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Ep #323 – Monick Halm – From House Hacker to 1000 Doors in One Year
Here is some of what you will learn:
Building great relationships
The 3 Cs of Identifying people to work with
“The best won’t cost you money, the best will make you money”
Selecting your market
Tracking U-Haul data for city growth
Finding City Stats (CAFR)
Tracking crime stats
The importance of mindset
Understanding your limiting beliefs
The W.E.A.L.T.H.Y. Formula for Women in Real Estate
To learn more about our guest please click here.
Full Transcript Below:
Monick Halm – From House Hacker to 1000 Doors in One Year (Ep323)
Intro: Hi! I’m Rod Khleif. Each and every week I record an interview with a thought leader that I know you’re gonna get a ton of value from. Now here on YouTube are the video versions of my podcast, Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. Now to make sure you get the latest information please subscribe and hit the notification bell. Let’s get started.
Rod: Welcome to another edition of “How to Build Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing”. I’m Rod Khleif and I’m thrilled you’re here. I know you’re gonna get tremendous value from the dynamic woman that we’re interviewing today. Her name is Monick Halm and she’s been in real estate for over 14 years. She’s done over 1200 doors in in quite a few different asset classes mobile home parks, RV parks, primarily multifamily and you know she is a big advocate for women and just delighted to have her on the show. Welcome Monick
Monick: Thank you so much for having me Rod
Rod: Absolutely. So you know let’s start out with your story a little bit, tell my listeners a little bit about your story and you know how you got into real estate and why you love real estate and
Monick: Yeah so I got into real estate almost entirely by accident. I knew nothing about real estate investing had grandparents who meant well for me, but they and they taught me I could be anything I want but in parentheses, “as long as I was a doctor, lawyer, professor, engineer” right like that’s what success was to them and I was a good student, beautiful daughter, I ended up going to college, did law school, law school was that route I chose. And I went to Columbia and then I got into a big firm and I was miserable
Rod: Here at JD? you’re a JD as well?
Monick: I am a JD
Rod: Oh wow very impressive.
Monick: But I hated law you know and I found myself pretty miserable you know at one point my appendix ruptured I ended up in the yeah in the ER and that when the doctor told me that I’d have to stay in the hospital for at least a few days and I’d be at home at least 30 days after to recover, my first thought was, oh I think I have to go to work. I was just like so grateful to not have to go to the office but I done all the right things so you know it should have been deliriously happy except I was miserable. And you know I’m part of my journey into real estate was trying to find a way to do something that I loved better but I ended up buying my first property my first rental property also was kind of I became an accidental investor too because I already ever learned about real estate was buyer at home that was all I was taught and so I went to buy a home and this was in LA 2005 towards the top of the last bubble and I you know the average price was six hundred-seven hundred thousand dollars for a decent house and a you know just okay neighborhood. And I even though I had a six-figure salary I couldn’t do that by myself so I ended up a friend of mine said well why would we buy duplex together you live on one side I live on the other and we ended up buying a property though that one side it was much nicer than the other. So we each took a bedroom in that in that place and then we ended up renting out the other unit that was a converted garage. We were able to rent out. We rent out our basement. We did house hacking before I knew that was the thing. And then when I met my husband, he had a duplex and we got a single-family house together. When the crash happened and houses were on sale, we started flipping. We flipped some houses in LA and we’re doing that until about 2015 when the margins weren’t making as much sense and we would we thought, okay well let’s do buy and hold and we’ll look for four-plex in LA we couldn’t find anything that made any financial sense. And at that time I was introduced to Robert Helms of the real estate guys radio from a mutual friend and Robert and like one ten-minute conversation with Robert, he busted a couple of huge paradigms for me that changed everything and then really got us from having I a couple rental doors to getting over a thousand and one year. So the first thing he told me because he was asking what I was up to I told about the flipping and how we’re looking for the four-plex in LA and couldn’t find anything and he said you know I always say he goes LA is a tough market I would say live where you want to live, invest where the numbers make sense. And I went “HA” I’ve never thought of that. I always thought you had to invest where you could drive to your property touch it you know I never they get so obvious after you hear that
Rod: Right
Monick: At the time I always thought yeah and the next thing he said was and you could get that four Plex by yourself but you’re limited to your own capital and credit. Alternatively, you could bring a group of investors together and you can get a 100 or 200 unit apartment building and that just blew my mind as I thought you need a Donald Trump’s bank account for that kind of thing. I realize regular people could do that. So I decided right then and there that’s what I wanted to do and so we just that’s what we went to learn how to do that and we invest a lot of time and money but in about a year we are able to get into over a thousand units by you know collaborating with others and bring groups of investors together
Rod: Nice nice nice nice yeah it’s sometimes it’s just a little tiny tip that can make all the difference in the world you know it’s funny I just had my multi-family mastermind boardroom in San Diego recently. And we had I don’t know we have about four billion dollars in assets represented in that group and you know and it’s just and there were people there that are very very successful and watching them, them have epiphany moments was kind of mind-blowing where like my god why didn’t I think of that and you know here’s a guy with you know 3,000 doors having an epiphany and you know sometimes it’s just that little tweak that’s all you need so that’s cool that Robert helped you with that
Monick: Yeah it’s a game changer, and that’s the beauty of masterminds
Rod: Right right I know that’s why I did it. I did the first version here in my house and I was just so blown away by the distinctions. I’m like, “Man, I’ve got to formalize this” Now it’s turned into you know really the largest multifamily Masterminded really I think on the planet but it’s just incredible and you know and they I’ll land the plane on this but the key with a master mind is people have to go to give not just to get and that’s what makes it such an incredible environment but you know all it takes like I say that one little tip you know made you millions of dollars and that’s what’s so amazing mentors and masterminds. And so you know I know you’re the queen or the goddess rather of relationships. I know you’ve got a podcast called Real Estate investor Goddesses, very cool I love the name but you know I know that you’re very relationship driven. So talk about how you know my listeners are aspiring real estate investors, they know they want to get into multifamily or they already are, talk about how you build great relationships
Monick: Yeah so relationship I think well real estate is such a people business right. It’s all about the teams and the people you work with and I have very much of the people first philosophy when it comes to real estate investing. And one of the things that I’ve learned is and I learned this through this genius woman Beth Clifford whose developers done billions of dollars and developments and she has built lots of teams and lots of companies, and one thing I learned from her is something called the three C’s which I always follow when I’m when I’m looking to work with somebody or thinking about working with somebody. So the first C which is you know this is an order of importance but they’re all very important. So the first C is Character all right. So what is somebody’s character like this is not something you can teach, it’s not something can change. So you you know really observing what are they like, who are they like, who are they, what do they like with everybody, what they’re interacting with right not just people they think are important, what how do they show up, what’s their integrity like, and so I look a lot at character. The next thing is their Commitment. So what is their commitment, their commitment to the project, their commitment to your shared mission, vision, values right. So you know talking up thinking about a construction, somebody
Rod: I want to slow you down just a little bit if you don’t mind. So I want to go back to character for one second because that’s such a critical component and then I want to get back to commitment. Back in character um you know there’s something called intuition and people think oh that’s foofy and airy-fairy and I’m here to tell you it has saved my butt more than once and I tell the story you know I was hiring a COO oh very high level position for one of my companies and I usually try to go to dinner with someone if it’s a really high level hire I try to break bread with them maybe have a drink with them get to know them and I noticed one little slight thing in the way that he treated the waiter. It was really minor it wasn’t like dramatic or he was just a tiny little thing there was a little bit of aloofness I’m like hmm. And I was ready to hire him that night I’d already done a lot of due diligence he had told me not to call one of his references he said because the guy had cancer. I’m like okay I’m not gonna bother that guy but then I’m like you know what screw it I’m gonna call him. Guy didn’t have cancer. And this guy had stolen from him. So you know when it comes to character guys those are you listening, don’t underestimate the power of your intuition, trust it. If your gut doesn’t feel right, trust it okay. So I just want to circle back on that. But back to commitment for a minute, how do you evaluate that C? Tell me how you, tell me what you do to evaluate commitment.
Monick: Yeah so a couple of things. So I for me I have a big commitment to leaving a property in a community better than I found it.
Rod: Okay
Monick: So it’s very important to me that the people I work with, have that same commitment so it was not about getting every dollar out of the deals, not about being a slumlord. It’s really about what’s their commitment to improving the you know to help it right. So there’s that’s the part of the commitment. Another part, another way I look at it is what is their commitment to showing up and being there. So you’re hiring somebody to do your you know a GC right a contractor. If they’re not committed to being there when you need them to be there a bunch of other projects and they’re not really fully committed to your project, that’s not gonna work. So it’s a committed in a very practical way so actually being there and showing up and being able to do what they say they’re gonna do and it’s also committed in the sense of our bigger vision and mission and values.
Rod: You communicate your mission and vision and values then
Monick: I do
Rod: You get buy-in okay what’s the third C?
Monick: And the third C is capacity. So that is, are they actually able to do the thing that they’re meant, they’re supposed to be doing right? So I’ve learned the hard way that you don’t always want to go with the cheapest person. It’s really, and I’ve learned that the best won’t cost you money. They’ll make you money all right, working with the best. So I look for that capacity in the hope and to the extent I can that they are outstanding at what they do and that they’re the best. So those are the three C’s that I look for and I look to work with people like that and whenever when I’ve not done well but when I do that we knock it out of the park
Rod: Love it love it those are very insightful love it. And you know it may be a team fit again but if they don’t have the bandwidth it’s not going to happen. So let’s shift gears this is kind of an abrupt shift but let’s talk a little bit about market selection because we had chatted about that before we started recording you know what to look for in a market because you came to the realization. It’s not going to be in LA. Certainly not today. The prices are stupid. And so you know in fact I’ve got a warrior I’ve got a you know I’ve got coaching clients and they’re called warriors. I’ve got a warrior group it does a meet up in LA and it’s called the out of state real estate investors meet up because it’s just not gonna happen in LA. So what do you do to look for a market?
Monick: All right I look for a bunch of different factors. Seven main things that I look for, I cant remember them all. So the first thing I look at is their job and population growth all right. So I look at you know is it our people coming there, are they going? are they coming? So I look for a job population growth. I look for landlord friendliness and business friendliness. So you know when you own property, you are a landlord
Rod: Anyway I’m gonna if you don’t mind I’m just gonna stop you as you forgive me. Job and population growth what websites do you like for that? I can share mine if you need to regroup but
Monick: Yeah sure so a couple of things I look at, I look at the U-haul you know where they going all right the one way to do U-hauls that’s
Rod: Where do you find that information?
Monick: Google. I just Google it. One way U-hauls will show you that
Rod: That’s a great idea
Monick: Yeah that’s a good hack right providing a population. There’s I looked at I just I also look at you know I Google is like you know the you know where’s the who’s gotten the most population growth this year like a job growth you know you can see lists like that
Rod: Let me share a couple we use that we find population. One is bestplaces.net that one does a nice job and another one is city-data.com and you can good to see if it’s been growing over a period of time. So those of you listening you know write those down as well. I love the U-haul hack. That’s awesome
Monick: Yeah if you know which city in particular, which market, yeah City-data is great. Another really great a wonderful way to get information about a particular city like once you’ve identified that city is if you just look through the city you can do Detroit, Michigan CAFR and put that into Google it’s blinking on what CAFR means it is a it’s basically it’s the city’s financial report and it’s mandated by law. It’s called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. It’s mandated by law. They’re like, the federal government requires it. And it’s basically the city’s report card financial report cards and it shares you know the employers, it shares the population, what’s been going on over time, it shares how the city’s finances are, it shares like it’s a several hundred page report yeah all sorts of data about a particular city.
Rod: Love it
Monick: Yeah so that’s it and you’re just Google yeah Los Angeles, California CAFR yeah and it’ll come up pretty much at every city will have one. So that’s a good place they get I mean it’s dense
Rod: Sounds like heavy reading but you know a lot of these statistics I mean you know sometimes make me want to blow my brains out when I you know it is important but like you said the big ones are job growth, population growth
Monick: And then speaking of masterminds something that I got recently at a mastermind and this is something from City-data.com that you can look at. So you’ll see if you scroll down there’s a crime list and going over the like the past 14 years. So somebody said that this is what he looks at he looks at the trends and if over the past fourteen years it’s gone down you know 200 or more points and also if it’s a five that the like the current year it’s five hundred or less you know you’re gonna have it’s just gonna be a better community, a safer community especially with the trends like you tend to be getting more educated people better tenant.
Rod: Yes Neil does a very good job with that
Monick: Is that Neil?
Rod: Yeah that’s Neil. Actually at my master mind, he did it. He does a wonderful job with neighborhood selection yeah
Monick: Yeah when he said that I was like, “genius” Neil Bawa. That was his little hack. So I hadn’t been part of my seven before but it is now. I also you know when you’re looking so the next thing is you know when you find the job and population grows, the landlord and business friendliness you know coming from LA where it’s taking nine months – did somebody or I’m like my poor cousin she had a tenant in a place in DC. Took her over three years to evict this woman compared to Dallas
Rod: The same thing in Memphis. Thank God they’ve changed it there but ya know yeah it’s a very good point very good point
Monick: Yeah then you want to look at the economy right. So you want the diversified economy not just
Rod: Diversified employers
Monick: And diversified employers and industries right. So you know you don’t want that one factory town and you also don’t want like all steel town or whatever you want a town as. Like diverse in terms of industries and diverse in terms of employers. What else
Rod: Income growth right?
Monick: I look at, familiarity actually is a big thing that I look at not just you know that there’s has to be somebody ideally it’s my own but it’s not always my own but at least somebody on the team that’s very trusted that is incredibly familiar with the market because there’s so you know you have to be in the right sub market. So it’s not just the market but then that’s the other part
Rod: Sure and where is the path of progress? how do you figure that out?
Monick: And yes I know
Rod: Typically people that either live there, unless you develop really good relationships, it’s really tough to find that out. That’s pretty good. I tell you know I tell my students ideally you know to select a market from one of four places, either their backyard which I say is a two-hour drive around them, a place they grew up or spend some time. So then there then they are familiar with it that’s familiarity. The third would be a place they have boots on the ground you know like you said just like you said and then the fourth really doesn’t apply to familiarity but it’s just a place they’d like to visit or maybe even retire. So those I suggest is the first four options but yeah love it
Monick: Those are great yeah. Do you want to be in the right market cycle? or an asset class that you’re doing? Right, so the rising market, is it boom, is it a downturn, or stabilize. And for the asset class that you are investing in you want to be in that right some market okay the right market cycle
Rod: Sure sure or be prepared to kiss 100 frogs to find a deal which is where we are in the multifamily space right now.
Monick: Yes coz its booming almost pretty much everywhere. All the markets that make sense it’s you know it’s challenging and the multifamily space right
Rod: Well I know that you’re also a big proponent in mindset. So why don’t you give us your SMI. So I’m really excited about this part of our interview. So tell me a little bit about how you feel about mindset and just some of your distinctions and wisdom in that area
Monick: So one of the things that I’ve noticed when it comes to different investors and who you know people who are successful, who have otherwise the same resources otherwise you know the same opportunities that some are you know become very successful and others don’t, under this they still, they stall. I think so much of it has to do with their mindset, has to do with what their beliefs about themselves and their ability to succeed, their beliefs about money, their beliefs about what it means to have wealth, you know their beliefs about the market they’re it’s so much about these beliefs. So lot of success is really finding the limiting beliefs that you have and being able to move beyond them so that you can take action
Rod: Love it love it and I actually do a piece on this in my live events. I just love the fact that you identified the most common ones and sometimes people don’t feel like they deserve the money. You know to drill down on these different topics you know certainly the belief about themselves, limiting beliefs, you know I’m not good enough, I don’t deserve it, you know and I had a huge one of my big ones is how can I show them I’m good enough, and that drove me for years and cost me my first family frankly limiting beliefs. There’s a reason belief systems acronym’s BS because most of them are, they have no basis in fact but because we had some emotional event that we you know put a lot of energy towards we believed in our mind subconsciously that they’re real and they’re not. And that’s my biggest struggle with my students as well as is to get them past that but I love that you brought up the money one because that one you know fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of rejection, all that stuff comes in but the one about money is profound because you know some people they have this, they’re in this box and they feel like the only deserves so much and you really are only gonna make what you believe you deserve and we’re so limited you know in in in our view of money like maybe you know our parents said money doesn’t grow on trees or you know and we have these things that are drilled into us when we’re adolescent. Sso that was awesome yeah – I’m sorry forgive me what you say is responsive
Monick: I missed your last thing too- but I was gonna say if people have these beliefs about the wealthy right. What it is you know rich people are or they’re selfish or they’re you know say they lack integrity, they’re bad people right. So if people have that like oh you know the one percent or a little wealthy then you’re not, people would rather you know they think of themselves as good people, they’re not selfish, they’re not greedy, and they’re not bad people. So if wealthy are bad people and I’m not a bad person then I can’t be you know that so they’re just not going to take the steps to be wealthy or to you know to grow and to create these things they need to do
Rod: They create a story. It’s really a story and stories are softeners. So they don’t feel bad about themselves so they used you know that’s an example of a story you know is to separate like that that’s one you know one dynamic as it relates to that but now I love it love it love it love it. Now I know you have this cool, that relates to women and it’s the acronym is wealthy. Can you speak to what wealthy stands for in your world
Monick: Yeah so this is what I think it’s the formula for building wealth through real estate for women. Although a lot of it 95% of it why have men too. But the wealthy, the W part of wealthy stands for womanly. So how do you do this? You may have noticed that women and men think a little differently a lot of times
Rod: Just ask John Grey, women are, we’re from a different planet
Monick: You know on a chromosomal level right we’re different and we approach investing differently, wealth differently, money differently, and relationships differently. So if you can invest in a way that most is in alignment with as a woman, then that helps. But it’s basically and that part of really it’s about partly it’s about mindset, partly it’s about intuition. Alright like tapping into our woman’s intuition but it’s intuition is really for everybody as well. Like we’re saying you relied on your intuition. For women it’s really actually very important to be in sisterhood. There’s something that’s you know on a release positive pheromones and hormones in our brain when we’re around other groups of women, learn better. So that sisterhood piece is very important for women as well. And pleasure it’s actually the very important. So you know the masculine ways to push through muscle through, no pain no gain. For women we actually do much better if it’s pleasure through and using that so that’s the W. E has to do with education. You know with you, this is why you teach real estate investing right cuz yeah and it’s so important to get educated. You know a lot of people think oh well it’s a common sense right, you buy a property, put in a tenant, you get a rent. What do you need to learn? There’s a lot to know
Rod: And education never stops. I mean that’s why I have my mastermind so I could be around people are in another level you know that education never stops right love it
Monick: And that it’s crucial and not only as you get educated do you learn what not to do but the more I’ve been educated the more I’ve learned all the opportunities that are out there that I couldn’t even see before you know when I learned about syndication. I can go for groups events like that’s a thing you can do that so that you know just whenever you get that new piece of education allows you to go further and further. A is for assets. So partly it’s knowing all of the different ways in which you can play in real estate know people know about single-family and they know about multifamily but there’s a whole universe of other types of real estate investments and there are a lot of different strategies too. So you can buy and hold that’s one strategy if people know about that they know about flipping but then there are all of these different from you know notes and liens and wholesaling and just you know taking a piece of property and dividing it using it in different ways so there are all these different strategies that you can use across asset classes. And lastly that’s asset protection. So buying a property is one thing but we live in a very litigious society so you need to be able to
Rod: Says the JD.
Monick: Well yeah they’d been even sued. Like when my dog bite, my dog bit somebody and I got sued for 1.2 million dollars
Rod: Oh good God
Monick: Yeah I know so things happen and so you want to be able to structure your property, your assets so that you keep them you know knowing how to buy them and entities and insurance and finance and using business credit. So that’s an asset. L is location. So we talked about what you look for in a market but you know what are the top three rules of real estate? one location, two, location, three, location
Rod: Yup
Monick: Location is the crucial. T is team. It’s a team sport
Rod: Specially commercial real estate as you discovered from Robert yes you know if you’re in the four and under units, you’re in residential, they’re gonna look at you. If you’re five plus, they’re gonna look at the team very important, love it
Monick: But even one to four right you need them, you need the agent, you need your maintenance guy, you know you need insurance, you need a CPA in it right, you need a team. H is How do you pay alright
Rod: I’m sorry could you repeat that?
Monick: It’s how you pay
Rod: How you pay okay
Monick: Yeah that one’s a little stretch in though with WEALTHY, the money part so how you pay
Rod: Show me the money. So how you pay is show me the money
Monick: Yeah but how do you, because you can do it alright. So there’s all cash, there’s all financing, there’s you know all different types of lending, conventional lending, hard money lending, private lending, you know
Rod: There’s no structure how you put the money together got it
Monick: How do you pay? How you know you can be creative about that there’s not just one way to do it and you can mix and match. And so if you don’t know what the universe of you know different ways of funding your property, your project might be, then you get stuck right and lastly is the Y is You. How do you do this in a way that is a fit for you? because real estate investing is not one-size-fits-all. So how do you put together everything you’ve learned so that you are going towards your goals, you are playing in this game in a way that is a fit for you and you can be you know put in that creativity and have fun. So you’re not only, is it getting you towards your goals but you’re enjoying yourself along the way. And you coming up with a plan that makes sense for you. So that’s the formula WEALTHY
Rod: Love it. Awesome. So let me ask you the question that I like to ask when I’m nearing the end of an interview which is you know if you could tell your I know you’re still 19 but let’s pretend you’re not. If you could tell your 1 year old, if you could tell your 19 or 20 yr old self you know how to maybe do things differently, would you do things differently as it relates to real estate? What might you tell that younger version of yourself with what you know now. So I would tell my 19 year old self real estate investing is this thing that you can do. You’ve been taught that you need to trade your time for money, you need to get a job, but you don’t have to. You can start investing and you can make your money work for you. And so that will get you freedom. So I would have told her to learn about real estate investing and to get into the game
Rod: Love it. Thank you so much Monick you’ve been such a treat I really appreciate you being on the show and I look forward to getting to know each other better. I’m so glad that Michele Bosche, Jack Bosche’s wife my friend, both friends introduced us because I’m really pleased to have met you and thank you for bringing value to my show. And I look forward to chatting again soon
Monick: Me too thanks very much
Rod: Bye-bye
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