 Gabrielle is a San Francisco real estate broker and investor with more than 18 years of experience. So far, she has published three books about real estate investing and is working on the fourth book in the series. She lives in San Francisco with her cat and loves to travel off the beaten path and connect with people, their cultures and languages. Please welcome Gabrielle Dom. Hello everyone, welcome. My name is Gabrielle Dom says you already heard, and I thank you for your interest in real estate investing niches. You may have attended the last presentation if you have this builds on that presentation. Okay, if you already are an investor, or on the way to becoming one real estate niches are important specializations. Combined with an overall strategy niches net investors money. Right. So, let me go and bring up my screen. Is that okay. Do I have control. Yes, perfect. Great. So, I'm going to share my screen and then we'll get. Hang on new slide. Sorry, I can't see this because here we go. Let's go here. All right, can everybody see this. Yes, perfect. Perfect. Okay. Again, whoever is coming in now welcome to everyone. And this is about profitable in real estate. Short disclaimer following Christie's disclaimer is that nothing in this presentation implies either legal or financial advice. Please always consult appropriate professionals to help you evaluate any situation property deal and investment. Okay, that's the easiest way to start by giving that little disclaimer. And now, as to what we will cover. Here we go. There will be an overview, then strategies and, of course, their effects. And then we go to investment niches which are in essence invest investment vehicles to fulfill the strategies we talk about, and then we'll talk about finding the right niche. And that is it for this presentation. I've written a whole book about this clearly I can only cover a certain fraction of that book. And there are other books that go into those niches. Pretty much a book a niche minimum. Okay, so there's a lot to learn. This is to get your creative juices flowing. I'll start just a little bit about myself. I'm a real estate broker and have been in real estate for 20 years here in San Francisco in the Bay Area. I have both a bachelor's and a master's in history which ties in with real estate for me in some way perhaps as the architecture or whatever it is it ties in it for in to it for me. And I'm a little distracted I see a lot of screens showing up it while I'm talking. Hopefully those will disappear in just a minute. Anyway, I was raised in Germany, and my parents were in the hospitality industry so I learned a lot about small businesses about customer service and so forth. And then I've lived in San Francisco for over 30 years and know the city like the back of my hand and have seen a lot of changes. Some of you may be in that same position some of you may be newer to the city. Well, welcome in any case. And finally when I don't write or I'm not writing. Then I love to hike in track and the last track I did was the W in Patagonia store still pine a gorgeous with glaciers and just stunning stunning landscape so I highly recommend that and then below this. That I wrote, or have written thus far these are the first three volumes of it. And we will be talking about the last one you see here the green book there on August 13, I believe. Okay, let's get started. First things first real estate consists of many property types and also income opportunities some of you may already know that. And when you when you know that you also know that the underlying premises that there is demand for real estate in its many forms. And that continues real estate is desirable overall, and can be quite profitable. The purpose of this presentation then is to give you a brief overview of the real estate of some real estate niches we won't be able to go into all of them of course. Then go into what those niches offer what they require, whether that might be time or money or effort. And all of this builds on the fundamentals of course, those of you as I already mentioned who attended the previous webinar about real estate investing last month. The fundamentals one will be able to layer the information of today's presentation and build on those fundamentals. And at this point, I believe, Chrissy has a poll question, is that correct. Yes, but I'm not seeing it just one second. Sure. You know, I don't have long. I can launch it Chrissy. Oh, thank you. Here it comes. I don't see it, you know, you don't see it on the screen. I don't. I see people are responding to it. Yes. Yeah, so not sure why I'm not seeing it Kirsty but looks like participants are able to see it, and they're answering so. Okay, great. So I'll end it in a minute. So maybe a few more. You more answers. Okay. Looks like we have about 71% 73 almost everybody. The answers are still coming in. We are at 80%. Okay, still voting. I'm going to go ahead and end the poll looks like we are at 85%. So, here are the results. Thank you everybody for providing your answer to this particular poll question. I hope to help you to reach some of some of those goals that you just mentioned there before going into some of the real estate niches. Let's start with a quick discussion of investment strategies. So strategies. Hang on. Now I don't know. I don't seem to have my, my screen. I cannot share it anymore. How come. Hmm. Ah, there we go. But I went one too far. Okay. Yeah, here we go. So strategies, little technical difficulties here strategies are really road maps to profits. And specialties mean money, as I already mentioned, in the very beginning here. And strategies are in essence plans and ways to create cash flow and to make money. And so you can do pro as you can get money and profits by creating cash flow through appreciation and real estate, or you can have a combined approach, both cash flow and appreciation. Obviously it's very nice to have both, but it doesn't always work so we'll go into into that. Your strategies may be all of that. Other strategies may be having tenants or having no tenants which is very important. And that said, market fluctuations, of course, are normal in all markets, and investors do well to consider that in any strategy, they might choose. And it is prudent, in my opinion, to select one or two contingency strategies as well. Moving into any real estate investing niche without a strategy is also, it's kind of like going out and flip without having a rudder. So it's drifting at sea in my opinion. Okay, having said that strategies are very important. And of course the niches are the ways to complement those strategies. Some strategies, real estate investing strategy, there's there are many, many, many, we're going to go into a few. So one of them would be buying something buying an asset and holding it. That could be both for appreciation and cash flow figure out which ones are with. Here we go here some some of the other ones you could wholesale. You could buy a property that needs fixing up but you don't want to do the fixing up so you then sell that property to an investor who wants to fix and flip it perhaps. Okay, so that's, that's another one. You could also buy no property at all and lend money to other real estate investors and developers. That's one way to have to make money in real estate, believe it or not. Then there is the term house hacking, which is very interesting. Some of you may know it. Millennials have really coined that term. It is about having very little to no money, and purchasing duplex, a triplex, etc. and then occupying, I should say that particular property is needs a lot of work generally, and then whoever purchases the property lives in one unit and the rest thereby paying the mortgage that's the ideal situation house hacking of course is also it works when you repeat it a number of times so the the part of that is most important is that whichever unit the new owner lives in to stay there no longer than a year and then to repeat the process with another property thereby building equity and building a cash flow as well. Okay. Then there is the franchise model so that's a that's a strategy. It's a big one. Okay. And with that, then we also have short term rentals. So, all of these are strategies are very important. There are others, and there are sub strategies of course, as well. So short term rentals could be rentals that are a few months long, or could be vacation rentals. Going into some strategies that actually are historically important and some of you may have heard of John Jacob Astor, who was a German immigrant. Right after the Revolutionary War he came to New York, which you see here completely developed. Nothing like this when John Jacob Astor came to to New York. He is really the granddaddy of the Big Apple and its development here and his strategy was what let me back up he was a fur magnet who had a monopoly in for and then saw the writing on the wall, understanding that the fur business was about to die. And then he realized that there was a huge opportunity in land. And essentially what he foresaw was the big boom of what today is Manhattan, and he bought up lots of land in Manhattan and its surroundings. It was a big development, but most of the most of the time he simply rented that land and to other users, and eventually he made a fortune. So that's, that's certainly one strategy. What does that strategy take for one thing it takes vision, and it takes the ability to take risks. Both of them are actually big because, of course, one could be wrong on either count. So, so there's a lot to consider there but if you want to do some reading about John Jacob Astor I'm sure the library has some resources. What he said really was that, you know, finding the land and then buying the land is just find the land where people are going to go, which is also something William Penn said. So, really interesting. That again takes a lot of vision, just to give you a little historical perspective. Now, there's another strategy that you may or may not be aware of McDonald's a big arches. Who would think that McDonald's has anything to do with real estate. Well, I'm here to tell you it does. Ray Kroc, who was the, the CEO of McDonald's, and its franchise model began to understand that the way to make money in the business would be to buy the underlying land of all the McDonald's franchises. And what he did was he, he built he founded a, sorry, if he founded a corporation that then acquired land where usually along highways or busy streets where he would then place the buildings and start package the whole deal to the franchise to the franchisees to whom he was selling the entire thing, but with the franchise, he never sold the land to those franchisees. He sold the franchise to the franchisees. So he had both cashflow and appreciation down the line. What an incredible model of doing business. He, he got very, very rich, obviously. And again, that was his vision. He tied it in with knowing business and knowing the restaurant business as well. But here's a quote from him, which I always find really fascinating. He said, we are technically not in the food business. We are in the real estate business. Pretty amazing. There you go. So that's, that's one model, one strategy of investing in real estate. And last but not least, some of you may know this lady. She's a corporate corporate and you probably see her signs or the signs of the corporate group, which she I believe she sold in 2002 for $66 million to a huge, I can't remember, I think it's a rheology company, which is a big real estate corporation. And she sold that particular franchise. There you go. There's another franchise. She's an investor. You probably know her from Shark Tank and so forth. The reason I bring her in here, the love of the game is really what defines her. She loves the game. But what she really loves about the game is the power of networking and building great teams. And that's what it's about real estate as a contact sport, and she embodies that backwards and forwards. Alright, now with some of these historical examples. I think you get an idea of how you will put use your particular expertise and skills to come up with a strategy that actually works for you. This is just to get your creative juices flowing. Okay, now let's move on to niches. You probably have some ideas already. Alright, niches. They are about focus and specialization. Again, think of niches as a way to complement your strategy. The strategies, of course, are your approach, and that and the niches are the way you fulfill that strategy. So there are tactics, if you will, in some way. Having said that, I do want to point out one thing that I find very important in in the way I've done business and in what I see in my clients and many other people who want to make money in real estate. And that is, you've probably heard of my Maslow's hierarchy, the needs based hierarchy, which goes from stability security, etc to to actually becoming free and in this in this case let's translate that into a more digital model, which is having security financially, having some disposable income, having all your needs met and then going to a place where you can create the freedom that you want and that could usually money represents time and other things that I think they're very important to you each of of you will have slightly different values around that. So I encourage you to explore that, because it's going to help you to focus and specialize. Yeah, it's it's that's the way it works niches work because they actually fulfill your strategy through specialization. They equate laser focus really, and in general real estate growth and wealth effects happen over time. I've hardly ever seen someone who in this in real estate and made a lot of money the next week. Now there are some exceptions but overall, that's, that's not been my experience. All right, so we'll get to the niches in short order each niche is quite specialized and quite unique. And the also niches also help you to assess what they require so some niches require money. Not all niches require some of that niches require money, time, expertise, and, and various other things so depending on what you have more of maybe it's money, maybe it's time, maybe it is expertise. It's going to help you to decide on which niche might be right for you. Now if you don't have any of these you probably have to figure out which one to go for and how to get it. All right, so that's, that's it. So here are some niches, you can see commercial opportunities you can see apartment buildings and multi unit buildings and single family homes, etc. These niches include single family homes, condos, TICs, multi family units, apartment buildings, commercial properties, tax deeds and tax liens, real estate notes, senior housing, and a lot of other different possibilities. I just want to give you some ideas you see a parking lot there are parking garage so parking lots that's a niche parking garages are also an itch. Okay, so that's probably more specialized reality but real estate. Other considerations for niches come from specific locations, neighborhoods, amenities, traffic, demographics, all kinds of things. So, having said this, our time today is clearly limited and we'll look at a few of these niches and how they are different. But investors ought to know about that. And at the end of all of this you will probably have some questions, and I will do my best to answer those, or as many as I can. All right, let's go here so there's more niching. You could also niche down into short sales and pre foreclosures. You could go to actual foreclosures and only focus on those for certain proper for whatever property you choose so you see it's niching down so you know where to go. Okay. For instance, in San Francisco, if you were to look here for short sales and foreclosures. First of all, there are rather few. And secondly, they have a huge amount of competition. So, right there, you'd probably have to figure out is this the right location to do this particular niche and strategy. Then probates, probates of course exist anywhere. So that's that's another thing they tend to take all cash, although that now some some of them might help you, you might be able to get alone but very few. Okay, so then you can go to short term rentals which we've already covered in a previous slide. So that is, you know, there, there are other things you could also do subsidized housing where the government actually pays some of the rents for tenants that that qualify for these programs. Now some people may or may not like that but it is a great income source for some people. Alright, so having said that. Let's move on to something that I consider very important, and that I addressed in the in the beginning a few moments ago, and it's called the hedgehog principle. This is a principle that comes out of the book. Good to great by Jim Collins, some of you may have heard of this book some of you may have read it. This is one of the big takeaways of the book. It applies to anything so it could be your own business it could be a hobby that you want to monetize it could be real estate, obviously. So you see that little green area where all the circles intersect. That's the sweet spot of the hedgehog principle. So what you want there is an understanding of what you can be best at, given your skills and expertise, whether you have a passion for it, very important, and whether that the money stands for the ability to make a profit in in that particular niche. So all those, those parts need to align so that at the end of the day, you'll stick with it and figure out is this something that I can stand behind that is going to work for me so there's a little bit of research and investigation and introspection required. Okay. So, before we go on, I put this particular infographic for you. And you will get that in the handouts, I believe is that correct Chrissy. Yes, we'll share it afterwards. Okay, great. Okay, so I just wanted to give you an idea of some trends for real estate investing for 2021. In 2021. Obviously, we are just coming out, hopefully, of the pandemic, and the pandemic has changed us in many ways. And one of the ways is that work has changed. We're now, many of us now work remotely. And that is likely here to stay in some form. There may be some combination ones and may depend on the companies, but it's likely here to stay. Okay, so that as an investor, that's very important to consider depending on what niche you want to want to go in. So some of these things, take a look at without spending too much time on this, you just, you can read through the through the points here. Consumers want more space that's a third point on this particular infographic that goes hand in hand with remote work, they're moving out of cities into suburbs and small towns, and want to have more space to be able to work and have families, raise families, etc. So as investors, that's very important to consider, because at the end of the day, and consumers are going to be your customers. Anyway, I will let you contemplate this particular infographic on your own, and we'll come back to it later you might have some questions about it. So the first niche we're going to talk about our single family homes by single family homes, you might go yawn. So why are we even talking about this well we're talking about this because single family homes have their about like 60% of homes in the US real estate in the United States, according to the US Census Bureau are actually single family homes. So that means there's a huge supply of them, and it will stay that way. Alright, so a single family home and investing means large supply. It also means on the flip side, large demand. Okay, however, the reason this particular niche shows up here first is that it is easy to get into in terms of finances, meaning obviously we're not talking about money but being able to to finance it through a bank, etc. It's easy. Okay, relatively speaking, it's also easy to manage because it is one home you you only have one tenant hopefully, and you know that is usually those tenants stay a long time. And they're pretty easy to manage versus having many different units that you have to manage now having said that there are investors who invest who invest in single family homes, and they build portfolios of course, of such homes once you have a portfolio of a number of them. The easy to manage part also changes, and some some other things change as well. The, the thing is, the underlying strategy to this particular niche is really appreciation versus cash flow, you can make a lot more money and other niches single family homes, you will have some cash flow probably not in the Bay Area. Because we're high cost of living area and real estate is very high. So to buy something that would actually get you, you know cash flow is, is rare. Unless you come in with all cash but then really there's no leverage there. So those are some considerations. Also single family investing is a little bit different because usually you're looking at retail prices buying those homes at retail prices. I call them retail prices it's going it's like going to Macy's or Saks Fifth Avenue versus buying something much more cheaply online. Okay. So again, that the markets here make a huge difference investigate them. Okay. By the way, leaving out condos and TICs, although for some people they might be good entry points they have other things that happen, and certainly HOA fees and other regulations that the HOA is half, make a big difference. Okay, so that they take a lot more investigation than a single family home usually would. Okay, let's move on to niche number two. Multi-family property and so multi-family usually is between two and six units. All right. I talked about house hacking in the beginning and house hacking. That's the particular property type. Most house hackers would would be attracted to because they would have either one or more rental units while they're living in the other unit. I hope that makes sense. So multi-family property investing is it takes the whole investing game from single family homes, for instance, to a different level because now you have several sources of income and relatively lower expenses. That's, they also benefit from more favorable financing and mitigate vacancies and risk. So I just reverse those two points. I hope you still got that. So in a single family home, if you have a vacancy, well, income stops in a multi-family property, if you have a vacancy, there's still hopefully another unit that brings you some income. That's the difference right there. And I already mentioned that house hacking often several times. So I mentioned it because for many millennials, it's a great option for them and many of them have found a way to actually own real estate without having much money or much of their own money invested, which can be very nice. So, you know, that's that's good multi-family properties. Right away, they begin to they begin to benefit from not only from cash flow and eventually appreciation, but also there's an economy of scale that starts to happen with them. Now, you see my little line below that says beware of state, local and local laws, rules, regulations and codes. Again, it's very location specific in tenant friendly jurisdictions. It may be a lot harder to deal with these properties. You have to do a lot more investigation and do diligence on the properties to see whether it's going to work for your purposes. I do at this point want to debunk the myth that rent control doesn't allow investors to make money. That is not true. You can go into that more, but it is not true. If you buy the right property and you've done your homework, you could still make money. Okay. That's, I'll just say that. And then the last part, you may wonder, I don't have a slide for this. This is just an aside. I wanted to buy buildings that are bigger like apartment buildings that have, let's say 10 units or 100 units or whatever. You're getting into much more economy of scale properties. So, your competition will be institutional investors, usually, not necessarily for those apartment buildings that are, let's say between 10 and and 30 or 50 units but once you get bigger than that, institutional investors are buying those up so it's a lot more competition. They have much more negotiating power and money than most single investors. Okay. If you do want to invest in, in apartment buildings, not the multifamily properties that we just talked about. It is a good idea to, to take a deep, deep look at what's available and to possibly you could invest in a REIT, which is of course not the property itself, but you're helping fund the investors that actually own the properties. That's one way to go. Yeah. Now, with multifamily properties, just like with apartment buildings, you may need property management. So that's, you know, that's another part. Let's go to the next niche. Some of you may or may never have thought about, I don't know. And that is note investing. Note investing refers to the underlying paper to the assets. So whatever paper that is, it might be a mortgage note, it might be defaulted paper. You know, so there are different ways to do it. So note investing there. The options are to become an active note investor, or a passive note investor. The difference between an active note investor and a passive note investor is this. With active note investing, you run a business. It is hands on. You find the, the mortgage notes, you have to be part of a network. You have to go reach out to people. You have to negotiate with the property owners who have that paper. And then, you know, whether they're performing notes, meaning they're being paid on, or they're defaulted notes, which means that those property owners have not paid their mortgages. And, you know, so there's a lot involved. It's important to become very effective at negotiation, at communication, and at running numbers and making them, showing them in a light where people actually see that what you offer them is of benefit to them. Why would anybody want to become a note investor? Well, note investing, you can generate cash flow, of course, but the idea is to eventually acquire the property. That is the idea. So the idea here is to own the underlying asset, especially when you're dealing with defaulted mortgage notes. Okay. On the other hand, passive note investors simply invest their hard-earned dollars into businesses of active note investors who need money to perhaps rehab properties, that kind of thing. So an active note investor will pay passive note investors a nice return on their money, usually between 8% and 12% of interest a year, which is way better than a CD, or even it depends. Some stocks might not net you that, some stocks will. So comparing it with the stock market is probably less of a good analogy. But you get the idea, right? So in either case for active and passive note investing, it makes both of them make most sense when building a portfolio. So you could probably see the power of this when you have, let's say, 10, 50, 100 of such notes versus having one. There's a big difference and something to consider. It will take some money to do either one of these. A passive note investing, however, you can come in with as little as $15,000 to $20,000 if that's what you would like. And then some crowdfunding platforms may have some opportunities for you. Alright. So that's niche number three, I believe. I need to take a look. Yep, it's niche number three. Okay, let's go on to a commercial option. One of the commercial options will be storage facilities. And the reason I'm bringing them into this presentation is that they are now all the rage to get into storage facilities. And part of the reason is the shift in demographics. A lot of people store more because they're moving more. They're doing, you know, they're having, there's a trend of a migration trend going on. And depending on the demographics of where that facility sits, it's, it can be very, very profitable. It takes almost no management. And let's go to the points here on the next slide. As I already mentioned, it's a low management cost for most self storage facilities. Okay. However, when buying self storage, it is X important to buy them below market and that sounds easy, but sometimes it's less, less easy. Today, it is recession proof. The business is recession proof. And it also has a low break even point which is generally anywhere between 40 to 50% of occupancy that is almost unheard of. So very good. You know, understanding the demographics is obviously important. Now, this particular niche is like almost all real estate niche is quite competitive. And if you wanted to find such a facility yourself, you'd have to look at the demographics, meaning the traffic to it, who lives around that within a one mile radius and you look at a three mile radius to see, is there actually a customer base that would would come and rent the any locker at your facility and do the customers have easy access very important. Also, if you wanted to do this yourself. You could start scouting for really poorly managed and run down self storage facilities and then approach the owners and maybe buy it from them or find some other way to to run that facility and make money, of course. The reason I say this is that if you go into something that's an excellent location and as well managed, etc. Well, guess what are institution institutional investors are back and they're buying all those facilities, and aside from buying them, they are also building them in places they've identified as perfect for their purposes for making money. Okay. Now, if you're interested in self storage investing, you could once more go and go to your brokerage and just swap, Merrill Lynch doesn't exist anymore, but a merit trade, those kinds of kinds of things, those kinds of brokerages and investigate a REIT that contains self storage in it. And those REITs actually are very, they can be good investments so there's several out there you could look at. And of course you have to evaluate stocks a different way. They definitely the companies that own them own the real estate but you as an investor do not. So that's a big difference there, but it is one way to get into self storage investing and also learn about it because you're going to see the prospectuses you can see all the information that you might not see otherwise. So that's that's good. Okay, going from these particular niches. As you can see we've only covered a few. My book has more. If you want to read it I think the library has it. I think Christie already showed it to you. And the, so go check it out, or you can buy it or you know of course I'm always happy if you buy it but you don't need to you can go. It's very clear that I wanted to have my books in libraries, which is why I'm also giving the presentations here. Now, you might say well you know what's the right niche for me. And the answer is that you have to assess your resources. And then, once you assess your resources. So the next step is to hedge pocket. If you remember that concept, bringing your expertise, if you have any, your expertise and skill. Plus your passion plus the ability of that particular net to make your money into play, you're going to be way ahead of your competition. So, go and assimilate that that particular that particular principle it's worth gold, in my opinion. And it will also tell you what the resources you have, because the resources are of course expertise skills money and passion. Okay. Once you've assessed those, then you can see where you can start that it's going to be very important. Okay. The next part is that in any niche, the way to make money is to add value. So let me go back to the self storage facility example that I gave you a moment ago where I told you. Yeah, if you want to go and find a self storage facility yourself that you would like to own, etc. Look for something that's run down. Well run down means that you can add value to it. You have to figure out what that would mean. So that means knowing your customers and what they would actually want. Maybe that facility right now is less secure than it could be. Maybe you make it secure. Maybe you give it curb appeal. Maybe you have signage that actually shows people, you know, how well you are managing it. So, there are lots of different ways to do it. And it's going to engage your creativity to find ways to add value. And I hope that is that makes sense. The one thing, you know, I want to say to all of this is that most people want to find below market value properties and that's true in any niche. Well, they exist. In a high value market like San Francisco and almost all of the Bay Area, they are much harder to find. So just consider that and consider is the Bay Area the location where you would like to find the niche to invest in and make money. That's very important. Okay. And then I would say also drill down into everything. Make sure you understand all the numbers, all the all the moving parts of the actual investment. There's a lot more to cover. And as a as a bonus, I'll just say, please be honest about what resources, you actually have how much time you have how much money you have how much skill you have how much you know and and how that would apply. The more honest you are with yourself about that, the easier is going to be for you to identify the niche that is truly right for you. Okay, one last time back to the hedgehog so interest you. That's really the big question. Is it exciting to you. It doesn't need to be but it's good. If it is. It doesn't use existing skills, strength or expertise so perhaps do a little assessment as to what skills you have what strength you have what expertise you have. And by the way, that does not need to be real estate specific. And then you have to figure out how does that translate to real estate. Okay, and then the last part of it is, does it meet a clear need in where I want to go, because you're going to look eventually for someone to sell the property to to to to, you know, find a different models where you have a mix of them. And you want to make sure that it's sitting in a market where you can do that is your target marketplace, you know, the right marketplace. So very important consideration. Okay. So looking at that, I will say, you should have a few ideas of how to evaluate niches at this point and what some niches might offer you. And in all of this, you are unlikely to find the niche that you're going to stick with. It's kind of like going to college and taking a major. And then a year later saying, Oh, I didn't know it was about that. And going to a different, a different subject, a different major, very similar. I hope that analogy makes sense to you. Therefore, stay flexible experiment. Having said that, give your experiment sufficient time, because if you jump around one week you're doing this one, one week you're doing another thing, that is going to be very difficult, because you're not going to be able to assess whether it's actually working and whether you like that niche. Very important. So please experiment, but figure out what what the right timing is for yourself, and then fine tune things. You think the niche is wrong. But once you start fine tuning it, it becomes the right niche for you. And maybe that's about educating yourself, which is about what, never stop learning. I think, Kristi and I were talking about that. I think yesterday was, is that true, Kristi? So never stop learning. That's right. Okay, yeah. So, you know, your education is so important, because your next steps will be way clearer than they ever were before. And what that means, really, is that the clarity you gain breeds confidence. Confidence also breeds momentum. So, in order to invest successfully, especially if you own the real estate, if you invest in the REIT, that's a lot more passive. But if you actually go into a niche where you're going to invest in the actual real estate, then it is so important to take action, take intelligent action, to gain confidence, to learn, to continue to learn, because we all make mistakes and it's okay as long as we learn from them. And then to build momentum. Okay, that said, most likely finding the right niche will take you a little time. But the process of focusing will teach you so much that it's okay to spend that time. So if you don't have that time, some people are really strapped for time. Probably a more passive investment is better for you. That's probably not what you want to hear, but I'll be honest. Okay, so finally, narrow down your choices to one to three niches, start with one, and then eventually after you've mastered that move on to the next one. If that, if you'd like to do that, you don't have to, you can stick with one niche. It's totally fine. Okay. So I hope the tools and the examples and the lists I've shared will help you to move forward in your real estate investing and give you some ideas about these niches. And now it's your turn to take the ideas that you've learned and translate them really into your own real estate investing business. At this point, we're going to have a couple more poll questions. Right, Christina, is that correct. I'm going to ask Diana because she has control of the poll. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Yes, let me see. Have a look at the polls here. Okay, we have poll number two. All right, I see people are submitting their answers. I'm going to take a little bit more time. I'm going to end the poll ink, ending it now. So we'll see the results here. Thank you everybody for participating. I'm sure you have a question of, you know, how to get started. Well, I want to give you at least a few little parts and every time we do the poll, my screen doesn't work. Now it went to went to jump ahead, but that's okay. So here's what I call opportunity sleuthing finding those opportunities that will be your investment or become your investment. Well, one way to do it is to buy leads. You can buy a third one, but it is a big one and people do that all the time. You can buy lists of probates of foreclosures of, you know, all kinds of different things of divorce sales, etc. Some of those lists, however, have been recycled. So you need to know where you get the list from and whether it has any value to you. And, you know, so there's evaluation involved also lists usually costs money. Okay, working with agents, I'm sure this does not come as a surprise to most people. So agents have proprietary information that information is proprietary to the MLS, and even though Zillow and Trulia, etc. pull data from the MLS. There's confidential data that they will never see, and also much of their data is old. So working with agents is the way to go now. One of the things I want to say, I get calls from investors all the time. Those investors want me to do the work. And at the end of the day, you know, they're, they're, they're offering nothing in return. So if you can work with one or two agents, make sure that you actually offer them compensation for what you're going to do. That compensation may be that you buy the property through them, but just be aware that playing agents against one another is probably a poor way to do business. If you have a job that needs to get paid, you have a job you want to get paid. So do do realtors. Okay, so that's my word of wisdom here. You could after you buy leads or pull any lists or go to the courthouse to pull records, etc. for probates or divorces or whatever you want to do send letters to people. It's very effective. Again, it costs a little time and money to do that but once you have a system in place. It's like clockwork. Now the thing with letter says you have to send quite a few. Usually out of 1000 maybe you get three to 5% and that's a good return where you get answers. You know, that's you have to repeat it because people take they usually need to see three to four to five letters from you before they ever respond. Okay, you could also make calls. Again, going back to lists or you compile your list or whatever. But you, I hardly ever answer calls that from numbers that I don't know anymore. You'll roll into lots of voicemails and that's okay. Some people still calls make lots of sense to them so it depends on where you want to do it. Again, it takes a little more investigation as to whether that is right for you. And then a big one here, join an investor group. Now you can find that through, I think in the resources one of the resources you were giving you, there are a couple of suggestions meet up as one of them. Just be aware that a lot of people have groups like this to, to support their business so they have something to sell they won't necessarily tell it to you, but that's it. So, those are very important things you can search in that it's time consuming because you have to weed through a lot of stuff. Okay, and here are some other resources. I think some of you saw this before so you can see it again. There are lots of different sites you can go to many of them are membership sites. Now, it's time for you to go ready set go, set a goal, find a niche and get started. That's really it. And the last slide, which I love is a quote from a master in marketing. He's also an author, Seth Godin. He says this in a crowded marketplace fitting in is a failure in a busy marketplace not standing out is the same as being invisible. This quote is here because this actually applies to niches. The niches help you stand out. So that's what you want. And then within the net you need to stand out again. So hopefully that makes sense. And now just the announcement I think I've made it before about the bonus watch your inbox for that bonus. Christy and her colleague Jana will be sending that to you as far as I know. And now we'll go to Q&A if you still want to stay on. So, if you have to go I completely understand I thank you for attending I hope you you learn something and enjoyed it. Okay, and let's move on to Q&A. Christy I think you're doing that right. Yes, thank you Gabrielle that was a great presentation. Thank you. So just, it's 207 so what time would you like to, and we do have about five, six questions, maybe more but I don't want to take up your time so 215 please. Okay, great. Make sure in Sweden you can send me emails if you know, and I'll see what I can answer them. Great, thank you. I'm going to include our email address. Again, so that people can email their questions to us. Okay, so one of the questions is, how much money do you need to have to lend this goes back to your earlier slide about lending. I think I mentioned it. It depends on how you want to do so there. So, if you have only, I don't know $500, which sounds very low, but you could go on to a crowdfunding platform just make sure you check out how bonafide they are, you know, do they have a track record that kind of thing. So make sure you look at that, look at their returns they usually have management fees like a broker would on on those on those crowdfunding opportunities. But that's very little money to go in and invest. Now obviously your return is going to be fairly small because the more money you have in the game the more money you're going to make. That's just the math of it. If you wanted to, to, you know, to loan money to your to a note investor, which is what I talked about. But you could do that with 15 to $20,000. Usually that's what it takes some times that note investor will do it for less but because they're servicing involved for the notes and so forth, and there's title involved and all that. That means their fees. And usually, the fees are not charged to you, the investor who whom you loan money to is paying those fees. And that means it has to be a certain amount of money to make it worthwhile for for that active investor. So that's why most of those investors will start at about 15 to 20,000. And, you know, and that's it so I have one note personally that with with a note investor who does affordable housing in the Midwest, a topic very dear, near and dear to my heart. And that particular note goes the term is about a year. I think it's at 11%. And my investment in it is $20,000. Okay, so that's one way to do it if you want some resources where you can, you know, if you want me to put you in touch with some people who do that who look for investors for that money. I'm happy to do that just send me an email. Okay, there's another question with COVID-19 evictions looming. Do you anticipate investors taking advantage of these unfortunate situations that would result in increased sales prices. So the short answer is yes. What happens. I mean, during the great recession in 2008 people, many people lost their homes. They went into short sales for closures. They were evicted. I mean, all of that very unfortunate situation, many, many, many people lost a lot of money in the markets, some of you may actually have experienced that. I'm really sorry about that. And of course, there were plenty of people who took advantage of that, not necessarily in a in an unethical way. That's not what I mean. But those who have money in times like these money to invest, they will, they will find those opportunities because they're ready to go. So that's, that's what it is. And it is unfortunate. It's a, it's a two etched, a double etched for it's word really. So I hope that answers your question. Okay, thank you. Yeah, there's another question. Are there any Bay Area sub niches where house hacking can be cash flow positive, whether on a certain number of units or locations. In the Bay Area, you would have to go pretty far out now the Bay Area is fairly big. You probably also, and I didn't mention this before, if you want to do that my recommendation would be to go into neighborhoods that have yet to be gentrified. Okay, going into a neighborhood like Pacific Heights, you're not going to find it there. It's not going to happen. You know, so if, if you go to. So immediately in the early 2000s, West Oakland comes to mind. Well, West Oakland was a bit of a war zone. And the people who were okay with that went in there and bought and then set it out. Now, that may or may not be your idea of investing you might feel very uncomfortable with it, and I totally get that. But going into neighborhoods that were gentrification is likely to happen. You can't always you can predict whether it's going to happen but most likely it's going to happen because in the Bay Area. That's what's what's happened to almost every neighborhood, not every everyone but almost everyone. And, and then if there are any working class neighborhoods left. Go to those, you're going to find, you're going to find those those particular places and you're also going to find places that are pretty run down, which is what you would probably be looking for. You have a different component to consider and that is, well, who would your tenants be in in that place let's say you own that place now. You've bought it for at least by Bay Area standards, and you now own the building and you have three units in there, and then, you know, and it's in a place where that's that's a little more dicey than some other neighborhoods. So who would your tenants be, you need to consider that because if someone makes, I don't know $150,000 a year, they're going to go into a place they're going to rent in places that are safe for them that are, you know, that appeal to them that have that and all that. So you need to consider that as an investor. I hope that answer your question. So this exists but you're going to have to do some work. Even in the Bay Area. So, it's 250 and we do have many more questions that I'll take one more if you want and then the rest I will, I will answer when, when you just forward them to me. Thank you. Okay, so the last question is, are you able to share where to find opportunities for passive note investors. I think I already addressed this so go ahead and send me an email or your email and I'm happy to put you in touch with some people that you then need to investigate because you know, in my word I'm in other words, I'm happy to give you some some sources where you can go. But there's no you know you still need to check it out and see, is this the right one for me. And I'm happy to do that if you'd like. Thank you so much. There are a lot of thank yous in the chat for you. I'm thanking you and saying that they learned a lot so again, thank you so much for this presentation, and everyone please join us on Friday, August 13 for part three of the series, the last part of the series for real estate investing basics, negotiation strategies and tactics. So thank you so much Gabrielle. I really, really appreciate being here I always love being, you know, being at the library, etc. Someone's asking me in the chat what my email addresses it's on the screen if you still see the presentation it's right there. So, and then if, if Christie if you want to send it out you can. Yes, I can put it in the chat. I'll put it in right now. So, thank you again. I really appreciate being here and look forward to doing the next one with you. Yes, thank you, and everyone will be getting a follow up email from us that will include Gabrielle slides, some bonus content and also a recording for this presentation. Thank you for joining us today it was great thank you again Jeff Gabrielle. Bye bye everyone.