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SHOW NOTES FOR EPISODE 285: MULTIFAMILY NEWBIE ACQUIRES AND INVESTS IN 1,000 UNITS HER FIRST YEAR
After flipping houses, house hacking, and investing in buy ‘n hold properties, former attorney Monick Halm stumbled on to syndication. This new discovery helped her grow her investments to over 1,000 units in her first year. In this episode, you will hear how Monick leveraged her mentorships, a focus on helping women and education into a successful real estate investing business.
What You Will Learn
- How “house hacking” is a great way to get started in real estate investing
- Why it’s important to carefully monitor the economy, know where you are cyclically and assess whether you need to shift strategies
- How syndication can quickly accelerate your investing goals
- The importance of good mentors
- How a friends advice to “Live where you live and invest where it makes sense” shifted her investment strategy
- Why it’s important to always pay for the best and how it can make you more money in the long term
About Our Guest
Monick Halm
Monick Halm is a real estate investor, syndicator, and developer with over 14 years of real estate investing experience. Together with her husband and her investors, she has over 1000 rental doors across 5 states. She’s an educator and advocate for women interested in real estate investing, and has made it her mission to help 1 million women create financial freedom through real estate. She’s the founder of Real Estate Investor Goddesses, an online education, mentoring, and community platform for female real estate investors; the #1 bestselling author of The Real Estate Investor Goddess Handbook and Wealth for Women – Conversations with the Team that Creates the Dream; and the host of the Real Estate Investor Goddesses Podcast. She is also a Real Estate Strategy Mentor, a Huffington Post Contributing Author, keynote speaker, recovered attorney, certified interior designer, Feng Shui expert, avid world traveler, wife and mother of three amazing kids.
More About Monick
- Started career as an attorney
- Parents are from Haiti, Monick was born in the US
- Parents always told her she could be anything she wants, as long as it’s a doctor, lawyer, professor or engineer
- Regarding real estate, the only thing they told her was to buy your own house
- Went to law school, became a lawyer but was miserable as a lawyer
- She had been a lawyer for a few years and she decided it was time to buy a house
Venturing into Real Estate
- It was Los Angeles in 2005 – near the top of the last bubble
- She couldn’t find anything she could afford in a decent neighborhood
- It would cost $500,000-700,000 for a decent home
- Even on a six figure income, the prices were steep
- A friend, who was a consultant, recommended they buy a duplex together
- They found an old place where the downstairs was a much bigger 2-bed unit, the upstairs was another smaller 2-bed unit, it also had a basement and a converted garage in the back
- They both loved the downstairs so they each took a bedroom there
- They then rented out the upstairs unit, the converted garage and the basement
- They were “house hacking” and didn’t even know it
- When she met her husband, he had a duplex, they got a single family house
- Left practicing law in 2008 – was fired when she was 5 months pregnant
- She thought that she would have her child and start looking for work after that but when she started looking, the bleak economy did not have much in the way of jobs for lawyers
- She did other things to make money including being a coach
- When the economic down turn happened, she used to watch the HDTV shows and she was inspired by the flipping shows
- They sold their duplex and started flipping in L.A. in 2010
- Homes were cheap and it was a great time to be flipping. It became their full time job
- In 2015, margins were getting slimmer and slimmer and it was difficult to find the right properties to flip
- Since flipping was getting harder, they started looking at buy ‘n hold
- They were looking at a fourplex in the L.A. area
Syndication
- In October 2015, she met Robert Helms (of the Real Estate Guys) and they learned about syndication
- Up until then, she though that you always had to invest near where you lived
- Robert Helms told her, “Live where you live and invest where it makes sense”
- He also said that you could buy that fourplex and be limited by your own capital and credit, whereas, if you syndicate, you could buy 100 to 200 units by bringing together a group of investors together
- She couldn’t believe that real people could do that and she said that’s what I want to do!
- She told Robert she wanted to be his “groupie”(lol), follow him around and learn everything she can to do this
- That night, her and her husband signed up for their first syndication seminar January, 2016, in Phoenix
- Ended up mentoring with The Real Estate Guys
- Did other mentoring as well
- That year they got over 1,000 units
- They brought investors together on all deals
- First syndication was a mobile home park – sub-syndication
- One of the guys in their mastermind group did mobile home parks and she was fascinated by that asset class
- He had a project where they had a big investor from Korea who could come up with the money
- They were asked if they wanted to syndicate the project and they said yes
- That was their first syndication
- June 2016
- Also, they passively invested in a few different tings
- They also acquired two apartment buildings in Albuquerque, New Mexico
- A 51-uit
- A 77-unit
- Both were C-class value add projects
- Two separate owners but they put in offers that were accepted at the same time
- They were fairly close to each other
- Had one property manager for both properties
- In fall of 2016
- Did a development syndication that happened early the next year
- All of those investments (including the passive investments) brought them 1,000 units
- Since then they have done
- An industrial development in Houston
- RV Park and multifamily developments in Lake Charles, LA
- About to do a single family portfolio in Jackson, MS
Becoming Syndicators
- Their next door neighbor worked for a large real estate investment fund
- She had done almost $1 billion in real estate transaction
- Had extensive experience with apartment syndications
- She wanted to do some smaller things in her own account
- She was too busy to do the work herself
- They decided to partner together
- The neighbor would do the due diligence
- Monick and her husband would find the deals
- The neighbor didn’t have the time so they ended up not “officially” partnering but, for a time, she was listed as part of Monick’s management team (showing that they had a billion dollars in investing experience) and it added credibility to their team – it helped their credibility and got them in the door
- They also made other contacts for their team through:
- The Real Estate Guys network And their “Inner Circle”
- Brad Sumrock’s organization
- Got partner from Albuquerque deal
- A GP
- A lot of investors came from the two groups as well
- Since then they have done
- An industrial development in Houston
- RV Park and multifamily developments in Lake Charles, LA
- About to do a single family portfolio in Jackson, MS
- Their role has changed to fund raisers and investor relations
- They found their strength more as
- Having relationships with investors
- Partnering with amazing operators who are bringing them deals, people they feel good about and who have great track record, experience
- Bringing great deals to their investors
- She and her husband are prompted by their investors
- They purse the deals that match what their investors are seeking
- That connects them with operators
- It’s less asset-class focused and more helping them to reach their goals in terms of returns, risks, etc.
- Monick and her husband are on the sponsorship team (get a share of equity and cash flow plus acquisition fee and sponsorship fee) of each project. They also are involved with investor relations. They are not so much involved in the day-to-day management activities of the project. They are more involved in the larger strategic decisions (i.e. good time to sell? re-finance? etc.)
- She is launching her first fund, the Goddess Fund, this year which is geared toward women (men can invest, too) will be majority of women-run projects.
Biggest Mistake
- In developing teams and, for example, hiring contractors, they would often go with the cheapest
- A mentor suggested to “Go with the best.” “They won’t cost you money, They will make you money.”
- She has found her biggest mistakes was being “penny wise and pound foolish”
- Often she would hire the cheaper guy who didn’t know what he was doing and after have to hire the expensive guy to fix the bad work of the cheap guys
Biggest Success
- She has a training program for women
- When the women in her program get properties, she gets great joy out of it
- Womenly
- Education
- Assets
- Location
- Team
- How do you pay
- You
Advice for Old Dawgs Interested in Real Estate Investing
- Start with the end in mind
- Ask yourself:
- Where to you want to be in 30, 20, 10, 5 years – work backwards
- Where am I going going?
- How do I want to get there?
- What things do I want to avoid want to avoid? (i.e. if I have no time, do I want to be a passive investor. If I have lots of time and want to get involved, will I buy my own properties). I like designing and decorating but hate finances)
- Design your journey and make a plan to get there
Current Business
- Her mission: To help 1,000,000 women create financial freedom
- Personally, she no longer has to work
- Short term: To launch her new fund
- Figuring out ways to have a more mass impact
Rap-It-Up
- Favorite real estate book: The ABCs of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy
- Favorite business book: The Go Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
- Most valuable web site for success (other than your own): Facebook
- Favorite app: Facebook
- Favorite quote: “Begin what you want to do know. We are not living in eternity. We only have this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snow flake.” – MB Ray
- If you had to start all over, knowing what you know, and you only had $1,000, what would you do to launch your real estate investing business? If she still had her relationships, she wouldn’t have to do anything because she could partner with them. If she had no relationships, she would start going to REI meetings, real estate conferences, and other good places to network and build relationships and then create win-win situations.
How to Reach Monick
- For the ladies: Go to REIgoddeses.com
- For everyone else: VIPAssets.com
- To get her book: The Real Estate Investor Goddess Handbook and Wealth for Women – Conversations with the Team that Creates the Dream
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