depending on if you are a new farm business or one that’s established and moving. They have a ton of different options. But the other thing that was nice about them is that we learned that you cannot refinance a land contract under 12 months in most cases.Our original plan was that we would sell or finance, get the property livable and then just refinance it into a conventional mortgage. But most banks that we talked to said we couldn’t do that in under 12 months and we had to. We had a deadline for our land contract. So that’s kind of what originally pushed us into looking into the agricultural financing, but it’s pretty cool. It’s definitely worth looking into if you have acreage that is being … I think eight acres is the minimum though for the program.

Ashley Kehr:What are the terms on this? Is the interest rate higher than what you would’ve got getting a mortgage for your primary residence?

Beth Decler:No, they’re pretty in line with what the market is right now. And there’s same options as far as like you can do a five-year balloon for a lower rate, you can do it on a 20 or 30-year loan. It’s pretty similar to a regular conventional loan.

Ashley Kehr:Yeah, that’s really interesting. We’ve never had anyone talk about this type of loan before.

Tony Robinson:Well, I want to go back to the actual off market because you touched on how you’re kind of going about this, but when you open up the conversation with someone, what’s the first thing that you’re saying to them? Because I mean, sometimes people are actively soliciting these properties, other times they’re not. How do you open up that conversation and say, “Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Homeowner, I want to buy your house.”

Beth Decler:Yeah, I’m notorious in my family for sending letters to random properties that I’m interested in and just my family’s like, “Why are you doing this? ” But it really is just kind of introducing myself, saying what we do, saying why I would be interested in their property and this is all in a letter by the way and then just giving them contact information if they want to have more. I try to keep it simple. I don’t want to send them a price or a deadline because if they weren’t even thinking about selling, then they’re not going to be prepared to close quickly versus if it was already listed, they have some urgency to sell. One thing I think is great about buying off market properties is that a lot of the rules for giving a buyer or a seller your story are not allowed anymore.They don’t want to create bias in who’s buying their property versus selling to somebody else, but those rules don’t apply when you’re buying off market. I can tell them, I can show them cute pictures of my kids. I can pull out whatever cards I need to to help negotiate. And I think that people appreciate that because a lot of times, especially rurally, people are very attached to their properties and they do care who buys it. They do want to know that person versus it just being another name on a piece of paper that they don’t have any connection to. So just telling them our story and introducing ourselves is how it starts.

Tony Robinson:And then Beth, you’re buying mostly all of these reforms, right? All of these transactions were also farms. So are you actually moving your business with each one of these transactions as well? And does that complicate the one transaction to the next?

Beth Decler:Yeah, we are. It’s not fun. It’s not ideal. I mean, you add the layers of our lives and it’s like, why? But it’s like doing a live and flip with kids, that’s hard. Moving with kids is hard. Moving with kids and animals and businesses is hard. Yeah, it is not sustainable long term. I think we’re at the point now where it’s like, okay, we’ll do other real estate things besides our family and farm moving constantly, which now we’re at the acreage that we really want it to be at ultimately. So I don’t intend to do that again. Was

Tony Robinson:That the goal along Beth was to be able to trade up until you got to the actual home and farm that you guys truly wanted?

Beth Decler:Yes. That’s been really the only motivation in our move is that we’ve moved up an acreage each time from five to 10 and now at 40. So it’ll be a long time before we outgrow this space.

Tony Robinson:Man, I love that, right guys, there’s so many different ways to get to the same end result in real estate. And I think that’s the beauty of what we get to show here on the Rookie Podcast is all the infinite number of paths that someone can take to get there. And it obviously didn’t happen overnight, right? And I don’t want the Ricky audience to lose sight of that. This was, you said 15 years of you guys grinding this out to get to where you are, but now you’ve got some version of your forever home and it was all funded through the real estate transactions of the past. So just a little bit of intentionality, a lot of sacrifice and your life can truly change if you leverage your tools the right way.

Ashley Kehr:Well, Beth, we’re going to take our last ad break, but we will be back with more and I want to ask about the conversation for seller financing. So we’ll be right back. Okay. Welcome back. We are here with Beth. Thank you guys so much for taking the time to check out our show sponsors. They help make the show happen. So Beth, we talked about the conversation that you have with someone or the letter that you send to solicit them to purchase their property, but what about the seller finance piece? How did you have that conversation?

Beth Decler:Okay. I’m trying to think of how it started. The challenge with that is that I was going through the realtor. It definitely would’ve been easier had I been speaking directly with the seller, but basically our initial pitch was that we wanted to buy the property and we just worked on getting to an agreeable price. And it wasn’t until the price was determined and we realized that we weren’t going to be able to fund it, that we came back to them and we were like, “How about this? ” And I think that knowing they had bought it for cash because it was on tax auction was important. It’s going to be a lot harder to sell or finance in a scenario where somebody has a mortgage, it’s doable, but it’s not as easy. So knowing that they had that option and really trying to not look at our limitations of like, “We don’t have financing, why would they want to work with us?” And trying to think of what things can we offer to them?What things as buyers make us a positive consideration for their scenario? They had won, I think, five other properties on this tax auction, so they were busy and they were deep in renovations. So they wanted to cut ties with something that was and just do it quickly and move on to the next thing. So our seller financing, I had to make it a short timeline, which was we ended up closing in less than two weeks, which is very challenging. And then we had to refinance within 60 days, which was honestly very scary to consider and that was thinking we’re going to renovate the house and get it livable and get it refinanced, which turns out would not have been possible because a gutted house doesn’t get renovated in 60 days. But trying to just give the things that we could give versus thinking of the things that we couldn’t, which was another lending option.And they actually said no initially. They said, “No, we’re not going to do that. ” And then we asked with kind of a litle bit more and they said no and we had walked away and then it wasn’t till a week or so later that they came back and they were like, “Okay, fine, we’ll do it. ” So I think just knowing that sometimes you’ll do your best offer and it will be rejected, but it’s important that you have to know what your boundaries are as far as your money and what you’re willing to risk.

Tony Robinson:And Beth, how did you actually solve that? Like you said that you had 60 days to refinance and get it by … How did you fix … Those are two big challenges, right? Both the renovation component and the financing on the backend.

Beth Decler:Yeah. So before we even closed with the seller financing, I was calling lenders about refinancing it. We weren’t even in that 60-day window when I realized I wasn’t even going to be able to refinance it with a conventional loan because of that 12-month land contract timeline that a lot of them fell to. So that’s when I pivoted to looking at the agricultural loans, which can happen much quickly because you don’t have to have typical appraisals. It’s just it’s a faster process. I told them upfront, I said, “This is our deadline. Can you meet that? Because if not, I’m not going to put all of my energy into this. I’m going to look for somebody else.” And yeah, finding the right lender, it really does make all the difference and just being very clear of what your timeline and expectations are to make sure that you don’t … You can only control so much, but doing your research before you commit to something

Tony Robinson:And Beth, I think it’s so smart that you were having those conversations beforehand because a lot of rookies might make the mistake of waiting until they’re just so excited about like, “I got a yes on the seller financing. I’ll figure everything else out afterwards and not realize that there could be complications on the backend.” So man, that’s amazing.

Beth Decler:Just assume there will be complications. I think that is a safe route.

Tony Robinson:But looking back across the several off-market deals that you’ve done, I guess what’s one thing that you would tell Ricky’s who also want to pursue buying off-market either, “Hey, here’s some things to look out for. Here are some assumptions I had that weren’t true,” but just what’s your word of advice to folks who want to go down that same path?

Beth Decler:Yeah, I would say two things. Number one is to just really commit to your numbers, really commit to your budget and not don’t fall in love with properties. I joke I can fall in love with any property, but I can also fall out of love with it if it doesn’t math out, if it doesn’t make sense. I’m not going to overpay for something or put our family in a situation. I don’t have that luxury of putting our family in a financial bind. So just really knowing your numbers and being confident that if it’s supposed to work out, it will. And if it doesn’t, then that’s not the one for you and there are literally hundreds of others. The other thing I would say is that when you are negotiating off-market properties, a lot of people will say figure out their pain point, but I would say figure out the motivation of the seller and realize that it’s not always money.In fact, a lot of times it’s not money. Sometimes people, their motivation to move is that they don’t want to have to clean out the house or they want it to close quickly or that they want to be able to take some Weird part of the kitchen that was where their kids’ little things were drawn as they were growing. There’s some weird things that people want to negotiate in that if you can tell that that is a main motivation, lean into those things and solve that problem for them and that will make you just a lot more likely to close the deal if you’re making it a win-win for both parties.

Ashley Kehr:Beth, we had Mindy Jensen on the podcast before. She’s the host of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast and she gave us some insight into how your net worth can grow from Liv and Flips because that has been her primary real estate investing strategy. So looking back over the last 15 years, has doing Live & Flips attributed to that net worth growth?

Beth Decler:Oh, for sure. Because when you’re putting all of your money, literally all your money into assets that really retain their value and continue to build equity even just on their own. Yeah, I think it’s a lot more realistic way and a lot more, I mean, sure way to control what you’re gaining net worthwise.

Tony Robinson:Now, Beth, you mentioned that you’re at least for the meantime done with maybe flipping up and doing the live-in flips. So as you think about what’s next for you as a real estate investor, what’s top of mind for you? What strategies or tactics are you looking to tackle next?

Beth Decler:I am obsessed with storage units. That is my favorite, favorite real estate. It’s hard because being rural, there’s a ton of mom and pop type storage units, which are great. And it’s just something that’s hands off. I love flipping and I love renovating and all of that, but we have a farm that we have to build again now that we’ve just moved. So something that is more hands off, something that I can delegate, something that is just going to kind of keep running and be residual income, that would definitely be my next goal, but I’m not going to go out of my way. I got to settle in here first and sell one other house first.

Ashley Kehr:Well, Beth, we would love to have you back when you get that first self-storage deal to walk us through that new strategy for you. But thank you so much for joining us today. Can you let everyone know where they can reach out to you and find out more information?

Beth Decler:Yeah, I am online. Mostly homesteading related stuff, but Beth the clerk on Instagram. And I do also have a podcast called The Profitable Homestead, which isn’t leaning towards real estate, but a lot of business, a lot of farm life if you’re into that kind of stuff.

Ashley Kehr:Well, awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time today to share your experience and your real estate investing journey with us. I’m Ashley, he’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.