Episode Zero | Ep.01 - Introduction to The TCO Method ™
The TCO Method ™ May 8, 2023 4:32 pm
In this first episode of the show, Andy McQuade introduces The TCO Method ™, explains the goal of the show, and publicly embarrasses himself by making a podcast with almost no preparation and no script. You’ll also learn who he is and why he created The TCO Method.
His goal – to help you Massively Increase Your Net Operating Income ™.
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The TCO Method ™
Episode 01
Episode Zero – Introduction to The TCO Method
Hosted by Andy McQuade
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[MUSIC]
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Welcome to the TCO method.
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The only show focused on helping you massively increase your net operating
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income.
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I am Andy McQuade and I want to thank you for tuning in to this very first introductory
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preview episode of the TCO method.
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And I’m going to apologize now because I sound terrible thanks to allergies and I can’t
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make it go away and I need to get these done.
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So it is what it is.
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I’m going to sound like this for this episode and probably episode one and two.
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I plan to do two episodes a week and the focus on all of them is going to be using the
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TCO method to maximize the profitability of your property for however long you’re going
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to hold it.
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Now, typically, I only work with larger commercial real estate operators, right, commercial multi-family.
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300 plus doors in an apartment complex, two to 500, maybe a thousand doors of single-family
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rentals, that type of thing.
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So a lot of what I talk about is going to be specific examples from what I’ve learned
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from the operators I’ve helped and worked with in my 25 plus years and a lot of it is
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going to be stuff that I developed after going out on my own to be a consultant to the real
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estate industry.
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Long story, not really super important at this point, but the long and short of it is this
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show and all the episodes are going to be focused on real estate investors, owners and operators
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of any type of real estate because most of the principles and ideas and concepts we’re
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going to discuss are going to be focused and can be applied to any type of real estate pretty
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much anywhere in the United States.
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There’s always going to be the exception, just like there are very specific markets that
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most investors are comfortable working in because they understand it.
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That’s how this show is going to be presented.
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I’m very, very comfortable with multi-family operations, but other stuff I’m going to
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have guests come in and talk about it.
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So I’m going to apologize in advance.
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Number one for my voice, which I already mentioned.
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Number two, because this is the first episode of podcasts and it’s probably going to be terrible
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like most first episodes of podcasts are until they get in their stride and really take
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off.
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So it’s going to be me and my ugly mug for the vast majority of episodes.
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No co-hosts, no panel discussions, none of that stuff.
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I’m going to cover different methods to impact your NOI positively on your properties.
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I’m going to talk about risk management and compliance and green up operations and value
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ad plays.
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I’m going to talk about numbers, but not so many numbers that it drives everybody crazy
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and makes your eyes glaze over.
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I’m not going to do math on the radio.
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I’m getting ahead of myself.
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This is a podcast.
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We’re not on the radio.
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I’m not going to do math other than some really simple examples to give you the idea of
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what I’m talking about.
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I have plans for the first 10 or 12 episodes already laid out and we’re going to be talking
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about things like decision making processes, like maintenance operations, like spend
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now to save later.
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What I like to call two cars, no brains, you have to listen to the episode if you want
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to actually figure out what two cars, no brains is.
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And we’re going to get deep into weeds on different topics involving probably politics
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more than we should that impact the industry.
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We’re going to talk a little bit about market pressures and what’s happening in the housing
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market, what’s happening in the industrial space as far as office space and manufacturing
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in the US and all sorts of that fun stuff.
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Yeah, buckle up.
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It should be fun.
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And again, I apologize in advance because this is probably going to suck.
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I’m going to not talk a lot about myself in future episodes, but you should probably
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have some sort of idea of who the heck I am and why you’re listening to me ramble on
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about this.
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And then you’ll just have to listen to episodes to figure out whether I’m going to add value
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to you or not.
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I spent the last 26 years working with real estate developers in various ways.
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Maybe I cut my teeth driving a forklift at a lumber yard when I was 17 and never looked
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back.
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That was kind of my career.
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I went to college, became a store manager for that particular lumber yard, did outside
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sales for that lumber yard.
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That’s really where I started figuring out how to communicate and negotiate and do what
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I needed to do to add value to my builder clients.
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My cookie cutter was a 6,000 square foot MacManchon in a nice area outside of Rochester, New
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York.
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And I sold everything from Framing lumber and interior doors and trim to, you know, bath
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fixtures and all the other fun stuff.
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And then I went and I worked for the Home Depot for almost 11 years after almost 11 years
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at the lumber yard.
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And during that time, I learned a lot about a lot of different things.
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I went in as a district level manager.
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I never worked in a store.
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So I don’t really have a lot to say about that side of it other than from a top-down management
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standpoint.
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But I ran their pro desks from 2007 to 2018.
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And I went from seven to nine to 18 stores in two different districts during that period
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of time.
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And in the last three years, I worked almost exclusively with large multifamily operators
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with their operations branching into multiple states.
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I managed all of their purchasing at the Depot, which most people are now going, “Ugh, crap,
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I don’t want to listen to this guy from Home Depot.”
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Well, Home Depot is not a good answer for most.
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And I say that with all due respect to people.
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They do have certain things.
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But they do well.
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They have other things that they do terribly.
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And the terrible, in most cases, outweighs the good.
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But it did get me into some very nice sea level offices behind the scenes, looking at books
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and numbers and how purchasing and operations were working for these companies.
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And I would literally towards the end, I would steal good ideas from some of my customers.
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And I would offer them up to other customers to help them operate their businesses more efficiently
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and more intelligently in some cases.
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And that allowed me to build the largest multifamily-focused property management portfolio in the
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United States at the Home Depot.
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So out of 213 people doing my job at the time, I was number one for about three years straight.
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And it was just because I was very, very good at going into these offices and already
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knowing what their challenges were and what their headaches were and having ways for them
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to reduce their expenses.
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Whether it was less time on maintenance, whether it was less windshield time driving stores
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and shopping for their guys, whether it was less money spent because they’re using different
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products, whether it was capitalizing on making sure that they’re getting the correct price
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on stuff according to the market and getting rebates and discounts.
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That’s how I did it.
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So all that being said, I only did that until 2018.
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I left for a year and did some high-end, cheesy reclaimed wood stuff with a local vendor
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here, a brand new outside sales team across the US for about a year.
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And then I went out on my own, opened my own consulting company after one of my large multifamily
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clients came to me for advice.
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One of the vice presidents changed the rules, went into procurement and risk management,
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sat down for half hour coffee, turned into a three and a half hour long, almost into lunchtime
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conversation.
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And from there, it became a no-brainer when he said, “You know you should do this full time.”
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And I said, “Yeah, you…
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Okay.”
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And two weeks later, I opened my own LLC.
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Months and a half after that.
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I left my job at the reclaimed wood place and started working for myself, helping property
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managers.
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And in the last, let’s see what is it, 2023.
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So in the last four years, I have through the TCO method added over $5 million annually,
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just hit that number in March, back into my clients net operating income.
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Now, I say $5 million annually in additional NOI because the very first customer I worked
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with in 2019, I only added 85,000 a year, I think, back to their bottom line.
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85,000 is nothing to sneeze at.
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It was a large multifamily complex.
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But $85,000 was the first.
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And now I’m up to, after four years and a couple dozen clients of doing this type of work
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for.
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I’ve gotten it up to $5 million in NOI, which is essentially like raising your rents by $10 million.
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Because if you’re…
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We’re just going to call your operations are going to eat up 50% of your gross revenue,
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right?
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In real estate and in property management.
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So we’re just going to go every dollar saved in NOI is $2 in your top line.
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Yeah.
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Here’s the key in commercial multifamily.
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$5 million at the cap rates these properties operated or were valued under.
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It’s like $70 million in value added to their properties, which is nothingness needs
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at.
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It’s actually quite significant when you look at it that way.
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So there’s a bunch of anecdotal stuff on Twitter, on retwit.
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If you don’t know what retwit is, you need to get involved.
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It’s just hashtag RTWIT and it’s all commercial real estate and real estate people across the
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country.
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There’s some people on there who know what they’re talking about and others that don’t.
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So, just like anything else, take it with a grain of salt.
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But it is worth engaging in and there’s been one meme that’s been going around recently
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about, you know, I’ll take pets all day long because I can charge them $50 a month times
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X number of tenants, say 50% of tenants have pets and blah, blah, blah.
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And, you know, that extra X number of dollars per year actually adds $600,000 to the property
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value at fees, right?
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Different ways to edge to your NOI.
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We call that alternative income streams or incidental income streams.
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And there’s a bunch of them out there that we’ll talk about throughout the span of this
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show, not this particular episode, but going forward, right?
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This is the preview episodes.
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So we’re going to talk a little bit about what we’re getting into.
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So risk management compliance procurement purchasing product selection specifications,
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like that’s my stick.
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I was a building material guy for 25 years.
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I know what’s hot garbage and what fails in units and I know, you know, what’s going to
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help save time.
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But I also know that there’s different holding patterns.
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There’s holding patterns, different holding times.
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There’s different, you know, disposition plans.
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There’s different classes and locations of property and we’re going to weigh our decision-making
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process based on what your plan is, right?
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So if you’re going to flip a home, you don’t really care if you’re going to put in light
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fixtures and appliances that are going to reduce energy use or water use or resource use
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or generate less waste because you’re going to sell it and it’s going to be gone and it’s
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no longer your problem, right?
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So ethics aside, because I know there’s people out there right now that are like, oh my
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God, you’re talking about generating extra waste and using more energy and blah, blah, blah.
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Well yeah, I am, but you have to realize that there’s this thing with builders and remodellers
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and flippers that they don’t want to own the workmanship or products on a property
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past what their reasonable warranty requirement is.
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So if they’re one year, two years, they don’t want to own the responsibility for that if
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they’ve sold it and moved on by the same token, they’re going to make sure that they’re
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using product that hits that year in lifespan, that the warranty covers, manufacturer’s warranty
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or whatever it is and the workmanship that they put into that also meets that one year,
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right?
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Or two years if it’s a higher in home builder.
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But beyond that, it becomes the homeowner’s problem, whether that homeowner happens to be
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an investor who’s renting it out to a tenant or whether it happens to be an investor that
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is using it as an Airbnb or an investor that is renting it out to another business as
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an office space or whatever.
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It doesn’t really matter.
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You can do value-ad plays on almost any type of building and then divest it and it’s good
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income.
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Anyway, most of what I do for multi-family managers is the longer term value-ad play.
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They buy a distressed property that’s failing for whatever reason, whether it’s a C or a
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B or an A. More of my A’s are adaptive reuse projects in old downtown commercial buildings
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that are going into luxury apartments.
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But that’s neither here nor there.
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The reality is that the best results with the TCO method are bound as from an ROI standpoint
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when you use it at the very beginning of a value-ad play.
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You’re buying the property, you’re getting ready to close, you’re trying to secure labor
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and materials for that project.
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By picking certain specific products from certain specific vendors or vendor or relevance is
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the thing too, it’s about picking resilient goods that will hold up to the class of property
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and the type of tenant that’s going to go in there.
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You have to build your portfolio to be resilient to the lowest common denominator of tenant
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that’s going to go in there.
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For those of you who’ve done commercial real estate for a long time, you know what that means
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when we’re talking about something like a dry cleaner.
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For somebody who’s done commercial multifamily for a long time, you know that that means that
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you’re going to be dealing with challenging people with financial hardship problems, with
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socio-economic problems, from disadvantaged communities that don’t take the best care
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of the spaces they live in.
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And so the challenge becomes what are you using and what are you doing to make that space
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as livable as possible for as long as possible that’s resilient enough to take the abuse that
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is going to get dished out onto it without breaking the bank because the only way real estate
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works for anybody, for the tenants or for the owners and managers is going to be if it functions
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for the length of time it needs to function without costing an exorbitant amount of money
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or creating an unsafe space for the tenant.
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And it’s a tricky balance and it comes in like everything I talked about at the beginning
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comes into that.
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So there’s a compliance play, there’s a risk management play, there’s a cost avoidance
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play, there’s all of the normal ins and outs of property management from a remodeling
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standpoint.
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So you’ve got to find the labor, you’ve got to buy the materials, you’ve got to make sure
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that supply chain is there, you’ve got to avoid delays, you’ve got to make sure that the
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quality of workmanship is going to be good, you’ve got to make sure that the products you’re
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using match the local comps for that class of property, you’ve got to make sure that you’re
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not going to break the bank and make it so you have to hold that property for longer or
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charge an exorbitant rent to make the numbers work.
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So there’s a lot of pieces that have to go into the puzzle, but it’s always easier to put
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the TCO method into place and get it working when the acquisition is made to the property
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on a value head play.
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It’s not the only place you can use it.
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I have plenty of customers who have adopted it and put product standards and specifics
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in place in order to drive value to their property to minimize the long term costs of doing
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business by managing or owning that property.
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It doesn’t work for everybody.
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There’s going to be people who are listening to me right now who are tuning out because
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they don’t want somebody telling them how to run their business.
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That’s fine.
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I welcome feedback, I welcome opinions, you can email the show at podcast@tco-message.com.
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You can email me at andy@andymacquade.com.
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We’ll get to your questions one way or the other, but if you’re going to email me and tell
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me I’m completely wrong, back it up.
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Give me facts, give me examples, don’t just tell me.
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If you write to me and you say something like, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and
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why should I listen to you?”
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I started in this industry when you were in diapers.
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I don’t care.
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Okay, that’s literally like I’m going to completely ignore anything you say from there because
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you are an uncoachable person who’s not open to constructive criticism and it completely
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discounts anything you might say from that point forward.
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Ego has no place in business operations.
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This is a numbers game.
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Either works or it doesn’t.
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You can have favorite people, you can have favorite vendors, you can have favorite products,
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you can have ways of doing things that have worked for you for 20 something years, but if
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there’s a better way and it’s been proven to be better and you’re not doing it because
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you like the old way and you’re okay with lighting your money on fire, then this show is
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not for you.
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That’s just the way it is.
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If you’re going to burn money, that’s your problem.
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If you want a waste time listening to me as you’re burning money because you’re not going
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to do or use any of the ideas that I put on this show, then I literally cannot help you
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and I’m not really interested in discussing it.
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You want to email, ask questions, clarify, tell me I’m a moron, call me names, you can do
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that.
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I don’t care.
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Okay, like it’s completely freaking irrelevant.
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Now, that being said, some other just qualifiers, right, back to where I’m at and what I’m doing
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and why I’m doing what I’m doing.
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In my career, I’ve worked on, impacted, managed, sold product to, touched in some way, influenced
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in some way, over 150,000 units, doors, apartments, whatever you want to call them.
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In 29 states in three countries, okay.
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It could have been, I sold the flooring that went into that.
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It could have been, I set the specifications for the products and the appliances.
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It could be any number of things.
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But I have personally touched 150,000 different doors, managed by over 50 different property
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management companies, which doesn’t really mean much because there’s literally tens of thousands
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of multifamily and property management operators in the country, if not millions.
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When you get into the mom and pops and the own less than 10 doors and they’re just doing
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it for their retirement, like, it’s completely irrelevant.
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However, it does give me some perspective because no matter how long you’ve been in the
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industry as an operator, okay.
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I doubt very highly that as an operator, you’ve been invited into over three dozen different
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sea level offices to discuss how they run their operations and why they do the things they
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do and how to make those better for them so they can make more money.
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It’s just not something that people who are in the business every day operating get to
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do.
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I’m very fortunate that I was a sales guy with a huge company behind me and a massive footprint
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with a great support team that allowed me to do that.
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Not everybody is going to be able to do that.
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But also not everybody is going to spend the amount of time learning the industry the way
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I did most sales people and no offense if your salesperson wants any of this.
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Most sales people don’t care how their customers operations run.
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They don’t care what their priorities are.
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All they care about is getting that commission check for selling something to them.
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Whether it’s the right product or the wrong product, they don’t care as long as it’s their
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product, right.
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That’s a huge issue for me and I used to tell my customers that I wouldn’t sell them certain
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things because it was terrible and if they wanted to buy it, they could buy it somewhere
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else or they could use what I recommended.
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And sometimes I didn’t have a recommendation because I didn’t sell anything like that so
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I just give my recommendation and say go buy it from XYZ Company down the street,
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right.
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So that’s where I’m coming from on that.
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The other things I’ve done, I have worked during the pandemic.
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I had to pivot a little bit because in case you were completely oblivious to what was going
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on during the pandemic, I couldn’t exactly go and get on a plane and fly to a multi-family
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property that was about to get a due diligence walk in another state for an acquisition.
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I couldn’t go into people’s units to look at stuff to help with the due diligence or walk
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a maintenance shop or even meet with vendors other than through Zoom.
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So I pivoted a little and I did some more general management consulting.
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So I did stuff for law firms.
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I did stuff for a VC funded startup involved in construction that has an awesome training
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program that they do all online, very affordable.
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It’s great for companies, great for people looking to cut their teeth and get into a blue
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collar job that will pay them good five figures for their entire lives and give them the opportunity
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to be entrepreneurs themselves and run their own shops.
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I’ve worked for publicly traded, massive companies operating in all 50 states, just doing
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20 to 40 hour consulting projects, research, market reports, that type of thing.
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I also participated in about two dozen expert networks, which is a whole different thing,
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but I would get calls from the big three consulting firms.
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I would take calls from some of the largest global investment banks.
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I still have three investment banks I work with regularly in Sydney, Australia from that
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relationship.
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I have several dozen large corporate clients that would call me to pick my brains on certain
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aspects of either the real estate industry, the building materials industry, asking questions
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how to get into big box retail, I come depot, etc, etc.
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So I’ve done a bunch of different stuff.
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Most of it has been in the real estate and construction realm.
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A little have I done outside of that from a consulting standpoint.
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That being said, every single client that I’ve worked with has serviced property management
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in real estate clients in some form.
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Law firm that I worked for, I helped them with a change management and an operational plan.
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They have a very strong real estate representation, I guess office where they help with everything
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from evictions to least generation and all the other fun stuff.
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I like to network.
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I like to work with companies that are in the industry.
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My plan is on this podcast that we will have guests, not in every episode, but in a few episodes,
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I’m going to bring specific things that I am not an expert in.
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I’m here to help the listeners of this program create NOI, whether it’s by adding things that
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add on a Y from an incidental income perspective or whether it’s a play to add an Y by reducing
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costs, whether it’s a play to keep more of the money they make by reducing tax burdens.
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All those things are going to be discussed.
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We’ll have guests on that specialize in that.
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Just like in my consulting firm, I don’t do things that I’m not qualified to do.
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I bring in partners to help manage that.
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I have people who do, you know, and I talk to people pretty regularly who do cost segregation.
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If you’re listening to this and you’re a CPA and you tell your people that cost segregation
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is a scam and it’s not worth doing, you can leave.
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Turn the radio off and delete this podcast.
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By the way, I’m very opinionated and I don’t really care what anybody thinks or says.
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It’s a huge value add play right now, especially with both bonus depreciation to be getting
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into and making sure that you are doing everything you need to do for cost segregation.
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It is a interest-free loan.
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Even if you’re planning on selling the property, even if you’re planning on holding that property
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for 30 years, it doesn’t matter.
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Things happen.
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Take the free loan.
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Yes, that’s right, silence.
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Now, the other part of that free loan.
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If you do it correctly, you can get 32 or 33% and then you only have to pay back 25.
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So not only did you get an interest-free loan, but you get to keep an extra 7 or 8%.
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Again, I don’t know it.
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It’s not what I do every day.
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I don’t understand necessarily all the numbers.
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What I do understand is free money.
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Do you know what interest rates are right now?
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It is currently May 6th when I’m recording this.
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So if this airs on Tuesday, it’s going to take two weeks for this to get live.
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So this is probably not even going to air go to air until maybe the 16th.
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Maybe?
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Interest rates just got raised a quarter point this week.
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Again.
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Right?
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Getting at 7% interest on most loans, whether it’s a FHA or whatever.
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Now 7%, I’m not a, oh my God, interest rates need to be zero guy.
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Interest rates need to be wherever they need to be to prevent stupid inflation at the
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end.
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And I’m sure I’ll talk about that.
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The show is going to be opinion, politics, operational, all things that affect your
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business and the NOI that you can generate in your business.
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So we’re going to talk a little bit about that.
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But if you can get an interest free loan, do it for the love of God.
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What can you scale with that money?
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Put the money into something.
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Use it to grow your business.
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Don’t just sit on it.
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It’s, yes, it’s like a tax break.
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I get it.
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Take that cash.
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If it’s a rebate, take that cash.
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If it’s just stuff you’re saving that you were going to pay and put it somewhere, put it
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to work.
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00:30:57,460 –> 00:31:01,100
Even if you’re just going to do a loan to somebody, right?
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You’re going to invest in a project as an LP and you’re just going to give them cash.
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You’re going to get 12 to 14% right now.
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You’re going to get it back in a year or two.
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I would take the free money and make the 12 to 14% on it or if you’re going to put it into
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another project or another property, do that.
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Same thing with tax assessment challenges.
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Almost everybody I talk to got crushed on property taxes, whether it’s multifamily operators
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and industrial, residential, doesn’t matter.
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Taxes went through the freaking roof for everyone this year and it’s catching a lot of investors
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with their pants down quite frankly, just like insurance increases, right?
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Two tax assessment challenge, do it every year.
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Talk to somebody who’s good at it that does it full time.
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They know how to talk to the assessors and get it done and get it done in a way that’s
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ethical and legal and that benefits your property and keeps your expenses under control.
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00:32:05,980 –> 00:32:09,140
Same thing when we’re talking about insurance.
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A lot of what I do is not for insurance companies.
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For only the owners and operators, I don’t sell products, I don’t sell services, I get like
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other than my own service, I don’t swing a hammer, right?
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I do stuff specifically to maximize NLI and to do procurement operations for property
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management firms because they’re very closely related and we’ll get into that further down
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the road.
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But the long and short of it is there are things you can do now from a risk management,
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compliance standpoint that with the right underwriting or the insurance for your property
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can reduce your bills.
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Well how does that work?
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00:32:53,740 –> 00:32:54,740
Why is that?
431
00:32:54,740 –> 00:32:55,740
Well it’s simple.
432
00:32:55,740 –> 00:32:59,260
It’s like when you’re looking if you’re not in the industry and you’re looking at it from
433
00:32:59,260 –> 00:33:03,540
a homeowner perspective, it’s like when they give you a discount for having dead bolts
434
00:33:03,540 –> 00:33:06,060
on every door coming into your house.
435
00:33:06,060 –> 00:33:09,700
They just, they give you a credit because something’s been done that they think is correct
436
00:33:09,700 –> 00:33:12,380
that reduces risk.
437
00:33:12,380 –> 00:33:17,820
The same thing with having smoke detectors in your house, the same thing with having a sprinkler
438
00:33:17,820 –> 00:33:22,220
system in your commercial space in your office, whatever it may be.
439
00:33:22,220 –> 00:33:32,660
The same thing with, if you have whatever it is, a sump pump with a backup if you have
440
00:33:32,660 –> 00:33:35,260
an emergency generator.
441
00:33:35,260 –> 00:33:41,220
Any of the things that an insurance company will discount your rate for, there are ways
442
00:33:41,220 –> 00:33:49,860
where commercial insurance underwriters can duplicate some of that to an extent for multi-family,
443
00:33:49,860 –> 00:33:53,460
for industrial, for office, for hospitality.
444
00:33:53,460 –> 00:33:59,660
You just have to have the right stuff in place and be able to show them that it’s working
445
00:33:59,660 –> 00:34:07,060
in a way that reduces your risk in turn reducing their risk.
446
00:34:07,060 –> 00:34:12,500
That’s really a lot of what we’re going to discuss, not directly tied to insurance, but
447
00:34:12,500 –> 00:34:21,780
it will give you the ability to talk to your underwriters or find an underwriter that understands
448
00:34:21,780 –> 00:34:28,380
how you can put things in place that will reduce your overall risk as well as reducing
449
00:34:28,380 –> 00:34:32,540
your operating costs and all the other stuff that the show is focused on.
450
00:34:32,540 –> 00:34:39,900
Now, since I’ve rambled on for a while, what I want to make sure is that everybody knows
451
00:34:39,900 –> 00:34:46,860
Tuesdays and Thursdays, just me at the beginning will do some interviews, will bring some people
452
00:34:46,860 –> 00:34:55,500
onto the TCO method, will start doing some live stream events, you can email me at the show
453
00:34:55,500 –> 00:35:03,580
at TCO method dot com, podcast at TCO method dot com is the actual email address we’re going
454
00:35:03,580 –> 00:35:10,420
to use or you can email me at andy@animacquade.com, but if it’s podcast related, I’d rather have
455
00:35:10,420 –> 00:35:15,740
you go there and I just want to thank you very much for tuning in for this first episode
456
00:35:15,740 –> 00:35:25,460
of me rambling on like a moron for 35 minutes and 12 seconds and I look forward to you coming
457
00:35:25,460 –> 00:35:31,020
and dropping me a line and letting me know what you think, what ideas you have, if you think
458
00:35:31,020 –> 00:35:36,620
I’m ugly and fat and stupid, cool, you can tell me that, I’ll probably just ignore it,
459
00:35:36,620 –> 00:35:39,540
but you can do it, I suppose.
460
00:35:39,540 –> 00:35:45,260
And I apologize again for this show probably being terrible, but the next show we’re going
461
00:35:45,260 –> 00:35:51,860
to talk less about me and more about you and all of your operations and how you’re doing
462
00:35:51,860 –> 00:36:03,060
and how you’re seeing the market go.
463
00:36:03,060 –> 00:36:18,660
So hang out, I look forward to this journey.
464
00:36:18,660 –> 00:36:21,240
(upbeat music)
465
00:36:21,240 –> 00:36:23,820
(upbeat music)