The Professionalist Real Estate Investing Podcast
Whether you’re a seasoned investor, budding entrepreneur, or simply curious about diving into the world of real estate, this podcast is your ultimate guide to building wealth and achieving financial freedom through smart investing.
Join host Tony Jacobs, a real estate professional , as he explores actionable strategies, emerging trends, and real-world stories from top investors and industry experts. Each episode delivers valuable insights to help you navigate challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and grow your real estate portfolio with confidence.
Tune in for expert interviews, market updates, and tips to elevate your investing game—because success in real estate starts with the right knowledge and mindset.
Ready to take your investing journey to the next level? Hit that subscribe button and start building your future today!
The Professionalist Real Estate Investing Podcast
Unlocking Real Estate Success in 2025 with Marcus Harvey! 🏡✨
Welcome everybody to the Professionist Real Estate Investing Podcast. I'm with my compadre here, Mr Marcus Harvey. Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:How you doing man hey, happy birthday.
Speaker 1:How you doing today. Oh, I'm doing good, I'm blessed Just another year that I made it through. I mean thank God. You know Some people, you know I tell people, you know they ask me when I wake up in the morning and I see them and everything like how am I doing today? I said I'm doing good, you know, because some people don't wake up in the morning.
Speaker 2:Man. You got to thank God or whoever the man up above. You got to wake up feeling blessed and thank the man up above that you're healthy and happy man for another day.
Speaker 1:Exactly, Amen, Amen. So this podcast end of the year is about five must-know tips, knowing tips for real estate investing success. Yes, so we're doing five tips and we're going to expand on how vital they are to your real estate investing journey, on how vital they are to your real estate investing journey. And especially, you know, 2025 is coming up in no time. So you know, got to get this thing in order and everything together Got to come out strong, especially with this next year. I'm really amped for this next year coming up too.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm super excited for 2025. I feel like it's just a lot of plans. I'm making, a lot of big things we're trying to make happen and, yeah, I'm super excited about 2025.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the five things you need to know so the first one we mentioned is it's going to be mentioned is know your market. You want to know what type of market that you're going to be investing in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. That's like key to really the one of the first steps and key to getting into real estate is like you have to analyze whatever market you're in, or whatever market I should say you're you plan on investing in market, then you're going to be kind of confused out there on what things cost and you're going to be confused on different pricing in the different areas. So know the market, yeah, know the market you're going to invest in, for sure.
Speaker 1:And especially with knowing the market. Also, you need to do your own research, which is really vital with investing, because you know I always say you know, know your market and what comes with that is location, location, location, absolutely so with that you know, you got to study the local trends, including, you know, supply and demand, job growth, population shifts, the, the median home prices. That's all vital because you want to know how much you gonna be spending on your investment property absolutely yes.
Speaker 2:You need to look at the neighborhood developments to infrastructure and the school quality, identify up-and-coming markets with growth potential. That is like a must. You like. You've got to know all these factors when you're investing, because you know you don't want to get, you don't want to overpay for anything and you want to be right, in the same price range as what things are buying.
Speaker 1:And selling for yes. And then the pro tip. It says leverage, and these are a couple of examples Leverage online tools like Zillow, realtorcom and local government databases to get market data. The Zillow and the Realtorcom those are just average ways to go about doing things. What is the one that people hit me up all the time? Tony, I checked and seen that the Zillow. Is it the Zillerator? I'm about to know about how much they know what their house is. Uh, we're like a testament.
Speaker 2:They call it yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was like that that's, that's not consistent, I gotta go to the MLS. That's more, that's more credible right there. But yeah, that's it's. It's. Yeah, it's a barometer that's used, that people use, and everything, cuz I mean not everybody has access to the MLS, right it's a range.
Speaker 2:Zillow will give you a range between one number and another, but it seems to be kind of off for a lot of people, especially investors. I'm not trying to downplay Zillow, but when you talk about Zillow and investing, there's other websites that you can use to have a more accurate number than what Zillow has with their information, you know yes number two.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, run the numbers. And why run the numbers? It says successful real estate investors make decisions based on data, not by emotions, exactly because don't let the emotions get the best of you, just like I think it was episode I've had with Rocky mm-hmm, and we was talking about that that people there's a lot of people go by emotions. They go by the way something looks instead of checking out the whole. I call it the DNA of the property, right on everything that, because you're not trying to buy something and then you down down the road find out that there was something wrong with that property right exactly.
Speaker 2:You want to know everything up front. You want to know before you even buy anything like hey, I got a word reports, I gotta run a search because it's just. You know, the worst thing you could do is being of being investor and be in this game and not do your proper due diligence.
Speaker 1:You know so yes, amen to that. So some of the key factors is this to focus on when it runs the numbers, it's going to be cash on cash return, cap rate, data service coverage ratio and operating expenses. Yeah, so the cash on cash return, that's how much return you're making on the actual cash you invest in the property. Yes, sir, cap rate. Cap rate is the rate of return based on the income that the property is expected to generate. That's what a lot of people, especially those who have a cash on cash return and a cap rate, are huge. And then there is the DSCR, which is that the debt service coverage range ratio that's ensure that you can cover your mortgage payments Most definitely want to make sure you get the payment sometime Right. And then operating expenses, that's the taxes, insurance, maintenance and management costs. Those are the hidden, little hidden ones that people don't talk about that can actually put you in a bind if you don't know about it. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, for sure. Like you got to stay up and make sure those costs, you know, stay low, but you know you got to make sure you can be able to afford those costs all and all included with everything. Um, I like the pro tip for this one where you know always stress test your numbers, assume higher vacancy rates and expenses to see if the deal actually still works. I love that, because you start off high and you can't go higher. You want to be able to go lower If you stress test the numbers. Yeah, you want to assume a little bit higher than normal. That way you're not. I guess what you say will be surprised.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you won't be surprised that cushion not too high, not too low. Yes, sir yeah okay.
Speaker 1:Number three build a strong network. The motto is your network is your net worth, and this is why it matters. It says real estate. It says real estate is a team sport. Your network of professionals can help you find deals, solve problems and navigate complex situations. Navigate complex situations? Yes, and that's true, because there's a lot of people who are into real estate and they have been through different situations that other people have never had. So their information is vital to and it's alert, all of its a learning experience to you know what they've gone through and they're teaching you. I mean, they're just they're feeding you free game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I feed me what it Like. That information is so valuable. You just really you can't take it for granted. You can't take it for granted.
Speaker 1:Not at all. And then it says with that, you know, with your network, it deals with these individuals. Real estate agents for access to off-market deals and expert advice. Estate agents for access to off-market deals and expert advice that's, that's huge. Because, um, you know, with me being an agent and the brokerage I'm with oh my goodness, I get off-market deals every single day. Right, they have a network of uh, it's called a sun workplace for facebook. It's just dealing with the agents, and they have actually organizations that primarily just deal with off market and that helps out. That helps out a whole lot.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, for sure, For sure.
Speaker 1:Another person on the team is mortgage brokers and they help you to find the best financing, and I'm glad they said mortgage brokers, because there's so many different. There is so many different programs that deal with mortgages that I had no idea about. I studied about it a little bit because I wanted to take my test about it, but I'm just concentrating more on the real estate part, but there are so many different programs that these mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers know about than a typical person knows about at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and some of them, though. You know that they advertise, obviously because they wanted to be known that you can be able to use a certain mortgage to your advantage. You know they advertise them to the public, but at the same time you can go into a broker office and they'll tell you about a program that you've never heard about. When did they start this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, right, when did they start?
Speaker 2:this financing program. So, along with the mortgage brokers, is property managers. If you don't want to manage the tenants yourself, property managers are very, extremely important when you're doing investing, and then the contractors to handle repairs and renovations also important. You've got to be able to turn over your units when you need to or be able to fix things when you need to. And, yeah, attorneys and CPAs, you need that on your team for legal advice and tax advice. When it comes to making things right, I'm making sure you you're operating legally and by the law. And then to make sure, with your CPAs, you want to get the best tax advice so you can take advantage of any tax write-offs or any kind of thing anything that's going to help you have an advantage tax-wise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cpa is very good. Me and Rocky had talked about that before. We'll probably talk about it again before tax time comes up in a matter of time, which will be being a hot skip and a jump when it comes back. Yeah, did you know? There's the H&R blocks, there's, you know, all different types of programs when it comes to the taxes.
Speaker 1:But you want to go to a CPA, you want to go somebody who is a professional with taxes that deals with, uh, even when it comes down, you know you're in your own business. You want to know that you're the write-offs and everything. But you want to know somebody also who knows about the real estate side, because a lot of people, uh, especially in the tax side, they don't know about, um, all the write-offs, um, you know the appreciation, the depreciation, um, can this be written off? Can this? You need someone who's certified, especially in the real estate field of the CPA. Agree, yep, and that will help you in the long run. And then you know, because the thing about it is it's like I tell people we even talked about this a long time ago.
Speaker 1:The government allows this. We didn't set these laws up. The government says, hey, you do such and such and such and such you can get, can get, you know, your taxes taken off. If you make a, you know, passive income, you can get this off. You can, you can write this off your taxes. The government allows it.
Speaker 2:So you want to meet, you want to talk to the right person to get into that, the niche of real estate investing exactly, exactly because, exactly Because the whole point of this is to be able to build wealth, but with real estate there's so many, not even depending on what you're doing but even if you're all the way down to wholesaling, to flipping to buy and hold, being just a sales agent, there's so many tax advantages with real estate that that's like one of the main parts of why people want to be in the real estate.
Speaker 2:Not only can you make and build extreme wealth but, um, you can also just take advantage of the taxes and what you can be able to write off business wise and then be able to uh of tax-wise with real estate. You know, because some of those real estate taxes you can't apply it to just regular businesses. You know it has to be real estate related, you know.
Speaker 1:Yes, so that's good advice right there. And then the pro tip was attend local, you know real estate meetups. Join online forums, engage with the industry professionals to grow your network. There's BiggerPockets the best. To me, it's one of the best meetups you can be online for real estate investing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, BiggerPockets, They've been around for a while too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then another one I would say also, this is across the country. It's called I believe it's meetupcom. Yeah. And then another one I will say also this is across the country, is called Believe. It's meet up, calm and you actually can put down Real estate meetups, and it's all over. It's all over the country you can do. A radius of believe is 25 miles up to 100 miles or even more, and they actually are a good source when it comes to meetups, because there's all different types of meetups all over the country Investors recognizing other investors and that's a good way to build your network and, who knows, you can collaborate and syndicate a deal with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I was going to say along with that, like I was just saying a few minutes ago, biggerpockets has been around. But another platform I've seen kind of just taken off lately, which is a really good platform, is InvestorLift. I've been watching a lot of podcasts about it on InvestorLift and been just watching a lot of different people talk about how you, how you can use investor lift to your advantage. I'm not trying to sponsor them or anything like that, or just I'm just saying their name because, like they, they pop in right now. Investor lift is uh one of those, uh one of those platforms where they bring on um, as far as what I've seen on their podcast, they bring on good information, they bring on good guests guests that we've all seen from you know, doing real estate. Just the information that they have and the people that they know. That's a really good coming up platform InvestorLive.
Speaker 1:Is that okay? You know I'm going to have to check that one out, because I did not know about that one right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been watching their channel on YouTube and they've got a pretty good podcast. Yeah, okay, it's pretty nice.
Speaker 1:Number four diversify your investments. I always think of the Dave Chappelle show when it says Wontang was right there. They said to diversify your bonds. Every time I see this, why it matters is diversifying reduces risk and increases the chances of long-term success. This is how to diversify. It says different property types. You got the residential, you got the commercial, you got the multifamily or even industrial properties. Then geography diversifying too. Invest in various locations to maximize the impact of downtown, of a downtown, a downturn, excuse me, in any one market.
Speaker 2:So that's another one, and then another one is also investment strategies.
Speaker 1:Consider, you know, making buy whole property, flips, short term rentals, airbnb and wholesaling. I know you help wholesaling. It's your bread and butter, right there.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, that's something I think a lot of us, a lot of people that get into investing, try to start off with this wholesaling, because it's just that low barrier to getting in and everything and that's one of the first uh strategies people talk about. When we're getting into real estate investing is wholesaling, uh, one of the easiest ways to get in the deal.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, so and that and this. I want to make this one thing clear too when it comes to that, that different type of uh property properties the residential, commercial, multifamily the residential you're going to have to deal with your credit, the commercial you're going to have to do not with your credit. It depends on, especially with multifamily, it's basically how much money is the property going to make. It's a whole other animal. That's where a lot of people, especially with the commercial multifamily people, especially with the commercial multi-family they deal with the syndication deals right, yeah, yeah with those type of deals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the bank's going to want to either see good credit, good credit, not good credit, but they're going to see what the property produces on commercial, and then they might ask you for a schedule of assets, if you have it.
Speaker 2:But if it's your first one and you really don't have, you know, yeah, no, yeah, you'll have no foundation. You'll have nothing to give them really right off if it's your first one. But usually they're going to ask for schedule of assets and not even worry about your credit score. You know your personal credit score. They just want to know if the property is going to be able to make money yeah, that's all it is.
Speaker 1:Know the banks are, they're all for making money and we all know that. Because that interest rate, man, interest rate and late fees, yes, and number five, have a long term mindset. Man, mindset is huge. I'll tell you that right now, because if you don't have the mindset, then you just, you just blown in the wind then you just you just blowing in the wind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're doing yourself a disservice by not having the right mindset to keep going in this, in real estate investing. You know you got to keep growing, you got to keep learning and you got to just keep wanting to grow and keep wanting to learn all the strategies and you want to take advantage of of everything that you can. You don't want to be doing a deal and find out that, oh, I could have did this strategy to make me more money than the strategy that I used. You know, so you just want to. Yeah, I agree my have that long-term mindset yeah.
Speaker 1:And why it matters is because it with a with a long-term mindset yeah. And why it matters is because, with a long-term investment, success often requires patience. Patience is a virtue, yeah, and especially with real estate, a lot of it deals with patience, oh, yeah. And then you focus on steady growth. You know you got to think about building equity and cash flow over time. Then, rather than chasing the short-term goals or gains, yeah. And then you know, keep a that I've heard about this too about to keep the five to five to ten year mindset. Focus on how properties will perform long term. And that depends if, if you want to keep it that long, as long as you've got the mindset and you have the exit. You have the exit of, like, all right, how long I'm going to have this?
Speaker 1:There's some people who own properties three to five years and then they have that exit plan away and they're ready to go into something bigger or something better their finances or anything that you know. Hey, can I accumulate more cash out of doing it this way? It's just a whole month. You just got to pick your strategy, how to go about going to the next step. Just don't stay, um, you know, just don't stay just average, right, right, and don't stay in a hole or get comfortable.
Speaker 2:You know, always expand right exactly along with that real quick. It's something I heard Cardone say. He said just keep on trying to do your deals to where, when you're in the acquisition process or the buying process of the deals, already know what your exit strategy is going to be. That's true While you're in that buying process and that acquisition process of getting a deal already kind of have that, hey, we get this deal.
Speaker 1:This is how we're going to get rid of it in five years or 10 years, or this is who it's going to go to this type of person. And that's why I like the syndication ones, because with the portfolio from Jump Street, from the first day on, they already have how much person needs to. Each person needs to contribute where the money's gonna go to and they have an exit plan date, basically, of how long they're gonna keep the property.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's, that's that's good research right there, because those having all that information is so important when, when, when you're buying, and some people, you know, some investors that are starting off, don't think about that. They don't think about like, hey, what's going to be if I buy this thing, what's going to be my exit strategy and how long am I going to hold this thing? And yeah, you got to have those dates in mind of, hey, I'm going to keep it till 20, whatever, 2020 something or whatever you know you have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to think about it, you know and then the pro tip of that it says avoid the temptation of flipping properties too quickly unless you're in a experienced investor in a hot market. Yes, sir, yeah, I agree with that that's a good pro tip right there.
Speaker 2:Just avoid that. Avoid trying to just get into flipping too quick because, um, everything that I've been learning, um just in these few years about between like flipping and maybe trying to do new construction and, um, you know, from wholesaling and I've just been, you know, hearing the pros and cons, you know of it all. So you really want to. When you're doing especially a flip, you want to make sure you're doing it at the right time, you're buying it at the right price. You know that's just with any deal. But you know, the latest thing I was telling you about flipping is hey, you don't know what's behind those walls? No, but a new construction. You know what's behind those walls?
Speaker 1:No, but a new construction you know, what's behind those walls, because you know it's brand new, exactly, yeah, you're right. Well, I want to thank all the listeners out there for this one. The five must know tips in real estate investing. Break it down again it is know your market, run the numbers, build a strong network, diversify your investments and have a long term mindset. And I want to say, off top, I want to thank my boy Rocky and my brother Marcus over here for helping me out with the podcast, especially last year. Oh for sure, it was great, especially on the podcast, because I got through Buzzsprout. The podcast grew 35% from last year. It got into 11 different countries. The number one episode out of it was Building Wealth, section 8, insights of Crafting a Resident Income Stream in Real Estate, and that was with you. Yes, sir, estate, and that was with you. Uh, that was a great episode. Yeah, that was great, especially with the section eight, because a lot of people don't know, uh, um, how to navigate with the section eight, with real estate investing. Um, yeah, I'm just, I'm just amazed at how far we've come. We've done over 25 episodes Doing shorts.
Speaker 1:Next month going full throttle. I have six interviews coming up of all different types of investors all over the country. Nice, you can follow the Professionalist Real Estate Investing Podcast on YouTube. I'm going to be putting a lot more shorts out and a lot of the it's going to be the audio in the video. You can check out on Apple and Spotify also. And, yeah, if anyone wants to join, just let me know the email address is. I mean, I got so many different ones, but I got to remember this one Real estate investing at the professionalist info. You can hit me up there or, you know, just even in the comments or anything like that. It's fine, but it's come a long ways and I'm ready to branch this out. I know you're on the coast, but anytime you come into town I'm definitely going to hit you up and everything. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You got to just keep this thing going and I think what's the next episode? You give me a heads up on what maybe the next episode is going to be.
Speaker 2:I think, since we've talked about it, it and I know definitely, you, you started um studying about it, I think the new construction okay, yeah, we're going to touch on that. New construction for 2025, um, something I think we really haven't talked about yet. No, so I think that'll be a good topic, um, and then, uh, yeah, we could take it from there and just um, you know, just, like I said, give you guys a heads up.
Speaker 1:That'll probably be the next episode. Yeah, new construction. So, yeah, everybody, yeah, subscribe. I'm going to make sure that I put everything out there. I know, like this next year I'm going to probably need an assistant because things are going to start getting real thick around here. Yeah, so, but I love enjoying it. I love talking to people, and especially with this, navigating on our careers in real estate, investing with you and with Rocky. He has some insight, he's ready to invest too, already this next coming year, and everything, yeah.
Speaker 2:Me, you and Rocky got to do an episode. I got to meet Rocky already, man, I got to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it needs to be three. I got enough equipment to get all three of us on here. That would be amazing, because I mean we'd probably be doing Joe Rogan's time like two hours on one.
Speaker 2:Man, get all three of us on here.
Speaker 1:man, we're going to do numbers on the views and everything, exactly exactly All the views and everything, exactly exactly all the information and everything that we have coming to the table. Yes, indeed right right all right, just so. Yeah, everybody you know, keep on following us, subscribe, you know? Hey, 2025 is about to be here. Y'all have a blessed day. I'm gonna have a blessed birthday, and we'll see you on the flip side success and nothing less.