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513: Finding Hidden Opportunities in Beaten-Down Commercial Real Estate with Dolf de Roos
About this Episode
The King of Commercial Real Estate joins us to discuss office, hotels, apartments, retail, industrial and warehouse real estate.
Many office building values are down 80%+. Is it headed straight to purgatory? According to Moody's, the national office vacancy rate is 20%.
Offices have the double-whammy of higher interest rates and lower demand.
Learn how feasible office to residential conversions are.
For two years now, momentum has swung from Airbnbs to hotels.
More apartment syndications will blow up from forthcoming interest rate resets.
Commercial real estate often has higher prices than residential. Learn from our guest, Dolf de Roos, on creative ways to make low down payments.
Learn how to vet commercial tenants.
We discuss adding carports to residential RE.
Rich people are often vilified. They're called "filthy rich" or "stinking rich".
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Complete episode transcript:
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Keith Weinhold 00:00:01 Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. There are many commercial real estate sectors. Large apartments, office, hotel, hospitality, retail, warehouse, industrial. Well, what's thriving? What's been beaten up so bad and is never coming back? And what's in a dip that's ripe for opportunity? Also creative deal structuring if you don't have a lot of money. It's the debut of the King of Commercial real estate here today and get rich education. When you want the best real estate and finance info, the modern internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's replete with paywalls. And you've got pop ups and push notifications and cookies. Disclaimers are at no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life? See, this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor and it's to the point to get the letter. It couldn't be more simple.
Keith Weinhold 00:01:13 Text gray to 66866. And when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course completely free. It's called the Don't Quit Your Daydream letter and it wires your mind for wealth. Make sure you read it. Text gray to 66866. Text gray 266866.
Corey Coates 00:01:41 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 00:01:58 What does your read? From Tuscarora, Pennsylvania, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Whitehill, and you're listening to get Rich education. Today's guest, the king of commercial real estate, is talented, dynamic, global, articulate, has both a wide range of knowledge and an expansive palette of creative strategies in both commercial and residential, where you can buy with little out of pocket. And he's going to share that with us today. That's coming up here shortly. Now, when we think about residential real estate, of course, that is a really wide world in itself.
Keith Weinhold 00:02:38 From condos to single family homes to tiny studio apartments. You could also divide it into short term and mid-term and long term rentals. And then you could also parse it by all of the geographic markets. Well, of course, the commercial real estate world has a ton of segments too, one of which is office, which I want to talk about because it's probably been the most downtrodden and beleaguered since 2020. But there are still some things that are misunderstood within office and even dividing things up that much. Let's take care not to broad brush stroke office real estate itself some smaller segments of office might be in decent shape today. Other office segments are in real trouble. Like we're talking about tall concrete and glass, office towers and a lot of business parks, too. Yeah, business park, sort of a campus like areas, like maybe what the comedy The Office had. He had Dunder Mifflin was in a business park.
Steve Carell 00:03:43 I'm just helping you invest in your future, my friend.
Oscar Nunez 00:03:46 It sounds like a get rich quick scheme.
Steve Carell 00:03:48 Yes. Thank you. You will get rich quick. We all will.
Keith Weinhold 00:03:52 yeah. I guess that's what Steve Carell's character. What Michael Scott from The Office says about prudent investing. Let's talk about office real estate and how that intersects with the housing market. And really a lot of this comes down to the office vacancy rate. Moody's tells us that 1 in 5 office spaces in this economy are empty. And that is the highest ever. And a lot of people think that it's going to go higher right now. Dayton, Ohio is the highest in the nation at 28%. These are office vacancy rates. Charleston, West Virginia's 27. Tulsa, Oklahoma 26. And Houston, Dallas and Austin are all in the top ten for the worst office vacancy rates. Now, a lot of city officials, they want to turn that into housing, and they want government funding in order to make that transition happen from office to residential. This is most attractive to cities if you can partially convert a building to have housing on upper floors, and then you just maintain some offices on lower floors and see that mix right there, that makes for a vibrant, lively downtown community, because that way you don't have downtowns that go quiet at 5:00.
Keith Weinhold 00:05:10 But a lot of these renovations, they just aren't that feasible. They call them ritzy conversions. That's kind of what this is known as. So office to residential. I mean that means you often got to deal with huge floor plates, overhaul mechanical systems, and you've even got to consider things like the fact that windows don't open in office buildings. And they've often got to for resin conversions. Well, with this prolonged high vacancy in offices. Well, where do these people that would have been in offices spend their time instead? Well, of course at home in their residential real estate. And oftentimes it is a one for one. You have one less person occupying an office for lots of that waking day, and that means one more person occupying their home. Well, that's one reason that people are increasingly willing to spend and pay more for homes because they're spending more time than ever there. And ever since the work from home movement and zoom from home movement, if you will, since that became commonplace for urban workers coming off the pandemic, you soon saw the hashtag auto.
Keith Weinhold 00:06:27 The return to office movement that began is where you've got to come into the office 2 to 3 days a week, and then a lot of companies try to ramp it up to 4 to 5 days per week. Some companies even said, yeah, come on in here. You've got to in order to be eligible for promotions. Well, a lot of people don't want to come into the office. We found that out now, especially younger workers. In fact. Did you ever hear of the term coffee bagging? Yes. Some workers are trying to game the system. Coffee bagging. That is the art of returning to the office to a quick hit. Just have a quick hit. You only badge in, get coffee, chat and peace out of there. Well, more people are doing this or they're staying at home than what you're often led to believe. So despite the RTL movement that you hear about the share of employed persons that work their average day from home, last year it rose to 35%, up from 34%, and that's per the BLS.
Keith Weinhold 00:07:31 Well, that's a little interesting to know, but it all comes down to that office vacancy rate, which is, like I said, a stubbornly high all time record 20% nationally, and it could go higher. If you're going to invest in office real estate today, I mean, you've really got to have some insider knowledge and invest smart.
Donald Trump 00:07:55 Did you use the word smart? so you said you went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college. You didn't go to Delaware State. You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don't ever use the word smart with me. Don't ever use that word. Oh, give me a break. Because you know what? There's nothing smart about you, Joe.
Keith Weinhold 00:08:16 oh, dear. Oh, one of those two men is our current president, and the other could be our next president. Oh, well, love him or hate him, I guess the Trump. Hey, he is the Art of the deal author. And when you think about the Trump name, you should think about seeing those letters on tall office buildings in hotels coming up on the show here in future weeks.
Keith Weinhold 00:08:39 We are stacked with great guests an NFL All-Pro, the president of the Mississippi Institute, the return of the tax free wealth author Tom Wheelwright, and also the incomparable financial firepower of Garrett Gunderson. That's all coming up here in future shows. Let's talk to the king of commercial real estate. This week's guest is a former high tech engineer turned real estate mogul and New York Times best selling author of the book Real Estate Riches. He is globally renowned for his ginormous real estate ventures and his mentorship. But his approach to real estate isn't just transactional, it's about strategic creativity and leveraging property investment for financial independence. Known as the King of commercial real estate. Hey, welcome here for your great debut. Joining us from Malta today. It stopped the roost.
Dolf de Roos 00:09:38 Thank you very much. It's my absolute pleasure to be here.
Keith Weinhold 00:09:41 Oh it's great to finally speak here on the show. And I know that a good segment of our international audience has been anticipating this episode. And often we think about commercial real estate today. Problems come to mind immediately, like the large apartment space with interest rates blowing things up over there, and then the office sector, which just seems to be dying and never coming back.
Keith Weinhold 00:10:03 So first of all, why don't you give us an overview on how various commercial sectors are doing today?
Dolf de Roos 00:10:09 There's always the things that you see on the surface, what you read in the newspapers and what you lead yourself to believe just on the sheer balance of probability. And then there's the reality of what is truly going on. And I'm always amused at the chasm between them. There's a big difference. And in fact, your ability to do well in real estate is largely dependent on the arbitrage between the markets perception of where things are at and the reality. Now, if we all follow the trends, you know, real estate doesn't go up linearly as mathematicians would say. It goes up in fits and starts with each peak a bit higher than the previous peak and each trough a bit higher than the previous trough. But in addition to that, real estate markets always overshoot so that when things are going well, when the public perception is that things are going well, Interest rates are low. There's good capital growth.
Dolf de Roos 00:10:59 People think it's going to go on forever. It will never end and they pay way too much for properties. We have the greater fool theory where no matter how big a fool you are to pay too much for a property, it doesn't matter, because next year they'll be an even bigger fool to pay even more for it. So everyone jumps into the market, overshoots, and then there's a strong correction. A bit like the 2008 GFC. It was on the cards. It was. The writing was on the wall, as they say, and then it corrects. But instead of correcting back to where it should be, it overshoots on the downside as well. And in Phoenix, where I'm based, at one stage we had 90,000 homes into foreclosure simultaneously, and they were selling them on the courthouse steps at the rate of one every 56 seconds for initially 20,020 5000, and people thought, why are these fools buying these properties? The market's crashed. It will never recover. And yet when you live long enough, which unfortunately I have to say, I've done now like I've been around a while, I've seen a few cycles.
Dolf de Roos 00:11:59 No, I'm serious though, Keith, because when you experience your first downturn, you think it's the end of the world. But when you've been through three and you've seen that despite all the bad press and saying it's doomsday to never recover, it not only recovers, but it actually far exceeds where it was before it crashed last time, then you know that the time to take action is when everyone else is panicking. You have to be countercyclical when everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon and paying too much for properties. That's when you should get on a plane and read some good books on a beach somewhere, preferably in a foreign location. Why a foreign location and being disloyal to the home country? Note just explore something. Expand your mind. And you know, I know I'm waving around a bit from topic to topic, but one of the great things about reading books on foreign beaches is that you get to see different ideas of real estate that you can bring back home. So when you bring back these ideas that can help correct the market, then you almost you don't wish for a crash, but you think when it happens, well, there's got to be some good aspect to this and you can actually find some stunning deals from people who are too scared to think it might recover well.
Keith Weinhold 00:13:05 So those places where you might find stunning deals are in some of those commercial real estate sectors that are suffering today. Tell us a bit more about some of those sectors in their health. We're talking about five plus in the department's office, hotel, hospitality, retail, warehouse, industrial. Let us know what's going on with some of those sectors.
Dolf de Roos 00:13:27 In a state of flux. And it's a very good question. Let's talk about hotels for a moment. When the pandemic set in, we were all told to do this thing called to be socially distant. We've almost blissfully forgotten that expression. But social distancing was the thing. So hotels fell out of favor because you're in a foyer with a concierge and a reception area and hundreds of other hotel guests checking in and checking out. So Airbnbs became very popular and the value of hotels plummeted. Many couldn't meet their mortgage obligations because their revenue from room sales did not cover their own loan commitments, so they were being sold off at ridiculously cheap prices. I know of one hotel in the Atlanta area, admittedly a very old hotel.
Dolf de Roos 00:14:09 It was converted into a storage facility. When you think about it, hotels are all compartmentalized and have good little cubicles for story. Yeah, and Airbnbs took off. And we all know people, and people wrote books about it and had courses on it. I know in Phoenix, one statistic in a 12 month period from July 22nd to July 23rd, the availability of Airbnb's went up by 23% and all would have been good and well if demand had kept on escalating. But as the pandemic sort of wound down and people realized they did need to be socially distant anymore. And what's more, when you went to an Airbnb, what you found is that there was a long laundry list of items you had to do, but the sheets through the washing machine no more than one bed at a time. Well, four beds worth of sheets is going to take you three hours and do this and do that. People thought hotels are much easier, so there was a massive swing by tenants of rooms back to hotels, and the value of hotels went back up.
Dolf de Roos 00:15:04 And in the meantime, the value of houses used as Airbnb's, it sort of peaked a bit and it's going down rapidly. How far it will go down? I'm not so sure. So my point is, with hotels in a very short period of time, like three years, the values plummeted and then they came back up again. Office space is suffering a bit of a longer cycle downturn. It's fair to say, I think, that offices are in a very dire straits. Something like $785 billion of mortgages secured against commercial office space that is coming up for renewal, and there's not enough revenue to cover them. There is a pair of hotels on Union Square in San Francisco, for instance, the park Renaissance and the Renaissance itself. They had $745 million of mortgage funding, and the operators of those hotels handed the keys back to the bank and said, we can't make this cash flow. There's a lot of commercial space that is being sold off a ridiculously cheap prices. So there are two ways of looking at this, Keith.
Dolf de Roos 00:16:02 One is if you happen to own office space right now, unless it's boutique space, I've got quite a bit of office space, but it's a very much a boutique classification, and they'll always be demand for boutique office space from unique operators like interior decorators and people like that. But for the general concrete and glass office towers, demand for that has plummeted. The values have gone down and I know of one building in Chicago. It's sold for 315 million. It's on the market at 60 and dropping, and there's not a buyer in sight. And you might say, well, it's got to be a bargain. But no. Here's the challenge. With commercial real estate. Unlike residential, residential is valued on the basis of comps. We all know that if you have a four bedroom, three bathroom home, certain age, certain size, certain condition in a certain suburb, then and if it's sold for, say, $480,000, then a similar sized and aged house up the road, down the street around the corner is going to sell for about the same amount.
Dolf de Roos 00:17:02 Whether it's tenanted or not, that doesn't even matter. But when it comes to commercial real estate, the value of a commercial property is literally a multiple of its rental income. Technically, is the rental income divided by the cap rate? Which cap rate is short for capitalization rate? It literally means the rate at which you capitalize the rental to arrive at the value. So if we can figure out a way of doubling the rental, then we've doubled the value. And by the same token, of course, if you lose the tenant and you have your rental, then you have the value. And that's why the value of so many of these commercial office buildings has plummeted, because there are no tenants for them.
Keith Weinhold 00:17:40 Yeah, well, there's a lot there. And back to the Airbnb thing. Yeah. About two years ago, there seemed to be this well well-documented Airbnb bust. And my gosh, I personally had awful Airbnb experiences recently, including checking into an Airbnb where it hadn't been turned over, it hadn't been cleaned yet, and that I can never unsee what I saw.
Keith Weinhold 00:18:00 Then I had to stay there. That was really rough. I think what you're getting at here is once you hit a bottom, that's where the opportunity is. So there are going to be some of those opportunities somewhere in the commercial real estate sector, commercial real estate syndicators, many of them imploded from high rates. So when we talk about finding the bottom link with these large apartment buildings, how many more apartment syndicator implosions do we expect from the higher mortgage rates?
Dolf de Roos 00:18:27 Many. I'm indifferent to it. I'm not saying I don't have sympathy for the people who own them, and I'm not gleeful for those who buy a bargain. But here's why I'm indifferent. I think it's fair to say that I've made most of my money in real estate by finding either vacant or semi vacant buildings, and that goes against the grain. Most people think they need to look for a building with a good tenant, because it's the tenant that pays the rent, and that's not incorrect. That's accurate. And then if you've got a building that you buy and say 8% return and your mortgage interest is 7%, hopefully that 1% margin covers your property taxes and your insurance and your maintenance.
Dolf de Roos 00:19:05 And then you just wait for time to do this thing where slowly, over time, the rents creep up and the property value creeps up. I don't have the luxury of waiting that long, and I never had the cash to buy properties like that, so I literally sought out semi vacant or even vacant buildings. Now, I didn't buy them because if I bought a vacant building, I still have to pay property tax and insurance. But what I would do before buying it is see if I can find a tenant, and I can give you a specific example. I came across a vacant building that was a funeral parlor, and most people don't like to think of what goes on in a funeral parlor. But they have these stainless steel trays where they put the product of their business on, and they insert these hollow stainless steel tubes and suck up the blood and replace it with formaldehyde and all kinds of things we don't want to think about.
Keith Weinhold 00:19:52 That's even worse than my Airbnb experience.
Dolf de Roos 00:19:55 No one knew what to do with it.
Dolf de Roos 00:19:57 So I found it. And it was being sold for a song because it was vacant. And what I did is I employed someone at the then going hourly rate of $8 an hour to phone every funeral director, going further and further from this place until she found someone who said, oh my gosh, I've always wanted to operate there. And I was just open and honest. And I said, well, there's a funeral parlour premise for sale. Go and check it out if you want to buy it, buy it. Why would I offer it to him, Keith, when I really wanted to buy it? Because the last thing I want is a tenant to be gracious. The fact that the only reason he's paying me rent is that I'd beat him to it. But I knew that in all probability, he didn't want to buy real estate. That's not his gig. And he said, no, I don't have the money or the inclination he had to look at. He said, listen, I love it.
Dolf de Roos 00:20:40 I want to operate there. What would it take? And I said, well, if you're willing to sign up a heads of agreement, an alloy, we're subject to me buying it. You will become the tenant, then I'll have a crack at buying it. And his response was, were not so fast, I need you. I'll only do it if you give me a long term lease. Well, that's exactly what I want. So I'd found a tenant by adding the tenant to this otherwise vacant building. The value of it doubled. And when I went to the bank to apply for a mortgage, they said, well, we're only going to give you 50%. Well, guess what? 50% of double the value was the purchase price. They lent me all but the last $10,000 to buy that property. So the magic sauce here is finding the tenant. Could anyone else have gone through at the time? This is before the internet, the Yellow pages and phoned every funeral director going for. Of course they could, but no one thought of doing it.
Dolf de Roos 00:21:33 And that comes to part of what you had in your title, that this is all about creative real estate. The thing I love about real estate is it's about the only investment vehicle where you can actually use your creativity. I mean, if you're a really creative person and you buy a portfolio of stock, IBM stock and Microsoft and biotech, what.
Keith Weinhold 00:21:53 Can you do to improve it?
Dolf de Roos 00:21:54 Can you deploy your creativity? How can you deploy what you've seen in your travels to make your stock portfolio worth more? Zero. Absolutely nothing. Not with stocks, not with bonds, not with futures. Options, certificates of deposit, Treasury bills, nothing. But with real estate, the sky's the limit, I love that.
Keith Weinhold 00:22:13 Well, you talked about getting into commercial real estate sectors with little or none of your own money. That's part of the creativity. A lot of our audience is interested in investing in residential property, a single family home. You might still be able to get one for 150 K now, 20 to 25% down payment on that 30 K plus.
Keith Weinhold 00:22:34 I mean, that's still pretty manageable for a lot of people, but many are somewhat intimidated by commercial real estate. I think one of the first things they think about is how do I come up with the money? So we talk about creativity in funding that down payment. Tell us more about some good strategies for doing that, and kind of overcoming that daunting feeling of higher commercial real estate prices.
Dolf de Roos 00:22:52 You're absolutely right. Most people think commercial real estate is more expensive, where you might be able to buy a home in a cheaper market, a cheaper price point at one 20,000, say the commercial property is going to be half a million, or if homes are $1 million and a fancy suburb and the commercial properties at 3 million. That's true, but not all properties are like that. My smallest commercial building was a little corner shop. It was a wet fish supply shop, so they sold fish but not cooked fish. And it was a horrible looking thing. But I paid all of $79,000 for it and it's been rented on a full commercial lease from the day I bought it, so it needn't be liked.
Dolf de Roos 00:23:31 In fact, we tend to only notice the big ones for the For Sale sign. You're in the downtown of some city and you see a big one of the big firms, CB Richard Ellis or Jones Lang LaSalle or something for lease or for sale sign, that's for sure. And you don't tend to notice the small ones. The trick in finding good value real estate. Be it commercial or residential, again, has to do with the fact that it's not an automated market like the stock market. You buy stocks through computers on a share market. Everyone pays the same price. But when it comes to real estate, the seller may choose to go through a real estate agency. It might be a national one, and then it's vetted by many agents. But we have a thing known as fizzbuzz or for sale by owner. And why would a seller choose to circumvent a real estate agent? Well, probably because he's hoping to save on the 6% commission. By the way, that's the highest in the world.
Dolf de Roos 00:24:21 And the rest of the orders? 2 or 1 and a half or 3%, it soon to be lowered in the States. But even so, they want to save on that commission and more sinisterly. Perhaps some of them think, why should I entrust my property, the sale of my property to some snooty, nosed 22 year old kid just out of school who doesn't even live in the suburb. I have lived here for 59 years or whatever, he says. And I know what it's worth. And in pricing it, he's either way too high or way too low. Now, if he's way too high, you and I aren't going to buy it because it's just way too high. We know that. But what if it's 100,000 below market value? It happens every day of the week, and if we stumble across one of those, then we might just make 100,000 that day. Not in terms of cash, not in terms of folding hard cash, but in terms of equity. And we could sell it the next day for a hundred thousand more.
Dolf de Roos 00:25:08 But we don't because we want to invest in it. And these things are real key. These happen. That's why I encourage people don't take the same route home from work every day. If you've finished work, get in your car, take a different route, keep your eyes peeled, look for visible signs of a sale by owner, or look for abandoned properties, ones where the grass is a bit high in this litter blown up against the fence and the windows are a bit grimy, and then do some research to find out who owns it.
Keith Weinhold 00:25:34 Sometimes the greater the crisis, the greater the opportunity. But often we talk about, say, if one has overcome the money in the down payment thing, you know, in effect, when we go ahead and get a loan, whatever sector we're investing in, the bank underwrites either us or the bank underwrites the property. But in a sense, us as the investor is we're sort of underwriting the tenant that's in there. Now, when we buy a residential building, you know, we can look at the tennis credit scores and their work history.
Keith Weinhold 00:26:00 You know, we know that the residential tenant is going to pay us to live there. We have a good sense of faith about that. But when it comes to commercial real estate investing, say, I want to buy a plaza with eight businesses in it. I think a lot of investors feel overwhelmed because they're like, oh my gosh, like, how do I study the validity of these eight businesses? And how do I know that they're going to be solvent and sustainable going forward? And do I need to understand all this, or can you speak to that and help break that down for us a bit? Basically the investor underwriting the tenant.
Dolf de Roos 00:26:31 That's all true. And yet there isn't that much to learn. Because if we take your imaginary shopping plaza with eight tenants. Yeah, I think we'd all agree that if one of those tenants was a Gloria Bean coffee and tea or whatever it's called, or Seattle's Best or Peet's Coffee, not to mention Starbucks, that's a global change, but one of those lesser brands.
Dolf de Roos 00:26:51 I think we would be pretty comfortable that they can pay the rent every month. And similarly, the bank underwriting that loan was like, well, a Peet's Coffee or Gloria, that they're a good tenant And, you know, just to name others at random rosters for less, that's a nationwide chain store. I think if we had them as a tenant, that would all go well. And you might get a couple of independents, but they would have a track record. They've leased those same premises for the previous eight years, and they moved there from other premises, which ended up being too small for them. That means they're expanding where they were for 12 years, things like that. Give a picture to any novice in this game to say, wow, they're probably going to be here for the long haul. And beyond that, what happens when you develop the skills to attract new tenants? You don't worry about that even because you know that when you lose a tenant, it's easy to get one lesson.
Dolf de Roos 00:27:42 I've got 101 ways of getting tenants for buildings, and I'm blown away that people don't deploy even one of them. And I'll give you an example from last week. I was with a client in the UK in Bournemouth, which is way in the south of the country, and we were looking at a commercial office building there and it had been vacant for 18 months. And I said to the agent what seems to be the trouble with getting a tenant? And he shrugged his shoulders and said, well, I don't know. It's been on the market for 18 months. And I said, has it ever occurred to you to put a sign outside the property? A big canvas sign hanging on the side of the building signs, and the grass verge saying, this building is for lease. Enquire within or go to this website. And he was stupefied by that thought. He said, what an amazingly good idea. You have to let people know. They think that they're going to go to their office because they're looking for office space.
Dolf de Roos 00:28:34 So now, would they be guaranteed to get a tenant within a week by putting a canvas sign on the building? Of course not. But I know we won't reduce the chances. And that's why if I can find a tenant before committing to buy the building, I'm pretty confident we'll get there. And I've got all these other techniques, Keith, of doing it like one that I really love is, let's say you've got a vacant warehouse and it's an ugly, horrible warehouse in a sea of similarly ugly and vacant warehouses. If you and I bought that, I would hesitate to suggest that we would have a tenant within a month. And here's how we'd do it. We would spend no more than $10,000, and we would go to the manager's office, because ultimately, the person who decides whether to lease our warehouse as opposed to another one, is not the CEO and the head office in New York or LA or wherever. It's not the cleaning lady or man who's going to sweep the floor. It's going to be the manager is going to manage it.
Dolf de Roos 00:29:28 So I get rid of the linoleum and I put in commercial grade carpet. I put in triple glazed or dual glazed windows. Keeps the noise out and the warmth in. I replace the fluorescent tubes with LED lights and replace the locks with electronic locks so he can never forget his keys. I put on an 80 inch LCD screen and tell him it's good for corporate training videos. We know he's never going to watch corporate training videos on it, but those TVs you can buy for $500 now, I put on a little coffee machine and make sure it's brewing when it looks, and have a fridge for end of week drinks, celebrations, and our unsuspecting manager, who's looked at seven ugly warehouses so far that day when he comes to our ugly warehouse and he opens that door to the manager's office subconsciously, or maybe consciously, he thinks, oh my gosh, if I lease this one, this is where I'm going to be packed for 40 hours a week for Lord knows how many years. He says I'll take it.
Dolf de Roos 00:30:17 And he hasn't even asked the rental. You might say that's bribery and corruption, but I think it's just offering a better product than the competition. No one else does this.
Keith Weinhold 00:30:27 Oh well. This is another brilliant example of using creativity in real estate investing. We're talking with the king of commercial real estate, Dolph Thomas More. We come back including some of his psychology and insights from the rich. This is general education. I'm your host, Keith Whitehall. Hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine at Ridge Lending Group Nmls 42056. They provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation. Because they specialize in income properties, they help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire. With leverage, you can start your prequalification and chat with President Ridge personally. Start now while it's on your mind at Ridge Lending group.com. That's Ridge Lending group.com. And your bank is getting rich off of you. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings.
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Keith Weinhold 00:32:55 I'm your host, Keith Whitehall. We're at the king of commercial real estate, Dolph Durst. Just like he has a lot of creative, proven types of things that you can do to improve commercial real estate. He also has a lot of those ideas for residential because he's been around the game for so long. So tell us about some more of those creative ways to add value to residential real estate.
Dolf de Roos 00:33:17 Well, probably. Like most people who end up focusing on commercial real estate, I got started in residential and that's where I first deployed some of my creativity. And I noticed, for instance, that I'd have a rental property that had no garage and no carport. And when you think about it, a tenant's biggest asset because it's not their home, it tends to be their car. One could argue that because they waste money on expensive cars every two years, that's why they can't afford to buy a home. But we won't go there. So if it's their car, if there's no carport and no garage, that means their biggest asset is in the rain.
Dolf de Roos 00:33:49 The sleet, the sun, the shine, the hail, you name it. So by building a carport, we can protect their biggest asset and it's worth a lot more to them by any means. If you have a carport on a house, that house will rent for about $80 a month extra. An 80 a month times 12 is 960. Call it $1,000 extra, a rent in a year. And Keith, I can build a carport for $1,000 easily. It's simply for one in each corner and then a roof with a bit of a slope. Why the slope? Well, if it rains, the rain falls off. If you're really cheap, you can get away with three posts. It still stands, you know. But no. And I'm being silly, but we sometimes make them with two posts and cantilever them. They're a bit more expensive, but then there are no posts out front so I can build a carport for $1,000, and then I get $1,000 extra a year coming in. And when you think about it again, which other investment can you think of that once you've consummated the deal, once you own it, you can spend an extra thousand dollars and then get 100% return on that money.
Dolf de Roos 00:34:49 And as they say in the infomercials. But wait, it gets even better. Because think about it. Let's say we have that carport built, but we haven't paid for it yet. And so we've got our thousand dollars a year extra of rental coming in. We go back to the appraiser and say, we want a new appraisal With an extra $1,000 coming in, he's likely to appraise it at $10,000 more. With that increased appraisal of 10,000, we go back to the bank and say, Mr. Bank manager, remember I got a 70 or 80% more. I've got now got an appraisal for 10,000 more. Will you give me a modest 70% loan on that? Well, banks are in the game of lending money and making a profit. So they say yes. So you get 7000 from the bank. Let's use 1000 of that 7000 to pay for the carport. It's now paid for. That leaves us with $6,000 cash. And the question is, is it earned income? And the answer is no, it's not earned income.
Dolf de Roos 00:35:42 There's no income tax on it. Is that the sale of something? Nope. Didn't sell it. No sales tax, no capital gains. It's tax free money. And you might say but hang on, you've now borrowed $7,000 that you have to be interested. Even at a ridiculously high 10%, that would only cost 700 a year. But we're collecting an extra thousand a year. So when you build this carport, you have two choices. One is pay cash for it and get 100% return on your money. Or the second one is don't pay any money for it, but $6,000 of tax free money in your pocket and get $300 a year surplus cash flow index for inflation for the rest of your life. Like, why would you not do that?
Keith Weinhold 00:36:25 Well, and it's a terrific example of how to accidentally improve the property. And it's so interesting that you bring this up, Dolph, because just a few weeks ago here on the show, I talked about garage real estate. I mentioned how adding a carport can often be more cost effective for a landlord from an ROI standpoint, than constructing a garage.
Keith Weinhold 00:36:43 I also talked about the future with autonomous cars. If people are going to need garages as much as they will, but that's into the future, and that's another subject in itself. All for one really important thing. I know that probably even more important than the actual investing is getting people in the right mindset to do this in the first place. You've studied this in really unexpected psychology behind wealth creation. I think a lot of it is counterintuitive, but it kind of makes sense because if you come from a scarcity and conventional mindset and you just do mediocre stuff, you're only going to get a mediocre outcome. So why don't you talk to us more about breaking down that psychology that most Americans and most residents of everywhere in the world really struggle with?
Dolf de Roos 00:37:28 Well, my pleasure. I had been teaching real estate for about 15 years and I decided why? I don't know, but I decided to run a survey to find out how many of my students became a millionaire within 18 months. That was my expected time frame of reasonableness.
Keith Weinhold 00:37:43 Is that I was actually wealthy.
Dolf de Roos 00:37:45 Right? And I was pretty confident. But when the results came in, I was devastated because it was fewer than 4%. And in my mind, 4% wasn't even statistically significant. Meaning if you take a thousand people, a random 4% are going to become millionaires. One's going to marry into money, one's going to win the lottery, one's going to win at a casino, and the fourth one's going to fall over a paper bag and looks inside. And we just believe that there's a million bucks there. So I vowed to stop teaching until I'd cracked the nut, because my dilemma was, how is it that when you give people all the tools you think they need to become fabulously wealthy, they still don't do it right? And what I found is that it had nothing to do with my rate of speech or my accent. Not that I have one, of course, or the content of my information or the sequencing of it. It had everything to do with the subconscious mind of the student, the fear.
Dolf de Roos 00:38:38 And he has that stance. You're a young kid and you say, hey, mom or dad, I want a bicycle. And they say, well, what do you think, kiddo? That money grows on trees and I know where the parents coming from. Hey, money's not that easy to come by. Temper your expectations of what you'll get for your bet. But this kid is. Our money doesn't grow on trees. Meaning money's hard to come by. And how often have we been told money can't buy you happiness. And money is the root of all evil. And when I say that, someone always points out no, the full saying in the Bible is for the love of money is the root of all evil. There's a big difference. And I'll say, yes, there is a big difference. But to the subconscious mind, it's still here's money and evil in the same sentence, and it's unconsciously makes that association. And the religious even say that it is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.
Dolf de Roos 00:39:24 In other words, if you're rich, you're condemned to hell. And that's a nice, strong belief system to take on board, even subconsciously. And by the way, most people don't know what the eye of the needle is. The eye of the needle was the entrance to East Jerusalem and even camels. And I've been there. I've said the camel said to get down on their knees as a sign of respect before they could enter. So there's a reason behind all these things, but the subconscious mind takes aboard. Money can buy you happiness. Money's hard to come by if you work hard for it. You don't deserve that money's root of lever. You won't get to heaven. You condemned to hell. And how do we describe the rich kids? We say they are so rich. That filthy rich. They're so rich. That stinking rich we associate being rich with filth and stench. So that is why in the United States and every Western nation, when someone wins the lottery and we no longer win 10 or $20,000, it's 300 million or 800 million or 1.2 billion when people win the lottery within five years of winning, 80% of the winners are back to where they were before they won.
Dolf de Roos 00:40:25 Right? And why is that? I discovered that it's because subconsciously, even though they're happy they won it and they going to tell their boss they're going to quit and they're going to buy their parents a nice home and they're going to get a new car. But subconsciously they feel they don't deserve it because they haven't worked hard for it. They're not going to be happy. They're now evil people. They're not going to go to heaven, and they're filthy and they stink. And the only way to overcome that is to get rid of the source of the problem, which is the money. And you'll see it happen again and again and again. So what we do is we dissolve what's in the subconscious mind, all these things that we've been saying without realizing it over and over and over again and replace them with more empowering beliefs. And the great thing about the subconscious mind is, initially, you don't even have to believe the thing that you're going to say over and over again to replace those old ones, but it could be something as simple as money is good or a bit more sophisticated.
Dolf de Roos 00:41:18 My poverty helps no one, but my wealth can help a lot of people.
Keith Weinhold 00:41:22 The more you have, the more you can give.
Dolf de Roos 00:41:24 Exactly as the reverend says, I'm a magnet for money. And so when we get into this mode of thinking differently, then all of a sudden people find that the money starts flowing and we give people specific exercises to do. And it's you think by how is that going to make difference? But it does. And so what I found when I introduced these concepts into my real estate teaching, the success went from under 4% to over 80%. And if that's not evidence enough that this works, I don't know what is.
Keith Weinhold 00:41:56 Yes, it really takes changing that mindset to break down these old stereotypes and have the confidence to say and act upon things like financially free beats debt free. But if you raise to think that money is a scarce resource, you think that retiring debt is a good thing, or don't focus on getting your money to work for you. Focus on getting other people's money to work for you.
Keith Weinhold 00:42:17 A lot of people don't even know what that means. But yeah, it takes breaking down some of these simple things that we all began to learn when we were age five or something like that. Golf is we're winding down here. You operate globally. You play globally. That intimidates a lot of people. They don't really know how to do that. But it's giving you this wherewithal to say that real estate is the only profession that can truly be played globally. Tell us about that.
Dolf de Roos 00:42:44 Well, when you think about it, if you study to become, say, an attorney, you can't just up and leave the US and go to Germany or Peru or Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to practice, you've got to study their local laws and set the bar exam. If you're a physician, you can't just go to another country and conduct frontal lobotomies on patients. You've got to study and hit the bar exam. I had a friend who was a dermatologist, a skin doctor from Austria. He moved to Australia after eight years of study to get his qualifications.
Dolf de Roos 00:43:13 They wouldn't accept them here to start all over again. And he said that's ridiculous. And he became a farmer and was very happy doing that. But when you think about it, not only our real estate investors welcomed all over the world, but they think that you're going to bring money with you. You don't have to, of course. In fact, if you're going to invest as a US citizen in another country, I would not recommend bringing U.S. dollars with you. I'd recommend borrowing locally, because if you bring U.S. dollars with you, then you're subject to exchange rate fluctuations. So just borrow locally and then you've got no risk from that at all. But despite the fact that the other countries, the host countries think that you're an investor, you're going to bring money. So they welcome you with open arms. I think it's the only profession where you are never discriminated against. Your welcomed. You're made to feel welcome. They want more of you. They encourage you to come with delegations of other investors.
Dolf de Roos 00:44:05 It's kind of good gig to be on.
Keith Weinhold 00:44:08 Make the World Yours. The UN recognizes 193 world nations. Get out and see them and invest outside your own home country if you have the ability to. Well, Duff, you've got this interesting combination of commercial real estate focus, a great grasp of the mindset and how to help people with the wealth mindset. And then thirdly, you also operate globally. So it's been really interesting to speak with you. You help people in so many ways with a lot of your teaching resources. So why don't you let our audience know how they can engage with that?
Dolf de Roos 00:44:41 We have a lot of programs that we run from time to time. I mentioned I saw a client in the UK. He was an example of someone we did a fly out for. I'd spend three days just with that one client to help him with his portfolio. But the thing I've got coming up is a live training and people can get a free seat to attend and learn more at my website called Dolf Live.
Dolf de Roos 00:45:03 So Dorfman and Dolf and then live Live.com golf Dolph Live.com. You can see what we've got coming up there. It's entirely free to attend. And then, you know, once that event's gone, I'm sure we'll post other things there, but that's the best way of staying informed with what I've got going. Part of my passion, Keith, is sharing it. You know, it's pretty boring doing it on your own. And one of the biggest thrills I get is when you get feedback by email or however, from someone who said, well, when I heard this or saw that or read this, I wasn't even sure if it would work and I certainly wasn't sure if it would work for me. But look at what I've done since then, and that gives you a feeling that you can't describe in words. That's pretty cool. You change someone's life and you don't even really know who they are, then that's kind of that's fun stuff.
Keith Weinhold 00:45:48 The ruse has been helpful to me in our audience today. The King of Commercial Real Estate, thanks so much for coming on to the show.
Dolf de Roos 00:45:55 Hey, thank you so much for the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.
Keith Weinhold 00:46:04 Check out Dolph Live.com. It looks like he's got a live event coming up this Thursday night, and if you missed that more afterward, like I was saying earlier, a ton of great episodes coming up here on the get Rich education podcast, just stacked. As always, you'll get lessons from me when I'm going to break down. Is any debt worth paying off? Which debts are which are not and why? That's going to help you know what to do with every debt for the rest of your life. And that's besides what I mentioned earlier, both new guests and very popular returning guests. I hope that you learned something today. I'll run it back next week when we meet again. Until then, I'm your host, Keith Weintraub. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 8 00:46:54 Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own.
Speaker 8 00:47:05 Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss the host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.
Keith Weinhold 00:47:22 The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get Rich education.com.
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