Brett:

Welcome to the capital gains tax solutions podcast where we believe most high net worth individuals and those who help them struggle with clarifying their capital gains tax deferral options. Not having a clear plan is the enemy and using a proven tax deferral strategy, such as the deferred sales trust is the best way for you to exit your highly appreciated real estate or other assets not using a 1031 exchange. I'm your host Brett Swarts. In each episode, I am joined by some of the best real estate, financial, business, and wealth minds in the world where they share their ideas, deal stories, and inspiration. So together we can make complex tax deferral strategies simple and passive income plans achievable. We're also streaming on Expert CRE secrets, from time to time we have guests that really fit both audiences, and today's guest is not going to disappoint. His name I'll tell you in a second, but his focus has been on helping people buy and sell a property for nearly two decades here in the Sacramento region. He has experience as a broker of record for multiple brokerages, a franchise owner and investor, and a property manager uniquely positioned him to serve his clients’ interests like few others, as a top-performing salesperson and he custom marketing strategies. He helps his clients sell their homes for more than 5.4% more than the average agent. As an industry veteran, he is often an early adopter of technology and business practices and is a team leader and a mentor of other agents at the fastest growing real estate company in America which happens to be EXP as well as happens to be the brokerage where I also have my license as well. Please welcome the show with me, Barry Mathis. Hey Barry, how are you doing? 

Barry:

Hey, doing excellent man. Thanks for the invite. Always glad to talk about real estate. I love that. It's been good to me and I love talking about it.

Brett:

Absolutely. Well excited to dive into the story here with you and get to know you a little bit more and share some wisdom with the audience. We are going to be talking basically about multifamily investing, we'll be talking a little bit about what Barry is seeing in the marketplace. And also a little bit about EXP, we'll touch on that. Barry to start out, would you give our listeners or getting to know you for the first time a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Barry:

You know, focus on me is kind of an interesting word because I do a lot of different things. And I've got some friends that are very successful in business. And they've always said, Why don't you focus on one niche?'' So over time, that niche has developed into investment property. However, I'm all over in investment property because I just like learning and I like learning about real estate. And real estate is such a great industry because you can do all types of it, you know, and you have so many different roles you can play in the industry. So that's, that's kind of a little bit of background for me, you know, I have served a lot of different roles. And that's brought me a lot of experiences. And you know, it really broadened my knowledge of it. So I didn't go to school too much to learn all of that. I just did it. Sometimes that takes me longer to learn than other people. Sometimes I fail at things repeatedly. But you know, over the years, it's been pretty good. And right now it's been a good season for me.

Brett:

Love it. Thanks, Barry for sharing that. And we'll dive into more of the lessons learned over the years and in ways that you uniquely help your clients. But before we go there let’s take one step back. Let’s go back to the high school days, of the university days. And I believe we've all been given certain gifts in this life. And these gifts I believe have been given to us to be a blessing to help others. Some people call them the strength, some people call these superpowers. So I'm wondering, Barry, what are those one or two things that you believe you were given? And how does that help how you help and bless people today?

Barry:

I'm gonna misquote this a little bit, but it's from one of the sales trainers. I think Chet Holmes, and it's a pigheaded stubbornness. And, and so I have a pigheaded stubbornness and that I go after something and I keep going after. And so that willingness to continue to do stuff even after the first few times have it worked out is probably my superpower.

Brett:

It's a great superpower. Maybe the honey badger comes to mind, right? And if you've seen some study of the honey badger but that's always a relentless inspiration for me if I'm going you know, let me go somewhere where and be with people who are being relentless and are pursuing their goals with a passion. So I love that. So now let's dive right into multifamily investing. So Barry, what are you seeing right now? And what's, what's the biggest secret to finding deals for your clients?

Barry:

You know, I think one of the fun things I'm doing right now, a lot of times I like working with people that are just getting started. I figure a lot of people that are very sophisticated and are working on 440 unit apartments, they don't really need my help. And one of my things is I really love to be valued and so helping people get their first investment property is something I love to do or transitioning them from a single-family into a multifamily. Maybe they've got four or five or 10 rentals and we take them into a multifamily right now. I've got a client that's using an FHA loan to buy a four-unit complex. So a four-unit property so that he's going to live in one unit and rent out the other three, that type of house hacking is all the rage in various forms. And I love that that's a great opportunity.

Brett:

I think that's so smart. And it's, it's often overlooked. But that you can get fixed financing for 30 years at some of the lowest rates ever. By being an owner-occupant up to one to four units, okay. And now you've locked in. I mean, if you think about even just inflation, if you keep that thing for, for those that amount of years, and then you eat, you live in it for a couple of years, and you could always move out. And now it's just an investment property, you really don't have a lot of downsides. Any thoughts on that, Barry?

Barry:

Yeah, the main thing that stops people from doing it, and what would stop my wife from doing it is that my wife wouldn't let me. So most of the time you find those properties, they're not as nice as what you could afford. If you weren't doing that, right. So you could afford a Granite Bay or Roseville, Rocklin house, but when you get into the multifamily, you're going to live in a lower neighborhood, you're going to live in Citrus Heights, or antelope or something like that. And for that, to be able to afford those other three units. And so, you know, I think people have to be willing to sacrifice today in order to have a better future for tomorrow. And that's been true throughout history, not just during this season, but it's especially true now.

Brett:

Yeah, 100%, right, you've got to be willing to do what no one else is willing to do. So later, you can do what no one else can do. It's kind of announced by Dave Ramsey and a number of people. So love that. Okay, so using FHA loans to house hack, and then you love value, being valued, and helping those that are most in need. I think that's actually motivated to get started and or transition from single-family into multifamily. I love that. So the next thing would be just the overall sacramental market. I mean, what are you seeing? What's your take on this last year? Is it like anything you've ever seen before?

Barry:

The market is definitely hot, you know, going up 13-14% over the year. I think in particular, the space that I look at the most on their rental properties, and property management and things like that are I use something called a duplex index. And so if you if somebody wants to shoot me an email, I'll be glad to send it to him. But my, the duplex index is basically I look at the last 90 days of sales for duplexes, and then I clean that data, but I'm looking at what was the rental income on those duplexes, and then how much the duplexes sell for, and I take out a gross cap rate if you want to if there is such a thing. And then I divide and then subtract for what would be the standard operating expenses. And so basically, we pull out a percent and a half are 2%, for that gross operating expenses, that takes you back down to the net, and you're left with a number that tells you what are people paying for an investment in this market. And from there, you can use that number to either judge an investment property as either being a good investment or a bad investment, riskier, more reward, however, you want to do that. So that duplex index is kind of my base of how I measure the other properties.

Brett:

Excellent duplex index. Yeah, I haven't heard of that one before. But I like that a lot.

Barry:

We, and by the way, the cap rate right now for Sacramento is about six and a half. And so minus your expenses. So that means that your cap rate is going to be around five. And that's pretty rich. You know, most people, you're looking at a gross rent multiplier of probably 16. And, you know, so we all know we're trying to target probably 10 gross rent multipliers and a cap rate closer to eight, between seven and eight, will usually cash flow nicely. So yeah, that's a pretty rich environment. Going back to what you were saying earlier about what we're looking at right now.

Brett:

Yeah, absolutely. By the way, you can learn more about Barry Mathis at brokerbarry.com. So I just listed a property up in Placerville, it's a multifamily property, 15 units. And exactly right. I mean, it's about a 4.72 cap. But one thing that's kind of shifting is it's in a high fire zone like or high-risk fire zone. And these insurers now, especially in the foothills are canceling insurance or saying, we're not going to insure you anymore at these low rates, you need to go somewhere else or pay these, you know, really big rates and so we're doing multiple insurance quotes to really figure that out. Have you seen any challenges there as it pertains to like insurance and places in fire zones?

Barry:

Absolutely. So one thing going back to that cap rate, it's going to be a little richer cap rate, lower for the seller. When the property count goes up, the number of units goes up, you have to pay more for those properties usually. And then the other thing on the insurance, absolutely, I just did a property up in Pollock pines, and that was almost a dealer deal killer for us. However, you know, we found a company from Oregon, that's wanting to get into the California market. And they give us a great rate. And so I think that's what you have to look for if you have to with insurance, in particular, you have to find a company that's wanting to grow their business. And, you know, just like a general contractor that's wanting to grow his business, he'll do it for cheaper than the other guy will. And so you have to find companies that are wanting to be in the market, because they don't come out and say they don't want to be in the market, they just raise the rates, which has the same effect.

Brett:

Yeah, 100% they got to be motivated to get in. So could you share with us who that company is?

Barry:

I know you're gonna ask that, and I do not know, but I can dig it up and send it to you. I apologize.

Brett:

Okay. And we'll put that in the show notes. But that's a great point, get to find the companies that are motivated, versus just sitting on what they can, and sometimes insurance gets overlooked. But it's, it's vitally important that you have quality assurance, but you're getting a good, fair, reasonable rate. So okay, right. So I agree with you. I think the cap rates are around 5%. Now, the thing that really you have to understand is the ability to do the upside. I said these cap rates can be deceiving, right? It's income minus expenses, right, divided by price. And that's yet it's your cap rate, which is also known as the unleveraged rate of returns kind of like cash on cash return. But the challenge becomes, how much can you grow those rents, right. So there are a couple of things that chat on here, there's rent control. And the second thing is, how much room is that to grow up because the cap rate at the sales price might be a five, but you might be able to grow it to a six and a half like the Placerville deal we have at 4.72. But we have a clear, I think a clear path of what's called closed caption was called the loss to lease, where you're able to raise the rents to the units that are already achieving that without having to do anything to it. Now you're at a 6.5 cap. Right. So talk to us about pro forma and talk to us about rent control and how you're kind of matching those two up?

Barry:

Well, I think that you just have to remember, and just to clarify, you did a good job explaining it. But the cap rate is the net operating income, which is the income minus all the expenses, and net operating income, divided by the purchase price of the property. But remember, on the purchase price side, if you have to do a bunch of improvements to the property, then you might as well just add those to your purchase price when you do that calculation. So if you buy a $500,000 property, and you need to do 100,000, in repairs to raise the rents, then you need to really consider that being a $600,000 purchase price. So as you're doing that math on the back of the napkin, so I'm not exactly sure what would happen on the tax basis. But I think that's the big thing is you just have to look at how much are you going to have to put into it, the rent control. Frankly, I don't think that's as big an issue as people think it is. Because the increases that are allowed, are fairly generous. I mean, I think that people overreact to that, I'm much more concerned about not paying rent than I am having not being able to raise the rent. And what we're finding is that even not paying rent has not really been the issue that people thought it was going to be. Most people that have a job and they are going to work are going to pay their rent. And so, you know, that's just the way most property owners are seeing it right now, just another reason to make sure that you probably stay in, B-grade and eighth-grade properties, instead of trying to find the cheapest property, in the worst area of town to get a high return, then those clients, those are the ones that we are seeing, just flat out not paying rent. Be careful with buying stuff that you like and don't it's not always about buying the best cap rate because with the best cap rate often comes higher risk.

Brett:

Yep, very well said. What I like to say is what's called the loss to lease meaning you don't have to do anything to the property or any improvements. I mean, maybe you know, if a tenant moves out, you might have to repaint a wall or you know, but you're not doing any major cap acts you know, countertops or flooring or appliances. It's just simply raising the rent. For the California rent law, essentially, we're looking at somewhere around six to 8% per year that you can actually raise on a current tenant based upon the CPI and based upon the new rent control laws. Now the challenge is if they don't move out, you can only get that but if they move out and you can just raise the rent on a brand new tenant, there's no cap on that which is really nice. Now the opposite of that would be, what Barry's referring to, which is actually improving the property, right? And you're absolutely right, you guys will add that if I can't raise the rents by $100, unless I put $10,000 into that unit, right, you might as well take 10,000 times, however many units and add that to the price and get your true, post-renovation cap rate. So make sure you're clarifying, is it a value add that they put in, or just do capturing loss to lease. Any other thoughts on that, Barry?

Barry:

Just mainly, that loss to lease is something that affects almost all small mom-and-pop operators. Because I mean, they'll literally come out and tell you, I just didn't want to raise their rent, I just didn't want to do this. And they're not necessarily doing it like a business person would make decisions. I mean, you wouldn't see McDonald's say, well, we're just not going to raise the burger prices, because we don't want people to pay more. The fact of the matter is, it costs more in taxes to operate a property and more in regulation to operate a property, and you have to consistently raise those rents on a regular basis every year. And when you buy into a property that hasn't done that for 20 years, because they like the person that's in there. You know, that's, what creates that opportunity to bring those rates up.

Brett:

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. So great. Now let's shift a little bit to EXP. So we both are at EXP, right? I joined about nine months ago, I think you may be a couple of years before, but could you tell us a little bit about your story? What was brokerage like before EXP, and then what has brokerage been since you joined the XP?

Barry:

Well, sometimes I get a little excited about this because the EXP has been so good to me. It's just an awesome company. It really revolutionized the way I did real estate and I'm a real estate broker. I've owned an intero franchise, and I've worked at Keller Williams, I've worked at REMAX gold. And then I've had my own property management company and ran my own brokerage and I cannot run a brokerage for the little bitty cap that I pay to Keller Williams, I mean to EXP, so I have a $16,000 cap, and have worn all of those hats before, I will gladly pay EXP $16,000 to take all my liability on all the liability of the team that I run, and all the liability of every transaction that I do 16 grand is cheap. And if you've ever had battles in those areas, then I'm gladly paying that 16 grand. But then lo and behold, this year, they turned around and gave me the 16 grand back. I've never had a broker give me anything back. This company gives me stock, they give me rev share eight different ways to make money. And I just came up with two more ways to make money. And so I'm launching a new division of that where we're going to be empowering our agents to also get their NMLS license and make money there as well. And so that's just been an opportunity for that. It's just been incredible. The 16 they gave me back $16,000 because I hit some performance targets. You know, at my old brokerages, if I did really good and had an incredible year, they might give me a better split, like take five points off my split. And this company, they gave me back every dime, I paid them. That is dead freaking amazing. And so it just goes to show that the company is really looking out for the agents. Well, they should because I own the company, they gave me stock, so the agents are the owners. So again, I could go on for a long time on this subject. But just to let it know, this is coming from a guy that can run his own brokerage and has run his own brokerage and doesn't really need to be in a brokerage. The brokerage that we're at is the smartest choice for any real estate agent that knows how to do the math. Their problem is a lot of agents let ego get in the way of their brain functioning and calculating the numbers. And so they go with something other than math to make their decisions. And so hey, I get it. Not every decision about math. Some decisions are about ego. Some people shop at Nordstrom even though you know I can buy a perfectly good pair of pants at Sam's Club and they go buy the same pair of pants in the mall for $200. I get it. That's fine, a perfectly good choice. I just choose to pay myself and my family and build my future more than building Dave Linares’s future, Gary Keller's future. That is, that's just not what I want to do is build somebody else's future in that way. No more so than I would want to rent a home and pay someone else's mortgage. It's just not something I'm cut out to do in real estate.