Bill Ham - Creative Financing To Acquire 402 Units
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Back in 2005, Bill Ham walked away from his lucrative career as a corporate pilot. After buying his first deal via creative financing, he quit his job and went full-time into real estate. He grew from $300/mo in cashflow and 10k in savings and built a large portfolio of single and multi-family rental properties. He later built out a large property management company with 16 employees and his peak. He bought his first 402 units using only creative financing and now teaches others how to do the same. He's also the author of 2 books - "Creative Cash" & "Real Estate Raw". He is also the COO of Broadwell Property Group in Atlanta, GA.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Mastering Creative Financing: Uncover new ways to secure real estate deals.
- Unveiling Spy Techniques: Discover covert methods for creative financing success.
- Navigating Market Cycles: Learn the crucial role of market understanding in real estate deals.
- Problem-Solving for Sellers: Unlock the secrets to resolving seller's challenges through creative financing.
- Residential Agents' Creative Financing: Explore innovative approaches tailored for residential real estate agents.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:06:36 - The Value of Time and Respect in the Workplace
00:09:13 - Humble Beginnings and Creative Financing
00:11:58 - Overcoming Embarrassment and Success
00:12:11 - The Power of Seller Financing and Lease Options
00:12:15 - The Aha Moment and Creative Cash
00:13:22 - The SPY Technique
00:15:31 - Transitioning from Residential to Investor Mindset
00:19:32 - Choosing the Right Market for Multifamily Investment
00:23:45 - Simplified Market Selection Process
00:25:38 - Finding Deals and Creating Value
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Bill Ham
And it's like my time is valuable, too. And I want you to respect my time and say the job is from here to here and give me parameters and I'll show up and I'll do the work. And that's great. You know, he had this kind of whatever it takes. You're part of the team. Do it. Fine, then treat me that way all the way to the end. Not when it comes down to just doing the work. And then when the money shows up, you want to remember that I'm an employee. That's where I had a problem with that. You.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some REL Freedom together. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of REL Freedom, real estate leverage Freedom. We talk about building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I am your host, Mike Swenson. And if you want to get started on your journey for real estate investing, you can go to our website, freedom through real estate. That's freedomtheralestate.com. We've got a lot of just basic information to hopefully get people started on their journey. For today's guest, we've got Bill Ham here, and Bill is going to talk a lot about scaling and growing creative financing apartments. There's so much stuff that you've done. You're very well versed. Also have two books, which, for those people that are watching, you can see right behind him, conveniently placed. We've got creative cash and real estate raw. So you certainly are a wealth of information on real estate investing and excited to dig into your journey. Bill, welcome to the show.
Bill Ham
Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Thanks, Mike. I've been here 20 years. Been doing multifamily for 20 years now. So started off in 2005, I was a pilot by trade, flying airplanes, and I figured out I was not such a good employee. I was a great pilot. I love flying airplanes. That was fun. I just didn't like being told when and where to do it. So I saw friends of mine sitting around and they were flipping houses. And I thought, all right, something's wrong here. This person, my friend, who's normal person like me, we're all at the same bar, right, having the same drink the night before, and this person gets up and goes out and flips a house. And in one or two transactions was making what I was making all year working. And I thought, all right, something's wrong. With this scenario. So I spent about a year sort of studying, figuring out real estate, and I bought a duplex. My very first deal, it was cash flowing, a whopping $300, and that's if nothing broke. And I had saved up $10,000 life savings. And that's what I went into real estate full time with. So after a year of studying, reading books, rich dad, poor dad, all that fun stuff, I went and turned into my two week notice, and I walked away from aviation and just went into real estate full time. And 20 years, what, 19 and a half years later, I'm still here, for better, for worse.
Mike Swenson
So for you, then, it sounds like be your own boss, set your own schedule, unlimited potential. That freedom piece is really what kind of drew you into that versus having to be where you're at when you're assigned as a pilot.
Bill Ham
Yeah, absolutely. Those were the thoughts going into it. I will tell you that life is not always that way. And I kind of laugh. And I've been in the real estate business for about 20 years now, multifamily, from single family to multifamily. I started single family and went into multifamily, and I've been teaching in this space for over ten years now, about twelve years or so. And my favorite is when someone comes on and says, oh, I want to be totally free, no boss, and make my own schedule and all this kind of stuff. And I think, ooh, you've got a lot to learn because being an entrepreneur is really actually not like that. Everybody thinks it is. Everybody wants it to be. I thought it would be, and I realize it's not. So what I would tell your listeners is that doing what we do, what you do, what I do for a living, is a lifestyle. It's something that I think you want to enjoy. I think it's something that you want to be kind of somewhat called to because there are days when you're not free and there are days when there's not that much money. And if you're only there for the money, you're only there for those sorts of things, passion, things like that, that'll leave you high and dry. So I think you need to be prepared for days that are not what everyone says that they are. It's kind of like you want freedom. Well, okay. But at work, you're free to go home at 05:00 you're free on Saturday and Sunday, you're free two weeks out of the year. As an entrepreneur, you're on all the time. You don't go home at 05:00 but you also might be off on Tuesday. Maybe you're working on Sunday. It's a lifestyle, so I think people need to understand that when they kind of look at what we do and it's great and love it, but it's not for some of those reasons of now that I'm my own boss, I get to do whatever I want to do whenever and tell everybody else what to do. Yeah, it's not like that.
Mike Swenson
I'm avoiding the nine to five to work.
Bill Ham
It's a good way to put it. Yeah. Right. You may enjoy the 24/7 infinitely more than the nine to five. And so I think it's all about fulfillment, personally.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And for somebody that's had a w two for quite some time, when the boss asks you to work on Wednesday night at 07:00 p.m. You're like, I'm doing them a favor by, I'm not seeing the benefit of doing that work. But if I choose to work at 07:00 p.m. Because it's going to help grow my business, I'm okay with that because I'm growing my business versus helping grow their business on my time, my off time.
Bill Ham
Exactly. And that was really actually one of my aha. Moments that got me to ultimately be okay quitting my job. And I realized I just wasn't a good employee. And that's why I was okay quitting the job because, yeah, I had a boss that wanted us to work the same way he did, and he was sort of the owner of the company. Right. And he wanted us to be in there for the sun up and there till late. And if he was working, he wanted us to all work and all that. Great. I don't remember getting a portion of that company. I don't remember getting any. I remember getting a paycheck, you know what I mean? So he wants us to work like an owner, but he wanted to pay us like employees. And that's where I kind of the rub. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't work hard and you shouldn't be a good, but I'm not saying these things. I'm just saying for me personally, that was a rub I couldn't get past. I couldn't swallow that. And it's like my time is valuable, too. And I want you to respect my time and say the job is from here to here and give me parameters and I'll show up and I'll do the work. And that's great. He had this kind of whatever it takes. You're part of the team. Do it. Fine, then treat me that way all the way to the end. Not when it comes down to just doing the work. And then when the money shows up, you want to remember that I'm an employee. That's where I had a problem with that. And it's like, all right, if I'm an employee and you're going to pay me like one, treat me like one. Let me go. And o'clock. Don't ask me to stay on here till 07:00 on a Wednesday. And then there's no benefit to that to me. I'm with you. That was my kind of, okay, I can do bad all on my own. If I'm going to have to sit here and work till 07:00 on a Wednesday, it can be for my company as well as somebody else's. And so I'm with you. That was my sort of transition moment into my own business.
Mike Swenson
And for some people, you're willing to do that and build stuff on the side for a year or a couple of years or five years. Some people do more of this. Let's just jump right in and go through that learning curve as fast as possible. So talk about kind of that early start you had a little bit of education, a little bit of knowledge, a lot of excitement. So talk about those early days of kind of building and scaling.
Bill Ham
Yeah, trial by know, I got an education and I kind of say education jokingly because it was a function of just reading books. I remember my first real piece of education was a VCR tape from Carlton's sheets that I bought. I'm aging myself now that I bought at a garage sale and I had to literally rewind it and put in the deal. That was my first piece of education. It was terrible. And that's what I got started with. And so, yes, it was very difficult in the first some years because that was before we had a lot of educators and a lot of coaches and people out there. And even still I didn't have the money for any of that. When I was getting started, I quit job. So I was living on ramen noodles and any little bit of rent I collect while building the business. So yeah, it was very difficult and I had to go out and learn a lot. And so my 1st 400 units, 402 units exactly I did with all creative financing. So that's how I got myself into the business back in that sort of post five going into eight world. Right. And it's very similar to where we're at right now. Because the lending dried up, and a lot of the lending is sort of post eight through 2012 or so. 2011 was really tough, right? And so I had to do all creative financing, which is also convenient because I was broke. So I didn't have any money, didn't have a job, needed to figure out how to do real estate. So I was doing seller financing. Lease options, match lease options, American Express, don't do that last one. But everything I could possibly do to get into deals, I was getting them done. Partnerships, all kind of crazy stuff. And so that was kind of my beginning and kind of how I got started. Went from single family, did that for two or three years, flipped houses. I built up a portfolio of about 40 single family that I was holding, started getting rid of those, transitioned into multifamily. Multifamily was, again, small to large. I did not jump straight up to the big stuff. My first real, I call it real multifamily, was nine units, and then I did a 20 unit, and then a 27 unit, and then 44, and then 100, 152. Went on up into the larger stuff. So very humble beginnings. Did not start off with anything particularly in my favor. Did not go to the top, did not start doing big deals. Started off very much like most of the listeners here. Maybe a couple of houses, you got a little experience, and I just grew up from there. So that's how I got going. Like I said, been here ever since. That was the first several years of my business.
Mike Swenson
So you're telling me that creative financing, that's all the rage now, wasn't invented just a couple of years ago? It's fun to hear people that have been in the business a while are like, no, creative financing isn't new here. It's been around for a long time. So talk a little bit about how those conversations go with sellers. I know everybody's kind of got their little take about how they approach it and the best way to do that. But talk about how you approach somebody, because for people that are newer in the business, or even people trying to scale, they want to tell me this one line that I have to walk down. And with creative financing, it's kind of like I've got a toolbox of options, and so I could really pull out the hammer, the screwdriver, the wrench, you name it. And I think that's what trips people up about creative financing is I have so many things I can choose. I don't understand them all, and I don't know what to do. So how can you help folks? Kind of navigate those waters.
Bill Ham
Well, first off, read my book. Besides that, actually, in the book I answer the question you're asking right there because, yes, let's back up. Right? So I did my first deals, all creative financing, back in, like I said, 2005 through 812, all that back then, I didn't know that what I was doing was a good thing. I was doing lease options, I was doing seller financing. I didn't know they were called that. And I thought, this is how stupid people do real estate. This is how poor people do real estate. Everybody else at that seminar I went to, man, they're all writing checks. They're getting loans. They're just buying real estate, cash money. And I'm this idiot over here doing lease options and seller financing. I was very embarrassed to talk about it. In the very beginning of my career, I was terribly embarrassed to talk about any kind of creative financing because one day I had gotten up to several hundred units and somebody really was asking me, how did you do that? How'd you get all these units? And finally I was like, all right, listen, I did seller financing, I did lease option. And all of a sudden I look up and there's this whole crowd of people all standing around me, like taking notes. And that's when my aha. Moment went off. And I was like, wait a second, you all want to hear about this? And everyone's like, yes, my God, tell us how you did this stuff. Yeah. Creativity has been around forever. It's how I built my career. This book, Creative Cash, was launched about two and a half years ago. It was written over twelve years ago. I wrote this book back right after the eight 2012 recession. It used to be a home study course. I was a terrible salesperson, never did any home studies, threw it in the closet and it sat there for almost ten years. And then, well, that ten years has been the upcycle in the market. Right. Well, first off, how you can tell when a market is going to shift? Interest rates go up. So that's how I started going. It's market cycles. And that's why I brought the book out about two years ago, because I knew we were going to go into this market cycle where creative financing becomes very prevalent. So it's easy to predict. Right. And so now, getting to the answer of your question here, where's that one thing that we can use to navigate this technique? It's easy. It's what I call the spy technique. All right? This is an acronym, seller property. You, that's the line in the sand that sets people that are good with creative financing apart from those who are not. So it's all about making an offer or using creative financing to create value. All right. And there's the catch right there. So number one, creative financing, you really hit on this. It's a pile of tools. Well, the first step is a diagnosis. What tool do we need right there. So analyze the deal, break it down. When the deal doesn't work and you say these numbers don't work. Okay, stop. And let's see now. Apply the spy technique. You want to ask what's going on and how is my offer, whether it's a lease option or seller financing or whatever, going to create value for the seller. First, the property. Second, you last and follow that order and you will increase your creative financing 100 fold. Getting accepted. So step number one, what's up with the seller? What is the seller selling the property for? What do they want? What's going on? Are they distressed personally? Do they need the money? Do they not need the money? Burned out landlord. What's going on with the seller? Is my offer going to create value and solve a problem for that seller? So step one, what problems the seller have? Step two, what's up with the property? Is it in bad shape? Is it occupancy? Is it deferred maintenance? Okay, is my offer going to solve that problem? And then lastly, is this going to solve my problem? And only last. Most people reverse this, and so they say, I want to do master lease options. I want to do seller financing. Who cares what you want? You don't have the real estate. That's irrelevant. Right. 90% of a good deal is seller, 10% real estate, 90% seller. Right. So you've got to have a willing seller. No willing seller, doesn't matter. Right. So step, that's what I'm saying. These steps here. Step one is figure out what's up with the seller. An offer that creates value and solves their problems. Second for the property, third for you. Don't start with you if you'll do that. That's your one thing that will move you forward in creative financing tremendously. And that's the key. Just always remember that creative financing being a tool, tools solve problems. That's what creative financing does, solves problems.
Mike Swenson
That's one of the things that, as a former residential real estate agent and somebody who spent a long time in residential, I felt like I had this brain block trying to go from residential sales to investor and think about these different creative financing options. And I remember I was at a seminar one time and asked a question and the speaker was like, oh, I just love you, residential agents. Because it's like we think this is how the deal should happen.
Bill Ham
Right.
Mike Swenson
Because this is how we were trained. We do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. And then we have the closing and investment. Real estate is just so different. And so if you're a residential agent or have spent a long time doing residential sales, it takes a little bit of unwinding to relearn a different way to approach these types of things because you just can't get past the. But this is how we're supposed to do it as a residential transaction. And that was a big challenge for me.
Bill Ham
Exactly. That's a great way to put it. Yeah. In resi, there's that form. You got your form contract, your form letter. Everybody wants to do. Yeah. In commercial or in small multi or in creative financing, you have to kind of throw all that out and just stop and immediately look at problem solving. Why is the seller, and so if you're a realtor. Right. By the way, if you're a realtor, you really want to get into understanding creative financing. If you're an investor, same comment, but really for different reasons. If you're a realtor right now, you're going to have trouble getting your clients financed for a lot of these loans, especially when we're moving away from single family, we're talking commercial use, four or five units, things like that. Right. So right there, your seller may have a distressed asset. You're going to want to learn the underwriting. Right. You're going to want to kind of have to learn the math a little bit. And if you see that that deal is not going to work out for traditional financing, that's where you, the realtor, really want to start trying to educate your seller and say, hey, look, a buyer is going to have trouble giving you the price you want and getting a loan. So let's look at some other ways we can get you the price you want. But maybe we have to kind of give on terms, other things of that nature. Right. So that's a lot. Largely what I do with creative financing is to try and get the seller the price they want. But as I tell everybody, give on price, take on terms. So I'm trying to get you the price you want, but it's going to be on my terms. Length, down payment, interest rate, things of this nature. So, yeah, if you're a realtor, you can read my book, but you really want to kind of get educated on some of these different techniques so that you can bring those to sellers. If you're an investor, you're going to learn to make these offers or need to make these offers where you're offering creative problem solving offers that don't include going over to, and I will say.
Mike Swenson
Too, having some more experience, not as much as residential, but as you move to the larger properties, there is a lot more opportunity for creativity because that's probably how that owner got the property was maybe through some creativity. If they have that property, they're maybe more business savvy. They understand putting a deal together and so they're willing to be more flexible with that. Where, yeah, if it's single family residential, that owner just may not be thinking in the same way as somebody who owns a small commercial building because they might have that business savvy or they might have needed the creativity to get the property themselves, so they're much more flexible. I've certainly learned that being in the business.
Bill Ham
Yeah, but even I found on the site either or commercial realtors are the ones that typically need to be educated. So again, as a buyer, hey, first thought on your realtor's mind, how are they getting paid? Hey, as a realtor, first thought in your mind, how are you getting commission out of this thing? Right? So whether you're the buyer or the agent, you need to be thinking in regards of how are you getting your commission, how are you getting your realtors commission and how is this going to work? So either side, highly recommend you get educated on these techniques. It's going to really open up a lot of opportunities for you to solve problems and get deals closed, kind of.
Mike Swenson
Bouncing back to your journey and growth in terms of market selection. Because I know as people are trying to figure out the types of properties where they're located, a lot of times people get hung up on where am I going to invest? So talk a little bit about your story of how you chose the properties as far as the locations and how.
Bill Ham
That'S maybe evolved over time on a macro conversation. So when we talk about market, because a lot of times when people start getting into multifamily, start looking at other cities, other states, and they imagine investing in places further away, typically, I think in residential, people kind of focus a little more closer to where they are in their own town. So if we're discussing the city, the market, I use several different metrics in there. Now, there is a lot of high level conversation that you can get into about selecting a multifamily market, and those are going to be on topics like job growth, rent growth, population growth, landlord friendly laws and all those sorts of things. And those are all great conversations and great topics to delve into. But I think there's a much more basic thing to kind of look at. Two things. Can you find something to buy there and can you get there? Those would be the two major things. I work with my students. All right, so let's say I'm in Atlanta and all of a sudden I say, well, gosh, I heard, and I'm making this up. Dallas, Texas is the market for me. Okay, fine. Two comments. Can you go there on a regular basis and can you find deals there? If the answer is no to those two questions, that's not the market. Forget population growth, job growth, all that stat stuff. All right. So what I'm saying is, number one, can you go there? You need to be physically showing up in your market, wherever that is, every few weeks, once a month or so, or you need to be able to go there quickly. If a realtor calls you up and says, hey, I've got a hot deal. Now here's a big difference between multifamily and single family, and there's lots of them in the realty world. I'll just hit this one quickly. It's really about buying deals that are not for sale today. As I always tell all my students, if a deal, a multifamily deal, specifically days on market, if it's still sitting around on the market, chances are it's been picked over. It's not a great deal. So what you're doing is you're trying to get to know these realtors so that when that brand new listing walks in the door, that realtor is going to pick up the phone on that call the short list of buyers. Right. Everybody's got that know, like and trust list, and they're going to call the top couple of buyers that they've been working with. Now that's not to say they can force the seller to sell, but they're going to call those first buyers quick pass the deal. If they can't sell it there, then it's going on out to the main market. Right. Your agenda, get on that shortlist. How do you do that? Show up, right. And people want to kind of do this dollar for dollars and call the realtor and all this. And I always kind of tell everybody, look, it's not a date. You're not trying to date the realtor. Right. These people are busy. They have stuff to do. Don't call them up on a Monday morning and start talking about their friends and their family and try and build commonality. That's creepy. Show up for a property tour. That's the magic. Show up, meet the realtor, do a walk through, just like you would in single family, except same in multifamily. You're going to show up and you're going to do that property tour. That's why I say it's key when choosing a market that you can physically get to because you're competing with the local. Number one competitor in a market is always local, right. The person that should get up, go meet the realtor, take a coffee break and go tour the property. You're competing with that individual. And so choosing a market too far away where you're just dialing for dollars, you're never really going to be competitive in that market. So that's the number one thing I would say for choosing a market. Can you show up? Second of all, is there anything for sale in that area? Right? So on that note, I always tell everybody, I'll explain this quickly. Pick a center starting point, like your home, your house, your address, whatever. Draw a circle around that. Inside that circle, you want to find three deals a week. Right? So I live in Atlanta. I would draw a circle around Atlanta, and I'd say I got to find three deals a week inside of this circle. Three what? Duplexes, ten units, 100 units, whatever I'm trying to buy, I got to find three a week to analyze, to be in the business on a regular basis. So I'm going to now allow that circle to be as big as it needs to be to find three deals a week. And now, inside that circle is my market. Right. And that could be a collection of cities. So number one, can you show up to this circle? Number two, how many cities are inside of this circle that provide you with three deals a week? Analysis wise, that's all you need to do for market selection. That's all you need to be worried about. If you can do that, you're off to the races.
Mike Swenson
I think so many times people get hung up on the next hot market, the perfect market. And it's like every piece of real estate in the United States is owned by somebody. So it's not know. In the midwest, nobody owns the real estate, but in the southeast, everybody does. Somebody owns it everywhere. So you can make money anywhere. Most it's. And then also know. I kind of think about this from like an educational, necessarily. I'm not a graduate level real estate investor yet. I'm a kindergartner right. And so I got to go through the lessons I'd learn as a kindergartner to go to elementary school, to middle school, to high school, to college, to then get further down the road so you can find that top emerging amazing market that's just printing money later. But you got to go through the lessons and the learning curve first that's going to help you find those great properties. So don't get hung up finding the perfect market and the perfect property yet. Figure out how do I get in and get learning.
Bill Ham
Yes. And even in your own area, you can find sellers that still may make that deal a good deal by helping the seller creating value. It's not always about the market. You can find really good deals in not such great markets with the right person, the right structure, the right creativity. So, yeah, don't always think it's just everything's market driven. I agree with you completely, and I'm cracking up because I always laugh. Same comment you made. It's like, look, everybody already owns this stuff. I always laugh on the inside. When people show up, they go, I found a deal. No, you didn't. That thing's been sitting there for 30 years. You'd find, it's like you didn't jump out of the bushes a minute going like, surprise. No, that apartment complex was built in the 70s, man. It's been sitting right there the whole time. Right? You didn't find anything. You may have now encountered a seller that for whatever reason today is willing to sell at some reasonable price. Fine. But yeah, let's understand that all the deals are already owned by everybody. You're not finding anything. You're not finding deals, you're still finding people. And it still comes down to the people in the business, and it's creating value for those people. If you can do that, markets and all this other stuff are a great distant second to simply creating value to a seller. That's the key. And again, it doesn't matter what market trend if you can do that.
Mike Swenson
So as somebody is kind of scaling now, so let's just say somebody in your shoes. What's important to you as you're looking about the next five or ten years? You've obviously been in real estate for 20 years. You've got a ton of experience, you got a ton of knowledge, you're educating a lot of people and helping them. But what are you looking for? For growth, for your portfolio here?
Bill Ham
Deep, personally, and this is kind of the exact same thing I'm telling everyone else to be looking for quality so flight to quality. Right now, my concern, and we could spend the whole day talking about this, but my concern is the aging buildings in the multifamily space in America. So what I'm talking about aging is anything really older than about 1980. 1980, 519 older. So your sixty s, seventy s buildings are starting to hit physical obsolescence. And if you've been watching the news, we've seen that. We saw the building that collapsed in Miami, corner of that building. I think it was Brooklyn river was up there. So there's been some different areas. And so what I am telling everybody right now is that you have to be very careful about older buildings because understanding the real cost inside the building is very difficult to do. So for me, for my portfolio, I'm looking for b class newer buildings in major metros. So I'm going to go into the major cities and I'm buying quality buildings. That's for me. What I'm looking for going forward, I can't say that's for everybody, but what I can tell everybody here is, yeah, if that building is older in the sense of older than 1985 or so, be very careful about the infrastructure and knowing what you're buying. And that is difficult these days.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, absolutely. Because I know here in Minneapolis St. Paul, I think we'd be jumping for joy to find anything newer than 1980. Small, multifamily, especially Minneapolis St. Paul. A lot of it was built in the early 19 hundreds.
Bill Ham
I'll take a 19 hundreds over 1960s any day of the week, though. They built it. Right? That's fine. Those properties, if you've got the plumbing okay in the infrastructure or the wiring and all that, your foundation you're building is probably solid again, going way in here. What I noticed from doing this for a long time is the post baby boomer, World War II type construction. So what you start seeing is the large multifamily apartment complexes or affordable housing, really started to come around with the advent of pine frame construction. So if you're looking at the stuff built in 19 hundreds, 1920s, those are still your brownstones, big block construction, very solid. It's the pine frame, vinyl siding, or wood siding. That kind of stuff that was built in the 60s has reached its physical obsolescence. And so they did not build them the same way in the, as they did in the 19 hundreds. So I'm still saying, yes, everything older in 1985, be careful. But if you're in this range of like 60 to 80, be extremely careful, because those buildings were just not meant to last 100 years. They weren't built that way, and they're running out of time. I mean, they just are.
Mike Swenson
What I was going to say is, I often tell my investors for something in the 19 hundreds, sometimes they're like, oh, my gosh, that seems so old. And I said, like you said, to your point, it's probably built really well. But I said, number two, we'll be able to tell if it was well cared for or not. We'll be able to tell if the foundation is strong, it's good. If it's not, it's not. And you can usually tell by dropping a marble on the floor, and you'll see if it stays. The foundation is solid. It's been around for 120 years, you're good. But if it starts taking off for the corner, and if you start to see some of the cracks in the building or the HVAC is just not good. I mean, it's kind of like feast or famine. If it's good, it's good. If it's not, we move on to another property.
Bill Ham
Yeah, it's funny we mentioned these 19 hundreds properties being good. Well, yes and no. I'm from Macon, Georgia, and so there were a lot of turn of the century houses built in Macon, Georgia. These old victorian homes, now, they were also still stick built, and those things are two, three story huge. I owned one once. 7000 square foot old victorian home. Yeah, but it was garbage, man. The light Bill, the electricity cost more than the rent. It was so energy inefficient. It was so old. It had old lead weighted windows and all that stuff. The house was probably worth more breaking it down in parts and selling it on ebay than trying to keep his house as a rental. It was a nightmare. You could stand on the third story and it would make you nauseous. The floor was so unlevel. I mean, you felt like you're constantly just falling. You're trying to straighten up. The house had that much of a lean to it. The neighbors were always yelling at me, saying, your house is going to collapse and fall on our house. It never did. But you can literally see the lean in. That building built in the 19 hundreds, early 19 hundreds. So, yeah, I would say northeastern 1900 real estate is probably better than southeastern 1900 real estate, unless in the south has been very maintained and it's some kind of historical building you guys built with more solid construction up there, your bricks, your blocks, the south being warmer climate, a little more stick built stuff. Victorian homes, they're beautiful. When they're maintained, they're disasters. If they're not awesome.
Mike Swenson
Well, Bill, thank you so much. I mean, I know we scratched the surface on quite a few things. I think you shared an awesome amount of information to help people along the way, especially the creative financing is really important for people right now. For people that want to learn more about what you're doing, how can they do so?
Bill Ham
Surely I'd love to give you my email. It's [email protected]. Feel free to email me, ask me any questions. It's [email protected]. G-O-B-R-O-A-D-W-E-L-L. And my website, realestateraw.com. Just like the book here, realestateraw.com. Just check that out. I've got a tremendous amount of free information on that site. I've got a blog on there, about 80 different articles that I've written. I offer education services. I won't go through pitching here, but you're certainly welcome to go to realestateraw.com. Check that out if you want to reach out to me, if you want any help from anything for me that I can help you with. Creative financing, realestateraw.com. I'll be right there waiting on you. Awesome.
Mike Swenson
Thank you so much, Bill, for sharing your huge wealth of information with the audience. We appreciate it.
