Rick Jarman: That was my first piece. Nothing really exciting about it, except that my trailer got totaled when they were delivering it, so that was kind of interesting. So, that was my first-
Chad Duval: Did you have insurance on it, at least?
Rick Jarman: Well, when we were waiting for them to deliver it and there’s a couple of my buddies with me, and my mom was there. And I said, “Well, we going to ride over to the highway.” Highway 82 is what it was, this highway that runs through town, to see if we could see them coming. Well, we get over there and that trailer is stretched out across, about 30 feet up. It was tore off all up and down the highway. And I’m thinking, “Man, I got to pay for this thing?”
Speaker 3: This is Start FM. Now, here’s your host, active real estate investor and entrepreneur, Chad Duval.
Chad Duval: So, I guess we could jump right in. I typically want to have a “who you are right now,” so people have some context of who you are, how long you’ve been in things, kind of give a little background on that, and then what we can do is then circle back and unpack that first deal, and go through that. So, I’ll leave it at that.
Rick Jarman: Okay. Well, I’m Rick Jarman. We have Jarman Realty and Construction, LSE. I’ve been in the business for myself full-time 35 years as of June, this past June. We were home builders up to 2015, and when I turned 60 I said, “You know, that’s it.” I’d built about 500 houses in my career. Plus there were years that we remodeled, whatever we had to do to make a living. It all depended on what was going on with the economy.
Rick Jarman: I loved home building, but I have a son that… I think that this month, a couple days, he’ll be turning 38. He works with me and I wanted him to learn more about the rental property because he was running the new stuff and there’s a lot of stress even though we were not doing custom homes. I haven’t did a custom home since 1998, but what we would do, we’d go in and buy a whole section of a sub-division. We’d have our plans on our lot and let them pick their colors if they came in, wanted to buy it pre… while it’s in construction or pre-construction. That was as close to custom as we did, but there’s still a lot of stress to it.
Rick Jarman: We flip houses now, about 10 to 12 a year. That’s fun for me, there’s no stress in it as far as I’m concerned. We run single family rentals. We have 125 single family homes, three duplexes and two houses that are commercial buildings and I buy and flip some commercial land. I buy a piece of land, maybe get it rezoned and sell it, that type of thing, but we’ve always leaned single family. I’ve had some… booked a family back years ago. It has a 16 unit, but it just wasn’t I enjoy. I love everything about houses and that’s just my thing.
Chad Duval: Yeah, and I think it complements, if you’re you’re flipping. If you do that all for fun, definitely the single family homes falls within that because you can…. If you decide that you do a flip and it doesn’t work out financially you can just turn it into a rental and just keep adding.
Rick Jarman: Oh, yeah. It cuts the risk if the market changes. This market can change overnight. I’ve seen it many times but it’s going good for a good for a while now, so that’s what we want. We learned a lot of hard lessons in 1998, late ’90s, so we were prepared for 2008 and we made it through that recession fine because of our rentals and stuff. Me and old Donald Trump both learned some hard lessons in the late ’90s.
Chad Duval: I think a lot of people did, for sure. I think a lot of people in the future in the next couple of years are probably going to feel the same type of pain because it’s getting frothy right now.
Rick Jarman: Yeah. And I don’t mean anything disrespectful about them, but I have to do it, because if you’re trying to do this business, that’s great, but right now a blind man can do it. It’s easy, but it has its moments. If you stay in it long you’re going to see some things change.
Chad Duval: Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I haven’t lived through that yet but I did graduate in ’08 from college so as soon as I got out that’s when everything hit. I felt a little pain as far as the employment market goes but I wasn’t in real estate yet so hoping to learn from people like you.
Rick Jarman: Right, just closed a million four worth of lots and then it was tough. We were able to pull back, work deals out with the banks and we came out intact and everything’s good, but our rentals are really what… It’s why I tell people, if you invest in affordable rentals, if the market turns, you’re still able to rent them because the working man, he’s going to be working. If somebody has a high-end job and they lose their job they got to move out and change status of life, but the working man he’s just going to keep on working and he’ll keep paying that rent.
Chad Duval: Yeah. I totally agree with that concept because I’m in the same boat. All of our rentals are C+, B- style properties and I think during a downturn like that, all the A class properties have already moved down to a B and a B moves down to a C. So at least in that C+, B- range, you’re pretty isolated from any kind of down turn. You’re always able to rent them out.
Rick Jarman: Exactly and you said you’ve heard playing in my videos, I always tell people, “You can buy it or rent it.” It’s not complicated. You’re going to do one of those two things and I say there’s only so many people can live under the bridge.
Chad Duval: Yeah. For all the listeners you posted on Instagram today, a video in front of a bridge and basically it was saying that, “There’s no people living under that bridge. They’re either renting or they’re buying.”
Rick Jarman: That’s it, that’s it. But it’s true and what I see today, so many people try to overthink everything and try to make it more difficult than it is. You may remember, there’s a story I told about… I had this guy send me some information and he ran all these detailed grafts on this house and was explaining everything and he was talking about this and that and I’m thinking, “Hell, buddy, I don’t even know what you’re talking about, buddy. Half of this stuff… ” And I bought my first rental, 1981, so I said, “Let me see about your rent.” And I looked at his rent, what he said his costs were and he won’t know if I thought it was good. And I told him, “Well I think it might be a little tight but you’ve already got it. You’ve got to live with it, but it’ll be all right.” And they didn’t let me know we haven’t even bought it and I’m thinking, “Man, you ran through all this?”
Rick Jarman: It was a single family home and boy he had more grass than-
Chad Duval: That’s great.
Rick Jarman: It is.
Chad Duval: Yeah. It’s crazy and honestly that’s one of the reason why I wanted to start this podcast is for that exact reason, because I was in that same boat where for years you’re running all the numbers and you’re afraid to start this stuff and take that plunge into real estate. Especially if you’re running to buy a bunch of people and everybody says, “This might be tight but you’re going to make it. You just got to take the jump.” And that’s what I’m trying to get across to everybody and you can’t think that your first property is going to make you a ton of money. Your first couple of properties are probably not going to make you a ton of money.
Chad Duval: With that being said if you want to go back to the 1970s when you bought your first property, to unpack that a little bit and give some details, I think that brings some good value to everybody. At least walk them through the financing, or how you found it or what type of property it was, so that people can model that maybe possibly if they’re interested in how you got started.
Rick Jarman: Yeah. Actually I’ll go all the way back to my first piece of property with a piece of land I bought. I hadn’t even graduated high school. My parents had a mobile home. We were poor and it was tough and they had a mobile home on a three quarter acre lot this man had developed. A little sub-division that was just for mobile homes, $500 down. He had financed for us, so I had paid down on that, got me a mobile home and this is like two, three days before I graduated high school. I graduated and got married June, 8th, been married 46 years.
Chad Duval: Wow.
Rick Jarman: So, that was my first piece, nothing really exciting about it except that my trailer got towed when they were delivering it, so that was kind of interesting. So, that was my first move.
Chad Duval: Did you have insurance on it at least?
Rick Jarman: Well, we were waiting for them to deliver it and there’s a couple of my buddies with me and my mom was there and I said, “Well, we’re going to ride over to the highway. The highway 82 is what it was. It’s a highway that runs through town to see if we could see them coming. Well, we get over there and that trailer’s stretched out across about 30 feet. It was tore off all up and down the highway and I’m thinking, “Man, I got to pay for this thing?” Of course they said, “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll have you another one in two weeks.” And I said, “Well that will work because we’re getting married in about three weeks or so.” So, it was like two months and we had to spend the first couple of months living with my parents as honeymooners and that wasn’t good.
Chad Duval: Oh, no.
Rick Jarman: Anyway, that’s 1973. I’m working, doing carpenter work. I was actually a carpenter apprentice by then. Well, not when I got the trailer, I got the trailer, I was working at a cabinet shop and then as a laborer on a union job. But fast forward to 1976, I’d sold my mobile home and I was looking for a house and this guy approached me that worked at the university and also had another guy in his apartment had a house he was trying to sell. He said, “Look, if you want to buy this,” he said, “I’ll loan you the money for the second mortgage to get it.” “That sounds good.” So, we cut our deal. I learned a good lesson on this because you got to realize I’m 21 years old and green as a cucumber. I had no clue.
Rick Jarman: We went ahead, moved in, we’re painting it up and everything and just getting ready to have a closing date. So, I contact this guy and he goes fishtailing on me. He said, “Well, we decided we better not do this.” And I’m thinking, “Man, you the one putting me on this. I’ve already moved.” So, I’m thinking… anyway, I get out and I hustle up. I find another man that wants to make some interest and he loans me the money for the second mortgage, so basically I got in at zero down other than some closing costs and we’re doing the work ourselves. We lived in it. We’re fixing it up. We’re not in it two weeks then he called and goes out, “Listen, summer Alabama boy… “
Chad Duval: So he backed out of it, just the financing side of things? He still wanted to sell?
Rick Jarman: Yeah.
Chad Duval: Okay, so at least that kept going.
Rick Jarman: He didn’t own the house. He was just doing the second mortgage but the guy that was selling me the house worked at his department at that university and I worked at a different part of that university.
Chad Duval: Were you advertising to people and talking to people that you’re looking for properties or how did people-
Rick Jarman: No, I was just getting started. This was just going to be my personal house. My plan was to fix it up, sell it, do that two or three times and that’s what we did in a period of less than… With two years we moved into three different houses, so by the third house we had… The same guy that loaned me the money for the second mortgage of the first house, when I sold it I said, “Would you be interested in doing it again?” He said, “Sure.” The people who got money won’t make interest. There’s something called User Laws but I didn’t have a clue about them then. He was hitting me with a high interest rate. But it made the deal happen, I guess what y’all would call hard-money lenders now, but it was high rate but I got the house.
Rick Jarman: So, anyway, he did that on two houses. Well, by the third house I had enough to pay the second mortgage off, buy the $8,000 play down on the new house and money left over. That’s when I said, “This real estate may work out.” But it was about 19… that would have been ’77 when we moved two times, but I didn’t buy my first rental until 1981.
Chad Duval: Okay. So between that span where you just basically living flip typey things or did you just still once you got to that house and then [crosstalk 00:12:57].
Rick Jarman: Well, basically like said I’m just about 60. I was 24 years old by the time I bought my first rental, 25. I was just working, trying to learn my job, putting my wife through college and all that stuff and I had one baby and another one on the way. I always kid folks, we were married seven years before we had children. It wasn’t a shotgun wedding, that’s what we used to call them in the South. So, I had a baby and the other was on the way, had just been born. So, I’m reading an article in Reader’s Digest magazine, I’m really updating myself now, and it was an article called, Beating Inflation with Real Estate and they listed three books. These were the first three books I ever bought on real estate investing. One of them was called, William Nickerson, how he turned… I’ll tell you more about him later, but one was called How to Turn $1000 into five million. The other one was a guy named Albert J. Lowry. It was, How You Can Become Financially Independent Investing in Real Estate.” The third one was Nothing Down by Robert Allen.
Rick Jarman: Well, I keep these three books today in my bedroom up on the shelf. The book is just to remind me where I was. [inaudible 00:14:26] was so tough, my mother said, “What would you like for Christmas?” I said, “I’d like these three books right here.” Because I got a lot to handle on my plate. I’m working my job, working side jobs, got my wife in school and two kids. It was tough but those books were the start of my career as far as learning, and I was doing maintenance for other people and remodeling on the side. So I was seeing the possibilities of what real estate could do for you other than just working on it.
Chad Duval: Well, yeah and that’s what seems like. You were tasting it while you were doing everything else. Overtime you finally made it your full-time gig but it took years of tasting, trying the maintenance, trying the flipping, the live and flipping, all of that stuff. I guess you’re what they call a modern day hustler back then with a bunch of side hustles.
Rick Jarman: That’s right. Well, everything is… I couldn’t have planned my career to work out better than it has for what I do. 11th to 12th grade high school, I did construction work and loved I it. I found out that’s what I want to do the rest of my life. We were building houses at Summer. Girl I went to school with, it was her dad’s company. So basically since then all I’ve ever done is construction and houses and everything related to it. In fact I did a video today about it. When we first got married my wife and I, I was working at a cabinet shop, that was first construction job I could get. I was making $1.60 an hour which was minimum wage. It gave me a nickel when I got married.
Rick Jarman: Well, I had worked all my life and saved money. I probably had 5, $6000 saved which was a lot of money back then but I had worked all my life and I’m just right out of high school, not a month. I said, “You know what? This is not going to get it. I got to find something better.” But anyway, we were on break one day and they were talking and without thinking I said, “You know, one of these days I’m going to build houses.” And boy, they got a laugh out of that and it kind of hurt my feelings, you know what I mean?
Chad Duval: Yeah, but that’s some good motivation right there.
Rick Jarman: Well, that’s what I was going to say. And so, you can fast forward it, that was 1973. Well, 1984, I went in business for myself full time, building houses for myself, remodeling, and actually I had to sell real estate for somebody else because you couldn’t get your broker license until you sold two years full time unless you had a degree in real estate which I barely got a high school education. So anyway, I got my broker license, all of that later, but anyway by 1984 I’d been at the university 10 years in maintenance, housing maintenance, worked through dorms and rental property, what better training? So, I was the Jarman level there.
Rick Jarman: I left that and so I worked at the cabinet shop, it was 1973, so fast forward to 1993, I’m building so many houses and flipping and buying rentals, my cabinet man can’t keep up, so I need another cabinet man. You can guess who I went and talked to, I hired a man that I worked for when I was just turned 18 years old. He didn’t remember it and I never said nothing about it, but I knew it.
Chad Duval: Oh, yeah, totally.
Rick Jarman: It’s 20 years later, he’s building cabinets for me.
Chad Duval: Full circle. That’s some good motivation, for especially people who are just starting out and they’re even… haven’t done a deal yet or just got their first deal. It takes some time but it all comes full circle like you’re saying. It’s really crazy.
Rick Jarman: You just can’t let whatever the situation of life you’re in hold you back. There’s a lot of people out there who think because they don’t have a college degree or whatever, but you know the thing about real estate investing, I’ve never heard a banker say, “Well, what was your… where’d you go to college?” Or “What was your grades in college?” And I never went, “What was your grades in high school?” They don’t care nothing about that. They just want to see your credit score and what you make and you go and pay the bills. The great thing about real estate it’s an equalizer. It’s nothing about your standard of life.
Rick Jarman: I tell folks. We live pretty good. We’ve got a good life, but my dad had a complete mental breakdown when I was three years old. And I didn’t find this out till about two years but my brother… I was asking about a house that my parents had lived in because I owned some rental houses there and he was telling me that when my dad got sick back in the ’50s, it would have been about 1958. I was three years old. Your mother didn’t work in those days and my mother didn’t even drive and so when dad got sick and had to go in the VA hospital, he was disabled, battered from the war too, and he just had to break down.
Rick Jarman: Well, they lost the house. They lost the car. We were homeless. My mother and I moved in with one of her sisters and my brother moved in with another sister and for nine months to a year we were homeless. I’d always wondered why my mother had worked like she did to keep a roof over her head and that was why, because we had to work. We had to go to work early. I tell folks that where I live now, I think I’ve shared with you, if you’re a football fan, coach Saban, Alabama’s football coach lives three houses up of me on the left. I did pretty good for a boy with no education and it’s been all through real estate.
Rick Jarman: But when I was 14 years old I had gotten a job working with the City of Northport on a garbage track. Now, if you’re wondering where your life headed, you working on a garbage track, that’s… But you know that’s why I tell folks, “You can’t let things… nothing’s forever, just keep working, studying, learning about the business that you’ve chosen and anything’s possible.”
Chad Duval: Yeah, 100% agree. Yeah, exactly. Well, that’s a good testament to… excuse me, a lot of people say that there’s two factors with becoming successful. One of them is A, you need have a really good plan and I think real estate is the number one plan that’s just… It’s performed for hundreds of years. It’s the number one plan and the other one is work ethic and hustle and working your butt off. Even if it takes you 10 years to finally start “making it,” at least you have the right plan and just have to just keep working at it and that’s exactly what it sounds like you did. Even if you just kept tasting it, the woodworking and the property management and all that stuff, eventually it all paid off for sure.
Rick Jarman: We’ve been sure to this so… like I said, there was a time in the ’90s I had a property management company that managed other people’s property too. Now, we just managed just our stuff and I have a full-time maintenance man. I have a lady… it’s my office manager that helps with my property managing and I still approve every application but I don’t get involved in the day-to-day. If I go knock on your door it ain’t good.
Chad Duval: So, just for all the new real estate investors, how long did it take you to get to a point where you are out of the day-to-day and have outsourced it to staff and that sort of thing? Did it take the 40 years or you’ve been like that for a while?
Rick Jarman: Been that for years, yeah, for years. The problem for me, is hard for me to pull back. Building and everything else, you just want to keep going. That’s why I tell people. I hear young people say, “Well, when I get 40 I’m just going to sit back and go to the beach and whatever, passive income.” No, let me tell you, when you work your butt off to get there, you’re not going to walk away because if you’re that type of person to get there, that drive is still there. I love it as much today as I did the first house I ever bought.
Chad Duval: Yeah. I know and a lot of people don’t realize that if they want to sit on a beach with passive income, that’s a different mindset and work ethic in my opinion than somebody who’s actually going to be able to afford sitting on a beach, but they don’t want to sit on a beach because they’re still… They’re married to their job. They like what they do and it’s not even work for them.
Rick Jarman: I know you’re going to think this is crazy but I was 60 years old before I realized I could stay at home all day on a Saturday and I’d go check a job or go to the office and work a little while. Me and two other guys owned a condo in Gulf Shores, Alabama, right on the beach for almost 13 years now. And the way we did it, we were all self-employed and we did our week from Tuesday to Tuesday, so every third week was your week. I’ve never spent a full seven days down in almost 13 years. Now, I love a long weekend or four or five days, I’m ready to come home and everybody else did and my family, my kids. But we never rented it so it was just… It was like our second home.
Chad Duval: Hey, guys. Sorry to interrupt this episode but I wanted to ask you a huge favor. If you’re enjoying this episode so far or you’re a big supporter of the podcast can you go to the Apple Podcast app and leave a rating and review for the show. I didn’t realize how easy it was until the past couple of weeks. I’ve been going in and rating and reviewing all of the podcasts that I actually listen to on a daily basis and it’s super easy. If you just go to the show in the app and scroll to the bottom, it’s literally just two clicks. All you have to do is click on the stars to leave a rating and then there’s an area there where you can actually leave a comment or a review on the actual show.
Chad Duval: So, I would love your help, leave some feedback and it will only help the show grow and appreciate you guys listening and let’s get back to the show.
Rick Jarman: But I’m okay with that. I’m crazy but that’s when you’ve grown up working all your life and I still have dreams of things I want to do. I set my goal when I was fairly young that I wanted to have 200 rental houses and be worth $12 million and how I come up with that at the time, I think it was like $600 a month per house. 200 houses is $12 million, that’s what I want, really complicated. Well, I tell a lot folks, I may not make the 200 houses but I’m getting pretty … It may be all right on the other part. I’m not there but we’re getting… That was before I retired. That was my goal and I hadn’t retired yet. You’ve got to have goals.
Chad Duval: So, you have 125 now but have sold off a bunch, so you’ve probably owned over 200 over in the course of your life?
Rick Jarman: Oh, yeah. Over the years you buy and sell. Like I said in the late ’90s I had to sell off stuff and you do whatever you got to do to keep going. But see I also got hit with… there was a bad tornado in Tuscaloosa in 2011. If you look it up. We 7,000 and something structures destroyed here in Tuscaloosa. Well, I personally lost 24 rental houses total and I had like $2 million claim, so we did all the work though, fixed them back. So, I had replaced those houses and what people got to understand, it’s not just the number. I could have 400 houses but if I’m splitting it with four people, it’s not just the… It’s who the hell you’re splitting it with and what moment you start getting paid for and it adds up pretty good. Like I said, I can’t explain it but I’m ahead like hell.
Chad Duval: Yeah. I know I would rather have 10 houses that make me x amount of money versus having 400 that make the same amount of money. It’s just more headaches. It’s more… It’s all about the bottom line, what money’s going in your pocket.
Rick Jarman: People ask me all the time, they say, “Well, where are all of you? Did you go out of town?” And you’ve heard me talk about this, “Why would I want to go out of town when I can get everything I want right here in my town?” You get into both the family… some people have to leave their towns, I understand, in the city because of the costs. New York and a lot of places and California but I’m in a college town of course so I’m not into student rentals.
Rick Jarman: In fact, I sold off some of my student rentals because I don’t like it. I’d rather deal with what I deal and it’s just… I’ve set up for it. I know it better and the student rental now has gotten to where you’re dealing with… everybody’s been married and divorced and so it’s not two parents. It’ll be like four parents and what they do here, they’d be like three of them in a unit so you’re dealing with about 12 different parents on every little thing and life’s too short.
Chad Duval: Yeah, totally. Well, that comes with experience too. You had to double in different types of real estate to find what actually you liked. You like building, you like flipping, you like regular single family homes. You don’t like student housing. You don’t like multi-family and it just takes some time over the course of, for you, 40 years, that’s a lot of experience. And I feel like that’s what stops a lot of people is they don’t know where they want to go but they haven’t even taken a step to try something. You can at least get single family home and get your feet wet, see if you like it, so it’s very, very interesting.
Chad Duval: But, yeah, at this point if you want to transition, I want to get into a little bit more about the mindset or routines of a real estate investor who’s been doing it a long time. Certain things like what is your day-to-day look like? I know you said you have a lot of staff right now that’s handling your day-to-day. You still write the checks and that sort of thing but what’s your morning routine?
Rick Jarman: Well, to break it down, I’ve always used to have to work… before I went full-time 35 years ago I worked on the side a lot. So you’d work your regular job then you’d go work half the night, so I learned to get buy on four, five, six hours of sleep. So to this day I only sleep six hours so if I want to sleep till seven I got to stay up to one. It’s just how it is. I’m a night owl and I know you are, I see at the gym [crosstalk 00:29:25].
Chad Duval: 4:30 every morning. We get up.
Rick Jarman: I just want to know one thing before I go any further.
Chad Duval: Sure.
Rick Jarman: Do you have to drag Holly out to go or is she ready to go with you?
Chad Duval: Honestly, it depends on the day. Some days it’s me dragging her out and some days she’s dragging me out, but I think it works perfectly because the days that I don’t want to get out, she’s ready to go.
Rick Jarman: I’ve gotten to feel like I know both of y’all just from your videos and stuff. It’s great. What’s so great about this, when I was learning, you had to read a book and then they came out with VHS. You could buy some tapes on this stuff with VHS on it or cassette. I used to record some of the infomercials on mine, put them on and go to bed listening to them just to keep me motivated. But anyway, back to my daily routine. I get up. I’m not one to go eat breakfast. I get a pack of crackers and a drink and that will hold me to lunch but by eleven o’clock I like to… I got a couple of buddies of mine, we graduated high school together and we like to get together and it lunch.
Rick Jarman: My wife sometimes, Amelia, she’ll say, “Y’all don’t talk.” Because sometimes we’re just sitting there chilling because we’re all in business and we just enjoy each other’s company sometimes even without talking much. But I still, I get up and I usually go to the office first for a little while then I like to get out and see if there’s something, I’d write it, write it down, look it. We have all the MLS stuff at my office because I am a real estate broker and I have one sales lady still today that’s been with me 15 years.
Rick Jarman: Well, back in the ’90s I was the owner of Coldwell Banker franchise with 27 agents, so I’ve tried it all and found out… Today I’m wearing shorts to work and shirt. I ain’t got to… My phone number’s not out there. Whenever you want to call me, you can’t get my number. Nobody calling me, but I’m reaching that point where we have an answering service, 24 hour answering service for our rentals and so we’re always. And it worked good when we had the construction team, but my day mainly consists of just keeping up with property values, looking for property and meeting with my son, talking about what’s going on with our houses, where we’re at on our current flips. Right now we’re flipping three houses we’re working on and we’ve got two, three rentals we bought that we’re trying to get ready to rent.
Rick Jarman: So, we’re staying real busy. People will ask me, “What you doing? I heard you quit building.” Well, we’re as busy as we ever were. We’re just not building new houses. And They’re laughing because I build… I have loved construction all my life, like I said from the time I was 16 years old and they’ll say, “Well, don’t you miss building?” I said, “Well, sometimes, but I can go home and get my recliner and it’ll pass.” But this business never changes as far as… It’s constantly changing. Real estate doesn’t change.
Rick Jarman: Like we talked about this, there’s always going to be that need for housing, but financing changes in the way you do things. I’ve had to learn all these new terms your generation… Frank Berry been calling me OG on the Instagram. I had to go look it up. See, I knew it was something to do with old school but I didn’t even know what it meant.
Chad Duval: That’s awesome.
Rick Jarman: In life, we talk about the hard money lenders, we call them Jesse James finance when I was… It’s just the terminologies is a little different but real estate never changes.
Chad Duval: Right, right. Well, you said something too, I didn’t realize it. So, I want to go back. You said that you are a broker, in your opinion do you suggest somebody who’s never done a deal to actually go through and get their license?
Rick Jarman: Well, I’ll back all the way up. When I got my license I was still working at the university. I got in in 1983, so I sold part-time for a year. I didn’t get in to be a sales person, I got in find more deals. With that being said, I think it’s good to have them. It’s a fine thing but you can never start thinking like a sale’s person. You got to always think like an investor. If you do, that’s it. You’re going to be just like the rest because there’s realtors and I don’t mean nothing against it, their mindset’s on sales, that’s what they do. But they’re sitting on deals and they don’t even know they’re deals. People think because it’s listed you’re not going to find a deal. I always tell folks, the deal doesn’t have “deal” written across, a big old sign that says “deal.”
Rick Jarman: A realtor may say it’s a deal but that doesn’t make it a deal, that’s why you have to learn your market so you can know what things… going forward. I did a little video about that. I think it’s good. I had a couple younger sales people here in town, approached me, and they say they could thank my company builder. I said, “Well, you’re doing pretty good selling real estate, what you need to do is flip houses.” Because the builder, when you’ve got to meet the concrete truck or you got to do this or that, it doesn’t wait. If you’re selling real estate, you need to check on the pay and working on your flip, you can run by there. I think it’s just another tool in your tool box. [crosstalk 00:34:47]
Chad Duval: Yeah, and I completely agree with that. I don’t have my license but I see the value in it. If you are an investor first and then a broker, second, to help you. Like you said, find deals in that sort of thing because it is a completely different mindset. For me the reason I never got it was because I figured all of the licensing and the classes and all the time that I have to do to put in to actually keep and maintain that, there’s a lot of time taken away from actually finding the deals in different ways. So, I never did but I can see some value and I think it helps people educate, newbies particularly, how the market works, certain criterias, the laws, that sort of thing.
Chad Duval: Then of course you had to get access to the MLS and they can walk into pretty much property that’s for sale and check it out as a “investor” not an actual realtor, so I agree.
Rick Jarman: And on the flip side they also need of course disclosure. You’re under a different scrutiny as a licensed real estate agent or broker. Like I said, I think it helps and I don’t recommend doing if you’re not going to actually try to use it to make a little money. It helps… to me this business is about doing full-time, that’s what it was always for me because I punched a clock for somebody else from the time I was out of high school, ’73 to 19… it’s 11 years. Well, then my son will be 38 in a couple of days and he’s never punched a clock for nobody. He’s worked for us in the business and that’s what you want and I listened when I was growing up, all I heard was from my uncles and stuff that worked in plants, “Get you a job with benefits.” Well, you can’t eat them benefits.
Rick Jarman: You’re limited. When you’re doing something for yourself, the sky is the limit. But you know it’s not for everybody and I always tell folks that.
Chad Duval: Yeah. I think people who think like that, no offense, it’s not a… It’s just a different mindset. They’re more in looking for safety versus looking for the outside.
Rick Jarman: And that’s good, it takes all kinds because somebody’s got to rent these houses.
Chad Duval: Right, right.
Rick Jarman: If everybody was doing it we wouldn’t have nobody to rent the houses.
Chad Duval: Exactly, exactly.
Rick Jarman: [crosstalk 00:37:13].
Chad Duval: Yeah. Well, we’re getting close to the end here. I want to shift gears into the final basic discussion here. There’s a few things we could touch on real quick. Right now if you want to just talk a little bit more about where you see yourself going in the future. I know we touched on it a little bit as we’ve been talking and you’re sticking to flipping and that kind of thing, but even if you want to talk a little bit more of how your market’s doing and where you think it’s going right now. I know up here in Boston there’s cranes everywhere. It’s over frothy, rent’s going up every month. It seems like we’re definitely at the top of a market cycle but if maybe want to that and then maybe we can wrap up after that.
Rick Jarman: Well, I get a lot of people since I’ve been on Instagram saying, “Hey, I’d like to come.” See some of the houses I advertise, whatever that I’ve… not advertise but have in my videos. And they all come down, hey, but it’s a sellers market but there’s no inventory. Normally in Tuscaloosa County just talking residential now, they would be anywhere from 1800 to 25 houses for sale at any one time and condos, whatever, we’ve only got 800 about three times in the past year. It’s 700 and something units, that’s listed with the MLS, so when you fry the deal you got to be hustling. So, it’s a seller’s market which works good when I find something. It’s tough finding it [crosstalk 00:38:43].
Chad Duval: Right. Yeah, actually let’s dig into that for a few seconds. So how are you finding stuff? I think I’ve seen a few videos of you. You’re doing some classic driving for dollars, driving neighborhoods, looking for run down properties and that sort of thing?
Rick Jarman: I’ve always did that and also I buy several things that listed. Like foreclosures that are listed in MLS but what I do, even though I’m a real estate broker and I have an agent that sells for me, I tell these people they’ve learned now that I don’t want the commission. I want them calling me. They can have the commission. I want the property, so by me being willing to let them make the whole commission, they know they don’t have to split it with anybody, they call me. I had a lady call me the other day. I did a little video on two houses that she had never even seen. One of them hadn’t been entered, even one of them, and to this day I got a price on one of them when she called me because I make it easier on them. When I buy a foreclosure, I tell them, I say, “Look, all I want is the deed, title insurance to prorate the property taxes. I don’t want you to fix nothing. It isn’t subject to nothing.”
Rick Jarman: Because the mortgage companies that are in the business of selling houses, they loan money. So if you do that and you get some deals out of them, I’ve had some pretty good investments, that’s the way I do it. I try to make it as easy as I… And I do that even if it’s a individual selling a house, I make it as easy as I can on them. I’m not going to have a home inspector come in and make ten pages of repairs, I take it just… I tell folks, if you got a good roof, a good heating and cooling, your electrical service is not bad on the outside, the rest of it’s just… it can be dealt with.
Chad Duval: That’s easy, yeah, yeah.
Rick Jarman: If the floor is rotten around the toilet or the tab, they all are. Older houses, they’ve all had some water damage or some termite damage like in the South, so I just take them like they are. But you always want to put you some contingencies like if you get a finance contingent on your finance and all that kind of stuff, but most time we make it easy on them.
Chad Duval: Nice, nice, yeah. I’ve been trying that stuff for two years now but honestly every property I’ve bought to date has been on the MLS. There’s been opportunities there that I saw that other people didn’t see and you execute that way. But, yeah, I still do the sending out letters to vacant properties, the owners of vacant properties or if I hear something. Honestly I just got… I’ve been doing a little bit on Instagram but I’ve been sending… I found a deal of a potential lady that’s trying to sell six units in the town that I’m investing in and I found it through my furnace guy who was doing some tune ups and a stuff like that. He knows that I’m in the process of trying to buy some stuff and he had mentioned, “Oh, this girl over here, she also mentioned she wanted to sell and all this stuff.” So, he gave me her info and I sent her a few letters.
Chad Duval: We’ve been going back and forth. She’s not quite ready to sell but I’m right there and I’m probably the first person to call when she’s actually ready to sell. But you get them through all kinds of different ways, you got to… I think it’s a mindset. You’re running around. You’re driving. You’re talking to people. You got brokers working for you. Eventually if you keep staying persistent something’s going to pop and you’re going to find these good deals.
Rick Jarman: Right. Everybody’s a suspect, that’s the way I look at it. You may have saw a couple of days ago I did a video about getting some business cards printed up. I told them “Don’t put your CEO, the company. Don’t put your picture, the little doodads on it.” I told them to leave the back side blank. You hand them cards, hope you get a thousand cards. They’ll go home make them on their computer because you had nothing committed. You committed to a thousand business cards and you leave the back side blank and you put them in people’s hands wherever you go. When you go eat, when you go the mall, when you go the gym. It’s old school but it still works.
Chad Duval: It really does.
Rick Jarman: They’ll hold on to that card, the first thing you know, they need to write a number down. Well, they got that card, they write a number down and look at the card, “Well, I’ll hang on to that.” But later on they get somebody that say, “You know anybody who buys houses?” They say, “Well, I got a card right here. Let me see what this number I wrote on the back. But, yeah, here’s the card.” It’s all about networking like that and anybody out there knows somebody. They may not buy a house from you but they may lead you to people.
Chad Duval: Absolutely.
Rick Jarman: And another… and I try to I tell people, they’ll DM me. You know all that DM, that PDF and all of that.
Chad Duval: You’re learning the lingo.
Rick Jarman: Yeah. Actually the first I heard that PDF I said, “Why don’t you PDF me, fella. DM me, I’ll DM you.” They don’t then send their message. They DM me and they say, “How do you find houses?” Well, it’s not like going to the store to buy a cake and just go buy the cake because it’s a cake store. You can’t do it. There’s all kind of ways and there’s no one saying “Wait.” I did a video, I think I did a whole video about working with older people. You thought older investors… I bought nine houses in [inaudible 00:44:19] from a man that was retiring. Here the other day I had a video of a house I bought that I actually bought three houses from him. I sold one, kept two, flipped one. And I’ve already closed it, got the other two fixed up as rentals.
Rick Jarman: But a retiring investor is good because you might work a deal with them to finance. They understand everything. They may take less money down, finance it, they still got the income because they’re used to that income. They only had to pay taxes. They own the money as it comes in, not like a wholesale. At least that law was changed, as far as I know it’s everything. So, there they are, that’s good former owner financing it. They still got money coming in and they understand it. So, they’re a good suspect for owner financing. And if they not want the financing they want the money, they’re still good because a lot of the times there’s no debt on it and they understand the whole process.
Chad Duval: Oh, yeah, definitely dealing with a seller that understands the process and they’ve been doing it for years. It makes it easier. That’s exactly how I found my first nine unit apartment building. It was a retired or they wanted to be a retired real estate investor and realtor and they sell or finance most of it to me because they knew how it worked. They were looking for income but they were sick of the headaches and I was the solution to them. You got to think of that too as you’re looking for properties is how can you bring a solution to the potential buyer? It could be you don’t want the headaches but they want the income. There’s a number of things that you can do to solve problems for whoever you’re talking to about their properties.
Rick Jarman: Right. And don’t be afraid to offer them a higher interest rate because you got to remember they’re only going to get a point, maybe a point, on a good day a point and a half. But you maybe can give them two points above the going rate is, commercial money and it’s still not going to hurt you especially if you save all those closing costs because that comes into play too. You save a world of closing costs.
Chad Duval: Yeah. I would even give them a higher interest rate and actually give them full asking price. It gets you into a deal.
Rick Jarman: Oh, yeah. You buy and you turn.
Chad Duval: Yeah, absolutely.
Rick Jarman: You buy and you turn. That’s what I always tell folks. Sometimes when you didn’t want to finance it you buy and you turn and older people in general are a good place to look. You going to put in a neighborhood with a bunch of folks to live there for years and years and they all had to go assisted living. Or they go to a two story house and they can’t go up and down the steps. You just got to read life. Everything is no one certain way and people like that. I tell folks that me and old Gary V., I didn’t know who Gary V was [inaudible 00:47:12]. That dude is funny. I like him.
Chad Duval: Yeah, he’s good.
Rick Jarman: He tells it like it is, but he likes garage sales and I like garage sales and estate sales. You can find stuff for your rentals. I’m tight and if I can save some money, I’m going to do it, but the thing about you go to an estate sale usually they get rid of everything. The get a house ready to go on the market. You find out, “Who’s house is this? How much they want for it?” You see a estate sale, that’s a lead right there.
Chad Duval: You’re right. That’s a really good point. I never actually thought about that before.
Rick Jarman: You got to break it down to everything. Because you got to think outside the box and different from everybody else because there’s a lot of competition right now.
Chad Duval: Yeah. I agree completely. Well, there’s a really good little nugget right there. There’s a soundbite.
Rick Jarman: You got to look at the old folks.
Chad Duval: Yeah. That’s a really good piece of advice. Again, we’re getting of the end here. I want to shift into the ending here and the only thing that I want to cover now is let people know that are listening where they can find you and where they can reach you. I know we’ve referenced Instagram a lot, that’s where we connected. We’ve been going back and forth on there for a couple of months now. A little plug for rick, he’s been putting out videos, a couple videos a day about everything real estate. But, yeah, I’ll let him tell you where you can find him and I highly encourage you guys to follow him on Instagram because you’ll definitely learn something every day.
Rick Jarman: Well, I appreciate that and like I said, I’d say about four and a half months ago I knew nothing about Instagram and I tried a little bit on YouTube. I got a YouTube channel but it seemed like anybody liked… I just thought, “Well maybe I ain’t nothing anybody wants to hear.” I started out going to do a podcast because my son introduced me to a podcast about two and half years ago, The BiggerPockets podcast. I got to listen. I said, “Well, hell, I get more with that stuff. I know as much. I can do a podcast.” Then I didn’t know how to place a line up to host it and I’m learning all this as I go, nobody to ask. I said, “It’s a lot of work. In fact I won’t do this.”
Rick Jarman: So that’s when I did the YouTube channel. I only had a few people who were following. I wasn’t doing it right and I’m still… I upload now just what I do on Instagram but it’s for our history. But the whole way this whole came about is my son, I’m always going to tell him I’m going to write a book. And he said, “Dad, you need to write a book.” And he said, “Well, that may be a way to get started.” He said, “You need to write something that’s going to baffle them. That could be a start to your book.” They got me to think and so I started all this just to help my son and my son-in-law and my family because if you think about it, I have nobody to tell all this stuff to.
Rick Jarman: I got a couple of young guys here town that will call and want to pick my brain. I tell them, “You buy my lunch and I’ll you whatever you want to know.” Because I’m not trying to sell anything. I’m not saying down the road I might not want to do a seminar or something. I’m a business man so I think like that, something with 20 people with x amount of dollars. I’m already thinking about because I like to make money, don’t get me wrong but I help people and I’ll say, “What would I charge an hour?” I’m not interesting. I want to help as many people I can.
Rick Jarman: But to answer your question, I’m talking in circles here, but I’m doing this to help people and it started out to help my son. Like I said, he introduced me to the podcast and BiggerPockets and I said, “Them folk did two or three deals and they think they’re an expert.” I said, “Shit, they need to ride out 35 years and see the good, the bad and the ugly when you’re paying 17, 18% money on construction loans. And I remember when 12 adjustment was best we could get for people buying houses, so it’s great right now and people just… I had one guy to tell me, he said, “Back then, housing didn’t cost that much.” I’m like “Yeah, back then we didn’t make no money.” It’s all-
Chad Duval: It’s all relative.
Rick Jarman: It’s all relative, yes.
Chad Duval: So, what’s your handle on Instagram? What’s your name?
Rick Jarman: It’s RE Investing Old School, Rick Jarman, actually Real Estate Investing Old School, Rick Jarman. I had to do RE because I couldn’t get all in.
Chad Duval: There you go and you guys I’ll add all his contact information to the show notes, make it nice and easy for you guys. Again, I highly recommend. I’m going to have to go check out your YouTube because I didn’t even realize you had a YouTube channel.
Rick Jarman: It’s a lot of the same stuff I do. I’m trying to change the name on it but you can only do it every 90 days, that’s how I knew I am on it. You’re only allowed three changes and I’ve been playing with it. But on my Instagram I made a commitment and so far I’ve been able to do it. I put out a video a day. I try to do at least one a day. Some days I do two or three. But when I discovered Instagram… somebody said, “Well, you ought to try Instagram.” Well, I got seeing how I can just pull over and tell what’s on my mind and crank it back and get on the road. I like that because I don’t script anything. If you’ve heard my stuff it’s whatever’s on my mind. The furthest ahead planning I’ve ever done… that’s why I don’t do a podcast because I don’t like…
Rick Jarman: I don’t like any… I have people now say, “Can I talk with you on such and such.” I don’t like to commit to nothing no more but lemon crock lunch. But anyway-
Chad Duval: So, Instagram, YouTube, anything else? That’s pretty much where you’re living right now, right?
Rick Jarman: Yeah, that’s it.
Chad Duval: Perfect. Yeah, and I see you’re getting hit up with a lot of people wanting to be on the podcast, Instagram Live, so he’s making his rounds. He’s making his rounds and again you guys all add to his info to the show notes and yeah, I guess we can leave it there. I appreciate you being on the show today and you guys again, I appreciate you being on here listening. And give Rick some love on Instagram because he’s grown like crazy, so thanks again. We’ll get out of here.