Ryan Chaw - How He Retired at 31 With Student Rental Properties | Real Estate Educators Podcast with Kevin Amolsch

Description

Ryan Chaw went from working long shifts as a pharmacist to becoming a millionaire at 28 and retiring at just 31 years old. His strategy? Building a portfolio of rental properties near colleges and renting them by the room to students. Today, he owns 14 properties and rents to approximately 90 tenants.

In this episode of the Real Estate Educators Podcast, Kevin Amolsch talks with Ryan about how he discovered the student housing niche and why renting by the room can dramatically increase a property's rental income. Ryan shares an example of taking a house that might rent for $1,800–$2,000 per month and configuring it into six bedrooms renting for $700 each, or approximately $4,200 per month.

Of course, renting to multiple college students comes with its own challenges. Ryan shares the story of an 80-person party at his first property and explains how that experience helped him develop his PRIME method for finding better tenants. He also breaks down how he uses head tenants, virtual assistants, guarantors, and a step-by-step conflict resolution process to manage approximately 90 tenants without creating another full-time job.

Ryan and Kevin also discuss financing, DSCR loans, overcoming analysis paralysis, and some of the costly lessons Ryan learned on his first property, including a $9,000 sewer line replacement that reinforced why investors should thoroughly inspect properties before buying them.

Whether you're looking for ways to increase cash flow on rental properties or considering student housing for the first time, this episode offers a practical look at how rent-by-the-room investing works, how to manage it, and the systems Ryan used to turn the strategy into financial freedom.

Timestamps

00:00 – How real estate created generational wealth for Ryan's family
03:05 – Becoming a millionaire at 28 and retiring at 31
06:15 – How renting by the room can double rental income
08:05 – Financing his first rental property
12:50 – Why Ryan targets graduate students
14:15 – The PRIME method for screening student tenants
23:25 – Overcoming fear and taking action in real estate
29:10 – Life after retiring at 31
32:05 – What Ryan would do differently starting over
33:25 – Why building your real estate network matters

Connect with Ryan Chaw

Ryan offers a free guide covering his student housing and rent-by-the-room strategy, including lessons and mistakes from building his own portfolio. He also discusses his one-on-one coaching program and YouTube channel in the episode.

Ryan Chaw's Newbie Real Estate Investing Guide

Learn more about Pine Financial Group.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
It's kind of like how you can sell pizza by the slice for like $7 a large slice, or you can sell the whole thing for like $15 or $20. It makes a lot more sense to sell by the slice, right? That's what they do in New York at least. Well, confidence doesn't mean you don't fear it, right? So confidence is still taking action, even though you have the fears going on at the back of your mind. So confidence is more like commitment.
Speaker #1
How's retired life?
Speaker #0
It's great. So the biggest difference is obviously you can wake up and set your own schedule, do what you want, where would you want, from wherever you want to do it with, right? You can go on vacations four times a year or whatever.
Speaker #2
We were in negotiations, investing in real estate. They're winning, they're making money.
Speaker #1
What's up everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back. I have another awesome episode, something that we have not covered on this. a podcast yet. So I'm really excited for this episode. So Ryan Chow, you've been doing this for quite some time now. 2016, you graduated as a pharmacist and you worked in infectious disease and pediatrics. So I'm sure there's some stories there. You got into real estate right after that. W-2 income helped you buy property after property after property. Now you have 14 properties and you have a very unique way of renting them out. You rent them out by the room, two students. What a niche. 90 students. is your tenant. So I'm happy to have you on the show, man. Welcome.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Thank you for having me on, Kevin.
Speaker #1
All right. Well, let's get into it. So you were in school to be a pharmacist. That can't be easy. So what made you get excited about real estate while you're trying to get this amazing degree?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, I had a grandpa who owned real estate. He bought a couple of properties back in the Bay Area back in the 50s. And we all know the San Francisco Bay Area went up like crazy. Rents one up. And he was not only able to retire early, but help cover part of my college tuition and that of my brothers as well. And that's when I realized that real estate creates generational wealth for people. And I wanted to get started right away. So I worked a lot of overtime shifts. I would work from like 730 a.m. to 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. at night to try to get up all that capital to put it into as much real estate as possible. And I aimed. basically to buy one property a year. And I was just, you know, getting stricter and stricter with my criteria with basically houses that would make really good student rentals. And I just continued doing that. And eventually I became a millionaire at the age of 28 and then retired at the age of 31.
Speaker #1
Wow. So you, you found this niche. And I want to talk a little bit about this because that seems like a lot of work to me, but I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it. But what made you get into that niche? I assume maybe just because you were in college.
Speaker #0
Yeah, this was like right after college. I was like, well, I had a buddy in college who basically he lived for free. He bought a house with his aunt as a guarantor cosigner. And he basically lived for free and rented out the other rooms to his friends and made some cash flow on top of that. So that's why I was like, oh, well, he seems to be making profit while living there. So why can't I rent out by the room to people and make profit on my own? And so that's what I did. I would buy my first house nearby my alma mater college where I went to pharmacy school and I rented out to like pharmacy students. And then I continued repeating that process. And by using the rent by the room strategy, it allows you to basically double your rental income. imagine A typical house in that area was around $1,800 to $2,000 a month in rental income. But what I did instead was I created six bedrooms and then I would rent out each bedroom for $700 a month. So that was more like $4,200 a month for a six bedroom house, which was double the typical rental income. It's kind of like how you can sell pizza by the slice for like $7,000. dollars a large slice or you can sell the whole thing for like $15 or $20. It makes a lot more sense to sell by the slice, right? That's what they do in New York at least.
Speaker #1
Well, that's an expensive slice of pizza, but all right. So your buddy was house hacking, I guess they call that now, and living for free. Is that how you got your first deal also? Were you renting out rooms in your own home you were living in?
Speaker #0
Actually, I lived with my parents at the very beginning. So. I did that because I could live basically rent-free, maybe pay some utilities. But yeah, basically have no debts. Again, remember my grandpa helped cover the college tuition, but because I had like no debts and lived at my parents' place, I was able to get qualified for loan after loan after loan. And every time I bought a house, it would actually lower my debt to income ratio because I would be making that cash flow on the rentals. So I was able to buy, you know, many, many properties until I hit 10 properties. Once you hit 10 properties, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will shut you off. So you have to start using more of like a DSCR loan. But yeah, that's only if you get to like 10 properties, for example.
Speaker #1
We're going to dig into that. But I want to hear about the very first one. So you're excited. You're young. You're getting your very first deals. Walk me through it, man. How did you find it? How did you finance it? How did that go?
Speaker #0
Yeah, you know, when I first got started, I was kind of hemming and hawing. I was stuck in that analysis paralysis stage. And my dad would kind of called me out on it. He says, Well, you talk a lot about real estate, but I don't see you doing anything. You're not really buying anything. He called you out. What are you doing, really? And eventually I was like, yeah, that's kind of true. So I actually was like upset at the time, but then I realized he was right. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to prove you wrong. So I called up a realtor that same day and I drove down to Stockton where my alma mater college is. And we looked at a couple properties and then I put an offer. on a property that exact same day. And that was the very first property that I ended up buying. It was a $262,000 house, three bedroom, two bathroom house in Stockton, California.
Speaker #1
Okay. So you had to reconfigure it then?
Speaker #0
Yes. So I did add an extra bedroom for that one. But then I realized that houses that are larger square footage, like 1500 square foot or more, I can get five or six bedrooms in there. And by By getting like... it up to six bedrooms that really can maximize how much rental income you're you're making on that property um but yeah i i basically did that i rented it out to one of my college friends who was in the same fraternity as me and i knew he was kind of like a little bit loud and some people call him obnoxious um and it ended up happening where i brought him in and i think only two months later it was like in October he I got a call from my other house, the other tenant who said that this guy invited over 80 people to a Halloween party. This is not OK. I'm not OK with this. And cops got called. And because there is loud music and there is a partying. And so I was like, oh, my God, I have to deal with all this. You know, while working full time as a pharmacist and sometimes working double shifts. So it was stressful at the beginning. But I learned. over time how to find high quality tenants and really know how to screen people to find great, great tenants for the properties.
Speaker #1
Okay. So that was going to be one of my questions. They had to throw parties, right? These are college students. They all do that, don't they? That's the first thing that came to my mind. So how do you deal with something like that?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So there's a couple things I do. The first thing I do is I target top colleges. these are colleges ideally that have like graduate programs. So maybe a pharmacy program, dental program, medical doctor program, for example. And then what you can do is rent out to the grad students because a lot of these colleges, they only provide enough housing for undergrads. They don't provide enough housing for grad students. So I started targeting like the grad student population. And then I also came up with this method called the prime method. It's an acronym. And basically, it's a way to find... high quality prime tenants. And so the acronym, like the P stands for placement of advertisements. So you want to place your ads where the target tenant hangs out. So for students, what's a really good place to put your ad up is Facebook housing groups, a fake college Facebook housing groups. And in those housing groups, it's all going to be college students looking for housing. So So it's a very hyper-specific way of, yeah. finding college students. The next thing is R, which is reviewing social media. So typically when these people apply, I will go through the social media. So like Facebook profile, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever they have available. And I'll look for things like smoking, alcohol, you know, drugs, raves and stuff like that. You know, that might not be the best tenant to bring into the house, right? because obviously smoking and stuff, the other tenants wouldn't be comfortable with that. The I stands for identifying the type of tenant they are. Or is this somebody who's like very professional and saying, hey, Mr. Chaw or hi, Mr. Chaw, I'm looking for, you know, a quiet place to stay and study? Or is it somebody who's like, yo, what's up? I want to stay in your crib or something like this. Right. So you can kind of, yeah, see, like, based off of their communication, is it professional? Do I want this person to be on my property? M stands for measuring responsiveness. The more responsive they are, typically, the more responsible they are. If they're getting paperwork back to you quickly, that's a good sign for like, let's say later when you say, hey, it looks like you forgot to pay rent. You don't want them waiting like three weeks to respond to that. You want them to respond right away. Right. And not and not having to worry for those three weeks. And then E stands for insuring proof of income. So you've got to make sure that they make at least three times the monthly rent as income, either for a lot of times from the parent. So I'll get like parent bank statements, for instance. Um, or the student might have a student loan that pays for room and board. They might have financial aid. Uh, they might have a stipend, a research stipend. Uh, one time I had a tenant who actually, he was going, he signed up, he signed a lease for the room, but I guess he was, he had to take care of his grandpa. So he ended up staying with his grandpa and he never moved into the room, but guess what? He paid for an entire year's worth of rent. And when we asked. Why did he do that later? He said, well, one, we signed a lease and we have to uphold that, right? But two, the scholarship he had, the financial aid he had, gave him a full right, including room and board. And if he didn't use it, that money would just go away. He would lose it. So he said, you know, it's not my money anyways. So basically, yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker #1
And you were the beneficiary, Ryan.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the day. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, this sounds like a great strategy to increase cash flow. And I know lots of places around the country, cash flow is tough. So this is attractive, but there's got to be some challenges with it. I think it's like almost like a hospitality type business. So sounds like you're retired. So you have all the time in the world to handle this. But what about someone that is working like you used to do? How do you set up your systems? How do you manage that much, like 90 tenants?
Speaker #0
Yeah, definitely. So I use a lot of tenant empowerment. One thing I do, I might do is I'll have like a head tenant, for example, and I could knock off maybe $50 a month in rent if they agree to do certain take on certain responsibilities for the house. So like, you know, help manage the cleaning, maybe like talk, set, have these like town hall meetings with the tenants, like all the housemates saying, how are we going to divvy up? the trash day, like the trash, the vacuuming, maybe what happens if there's dirty dishes left in the sink, right? So basically, the head tenant will help manage that type of stuff. Now, if you don't want to give, you know, do a head tenant, you can always have somebody who will be like a boots on the ground person to help manage the tenants. So sometimes I've had like a handyman do that job, for example. Other times it's been like a realtor. maybe, or a realtor's friend who wants to kind of get into real estate and they want to get some hands-on experience with property management. Right. And so those are some of the things I did to outsource that. But yeah, like for tenant versus tenant conflicts, those occur. So like, let's say somebody does leave the dirty dishes in the sink, you know, obviously that will cause another to get upset. So what I have them do is have, have like a five-step process. I have First, the tenant talks. directly with the tenant they're complaining about face to face. And then I mean, I encourage that. Number two, they have to come up with an actionable plan that they can implement within the next two weeks. Number three is obviously implement that plan and see how it goes. And usually at that stage, I say like after two weeks, if it's still not working, come back to me. But after those two weeks, I never hear from them again. And it's usually because they learned either how to tolerate each other or they at least We're able to talk to each other about it so they know how each other's feel. So that's important. Number four is if it's still a problem, then you can talk to the tenant that's being complained about and saying, hey, these are what the other housemates are telling me. What is your plan for, you know, making sure you make sure that they're happy before they're staying? And then the last part is number five. You can always go to the parent because I have my parents sign as guarantors on the leases. So you can go to the parent and say, hey, this is what's going on. Can you please have a discussion or communicate with your kid to make sure that everyone's happy at the house?
Speaker #1
How often do you do that?
Speaker #0
Very little now. So nowadays I have a virtual assistant team. I have basically a 40 hour a week virtual assistant in the Philippines. I paid out $110 an hour. They got a raise over time. But I have another VA that's 20 hours a week and then we pay her $7 an hour. So which is pretty good, really good in the Philippines, actually. Typical pay in the Philippines is $4 to $7 an hour for a VA job. So yeah, it's definitely a really good pace, but they're kind of handling that at this point. I used to handle that at the beginning. The first year I definitely had to, you know, I had that one tenant who threw a wild party and all of that, but around year two or three, I started figuring out kind of that system where I would have like head tenants help out around the house and, you know, obviously giving them a reduction in rent in exchange for taking on those responsibilities. And that allowed me to really make it more hands-off for me. And up until I got to probably property number five, I was actually self-managing it on the side of working 40 hours a week.
Speaker #1
Wow. Well, you were working more than 40, it sounded like.
Speaker #0
Yeah, more than 40. Yeah. So you're trying. Yeah,
Speaker #1
that's a lot. But you're young, right? So that's not, maybe it's not so bad.
Speaker #0
That's why I figured, yeah, you're young. Do it now. Grind it out. I was 23 at the time. Um, so I was like, yeah, these first three years, I'm just going to grind.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Good for you, man. And then now you're retired. So how did this a lot of cool systems? It sounds like you created, where did you learn how to do this?
Speaker #0
I had to learn on the spot. That's the unfortunate part. It was all trial and error. I had, I was lucky to have a good realtor though. They, they would go through the houses and point out issues like, Hey, you know, this roof, uh, looks like some of the shingles are falling off or something like this. Right. And then they will kind of like guide. He kind of guided me a little bit through that. But as far as like finding tenants, managing it, all that, obviously, I was all on my own for that. I did have my grandpa's inspiration, but unfortunately, he wasn't able to like actually show me how to manage a rental or anything like that. But, yeah, that's that's how it had to. D for me.
Speaker #1
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Speaker #0
yeah, yeah. Well, confidence doesn't mean you don't fear it, right? So confidence is still taking action. even though you have the fears going on at the back of your mind. So confidence is more like commitment. Like I'm going to do this. I'm going to make it happen no matter what. Things may go wrong, but I'm okay with that. And eventually I have the faith that I'll figure it out and make it work. And I can pivot, you know, if something goes wrong. So for me, I was like, hey, if the student rentals don't work out, I can probably pivot to a long-term rental and rent out to a family, right? I Back then, when I was 23, I was just very open to whatever came my way. It's not like you get a degree in real estate investing. There might be some out there, but there definitely wasn't one for me. I just figured it out along the way. I guess you just have to make that decision and then ask for help. You can always ask the realtor for help. buying a really you know a house in good condition obviously um and then you know as far as marketing let's see how do i figure that out i feel like i just asked around where do people where do people market at first i put a for rent sign on the lawn and uh like i said placement of advertisements i got i got that was a bad idea i got a bunch of calls from random people and none of them were students and i was like okay let's not do that again um so you kind of Live and learn along the way.
Speaker #1
Learn as you go.
Speaker #0
Yeah, learn as you go.
Speaker #1
A lot of times when you learn as you go, you know, they say fly in the plane when you're building it, you know, that sort of thing. You're going to run into some mistakes and some pain points and some failures along the way. Tell me, man, what's a mistake you made and what'd you learn?
Speaker #0
Yeah, on the very first property, I made a lot of mistakes. It was a hundred-year-old house. for one thing and it had a lot of major systems that needed to be replaced but I wasn't really paying attention for one thing I got this call around 11 p.m at night from my tenant about two months in and he said that dude there's a poop that's spilling like spewing out of the kitchen sink all over the kitchen floor now and it's like backing out into the showers drains and then into the bathrooms as well. So I had to get somebody to sanitize it all. And then when I got a plumber to stick a camera down the pipe, he found that there were actual tree roots. We had these really big oak trees and the tree roots were sticking into the pipe and broke the pipe in half. And so I had to replace the entire pipe, sewage pipe, which costs about nine thousand dollars to replace it with PVC. And so I learned from that I could have done a sewage lateral line inspection. It's an add on inspection you have to you have to actually pay for. In addition to the normal home inspection that will stick a camera down the pipe to see if there's any like tree roots in the house. And this is recommended for any houses like older than the 1980s, because that's like around when they transition to PVC. And so I learned to do that in every house. I found that about half of my houses actually had sewage line issues. And it only costs $200 to maybe $300 to do if you find a cost efficient plumber to do it. But it'll save you like thousands or potentially tens of thousands, depending on the house and how long the line is itself.
Speaker #1
So, Ryan, we're a hard money lender and we finance fix and flips. That's really what we do.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
So our clients are out there buying houses that they're remodeling. Right. Similar to what you did with that very first one. And I always tell them, man, you got it. You could put all brand new stuff in there. That's fine. Maybe you don't need an inspection on the kitchen appliances. I get it.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
But you can't see the sewer. That's the one thing you cannot see.
Speaker #0
So always,
Speaker #1
always for the listeners benefit here, always scope that line. It either is you're going to find something makes you not want the property or it's going to give you some leverage to negotiate. So even the newer sewer lines have damage sometimes. So I would I would definitely scope every one. So thank you for that. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #0
And what you can do is once you find the issues, you can have a quoted and then send that quote to the seller and say, dude, we got this huge replacement that needs to be done. Are you going to pay for it? And, um, I would say at least 50% of the time they'll pay the full amount or at least 75% of it. So that's why you do those inspections. Other inspections I add is like maybe a roof inspection or HVAC inspection. Sometimes like if I'm worried about foundation, maybe a structural engineer. There's also plumbing and electricians, electrical inspections. So those are some considerations if you want to really thoroughly vet a property.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Especially if you're not doing a lot of work, if you're buying a turnkey, which you sort of are, you definitely want to know what you're buying. So I agree with you. You've had a ton of success. You retired at 31. I don't hear that very often. How's retired life?
Speaker #0
It's great. So the biggest difference is obviously you can wake up and set your own schedule, do what you want, where would you want, from wherever you want to do it with, right? You can go on vacations four times a year or whatever. But yeah, I mean, what I do nowadays is I actually, because this was like very powerful for me, the rent by the room strategy that is, specifically for student housing, I now teach others how to get into it and get started because I had to go through all this like trial and error stuff. But I feel like, yeah, you don't necessarily have to go through all the weeds yourself if you have somebody to help guide you and be a sounding board, etc. So that's what I do nowadays is I help teach others. I also lead my team. You know, I have the virtual assistants and some boots on the ground in my out-of-state properties. And then I have five in California as well. So I help lead my team. And we have like once a week meetings, maybe once or twice a week, depending on the needs of the business.
Speaker #1
I was hoping you got into your coaching because I read that you were coaching people on how to do this niche. Yeah, yeah. So I was like throwing you a softball there, right? Like I appreciate it. How did you learn all of this? But yeah, so tell me about it. What's the program?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's an A through Z program. I go through how to identify, obviously, a top college or a college that you will want to invest in. And then do that market analysis. How much can you get for rent? And then deal analysis, looking at specific deals, like maybe your top five deals on a call. And then we'll go through one at a time. What are the pros and cons? What are the red flags to look out for? And then, you know, marketing it to college students specifically. leasing it out, what the lease should look like, the house rules that you should set, how to have somebody run a town hall meeting, and then, of course, managing the property. So it's a full A through Z, how to get started. And you don't have to have any prior knowledge to get started.
Speaker #1
If I was to join that, like. What does that look like from my lens? Am I meeting with you directly? Is this a weekly, monthly? Yeah,
Speaker #0
at the beginning, it's a weekly call. So we just meet through Zoom like this once a week, 30 minutes to 60 minutes, basically. And then, you know, we go through the whole process at the very end of every call. You'll have very like specific steps to take before the next call. And of course, like you can always text me or email me in between. and I get back within 24 to 48 business hours. So it's a really true one-on-one coaching program where I'm like there for you as a partner.
Speaker #1
Okay. One of the best things about coaching from my experience, and I've been doing this a little bit longer than you have, is the accountability piece. Like if you have a coach that's going to be hard on you and say, dude, you're not doing what you said. How do you expect to get the results you want? Right. That sort of thing.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Just like your dad did for you. So are you doing that with your students?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so some people want more gentle prodding. Others like that tough love. So obviously, you know, I asked at the beginning, what do you prefer? But yeah, definitely accountability is a big part of it. So I have a check like accountability checklist. Like these are the things that need to get done as you go through the program. And you'll just check it off one at a time as you finish, you know, after the first 30 days, 60 days, whatever. those milestones and yeah I'm here for you and you know if if you aren't or if you are struggling with something we dive deep into it why why are we struggling with that part is it is it maybe you just didn't have the time or was it just that maybe you weren't sure how to make that call what to talk about like when you make the call or whatever it is you know okay and so I give you the resources for all that that sounds like a great program um
Speaker #1
I'm going to ask a question I've already asked, but a little bit differently. I want to see if I get more nuggets of information for the listener. So you cannot answer, you would scope a sewer line. Okay. But if you had to go back to the beginning and change one thing or give yourself some advice from 2016, what would that be?
Speaker #0
Oh man. I mean, I kind of live life without regrets. So I don't like to say, oh, I would definitely change, you know, something, but I would say, um Hmm. If I were to go back, I guess that was, let me answer this. And like, if I was a beginner, I would say, um, I would try to expand my network a little bit more. Um, because I think that that's really underrated. They say you're the average of the top five people you hang around. So if you were like just starting out, there are a lot of real estate investing clubs. Obviously, vet them and make sure that the people in the club or meeting actually invest in real estate actively. But if you can get in touch with those people, they can teach you a ton. Or just hire a coach. That's probably my number one recommendation is I would have definitely hired a coach, a real estate coach at the beginning if I could go back.
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's interesting because you said one of the things that you contribute your success to is being able to ask for help. And you were referring to the realtor.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
I mean, that's anybody, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Ask around. People are, you know, domain experts, right? So you're not going to go over there and fix toilets by yourself. You have handyman to have fixed like hundreds of toilets before, right? So, or a plumber, right? So that's what you want to do is you want to hire and get with, you know, get in contact with and establish networks with the right people.
Speaker #2
Okay.
Speaker #0
All right. Another coaching. One last question on that. And then I'm going to go through some notes that I took through the episode because I definitely got a lot of value out of this one. So website, is that where I get like more information and what the costs are and all of that? So I'm assuming. So what's the website and what do I expect to see when I get there?
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I have a free PDF guide. No cost there to basically go. It goes through the student housing strategy or the rent by the room strategy. It tells you about all the mistakes I've made and how you can avoid them. Lessons I learned a lot of good like tips throughout my journey. And that's at www.newberealestateinvesting.com slash guide. Again, it's www.newberealestateinvesting.com slash guide. And newbie is spelled N-E-W-B-I-E. So that's the number one resource I would recommend you check out if you're interested in rent by the room. or getting into real estate investing in general.
Speaker #0
Dude, that's awesome. So you got a really great domain there. I can't believe that was available.
Speaker #1
Oh yeah, it was.
Speaker #0
That's cool. All right. So what I like to do before we close out the episode is to go through my notes. So I took notes as we were talking and some of the things that I've learned or what I want to retell to the listener. So I'm gonna go through my notes. Ryan, if you could just tell me what I'm missing or if there's anything you would like to add, please do that. And then I would love one final piece of advice before we close this out.
Speaker #1
Sounds good. All right.
Speaker #0
So we started with you getting excited about real estate as a student and you wanted to build generational wealth. And you realized early on that you could do that with real estate because your grandparents were helping you pay for college. So you got excited and started doing rent by the room immediately. So you stayed in your lane the entire time. And the reason for that is because rent by the room can literally double the income on each property. you Biggest thing for you was getting quality tenants. You learned that really early on with an 80-person party. And the way you do that is go to top colleges with grad programs and rent to the grad students. And then you use PRIME, which is an acronym. Placement of the advertising. You said Facebook housing groups is your number one lead generator. Review social media. That was awesome. I love that one. ID type of tenants. So. If they say they want to stay at your crib, it might not be a great tenant for you. Measure responsiveness and ensure proof of income. After that, sometimes you use a head tenant, someone on the ground that can help you manage it. Then you went through your five-step process of tenant disputes. And it's very rare that you get all the way to step five, which is basically telling them with their parents, right? But I'm sure that's pretty effective. Ask for help. We talked about that. Do your inspections. And we talked a lot about the sewer inspection, but then you went through a whole list of other inspections to at least consider. And then finally, what you contribute your success to or a piece of advice for other people to have similar success would be to build your network. How did I do?
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's perfect. Exactly.
Speaker #0
All right, man. Did you think about it? What's the final piece of advice?
Speaker #1
Just get started. Like, I know a lot of people are worried about interest rates and home prices, but that's going to be like in 10 years, none of that's going to matter. Really, like if you look back on it, the house would have appreciated you, you know, you have built up so much equity. And if you think about it, even if a house, let's say a house is in a pretty decent neighborhood and you're making 7% appreciation on average every year. After three years, that's a 21% appreciation. But because you usually put a 20% down on the property, you literally 100% return. It's a 100% return on your investment because you put 20% down. It went up 21%. So if you put down 60K, you get an extra 60K. And now you have 120K. So that's how real estate works is every three years or so, it basically doubles whatever you put into it. Obviously, buy great properties and everything like that. Caveat thing with that. I'm not sure. So yes, generally speaking, appreciation can double your equity every three or four years. Yeah,
Speaker #0
I totally agree. And obviously, markets move. It goes up and down. It's been a little bit slower lately. So maybe you haven't got so much appreciation, but you are still paying the mortgage down. So there's a lot of advantages here. And the 20% down that he's referring to is if you're buying a non-owner occupied. Now, you said your buddy bought a property and rented it out to other college students. So if you're listening and you're younger, you could easily get in for. three and a half percent and maybe less depending on how creative you are with the financing. So there's a lot of opportunity here for, sounds like for student housing. What's the best way to get, I know you already gave me your website, but maybe I do it again. What's the best way to get ahold of you?
Speaker #1
Yeah, there's a website. I also have a YouTube channel. So you can always watch the videos and comment and then I will reply to all like any questions you have. I'll reply on the YouTube channel as well.
Speaker #0
Awesome. So a lot of the guests that come on here, Ryan, are very, very busy. They've got multiple things going on. They've got just business to run, right? You are not that way. You don't have a lot going on. You're retired and you're just living life. But still, I appreciate you coming on the episode and carving out some time. with me today to help our listeners become better real estate investors. So thank you so much for your time.
Speaker #1
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on Kevin.
Speaker #0
All right. And for the listener, you have other podcast options, right? You could be listening to another podcast right now, but you chose the real estate educators podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. Thank you. And I hope you make this day a great one. Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave us a review. Oh yeah. And tell friend.

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Speaker #0
It's kind of like how you can sell pizza by the slice for like $7 a large slice, or you can sell the whole thing for like $15 or $20. It makes a lot more sense to sell by the slice, right? That's what they do in New York at least. Well, confidence doesn't mean you don't fear it, right? So confidence is still taking action, even though you have the fears going on at the back of your mind. So confidence is more like commitment.
Speaker #1
How's retired life?
Speaker #0
It's great. So the biggest difference is obviously you can wake up and set your own schedule, do what you want, where would you want, from wherever you want to do it with, right? You can go on vacations four times a year or whatever.
Speaker #2
We were in negotiations, investing in real estate. They're winning, they're making money.
Speaker #1
What's up everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back. I have another awesome episode, something that we have not covered on this. a podcast yet. So I'm really excited for this episode. So Ryan Chow, you've been doing this for quite some time now. 2016, you graduated as a pharmacist and you worked in infectious disease and pediatrics. So I'm sure there's some stories there. You got into real estate right after that. W-2 income helped you buy property after property after property. Now you have 14 properties and you have a very unique way of renting them out. You rent them out by the room, two students. What a niche. 90 students. is your tenant. So I'm happy to have you on the show, man. Welcome.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Thank you for having me on, Kevin.
Speaker #1
All right. Well, let's get into it. So you were in school to be a pharmacist. That can't be easy. So what made you get excited about real estate while you're trying to get this amazing degree?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, I had a grandpa who owned real estate. He bought a couple of properties back in the Bay Area back in the 50s. And we all know the San Francisco Bay Area went up like crazy. Rents one up. And he was not only able to retire early, but help cover part of my college tuition and that of my brothers as well. And that's when I realized that real estate creates generational wealth for people. And I wanted to get started right away. So I worked a lot of overtime shifts. I would work from like 730 a.m. to 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. at night to try to get up all that capital to put it into as much real estate as possible. And I aimed. basically to buy one property a year. And I was just, you know, getting stricter and stricter with my criteria with basically houses that would make really good student rentals. And I just continued doing that. And eventually I became a millionaire at the age of 28 and then retired at the age of 31.
Speaker #1
Wow. So you, you found this niche. And I want to talk a little bit about this because that seems like a lot of work to me, but I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it. But what made you get into that niche? I assume maybe just because you were in college.
Speaker #0
Yeah, this was like right after college. I was like, well, I had a buddy in college who basically he lived for free. He bought a house with his aunt as a guarantor cosigner. And he basically lived for free and rented out the other rooms to his friends and made some cash flow on top of that. So that's why I was like, oh, well, he seems to be making profit while living there. So why can't I rent out by the room to people and make profit on my own? And so that's what I did. I would buy my first house nearby my alma mater college where I went to pharmacy school and I rented out to like pharmacy students. And then I continued repeating that process. And by using the rent by the room strategy, it allows you to basically double your rental income. imagine A typical house in that area was around $1,800 to $2,000 a month in rental income. But what I did instead was I created six bedrooms and then I would rent out each bedroom for $700 a month. So that was more like $4,200 a month for a six bedroom house, which was double the typical rental income. It's kind of like how you can sell pizza by the slice for like $7,000. dollars a large slice or you can sell the whole thing for like $15 or $20. It makes a lot more sense to sell by the slice, right? That's what they do in New York at least.
Speaker #1
Well, that's an expensive slice of pizza, but all right. So your buddy was house hacking, I guess they call that now, and living for free. Is that how you got your first deal also? Were you renting out rooms in your own home you were living in?
Speaker #0
Actually, I lived with my parents at the very beginning. So. I did that because I could live basically rent-free, maybe pay some utilities. But yeah, basically have no debts. Again, remember my grandpa helped cover the college tuition, but because I had like no debts and lived at my parents' place, I was able to get qualified for loan after loan after loan. And every time I bought a house, it would actually lower my debt to income ratio because I would be making that cash flow on the rentals. So I was able to buy, you know, many, many properties until I hit 10 properties. Once you hit 10 properties, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will shut you off. So you have to start using more of like a DSCR loan. But yeah, that's only if you get to like 10 properties, for example.
Speaker #1
We're going to dig into that. But I want to hear about the very first one. So you're excited. You're young. You're getting your very first deals. Walk me through it, man. How did you find it? How did you finance it? How did that go?
Speaker #0
Yeah, you know, when I first got started, I was kind of hemming and hawing. I was stuck in that analysis paralysis stage. And my dad would kind of called me out on it. He says, Well, you talk a lot about real estate, but I don't see you doing anything. You're not really buying anything. He called you out. What are you doing, really? And eventually I was like, yeah, that's kind of true. So I actually was like upset at the time, but then I realized he was right. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to prove you wrong. So I called up a realtor that same day and I drove down to Stockton where my alma mater college is. And we looked at a couple properties and then I put an offer. on a property that exact same day. And that was the very first property that I ended up buying. It was a $262,000 house, three bedroom, two bathroom house in Stockton, California.
Speaker #1
Okay. So you had to reconfigure it then?
Speaker #0
Yes. So I did add an extra bedroom for that one. But then I realized that houses that are larger square footage, like 1500 square foot or more, I can get five or six bedrooms in there. And by By getting like... it up to six bedrooms that really can maximize how much rental income you're you're making on that property um but yeah i i basically did that i rented it out to one of my college friends who was in the same fraternity as me and i knew he was kind of like a little bit loud and some people call him obnoxious um and it ended up happening where i brought him in and i think only two months later it was like in October he I got a call from my other house, the other tenant who said that this guy invited over 80 people to a Halloween party. This is not OK. I'm not OK with this. And cops got called. And because there is loud music and there is a partying. And so I was like, oh, my God, I have to deal with all this. You know, while working full time as a pharmacist and sometimes working double shifts. So it was stressful at the beginning. But I learned. over time how to find high quality tenants and really know how to screen people to find great, great tenants for the properties.
Speaker #1
Okay. So that was going to be one of my questions. They had to throw parties, right? These are college students. They all do that, don't they? That's the first thing that came to my mind. So how do you deal with something like that?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So there's a couple things I do. The first thing I do is I target top colleges. these are colleges ideally that have like graduate programs. So maybe a pharmacy program, dental program, medical doctor program, for example. And then what you can do is rent out to the grad students because a lot of these colleges, they only provide enough housing for undergrads. They don't provide enough housing for grad students. So I started targeting like the grad student population. And then I also came up with this method called the prime method. It's an acronym. And basically, it's a way to find... high quality prime tenants. And so the acronym, like the P stands for placement of advertisements. So you want to place your ads where the target tenant hangs out. So for students, what's a really good place to put your ad up is Facebook housing groups, a fake college Facebook housing groups. And in those housing groups, it's all going to be college students looking for housing. So So it's a very hyper-specific way of, yeah. finding college students. The next thing is R, which is reviewing social media. So typically when these people apply, I will go through the social media. So like Facebook profile, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever they have available. And I'll look for things like smoking, alcohol, you know, drugs, raves and stuff like that. You know, that might not be the best tenant to bring into the house, right? because obviously smoking and stuff, the other tenants wouldn't be comfortable with that. The I stands for identifying the type of tenant they are. Or is this somebody who's like very professional and saying, hey, Mr. Chaw or hi, Mr. Chaw, I'm looking for, you know, a quiet place to stay and study? Or is it somebody who's like, yo, what's up? I want to stay in your crib or something like this. Right. So you can kind of, yeah, see, like, based off of their communication, is it professional? Do I want this person to be on my property? M stands for measuring responsiveness. The more responsive they are, typically, the more responsible they are. If they're getting paperwork back to you quickly, that's a good sign for like, let's say later when you say, hey, it looks like you forgot to pay rent. You don't want them waiting like three weeks to respond to that. You want them to respond right away. Right. And not and not having to worry for those three weeks. And then E stands for insuring proof of income. So you've got to make sure that they make at least three times the monthly rent as income, either for a lot of times from the parent. So I'll get like parent bank statements, for instance. Um, or the student might have a student loan that pays for room and board. They might have financial aid. Uh, they might have a stipend, a research stipend. Uh, one time I had a tenant who actually, he was going, he signed up, he signed a lease for the room, but I guess he was, he had to take care of his grandpa. So he ended up staying with his grandpa and he never moved into the room, but guess what? He paid for an entire year's worth of rent. And when we asked. Why did he do that later? He said, well, one, we signed a lease and we have to uphold that, right? But two, the scholarship he had, the financial aid he had, gave him a full right, including room and board. And if he didn't use it, that money would just go away. He would lose it. So he said, you know, it's not my money anyways. So basically, yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker #1
And you were the beneficiary, Ryan.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the day. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, this sounds like a great strategy to increase cash flow. And I know lots of places around the country, cash flow is tough. So this is attractive, but there's got to be some challenges with it. I think it's like almost like a hospitality type business. So sounds like you're retired. So you have all the time in the world to handle this. But what about someone that is working like you used to do? How do you set up your systems? How do you manage that much, like 90 tenants?
Speaker #0
Yeah, definitely. So I use a lot of tenant empowerment. One thing I do, I might do is I'll have like a head tenant, for example, and I could knock off maybe $50 a month in rent if they agree to do certain take on certain responsibilities for the house. So like, you know, help manage the cleaning, maybe like talk, set, have these like town hall meetings with the tenants, like all the housemates saying, how are we going to divvy up? the trash day, like the trash, the vacuuming, maybe what happens if there's dirty dishes left in the sink, right? So basically, the head tenant will help manage that type of stuff. Now, if you don't want to give, you know, do a head tenant, you can always have somebody who will be like a boots on the ground person to help manage the tenants. So sometimes I've had like a handyman do that job, for example. Other times it's been like a realtor. maybe, or a realtor's friend who wants to kind of get into real estate and they want to get some hands-on experience with property management. Right. And so those are some of the things I did to outsource that. But yeah, like for tenant versus tenant conflicts, those occur. So like, let's say somebody does leave the dirty dishes in the sink, you know, obviously that will cause another to get upset. So what I have them do is have, have like a five-step process. I have First, the tenant talks. directly with the tenant they're complaining about face to face. And then I mean, I encourage that. Number two, they have to come up with an actionable plan that they can implement within the next two weeks. Number three is obviously implement that plan and see how it goes. And usually at that stage, I say like after two weeks, if it's still not working, come back to me. But after those two weeks, I never hear from them again. And it's usually because they learned either how to tolerate each other or they at least We're able to talk to each other about it so they know how each other's feel. So that's important. Number four is if it's still a problem, then you can talk to the tenant that's being complained about and saying, hey, these are what the other housemates are telling me. What is your plan for, you know, making sure you make sure that they're happy before they're staying? And then the last part is number five. You can always go to the parent because I have my parents sign as guarantors on the leases. So you can go to the parent and say, hey, this is what's going on. Can you please have a discussion or communicate with your kid to make sure that everyone's happy at the house?
Speaker #1
How often do you do that?
Speaker #0
Very little now. So nowadays I have a virtual assistant team. I have basically a 40 hour a week virtual assistant in the Philippines. I paid out $110 an hour. They got a raise over time. But I have another VA that's 20 hours a week and then we pay her $7 an hour. So which is pretty good, really good in the Philippines, actually. Typical pay in the Philippines is $4 to $7 an hour for a VA job. So yeah, it's definitely a really good pace, but they're kind of handling that at this point. I used to handle that at the beginning. The first year I definitely had to, you know, I had that one tenant who threw a wild party and all of that, but around year two or three, I started figuring out kind of that system where I would have like head tenants help out around the house and, you know, obviously giving them a reduction in rent in exchange for taking on those responsibilities. And that allowed me to really make it more hands-off for me. And up until I got to probably property number five, I was actually self-managing it on the side of working 40 hours a week.
Speaker #1
Wow. Well, you were working more than 40, it sounded like.
Speaker #0
Yeah, more than 40. Yeah. So you're trying. Yeah,
Speaker #1
that's a lot. But you're young, right? So that's not, maybe it's not so bad.
Speaker #0
That's why I figured, yeah, you're young. Do it now. Grind it out. I was 23 at the time. Um, so I was like, yeah, these first three years, I'm just going to grind.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Good for you, man. And then now you're retired. So how did this a lot of cool systems? It sounds like you created, where did you learn how to do this?
Speaker #0
I had to learn on the spot. That's the unfortunate part. It was all trial and error. I had, I was lucky to have a good realtor though. They, they would go through the houses and point out issues like, Hey, you know, this roof, uh, looks like some of the shingles are falling off or something like this. Right. And then they will kind of like guide. He kind of guided me a little bit through that. But as far as like finding tenants, managing it, all that, obviously, I was all on my own for that. I did have my grandpa's inspiration, but unfortunately, he wasn't able to like actually show me how to manage a rental or anything like that. But, yeah, that's that's how it had to. D for me.
Speaker #1
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Speaker #0
yeah, yeah. Well, confidence doesn't mean you don't fear it, right? So confidence is still taking action. even though you have the fears going on at the back of your mind. So confidence is more like commitment. Like I'm going to do this. I'm going to make it happen no matter what. Things may go wrong, but I'm okay with that. And eventually I have the faith that I'll figure it out and make it work. And I can pivot, you know, if something goes wrong. So for me, I was like, hey, if the student rentals don't work out, I can probably pivot to a long-term rental and rent out to a family, right? I Back then, when I was 23, I was just very open to whatever came my way. It's not like you get a degree in real estate investing. There might be some out there, but there definitely wasn't one for me. I just figured it out along the way. I guess you just have to make that decision and then ask for help. You can always ask the realtor for help. buying a really you know a house in good condition obviously um and then you know as far as marketing let's see how do i figure that out i feel like i just asked around where do people where do people market at first i put a for rent sign on the lawn and uh like i said placement of advertisements i got i got that was a bad idea i got a bunch of calls from random people and none of them were students and i was like okay let's not do that again um so you kind of Live and learn along the way.
Speaker #1
Learn as you go.
Speaker #0
Yeah, learn as you go.
Speaker #1
A lot of times when you learn as you go, you know, they say fly in the plane when you're building it, you know, that sort of thing. You're going to run into some mistakes and some pain points and some failures along the way. Tell me, man, what's a mistake you made and what'd you learn?
Speaker #0
Yeah, on the very first property, I made a lot of mistakes. It was a hundred-year-old house. for one thing and it had a lot of major systems that needed to be replaced but I wasn't really paying attention for one thing I got this call around 11 p.m at night from my tenant about two months in and he said that dude there's a poop that's spilling like spewing out of the kitchen sink all over the kitchen floor now and it's like backing out into the showers drains and then into the bathrooms as well. So I had to get somebody to sanitize it all. And then when I got a plumber to stick a camera down the pipe, he found that there were actual tree roots. We had these really big oak trees and the tree roots were sticking into the pipe and broke the pipe in half. And so I had to replace the entire pipe, sewage pipe, which costs about nine thousand dollars to replace it with PVC. And so I learned from that I could have done a sewage lateral line inspection. It's an add on inspection you have to you have to actually pay for. In addition to the normal home inspection that will stick a camera down the pipe to see if there's any like tree roots in the house. And this is recommended for any houses like older than the 1980s, because that's like around when they transition to PVC. And so I learned to do that in every house. I found that about half of my houses actually had sewage line issues. And it only costs $200 to maybe $300 to do if you find a cost efficient plumber to do it. But it'll save you like thousands or potentially tens of thousands, depending on the house and how long the line is itself.
Speaker #1
So, Ryan, we're a hard money lender and we finance fix and flips. That's really what we do.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
So our clients are out there buying houses that they're remodeling. Right. Similar to what you did with that very first one. And I always tell them, man, you got it. You could put all brand new stuff in there. That's fine. Maybe you don't need an inspection on the kitchen appliances. I get it.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
But you can't see the sewer. That's the one thing you cannot see.
Speaker #0
So always,
Speaker #1
always for the listeners benefit here, always scope that line. It either is you're going to find something makes you not want the property or it's going to give you some leverage to negotiate. So even the newer sewer lines have damage sometimes. So I would I would definitely scope every one. So thank you for that. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #0
And what you can do is once you find the issues, you can have a quoted and then send that quote to the seller and say, dude, we got this huge replacement that needs to be done. Are you going to pay for it? And, um, I would say at least 50% of the time they'll pay the full amount or at least 75% of it. So that's why you do those inspections. Other inspections I add is like maybe a roof inspection or HVAC inspection. Sometimes like if I'm worried about foundation, maybe a structural engineer. There's also plumbing and electricians, electrical inspections. So those are some considerations if you want to really thoroughly vet a property.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Especially if you're not doing a lot of work, if you're buying a turnkey, which you sort of are, you definitely want to know what you're buying. So I agree with you. You've had a ton of success. You retired at 31. I don't hear that very often. How's retired life?
Speaker #0
It's great. So the biggest difference is obviously you can wake up and set your own schedule, do what you want, where would you want, from wherever you want to do it with, right? You can go on vacations four times a year or whatever. But yeah, I mean, what I do nowadays is I actually, because this was like very powerful for me, the rent by the room strategy that is, specifically for student housing, I now teach others how to get into it and get started because I had to go through all this like trial and error stuff. But I feel like, yeah, you don't necessarily have to go through all the weeds yourself if you have somebody to help guide you and be a sounding board, etc. So that's what I do nowadays is I help teach others. I also lead my team. You know, I have the virtual assistants and some boots on the ground in my out-of-state properties. And then I have five in California as well. So I help lead my team. And we have like once a week meetings, maybe once or twice a week, depending on the needs of the business.
Speaker #1
I was hoping you got into your coaching because I read that you were coaching people on how to do this niche. Yeah, yeah. So I was like throwing you a softball there, right? Like I appreciate it. How did you learn all of this? But yeah, so tell me about it. What's the program?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's an A through Z program. I go through how to identify, obviously, a top college or a college that you will want to invest in. And then do that market analysis. How much can you get for rent? And then deal analysis, looking at specific deals, like maybe your top five deals on a call. And then we'll go through one at a time. What are the pros and cons? What are the red flags to look out for? And then, you know, marketing it to college students specifically. leasing it out, what the lease should look like, the house rules that you should set, how to have somebody run a town hall meeting, and then, of course, managing the property. So it's a full A through Z, how to get started. And you don't have to have any prior knowledge to get started.
Speaker #1
If I was to join that, like. What does that look like from my lens? Am I meeting with you directly? Is this a weekly, monthly? Yeah,
Speaker #0
at the beginning, it's a weekly call. So we just meet through Zoom like this once a week, 30 minutes to 60 minutes, basically. And then, you know, we go through the whole process at the very end of every call. You'll have very like specific steps to take before the next call. And of course, like you can always text me or email me in between. and I get back within 24 to 48 business hours. So it's a really true one-on-one coaching program where I'm like there for you as a partner.
Speaker #1
Okay. One of the best things about coaching from my experience, and I've been doing this a little bit longer than you have, is the accountability piece. Like if you have a coach that's going to be hard on you and say, dude, you're not doing what you said. How do you expect to get the results you want? Right. That sort of thing.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Just like your dad did for you. So are you doing that with your students?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so some people want more gentle prodding. Others like that tough love. So obviously, you know, I asked at the beginning, what do you prefer? But yeah, definitely accountability is a big part of it. So I have a check like accountability checklist. Like these are the things that need to get done as you go through the program. And you'll just check it off one at a time as you finish, you know, after the first 30 days, 60 days, whatever. those milestones and yeah I'm here for you and you know if if you aren't or if you are struggling with something we dive deep into it why why are we struggling with that part is it is it maybe you just didn't have the time or was it just that maybe you weren't sure how to make that call what to talk about like when you make the call or whatever it is you know okay and so I give you the resources for all that that sounds like a great program um
Speaker #1
I'm going to ask a question I've already asked, but a little bit differently. I want to see if I get more nuggets of information for the listener. So you cannot answer, you would scope a sewer line. Okay. But if you had to go back to the beginning and change one thing or give yourself some advice from 2016, what would that be?
Speaker #0
Oh man. I mean, I kind of live life without regrets. So I don't like to say, oh, I would definitely change, you know, something, but I would say, um Hmm. If I were to go back, I guess that was, let me answer this. And like, if I was a beginner, I would say, um, I would try to expand my network a little bit more. Um, because I think that that's really underrated. They say you're the average of the top five people you hang around. So if you were like just starting out, there are a lot of real estate investing clubs. Obviously, vet them and make sure that the people in the club or meeting actually invest in real estate actively. But if you can get in touch with those people, they can teach you a ton. Or just hire a coach. That's probably my number one recommendation is I would have definitely hired a coach, a real estate coach at the beginning if I could go back.
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's interesting because you said one of the things that you contribute your success to is being able to ask for help. And you were referring to the realtor.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
I mean, that's anybody, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Ask around. People are, you know, domain experts, right? So you're not going to go over there and fix toilets by yourself. You have handyman to have fixed like hundreds of toilets before, right? So, or a plumber, right? So that's what you want to do is you want to hire and get with, you know, get in contact with and establish networks with the right people.
Speaker #2
Okay.
Speaker #0
All right. Another coaching. One last question on that. And then I'm going to go through some notes that I took through the episode because I definitely got a lot of value out of this one. So website, is that where I get like more information and what the costs are and all of that? So I'm assuming. So what's the website and what do I expect to see when I get there?
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I have a free PDF guide. No cost there to basically go. It goes through the student housing strategy or the rent by the room strategy. It tells you about all the mistakes I've made and how you can avoid them. Lessons I learned a lot of good like tips throughout my journey. And that's at www.newberealestateinvesting.com slash guide. Again, it's www.newberealestateinvesting.com slash guide. And newbie is spelled N-E-W-B-I-E. So that's the number one resource I would recommend you check out if you're interested in rent by the room. or getting into real estate investing in general.
Speaker #0
Dude, that's awesome. So you got a really great domain there. I can't believe that was available.
Speaker #1
Oh yeah, it was.
Speaker #0
That's cool. All right. So what I like to do before we close out the episode is to go through my notes. So I took notes as we were talking and some of the things that I've learned or what I want to retell to the listener. So I'm gonna go through my notes. Ryan, if you could just tell me what I'm missing or if there's anything you would like to add, please do that. And then I would love one final piece of advice before we close this out.
Speaker #1
Sounds good. All right.
Speaker #0
So we started with you getting excited about real estate as a student and you wanted to build generational wealth. And you realized early on that you could do that with real estate because your grandparents were helping you pay for college. So you got excited and started doing rent by the room immediately. So you stayed in your lane the entire time. And the reason for that is because rent by the room can literally double the income on each property. you Biggest thing for you was getting quality tenants. You learned that really early on with an 80-person party. And the way you do that is go to top colleges with grad programs and rent to the grad students. And then you use PRIME, which is an acronym. Placement of the advertising. You said Facebook housing groups is your number one lead generator. Review social media. That was awesome. I love that one. ID type of tenants. So. If they say they want to stay at your crib, it might not be a great tenant for you. Measure responsiveness and ensure proof of income. After that, sometimes you use a head tenant, someone on the ground that can help you manage it. Then you went through your five-step process of tenant disputes. And it's very rare that you get all the way to step five, which is basically telling them with their parents, right? But I'm sure that's pretty effective. Ask for help. We talked about that. Do your inspections. And we talked a lot about the sewer inspection, but then you went through a whole list of other inspections to at least consider. And then finally, what you contribute your success to or a piece of advice for other people to have similar success would be to build your network. How did I do?
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's perfect. Exactly.
Speaker #0
All right, man. Did you think about it? What's the final piece of advice?
Speaker #1
Just get started. Like, I know a lot of people are worried about interest rates and home prices, but that's going to be like in 10 years, none of that's going to matter. Really, like if you look back on it, the house would have appreciated you, you know, you have built up so much equity. And if you think about it, even if a house, let's say a house is in a pretty decent neighborhood and you're making 7% appreciation on average every year. After three years, that's a 21% appreciation. But because you usually put a 20% down on the property, you literally 100% return. It's a 100% return on your investment because you put 20% down. It went up 21%. So if you put down 60K, you get an extra 60K. And now you have 120K. So that's how real estate works is every three years or so, it basically doubles whatever you put into it. Obviously, buy great properties and everything like that. Caveat thing with that. I'm not sure. So yes, generally speaking, appreciation can double your equity every three or four years. Yeah,
Speaker #0
I totally agree. And obviously, markets move. It goes up and down. It's been a little bit slower lately. So maybe you haven't got so much appreciation, but you are still paying the mortgage down. So there's a lot of advantages here. And the 20% down that he's referring to is if you're buying a non-owner occupied. Now, you said your buddy bought a property and rented it out to other college students. So if you're listening and you're younger, you could easily get in for. three and a half percent and maybe less depending on how creative you are with the financing. So there's a lot of opportunity here for, sounds like for student housing. What's the best way to get, I know you already gave me your website, but maybe I do it again. What's the best way to get ahold of you?
Speaker #1
Yeah, there's a website. I also have a YouTube channel. So you can always watch the videos and comment and then I will reply to all like any questions you have. I'll reply on the YouTube channel as well.
Speaker #0
Awesome. So a lot of the guests that come on here, Ryan, are very, very busy. They've got multiple things going on. They've got just business to run, right? You are not that way. You don't have a lot going on. You're retired and you're just living life. But still, I appreciate you coming on the episode and carving out some time. with me today to help our listeners become better real estate investors. So thank you so much for your time.
Speaker #1
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on Kevin.
Speaker #0
All right. And for the listener, you have other podcast options, right? You could be listening to another podcast right now, but you chose the real estate educators podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. Thank you. And I hope you make this day a great one. Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave us a review. Oh yeah. And tell friend.

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