024 - Malleable

Unearth the secrets of success in the real estate world with our special guest Brian Force. Aside from being an ardent golfer, Brian is a seasoned player in the realms of property management, real estate sales, and multi-family syndication. Our conversation navigates through his intriguing journey, revealing how he carved out his career path in this volatile industry. Get ready to be entertained with some golf talk, as we discuss the variety of courses around Texas. Also, you won't want to miss Brian's personal insights on his own podcast.

The real estate investing field is as challenging as it is rewarding. Brian and I delve into the pressing issues that investors face, such as the importance of due diligence in verifying asset values. We also highlight how investors themselves can steer market momentum. The conversation takes a darker turn as we discuss the manipulative schemes of certain players who bind properties with the intention of re-trading later. However, it's not all gloom and doom. Brian emphasizes the potential for success through opportunism, dedication, and hard work, even in challenging times. This episode is packed with knowledge and tips to help you navigate the demanding yet rewarding world of real estate investing.

Resources and links discussed:
- Videocast on our YouTube Channel
- ANB Funds Website - https://anbfunds.com
- The Only Real Estate Podcast Worth Listening To (TOREPWLT) - Brian's Podcast
- https://facebook.com/onlyrepodcast
- https://www.youtube.com/onlyrepod

About the Host:
Justin Bogard – Note Investor specializing in performing Residential Real Estate Debt. He finds deals and acquires them for his own portfolio as well as educates investors while walking them through the process of owning a Real Estate Note!

Connect with the Host:
Facebook - bethebank
Twitter - bethebank1
Instagram - bethebankpodcast
American Note Buyers - https://anbfunds.com/
Monthly Broadcast - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzc944w1xydt5aLDrrEPHJhdJeDkBjjD4

Chapters

• 0:02 Real Estate Investing and Wealth Creation
• 10:54 Challenges in Real Estate Market Trends
• 18:52 Real Estate Investing in Challenging Times

Transcript

Narrator: 0:02

Interested in real estate. How about wealth? Well, they go hand in hand, and here you'll learn all about it. Welcome to Be the Bank, a podcast where we discuss and debate the topics centered around real estate investing. Your host, justin Bogart, shares insights into investing in real estate to create real wealth and passive income for you and your family. He'll share stories of real estate investments done right, take you through the process of owning a real estate note and, most importantly, educate you so you can be the bank. This is Be the Bank brought to you by American Notebuyers. Now here's your host, justin Bogart.

Justin Bogard: 0:45

Hey, hey, listeners, Justin Bogart here and welcome to another episode of the Be the Bank, number 24 this season, on season number 5. Man, we only got a couple episodes left to end the season. Woohoo, Our special guest. His name is Brian Force. You guys are going to love this guy. He's got a ton of energy, he's younger than me and he knows quite a bit about real estate. So you ought to listen to him when he talks.

Justin Bogard: 1:06

And we're going to be bringing up the fact about kind of sketchy people in our business and just kind of watching out for the bad actors. So you're going to love this episode, so stay tuned, Brian. What's happening, buddy? What's up, brother? How are you Doing? Very well, it is deciding whether it's going to cool down or heat up here in Indiana. So our weather is typically around this time, probably about 20 degrees in the morning, up to about 50, mid-50s in the afternoon, and right now it's still hovering in the mid-60s, even though it's 70s or a few days here. So I'm afraid that we're going to, the frost is going to come in, and just you know nip it to the… I was going to say is this maybe like?

Brian Force: 1:53

I got to look on my phone here? Is this maybe the first time that we're on that? Is it like colder than when you're at? We're at? No, we're at 65 right now. This is pretty normal for Texas in November, though we might get up to 100 a few more times this year, who knows?

Justin Bogard: 2:07

It's nice to be you man, oh man.

Brian Force: 2:09

Well still, you can still go play golf in December here, so that's not a bad thing.

Justin Bogard: 2:13

Man, I love playing golf. If I could play golf every day, I would, I really would.

Brian Force: 2:18

It's charity tournament season around here, because it's a little cheaper to play. Right now it's a charity tournament, so it seems like every week that's awesome.

Justin Bogard: 2:26

So what do you play down there? Do they have links courses or is it wooded courses?

Brian Force: 2:32

Oh man, we've got a little bit of it. Texas, north Texas area, is kind of a mecca for golf so we've got like they'll pull out all the stops. So we have like a really great like links course called the Tribute, which is a very kind of like nationally renowned links course around here all the way up to like I live right down the road from the new PGA resort, which I've not had the pleasure of playing yet, but it's incredible from what I hear. So I mean it's we got every flavor and delicacy of golf course around here you could possibly imagine. Man, it's pretty awesome.

Justin Bogard: 3:04

I would love to lose all my golf balls down there. That sounds like a lot of fun. And don't I know it 18 holes, 18 golf balls gone. It's an expensive sport but we keep coming back from work as we're glutton for punishment.

Brian Force: 3:15

Exactly, brother.

Justin Bogard: 3:16

All right. So for the for listening and viewing audience here well, actually listening audience if you didn't know, we have a YouTube channel American note buyers YouTube channel. You come over and check us out and you can see the video feed of today's episode. And so Brian and I don't know each other for a very long time, but we do know each other and our commonality factor is actually his father, and so his father is heavily in the note business right now and he actually has a mentor, eddie Speed, who's who's my mentor as well. And so that's kind of how we met.

Justin Bogard: 3:45

And so Brian and I met because his dad, tom, brought him to a mastermind that I was at with my business partner, richard, who's usually on the on the show, but we kicked him off today just because you know he's, he got in trouble with HR, so he's just not allowed to be on the day. That's his punishment, but yeah, so Brian and I got to meet at the mastermind. We kind of hit it off. I kind of know a little bit about his story, which he's going to share today, and we're going to get into some fun topics. But, brian, why don't you go ahead and just kind of set the, set the table here with as far as, like you know, what have you been doing in real estate so far? And I definitely want to plug your podcast because I want to make sure people are going to subscribe to your podcast. Sure.

Brian Force: 4:22

Absolutely. Thanks, man, it's. It's fun to be on this side of things for for the first time in a while.

Justin Bogard: 4:27

I'm using the one-up Instead of posting you're, you're guesting right.

Brian Force: 4:29

Yeah, exactly, it's a totally different flavor. So my name is Brian force I. I've been in real estate for about 13 years now. It just I guess, if you count being a licensed real estate professional been wholesaling and stuff since I was about 19 years old, so maybe more, like you know, 16, 17 years. I currently run a real estate sales team with Keller Williams that's the Livian DFW team. We're blessed enough to do about 350 home sales last year. I run a home word property management we should co-founded a couple of years ago. We manage about 400 residential doors across North Texas now and run a multi-family syndication company called deep blue capital. We did our first acquisition earlier this year. That market we're trying to acquire more and more right now, but the multi-family space is very interesting right now.

Brian Force: 5:26

So I've naturally have spread myself pretty thin in my in my real estate endeavors and then I also co-host two podcasts. One is the only real estate podcast worth listening to. We've been doing that for about six years. We're very fortunate to be one of the Inman News's top 25 real estate podcasts in 2022. Yeah, and even though that one's called the only one worth listening to, I do do another one. That's our multi-family podcast called the more doors podcast. We just started that one earlier this year. It's been phenomenal. It's been. I've met so many amazing people and operators and investors through that podcast. It's been very, very, very cool. So that's a little bit about me. I'm perpetually exhausted from all the things I get myself into, but I absolutely love it.

Justin Bogard: 6:13

I can say I hadn't listened to the other podcasts you mentioned about the multi-family syndication. Well one, obviously I'm in the note business so I'm not really looking at multi-family stuff that often. But you know the name was too short Exactly the only real estate business you'll ever listen to. It seems like a very long name and so I figured you know you got to listen to it. If you have to read a paragraph to describe the name of the podcast.

Brian Force: 6:37

We have made a name for ourselves, doing, I think, everything the exact opposite of what a successful podcast should do. We made the name too long. Uh, we do it live and we never edit it. We barely market it. To be honest with you. It just we have a good network of people that that are we're blessed enough that they share it out and it's growing. It's gained a major following and I don't think that we're definitely not starting an online course in how to be professional podcasters anytime soon. I think we're very lucky to have success that we've had, because I think we've done everything wrong that they tell you to do to grow a podcast. Somehow it works.

Justin Bogard: 7:14

Well, it's a really cool podcast. It's it's you guys done a great job with it. You're you're two co-hosts Um, they do a great job as well, so it's really fun. I really encourage you guys to check it out Both podcasts, obviously, but the the main one. I listened to it and I also saw it on Facebook live the other day too, when it just popped up uh, just cause we're friends on Facebook, so that's how I saw it was live. It's really cool how you got the setup. You know you got different camera positions going, you got some, you got a great video, uh, person on demand and and the post production of it as well.

Brian Force: 7:42

So it's really cool, you know what I think is really, and you know and, and we'll you know I won't dwell on this too long, but I've always said that the podcast that we do is a very good, uh, visual metaphor for just the growth of any type of venture or business or whatever. If you look at, I'm actually sitting in our studio today but I'm not hooked into our normal equipment, so I might sound a little different. We've got a very, very, very professional setup now. Um, which is awesome. We sound good. We have an engineer that that runs the whole show. Um, it's fantastic. We actually, uh, we, we run the studio as a separate, uh, a separate company now, tour studios, uh, tour to TOR the only real estate that's kind of our brand now tour studios uh, produces several podcasts now. So we actually have monetized that aspect of it. But it started with, uh, me and my co-hosts and a free zoom account and that was it six years ago.

Brian Force: 8:35

We had no idea what we were doing. If you go back and watch the old stuff, uh, the only thing that we did right was put it on our calendars for Wednesday at 3 PM and never miss it. And I think that that's such a a testament to what just commitment over the longterm can do for you in any venture, because we had no idea this thing would get as, as big as it has. Um, but we didn't care. 3 PM on Wednesday, we were always there to do it. I think if you, if you take that ideology into any business venture, it's going to be really difficult not to be successful if you're, if you're just consistent and looks like you guys have a lot of fun too, and that's what I think's important about podcasting.

Justin Bogard: 9:11

You know, it's about having fun and just having a discussion debate.

Brian Force: 9:15

Yeah, exactly, it's a blast man that makes it. That makes it way easy to keep coming back. It's awesome.

Justin Bogard: 9:22

Well, hey, man, today there's a subject matter that I kind of wanted to get into and typically what I do with Richard and I. We have something that happens to one of us during the week or the previous week and we just kind of bring it up and talk about it and it's kind of cool to be a fly on the wall. You'd listen to her here are going to get to hear us go back and forth on just a subject matter that we either may both agree on when we lightly agree on, maybe we disagree on. So it's just kind of fun to go back and forth. And so what I see lately and when I say lately, this is going to be a loose a timeline here by about a year is when this economy kind of struggles in real estate from my point of view obviously I'm the note investor guy here I'm seeing a lot of people present to me deals. I'm seeing them present me deals with like overinflation of the actual real property value.

Justin Bogard: 10:03

I think a lot of people got really excited during COVID and they saw appreciation to shoot through the roof and I am looking at a deal, regardless of what the unpaid balance is, before I buy this note. But I also want to know the property value is, and if I notice that the property value is severely overinflated from what the note value is, you know, it's kind of a red flag to me. I think sometimes they oversell this thing. So I just want to kind of start this conversation, set the table of, like you know, we'll call this the poser mentality when it comes to setting a wholesale price. Like I know, when I got ingrained into real estate investing, the first thing they said is like don't trust a wholesalers value. You know, don't. Regardless of who they are, you need to do your own valuation on it and get an idea. Don't, don't trust their numbers, you need to run your numbers, and so that definitely holds true in what I'm doing today.

Brian Force: 10:50

Yeah, 100% man, and you see it in the note business. I think one of the most visual good metaphors that a lot of investors would resonate with is maybe, like the single family wholesale business, right, just because that's you know, for the longest time, and so I used to flip, you know, several houses a year I don't as much anymore just because the market got really tight the last few years. It was, it was Uber competitive, and whenever things are continuously trending north like they were up until middle of 2022, it can be difficult to compete and I only have so much time in the day. So, yeah, what I noticed is that most wholesale deals I mean they didn't even make it to my inbox before somebody was buying them. Now I'm getting 20 or 30 a week, but, as you said, the numbers, knowing what I know about the North Texas real estate market and having done this for a living for so long, I can identify what an ARV is going to be before I even pull up the MLS to verify comps and they're just not really even close. And as a wholesaler it's a you know or as any sales professional, let's say it's a very human thing to give in that urge to really try to make a case for the maximum value of an asset, and so you'll see some of these supporting documents or CMAs or things like that that have comps that are nowhere near the most relevant, probably way too old to be to be considered. You know the best comparables and you just see wholesalers making a case for a value that, as a professional, I know is absolutely inflated from where today's market's at so one. It's obviously why you're, why you are tasked with being a consummate professional on your end, having a mechanism to run your own numbers and do your own. That's why they call it due diligence. It is your job to verify those things.

Brian Force: 12:31

I think it's a responsibility you know, and I would encourage anybody that's you know looking at. You know whether it is notes, multifamily, single family, whatever your intentions are. You'll take the flipping business, for example. You know I'm making offers on stuff because I'm getting so many more deals in my inbox right now that aren't even close to what the wholesaler is asking for, right, and I have no shame or doubt in that I'm not going to get as many deals if I was just going with what they were asking. But I actually believe this to my core. I believe that buyers that can close, savvy investors that have an education and know what they're doing and have a track record and have experience. We have an actual I mean we actually have a responsibility to drive the market with our activity Meaning.

Brian Force: 13:18

If I talk about this a little bit, on the multifamily side, we're not able to get deals to pencil. So sometimes you know, my partners won't even want to put an LOI in. I say no, we got to put an LOI in, because if we put an LOI in and every other person, every other group that's underwriting and penciling this deal at the same number that we are, puts an LOI in, well, what do you think that seller is going to feel whenever they get 15 LOIs that are a heck of a lot more realistic in what their whisper price is right? Are they going to be obstinate or are they going to come around and start to have a realistic conversation with the broker on the state of the market, what their DISPO strategy is and whether or not it makes sense to stick to their whisper price or to come down? But if we don't get in the game, the game never moves. There's no momentum in any direction, and so in these types of when the market shifts really quickly.

Brian Force: 14:07

You're going to have a lot of times an end user there who is disbowing an asset whether they're selling a note, they're selling a multifamily asset, they're selling a single family house. They're going to have a different perspective for a while on what asset values look like than what the buyers on the other side are going to want to pay. The bid-ask spread is going to open up pretty wide when you have a quickly shifting market like we saw, really beginning in the middle of 2020 or 2022, I'm sorry. And so in the middle there there's going to be people that are always going to be some bad actors for sure. Like you said before, there's also going to be a lot of people, if you look especially on the single family wholesale side just people that aren't having strong conversations, just wholesalers that are just making promises to a seller or a homeowner that there's just not a chance of heck they're going to be able to keep, because they want that dopamine hit of getting a deal under contract and they'll usually have no skin in the game whatsoever.

Brian Force: 15:11

Exactly, they're like I'll figure it out on the other side and if I'm playing with house money because I've got a dollar option period and no earnest money. If I'm not having a strong conversation, I might tell the seller whatever they want to hear, just to get that under contract. And what really frustrates me on that side is the bad actors that we talk about. Those would be the ones that are purposely tying up a property for an extended period of time with the intention that they're going to retrade the seller down at a later date. I've got a 10 or 15 day option period to go get this contract assigned. I know I'm not getting it assigned for the price that I'm trying to what I'm promising the seller. So I know I'm coming back in five days and trying to retrade them. And that's the stuff I can't stand.

Justin Bogard: 15:58

So the wholesaler has the wrong type of motivational problems. They don't really have cash flow, they have transactional flow and that really affects them in this down market because they're so competitive right now. They're stepping over each other and I think, fortunately, a lot of them will kind of weed themselves out. The ones that are more what do you want to say? Fly by the night or inside habit aside, hustle wholesaler, those guys are going to go by the way size anyways. But it is difficult because I noticed everyone has the sense of urgency. I'm doing air quotes here for those of you that can't see me right now.

Narrator: 16:35

And the sense of urgency is.

Justin Bogard: 16:37

I hate doing that because I back up and I say wait a minute, I'm not funding this thing tomorrow, just so you know, I'm going to need a few days and I'm going to have to underwrite this a different way. God deal, what was it four days ago? I believe it was on Friday, right before the weekend. The deal the investor says hey look, I've got a seller finance transaction that I'm doing and this property I sold for $90,000. I got like $10,000 down, whatever the terms were, maybe 15 years or so. So it's like $780 payment a month. Okay, great, that all sounds good. You start digging into okay, what's the BPO value? When's the last time you got an evaluation on it? Okay, here it is, as is value 55K. Oh man, wow.

Justin Bogard: 17:21

Okay, barely half I was like, hey, what's is this real here? Oh yeah, but the future value of it is after ARV it's gonna be a hundred or hundred fifty.

Justin Bogard: 17:32

I'm like, yeah, those are great costs, but what's what you know as a lender? Why would I assume that they're gonna actually fix it up? What you know what? What's their motivation there? Would you they have more money to put down? Like? Is it the things that I try to coach some of the Some of the seller financiers out there that are just trying to do this and and over pad the numbers? Because you know, yes, I do say this out loud and I'll stand by it. You know you're providing a premium service by providing premium financing. So, yes, you can charge a little bit more and, yes, you can sell a little bit higher, but you can't double it. You can't double it.

Brian Force: 18:06

And I think that that's yeah. And to come back and talk about ARV and things like that, I mean you know you can use that as an acquisition strategy. You're hoping that you never have to take that property back in the first place.

Justin Bogard: 18:18

But if you're the, if you're the borrower, that's okay to have an ARV strategy, but when you're the lender, that's not the value you're looking at.

Brian Force: 18:25

Exactly. That's not your strategy at all. You're not gonna want to go and actually do with the renovations and get it up to market value and all that you know.

Justin Bogard: 18:32

Not not a whole different job. I've lost plenty of money trying to do that. I am not the expert in that at all.

Brian Force: 18:38

Exactly. Yeah, I mean it is. It's definitely an interesting time Because I think we're seeing that that same ideology in several aspects of the marketplace, in several different industries. You know, I I am curious. I think we're all waiting on baited breath to see what happens Q1, q2 of 2024, with rates, things like that, and how that affects the, the characters and the players inside the marketplace. I agree with you, I think that I Think it is only a matter of time and I think it's already happening.

Brian Force: 19:12

It's only a matter of time before the undedicated are unskilled and in the aspect of the industry, they just aren't able to to continue with their business model, if you even call it a business model. Yeah, when, when market volatility is so prominent, then Expertise is what gets you to where you're trying to go and what helps you thrive in that market. So I do think you're going to see this temporary Massive bid ask in a lot of different areas, or just these crazy terms or these Ideological definitions around value. I think you'll start to see those smooth themselves out over the next 12 to 18 months. Yeah, it's.

Justin Bogard: 19:53

I was trying to think of the word earlier and I finally came to my mind hobbyist is what I was thinking, or yeah, hobbyist wholesaler.

Brian Force: 19:59

Yeah, oh man, we agree, you have that in every industry. You've got the hobbyist wholesaler. Up until you know, earlier this year for Pandemic, all through 2022, you had a lot of hobbyist real estate agents that were crushing it as well, and it's very difficult as a hobbyist to to really grow your business or even to maintain it in periods like this.

Justin Bogard: 20:20

So I saw a quote earlier today, just by half a stance, and it said and I don't have any validity that this is actually true, but I do believe it's true because the number makes sense to me, that it says Like 95% of real estate investors fail. Mmm, and maybe that sounds steep, but I kind of believe it because I've been in some of these seminar classes, because, believe or not, I used to be a seminar junkie with this stuff till I finally took action. And a lot of these people are just paying in this Absorbent amount of money to learn the skill and the craft and then they go out and they really don't do anything with it. And so I, like I can see these hobbyists now that are trying to get into this End up fading away because they realized, guess what this is, work this, it's not really passive when you're active real estate investor.

Brian Force: 21:03

I mean, I hate to break the news for you, but that's what I was gonna ask is what you're definitely, what the definition there and that number of failure is because lack of action to me Is really the only failure. Right, and I would definitely agree with that number. You can be a real estate investor, not make money on every deal. You can lose money on a deal and still not really fail. If you're learning what not to do, then you're actually succeeding long term. So I would I mean, as a as a seminar, former seminar junkie, still a mastermind junkie myself as well I sit in a lot of rooms, a lot of people that are looking to learn.

Brian Force: 21:36

What they're really looking to learn is what is the way for me to make really great money as a real estate investor While taking almost no risk and not really working my butt off, you know, and like like this is a business, like this is a real job, professional seminar goers or learners they are. They are there in droves in the real estate industry in all aspects. I think that's a fair number. I think that 95% of people just fail to take massive action Because it's scary. But I'm a lot more scared of looking back on my life and realizing that I never did the things that I wanted to do so.

Justin Bogard: 22:17

Put with that into perspective. Just two things while you were talking I just jogged my memory. It's like two things that can outbeat that pace, or being a Chick-fil-A owner and being in the restaurant business.

Brian Force: 22:29

Oh yeah, I can only imagine just barely. I can only imagine. Yeah, absolutely. I have a pretty high risk tolerance. Being in the restaurant industry is probably higher than I'm willing to go. I Was a bartender all through college. I put my school and I can't understand how the back end works and man, I, I Love, I love being a patron. I don't know that I could.

Justin Bogard: 22:55

I could be on the ownership side of the restaurant business All right, brian, I'm gonna give you a chance to do a one word thing here, just because I've been thinking about this all day, love, and I have nothing else to do but think about this stuff. So get, given the real estate economy that we're in right now, get, given the difficult situation of going through the end of 19, early 20, 21, 22 and now 23, and looking forward, what is one word that would describe how a real estate investor should be, just in today's environment, versus, you know, the long stretch of probably, let's say, 13 to 18. Where it was, you know, there was just one, one rule. It was, you know, buy it cheap.

Brian Force: 23:38

Opportunistic. I think Opportunities are going to be there Absolutely already are. I don't think that they will be For the next couple of years. I don't think that they will be as Straightforward as they probably were in that in the time that you're talking about 13 to 18, where you're looking at basically you know, if you're looking for rental properties, 1% deal, lock it up all day. You're you're going to need to be an opportunist and I think that comes in many different forms. Either you're going to real estate investors.

Brian Force: 24:07

Now it's more important than ever to View your like, treat your business and work your business like a business, meaning you we're seeing this on the multifamily side. We're putting out LOI. Is that that those deals are getting locked up with a buyer that went higher and falling out six weeks Later, going with another buyer who is still higher than us, falling out six more leaks later. Right, so we've got to be on top of our game with our follow-up, follow-up. You're building a database on the multifamily side, especially of assets that you are, that you are looking to to acquire and that might happen. That could happen 12 months after you originally toward and put an LOI in just because it just the buyers weren't able to close. We're unable to raise the capital. Something got in the way. They tried to retrade them. It fell out. Seller decided not to sell. Then the seller, you know, couldn't afford their rate cap renewal premium, so they had to sell.

Brian Force: 24:55

Like there's a story behind every asset and if you're not organized, you're not on top of things, you're not going to be able to take advantage of as many opportunities. The same thing if you are a flipper right now we're talking about the wholesale side before those deals are falling out like crazy, people are locking up wholesale deals. They're falling right back out. By the way, those wholesalers, they're not even close on most of their deals. So if you're creating a database of addresses that wholesalers have sent you and they're falling out, 10 days later you should be in the car knocking on every single one of those doors, going direct to seller and saying, hey, I can make your real offer and actually close in seven days.

Brian Force: 25:26

But you've got to be way more organized because the deals, the deals, might feel a little bit more plentiful, but the bid-ask spread is so wide right now that you're probably not locking up dynamite home run deals Just in your inbox like that. You've got to build a database. You've got to be following up and you've got to be ready to go when that right deal comes along. Have your contract if you're a flipper, contractors, financing, everything good to go lined up if you you know multifamily is a whole different animal, but in general, opportunistic is the word you can't accidentally succeed as an investor in this environment. The opportunities are there, but you need to be an opportunist.

Justin Bogard: 26:05

I Love how you articulated all that. That was a great, a great way that you explained it, because you're exactly right. And During certain periods of short, certain periods of real estate times here, you could go get your real estate license and fall into selling a few houses and make a bunch of money and you could be a mortgage loan officer and you could have Everybody and their brother wanting to refi because the rates were below 3% and everyone had super appreciation and tappable equity in their homes and it was easy to be a loan officer. Now, where are those guys at?

Brian Force: 26:35

I know there's mortgage lenders that were making $750,000 a year. That might not be in the mortgage business next year, you know, and that's not to say they're not phenomenal people, but yeah, there's really great markets for certain industries at times. And then there are times where the opportunity is there. But you've got to change your approach and your mindset and the way you go about it.

Justin Bogard: 26:55

Yeah, you said exactly the word that I have been trying to think of all day is malleable, and so being malleable in this business and any real estate business in general you know the pivot was used a lot in 2021, 2020, you know. But I say malleable and because I always have to be creative. You're a very creative person as well. You may not say that out loud, but I believe you to be a very creative person because you have different strategies and you know how to navigate and you know how to make money. You smell out being an entrepreneur and you execute on that Sure, and I think that's the only way you can be right now and survive, and I think that's how I think is what normal is.

Justin Bogard: 27:33

I haven't been in this real estate business too long. I started in 2016, 2015-ish into 15. So I haven't seen all the ups and downs, but listening to my mentors and hearing other people talk about that has been in a lot longer than I have. It's like you. Definitely opportunistic is a great word, and I would also say malleable is another word that I would use to describe yourself that you have to be willing to bend and flex and move and be created, and you know, pivot, as they used to say, 100%.

Brian Force: 27:58

And I think it's just you know it comes down to this is true in many forms of life. It comes down to a willingness to face the objective reality of what is happening and then, you know, take action around it, and at any speed. I think is a great example of this. You speak to him about the note business. You know he sees a shift in the note business coming a million miles away.

Justin Bogard: 28:23

Oh yeah Right. Years before it happens, years.

Brian Force: 28:26

Years and he is a secular individual. In that regard, he is the Michael Jordan of the note industry, but he's also he doesn't keep those things to himself. He will be the first one preaching about any sort of volatility or opportunity or shift in the market, and we do that in, let's just say, the single family real estate business, the sales business. You can see a shift coming from a mile away when the Fed starts hiking rates. You know you know that things are going to shift, but it's one thing to just talk about it and we almost get embittered about it, like we get annoyed that things aren't the way that they used to be, like things should always be the same all the time, which is never going to be the case.

Brian Force: 29:13

If you look at the residential sales business, home prices nationwide have increased like 40% or something like that, I believe, since 2020. I mean it's ridiculous. Because that trend continued, every home would be worth $500 million in the next 15 years. It obviously can't stay the same like that for that long. But when we see things coming, there's a little bit of a delay between us seeing a market shift and then us actually feeling the tangible effects. So we oftentimes talk about what's to come and then take no action to prepare ourselves or educate ourselves or look at what we need to be doing to thrive in that new environment. And then, all of a sudden, this very slow moving train that we saw coming from a mile away gets right up next to our face and we're still standing on the tracks. It's like, guys, if you start coming from that long, be malleable. You've got to learn the next strategy, you've got to learn to adapt, and I think that's what people like Eddie Speed do very, very well.

Justin Bogard: 30:08

Absolutely, brian. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. We really appreciate your insights. I hope to have you on again because I'd love to continue this conversation and dive into some other subject matter with you, because I think you have a lot of expertise that you can bring to the audience to definitely give it a different point of view that not a lot of us think of. So I really appreciate that and again, man, thanks for being on. I appreciate all the hard work you guys do in your podcast. It's really good. One more time, go ahead and plug in both your podcasts there.

Brian Force: 30:33

Yeah, likewise, brother, thanks for having me on. You can find us, the only real estate podcast worth listening to. Literally just Google that. You'll find it everywhere, it's pretty easy to find and the More Doors podcast. Check both those out If you're looking to talk single family or multi-family whatever. We kind of cruise around all those. So thank you so much for having me on, brother. I look forward to doing it again soon.

Justin Bogard: 30:56

All right, man, don't forget to check us out, listener, on our YouTube channel, american Notebuyers YouTube channel. This is episode number 24 of season five. I'm Justin Bogard, my guest here, brian Force, and we'll catch you guys in the next episode, see you later.

Narrator: 31:13

Thanks for listening to Be the Bank. We hope you learned something from today's show. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us. Plus, check out our channel on YouTube and follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Be the Bank, and on Instagram at Be the Bank podcast. Be the Bank is sponsored by American Notebuyers. Thanks again for listening.