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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PODCAST: 0:23 - Introduction 1:14 - Today with the brokerage business 3:45 - Vision of Brokerage side 5:31 - Where are we with hired agents in markets 9:56 - Deals recently with investors 12:52 - What to expect with Section 8 occupied homes 16:51 - Home in Midfield 22:47 - Best Practices 25:18 - Success - Hear our numbers Contact: ghall@evernest.co brokerage@evernest.co FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST AUDIO: Matthew Whitaker: What they're really looking for is a partner relationship. They want their property manager to be a partner. And what we're trying to do is expand that partnership. Yes, we want to be your property manager, but we also want to be your acquisition partner to help you buy more of the right rental houses. Spencer Sutton: All right, everybody. Welcome. Going back to another episode of the Birmingham Real Estate Investor podcast. I am one of your hosts, Spencer Sutton, and I have actually two co-hosts with me. I got Matthew Whitaker. Welcome back to the show, Matthew. Matthew Whitaker: Glad to be here. Matthew Whitaker: Because we're just a glutton for praise and listen to, we brought Gray Hall back, who was our director of brokerage and one of our top listened to podcasts. Welcome back, Gray. Gray Hall: You're welcome, for bringing the crowds in. Spencer Sutton: Trying to boost ratings. Matthew Whitaker: We are like very excited to boost ratings, but it really hurts our feelings. That you're the one that boosts ratings. So we decided, even though it hurts our egos a little bit, you're one of the top listened to podcasts. We're still going to listen to you, right? Gray Hall: Thank you guys for humbling yourselves and having me back on. Matthew Whitaker: So let's call this brokerage 2.0, I would love a quick update from you on, because when we launched that podcast, probably 60 days ago, this was something very new that we were doing and we were kind of dipping our toe in the water and a lot has happened since then. So bring us up to date, Gray, on the brokerage business. Gray Hall: Yeah. So fun times to be in the brokerage side and then single family and small multi-family world. There's just a ton of demands where everybody kind of knows the housing market is crazy, but there's still deals to be had out there. So I think when we last talked, yeah really getting the ball rolling, but we really seen the momentum pick up. So we've done a lot of deals in Birmingham, started new deals in Atlanta, done some deals in Little Rock and continue to look at the grow, kind of our footprint. So the long-term vision is matching up what we're doing in Birmingham and Little Rock and Jackson with all the markets that we're in, where we're kind of getting Birmingham built up. And we actually just hired an agent here to help us with this overwhelming demand because there's tons of people wanting to buy rental houses. And so we're actually looking to bring on agents in those other markets to be boots on the ground, to help everyone out there I've used some deals. Matthew Whitaker: Our vision for this broker's business is that it supports the property management business. So never say never, but we don't ever see a time where we're going to get into a bunch of retail type deals and compete with the ReMax's and the normal brokerages out there. Our goal is to support the property management business. And the way we do that is to find deals for investors. And one of the things I think is interesting about that is since we run, and I was actually talking to somebody in the industry about this, and we were kind talking about what's more important, like experience of buying deals for the agent or experience of the property management company helping people buy the right houses. Matthew Whitaker: And the thing I was saying to them was I would rather a property manager agent, somebody that also has to live with me on the back end help me buy rental houses because it's not like a one and done. I heard somebody call it one time, you date your real estate agent, you marry your property manager. Well, we're trying to be both. We have to deal with this property for long periods of time after the sale, whereas a real estate agent might just be focused on closing a transaction. We have kind of more aligned interests we think with our investors. Matthew Whitaker: So talk a little bit about that and kind of where you see the vision for our brokerage business. Gray Hall: Yeah. I think at the fundamental we want to help solve investors problems. I mean, I think investors have where they've held properties and they want to sell those. We want to help get you a fair deal and make it a quick and easy process. Yeah. If we're trying to sell and if you're looking to buy, we want to make sure you're buying good houses. So yeah, Matthew said we got to live with them on the back end and we've got to manage this. We want to put you in a position to buy houses that are going to provide a return for you and that you're going to be happy with. And so I'm kind of looking at it through those lenses. It has been cooled, the problems that we help solve for some investors and done a majority of the stuff in Birmingham, but do you want to roll that into these other markets? Gray Hall: It's been cool. A lot of people have reached out after that podcast and hearing the problems that investors have. And we want to be really receptive to that. Like how can we solve those? And I think acquisition deal flow is what we talked a lot about last time, is a big problem that we're working to solve. We've got great relationships in these markets with agents, you have properties that set us to them off market before they hit the market, wholesalers who are out there who are looking and we can provide them if we know what people are looking for and they will go out and find that for us. And so the bigger that we get, I think it's the more opportunities that we can be, where a lot of the off-market deals come to first. And that's just a huge benefit to anybody working with us is that we can get you first look at a lot of these deals. Matthew Whitaker: Well, we also have our portfolio too, right? Now we're managing, we're closing in on 5,000 units, mostly single family houses under management. So we also have our own portfolio that at any one time, for whatever reason somebody's buying and somebody's selling and I think we're going to actually cover a couple of those deals today. But before we get there, I would love to know where are we specifically with hired agents boots on the ground in markets? Gray Hall: So we've got two agents in Birmingham, we just hired another one. So he's going to be starting in a couple of weeks, as you all kind of reach out, I'll get him looped in and he will be boots on the ground. He'll be able to go check out properties, estimate rehabs, get deals under contract. And then we are actively in Atlanta, Little Rock, Arkansas and Jackson, Mississippi. So if you know anybody who's licensed, who's got an interest in this, who would love to come work with us and then help these investor leads that we have close the deals. Please reach out to us and we'd love to talk and see if we can find a good fit in that local market. Matthew Whitaker: And we also have somebody in Denver. Correct? Gray Hall: Correct. Sorry. I forgot about that. Yeah. So there's a girl out here who's, yeah, been a big part of what we've been doing out here. And so she's going to come on and help us. Yeah. The Denver market is pretty crazy. It's a hot market with low inventory where it's just like everywhere else, we're kind of seeing out here. And so we've got some owners who have held their rental properties. They've gotten a great return over the past five or 10 years, and they're looking to sell those either on the retail market or potentially to other investors. And so she's going to help us solve that problem. And I think a lot of it is on the buy side and the sell side, if your property needs work, we can get that done for you. We can manage that process instead of having to outsource contractors, and on the buy side too, we know what stuff is going to get, cost to get done. And so we can kind of help oversee that. So it's just all about solving problems for where investors are either looking to sell or looking to buy. Matthew Whitaker: And that's the thing I've found with investors is what they're really looking for is a partner relationship. They want their property manager to be a partner. And what we're trying to do is expand that partnership. Yes, we want to be your property manager, but we also want to be your acquisition partner to help you buy more of the right rental houses, because there's nothing worse than somebody walking in and you have to say, look, you don't need a property manager. You need a magician because we can't make money for you at this property. And so to solve that problem, it's always easier for us to be on the front end of the acquisition side. Gray Hall: It's hard to buy a lot of properties and there's just a lot of moving parts. And so we're trying to kind of streamline that for investors, because we have everything from analyzing deals to kind of know what the inventory's out there. What's the area look like? What is the rent look like? What repairs does it need and the whole deal flow process. And so we're trying to take on all of that burden to streamline that where we can build partnerships with investors. We know what they're looking for. We can go out and find properties for them and trying to help streamline that so they can get to scale faster. And so that's just kind of another problem as I've been talking to investors that I think we can help them solve and not just one market, but multiple markets. Matthew Whitaker: One of the things that I think is also a tremendous value is that whole contract or piece. Right now, people that work on anything on houses or commercial companies are in desperate need because building is so hot right now in all the markets that we're in. And so us just finding, vetting, keeping excellent contractors is well worth paying us some sort of oversight fee because we spend so much time, energy, and effort. And you and I, because we've been working on this now for five or six months, it is the thing that we talk about the most when we need is, how can we find more better contractors? And we honestly, when we have conversations with people in the industry, it's a pain that they're feeling as well. How do you scale renovating these houses? How do you scale finding these contractors? How do you make sure the quality is good? So we're thinking through that problem too, but it's been a sticking point in our process, frankly, since we've gotten started buying houses for people. Gray Hall: Yeah. And getting it done a fair price too. I mean, I think that can make or break a deal if you can get the work done. So yeah, it's not just, we struggle with that or boots on the ground. And so it's just a big challenge, but that's a big problem we're trying to solve. That's what I keep talking about is trying to solve all these problems. And that's what it's been a lot of is, and this is a problem and how do we put a process in place to be able to solve it? Matthew Whitaker: It's great to have a hot market, but with hot markets come all these ancillary problems, like labor is very expensive right now. So having a partner boots on the ground that can kind of weigh through all these issues, I think is very helpful to our investors. And hopefully somebody listening to it would be helpful to them too. Matthew Whitaker: So we're going to talk about, cause this is a Birmingham podcast, we're going to talk about a couple of deals that we've done recently with investors. One is in West End, which is 35211 zip code. And one is in Midfield, which is 35228. Both of these cities are on the western side of town. Very similar socioeconomically. Midfield is its own city. West End is a part of the city of Birmingham, but let's kind of dive into the deal and give us some kind of context for this. Let's start with the West End house. Gray Hall: Yes. Somebody who'd reached out to us and wanted to hire us to see if we could find an investor to buy these properties. So they were both resident occupied already. So, that one in West End that the resident was paying $900 a month. And that was a four bed, two bath. And so something good to know when you're kind of dealing in three days that are heavily section eight, which have a higher proportion of tendency to use section eight, you can look them up on their website and you can kind of see, you can reach out and ask us. We kind of know on a bender basis. That's what a lot of times allows them to kind of jump into the next bracket. And so if it's a three one or a three two every day, or we kind of know it's in that eight to 850 range, if you start getting up to the four bedroom range, that's when you can get into the nine hundreds. Gray Hall: And I saw there was another one in Westwood, that one got above a thousand. So kind of keep that in mind, it's important to look at the square footage, also the bed bath. And so that's one thing we liked about this house, was it was a four bed, it was a two bath, it was getting a really strong rent and we got it under contract. And it was after everything was said and done, it was around $56,000. So yeah, pretty strong rents for the price and needed a little bit of work, residents already in there. And so there's kind of instant cashflow coming in. So this investor, we kind of talked through your game plan of how do we to do this, this and this over the next six months to get the house and they get placed. Gray Hall: And it was, we're checking on the main system, to the AC was good. The roof needed a little bit of patching, a little bit of electrical work to be done, a little bit of, kind of interior work, but kind of his all-in number. It's still going to be a really cash flowing property as looking at this investor wanting to buy. So residents are staying in the property and that's section eight, so the money has come every time for the past two years, we got now on the rent roll. So it kind of came in consistently, but part of that was just planning for what repairs needed to be done in that house. Spencer Sutton: I think something also that's good to note about this area, about West End, whenever I had section eight residents in West End, they typically stayed a long time. It wasn't like a one year or two year occupancy. It typically would go four or five, six years. So good area. Those are nice strong rents for the West End. Gray Hall: Yeah. It was on a good street too, I think you kind of hear it street by street. And so, they're out there driving down the street and making sure that an area that you want to buy it as an important piece, because there are good deals to be had in there. But there's also streets that we might say, Hey, that's probably not the best bet to buy there. So yeah. On a good street and investors felt good about it. And I had really strong, yeah. Strong rent to what we're able to get it for. And then even after putting the repairs in, still going to cash flow really well. Matthew Whitaker: Talk about buying a house that's section eight occupied. Like what can an investor expect? Gray Hall: I would probably say, section eight or private pages if you're buying occupied, it's a little bit more to get it scheduled. You want to make sure that you respectful to the resident, making sure that you're giving them enough notice, try not to bother them with plastics inspections. It's trying to get knocked out one or two, but then yeah, just communicate with the resident. Kind of letting them know once the property has gone under contract and kind of let them know, hey, new manager is here, new owner, things kind of changed. So not really different between section eight and private pay, certainly a little bit different with a vacant house because you got to extend it there. And a resident is a very valuable asset. So we want to make sure that they are taken care of. Gray Hall: And so an important piece too, if the house has deferred maintenance getting in there and doing that work to kind of let them know, hey, this new owner, they care about this house, they want this to be well. So there's a kind of success keys after you do close if you've got a resident, because you want to keep them in there because the last thing you want to do is run your numbers off the resident staying, they've got a lease through the end of the year and the resident up and moves out if they aren't sure kind of what's going on. And so, yeah, making sure the resident's kind of kept in the loop and through the process and making sure to get the work done on the back end. Matthew Whitaker: And we're getting a lot of these investors that are kind of cashing out they, in our portfolio, right? And we can manage that process very easily because we are the property manager. We will be the property manager, so we can manage the inspection, the transaction very easily because we can kind of control the whole process and make it as seamless as possible. Obviously you don't want the resident to move out. The other thing I think would be a benefit, section eight, is it does have an annual inspection. So you do have some confirmation that at least in the last 12 months, somebody has walked through that house and done an inspection and required whatever repairs or not required repairs if nothing was needed. So I think there ought to be some confidence when you buy a house with the section eight resident, that it's not like the house is about to fall down. Gray Hall: Yeah. But yeah, that's a good point. So section eight. Yeah. There's an annual inspection, but whenever you're leasing a vacant house to a section eight resident they've got their own list of basically requirements of things that need to be done in the property. So the downside is that's going to cost a little bit more money. If a private pay resident is willing to rent it and a weather stripping on the door doesn't seal, they'll take it as is. But section eight is going to require that. Gray Hall: There's also electrical, kind of safety things that you would want to do, but this is kind of another opportunity where they go in there and they'll let you know if something needs to be done. So if you have a house where the resident's been in there for four or five years, if there's a section eight, you know that those inspections have gone on because the, they will stop paying that rent if you don't keep it up to their certain standards. And so yeah, a little bit more comfort that they've at least gone through there and there's kind of a certain standard, you know the house is going to be up. Matthew Whitaker: One of the things that we've talked about and frankly done throughout the years is just try to bring every house specifically from a safety standpoint, up to those section eight standards. And they're not unrealistic standards, obviously having some sort of kind of minimum standard really helps our owner sleep at night, helps me sleep at night, frankly, managing all these houses. You know, again, I don't think the section eight inspection is too onerous, certainly there's times where we're like, that's kind of crazy to do that. But I think especially in Birmingham, I think that they're very realistic in what they expect from a renovation standpoint. Gray Hall: And they want to make sure one that providing report is a safe and inhabitable place. And I guess we, all those landlords want is, and we want the resident to live in a place. And so, yeah, I think it's a good thing, especially on the safety side stuff. I mean, hey, they pointed out some electrical stuff that it does need to be, it does need to be fixed and maybe it's got worn down over time or they'll kind of let you know about other items that you want to keep up this property because when you go to sell it five, 10, 15 years down the road, you don't want that problem. So you just have gone on and on and on and not be made aware of it. Matthew Whitaker: So let's talk about the home in Midfield. Gray Hall: So yeah, private pay resident, very kind of similar; it was on a good street, good area. The resident's been there for a while and this one was rented around 750, kind of that 700 number. We got this one for around $50,000. So this one had a little bit of work that needed to be done, add a newer roof, but it had just some light electrical stuff that needed done and safety stuff. And then there's a little bit of plumbing work that needed to be done, but kind of same story, hey, the resident is in there, been a good resident. They paid on time, they've been consistent. Gray Hall: And so the owner kind of saw that as I would get these repairs done, but there's not, this may be 30 or 60 days to have a resident before they start paying rent. So that one was a three, two. And so it was net 775. And then that was a private paid resident. So you get opportunities to increase their rent. And if you want to go that route to get it up to market rent at the lease renewal, and if it was section eight, you got to put a request in there. So the other house just had the renewal go through. And so 12 months from now, we'll be able to get through and increase rent. Just kind of a reasonable increase in rent. Matthew Whitaker: The second house I ever bought was in Midfield and I still own it actually, great house. I've actually had a... Spencer Sutton: What street was it on? Matthew Whitaker: 10th Avenue. And it's a two bedroom and I've had the same resident there, I think like six, seven, eight years. I mean a long time. He may have been there 10 years. I don't even know, but I'm just, bend over backwards to make that guy happy. He pays like clockwork. And the thing that people need to understand about these kinds of C class, B minus, the majority of the residents in there are awesome people. They're just blue collar working people that pay their rent and go to work and do, they're just trying to have a excellent life and we just provide them housing. Matthew Whitaker: So I love Midfield. I would own as many midfield homes as I possibly can. There are probably a couple of little areas I probably wouldn't buy in. Spencer Sutton: Thank you, dude. Kind of need to know some of the streets because, but there are pockets of great areas, still a lot of home ownership in some of these areas, pride of ownership. I had one, it was a four bedroom, two bath, it was section eight and they were paying, I want to say 740. This is several years ago. 740 something. Matthew Whitaker: Yeah. That was a long time ago because their way higher now. Spencer Sutton: It was a long time ago. But this resident, I loved her. She was awesome. And like yours I've bent over backwards to keep her happy. And what happened was the section eight program worked exactly the way it was supposed to be. It's supposed to, because year after year, their payout got lower and lower and she paid more and more and more, until eventually they were paying, I mean it wasn't more than 20 bucks a month and she was paying the rest because she had gotten a job. And it was awesome. I mean, but she was a great resident, stayed in there and actually until she passed away, but I love Midfield, great area. Gray Hall: Yeah. There is some stuff turning, I mean, I've seen some pretty strong kind of like retail sales over there. And so even in some of those pockets, I'm starting to see some more house that have either been flipped or there were homeowners who have just kind of kept them up. And so you can find kind of strong comp values if you're looking for that, either on the back end for a refinance, or if you're looking to sell kind of knowing that value's there. And a lot of these homes, you know, they're kind of turnkey resident ready, they're kind of priced at 1% or roll, so if it's an 850 house, you know, it's somewhere we're going to be in that eight, maybe 85 range. And so, yeah, these are good deals, but you can find these with wholesalers. And so there is opportunities to get in there and to have, you know, a little bit of equity and have a really strong cashflow for what you can get it for. Matthew Whitaker: Oh great. When we did version 1.0 of this and we were just kind of getting started, we asked people to go to a website which escapes me. What was the website? Spencer Sutton: Evernest.co/pocket-listing.com. Is that right? Spencer Sutton: Possibly listings, not.com at the end, but whatever, something like that. You can tell we're great marketers here. Gray Hall: Evernest.co/pocket-listings Matthew Whitaker: Yeah. So a lot of people, and if you're hearing this for the first time, you can certainly go there and sign up. But what we can't promise you is that we'll call you back. So if somebody put their information in there last time, why don't you give them a message? Like, hey, I put in there that I wanted to buy houses and you hadn't reached out to me yet. Or maybe you sent me an email, but kind of tell them that we're, what's your message for them? Gray Hall: Yeah. And we probably need to change this to kind of like a brokerage service inquiry. That's kind of what a lot of it talked, you know, it was kind of what it turned into, but yeah, we got an awesome, just kind of overflow of people reaching out, trying to get back to everybody and kind of talk through what it looks like, kind of version 1.0, and as we're building this thing kind of version 2.0 is hiring this agent to be able to kind of service every lead that comes in and be able to work with everybody, kind of got inundated with responses. Gray Hall: And so we've been trying to work with as many people we can. Started sending out weekly emails with either off market properties wherever they come to us. That's going to pick up as I've got, I've hired some people to help with that, to be a lot more consistent with those daily MLS stuff with also a wholesaler, who's getting a ton of kind of inbound stuff and so I'm hiring somebody who's going to help us sit down on a consistent basis. And that's what a lot of us looks for. So, yeah. Please reach out again. You have emails like either brokerage@evernest.co or gray.hall@evernest.co. We'd love to help find you some properties, especially as you start onboarded as a new agent in Birmingham, have a lot more capacity in Birmingham to start doing that. Matthew Whitaker: And be patient with us. I think it's kind of like Reid Hoffman who founded LinkedIn. He said, sometimes when you start something new, it's like jumping off the side of a mountain and building the airplane on the way down. And to some degree we're doing that and just trying to do the best we can, deliver on product to the people that are buying. Matthew Whitaker: What would you say if, words to an investor? Like what are some best practices of working with us that you found now over four or five months of doing this? Gray Hall: Yeah. I would just say know exactly what you want. And there's a lot of people who do know exactly what you want. So yeah. Thank you. If you put that in kind of your buy box area, but know what areas or know what questions to ask. Like if you got specific areas, you get kind of questions, then we can kind of guide through that. But yeah, know your area, have your cash proof of funds. If you're a cash buyer, it's super, and that's kind of what a lot of times it takes right now, you can still get dusted on the financing, but if you are financing, make sure you got all that lined up and then respond quickly. So if we send out an off market deal and it's something that you are interested in, respond quickly, either with kind of specific questions that you got about that deal, or hey, this is what I want to offer on it. Gray Hall: So we've kind of gotten this going with a couple of investors where I'll send something out and they're, hey, I can offer this much, so I can do this much as money and then see and then we can get negotiate that deal in the contract. And so, yeah, a lot of the same message, you kind of know exactly what you want and kind of be able to respond quickly because stuff is going very fast off the market. On market stuff is getting multiple offers. Off-market stuff is still getting multiple offers. You know, first day it goes up on the MLS five or 10 showings and they'll get three or four offers. And so giving them with your highest invest too, there's kind of very minimal negotiating right now. And so come with a strong number and we'll try to get it under contract. Matthew Whitaker: And I think the investors that are daily managing this, I think of the word consistency. Anytime you're dealing against people to buy things and you're taking consistent swings, you're going to be very successful doing that. And also having realistic expectations about what's possible, but just being very consistent with that, the deals that we send, of course, you probably, sending a home saying, well, y'all need to be more consistent sending them. We do know that, and we're going to get there. But. Spencer Sutton: I mean, it's not even five months old yet. I mean, we just started in January. So yeah. Gray Hall: And on that point, I mean, there's, there's one guy who reached out after the podcast and we probably put four or five offers in. We hadn't won any of them, but we're going to hit one at some point. And so it's just kind of that consistency and he's got a really great attitude. I would miss that one. What did we learn? On to the next. And so, yeah, that's a very much a part of this, don't get discouraged. If we don't get your first deal, it might take five, six, seven, or eight, depending on what you can pay for the property, the deals that are coming out. Matthew Whitaker: Gray, just to give some people some context that we are having some success too, right? Like you want to give them an idea of how many homes we've put under contract and, or have closed on in the first five months? Gray Hall: I haven't looked today, but when I checked yesterday we're in that 115 to 120 range of deals that we get either closed or under contract. And so it really ramped up and we've seen a ton of success. So there are deals to be had out there. Matthew Whitaker: So point being there are opportunities and people are buying houses, we're seeing that. And I think people are saying, well, there's just no opportunities out there. And we're here to tell you that there are, we're seeing it and people are buying them. So if you want to be a part of that, certainly reach out. You can go to our pocket listing, which I think is a weird name website actually pushed back, but you said, well, we've already recorded it on the name of it. So don't judge us by the name of the pocket listing. Spencer Sutton: I don't think the name is going to keep anybody from filling the form out. Matthew Whitaker: It might, I don't know. I don't, really? Gray Hall: The URL said the same thing. Matthew Whitaker: Oh my goodness. Maybe we need to, maybe you need a better, we'll call them evernest dealio. Gray Hall: Oh God, that's terrible. Spencer Sutton: Keep Matthew out of marketing. Gray Hall: The only other thing an investor would say is, I had this conversation with somebody just on basics. It's probably tough to a home run deal right now. And so the kind of, invest in what you can and can I, it might be a base hit or a single or a double used baseball term, but still a solid deal. But it's, I would say probably focus on getting some basis, do think in the long run in the next five, 10 years, you're going to have more deals under your belt. And if you just kind of wait for that one home run, you're probably not going to do as many. So your key cashflow would probably be higher if you focus on getting singles and doubles and hitting a home run every once in a while. But home runs are just tough to come by right now. So it's kind of, you get invested in the market that we're in. So a lot of singles and doubles that are great solid deals and good areas that have really strong rental potential. But yeah, finding out it's up to home run right now. Matthew Whitaker: Well, I appreciate, first of all, I appreciate the baseball analogy cause I use them so often, as you know probably. I actually was giving a bunch of baseball analogies today. Actually, I wouldn't even pivot on that a little bit and say the home runs come as a result of taking swings. And if all you're looking for is home runs and you're just watching pitches, watching pitches, watching pitches you're probably not going to be ready for the home run pitch when it does come because you haven't been consistently taking swings. And so that's another kind of.... Gray Hall: Yeah. It plays on top of each other. If you do a couple of deals, you know what it works for, or you kind of learned some stuff in the construction phase, it helps you better identify what that home run is going to look like, or what you think might be a home run deal right now. It might not be. And you kind of learned that through just kind of experience and consistency. So it kind of builds on top of each other, and so the more knowledge you get as an investor, the better chance you put yourself in hitting a home run. Matthew Whitaker: Yeah, because I think the home run deals are out there, but the people that are buying, those are the ones that are taking all the swings right now. Buying a bunch of houses. Gray Hall: 10 or 15 base hits and you get a home run deal just because you're to that many more properties. Matthew Whitaker: All right. Anything else we want to add? Spencer Sutton: This has been good. Gray, thank you for the update on this podcast. The brokerage update 2.0 has been great. And again, we've got the URL. If you are interested in being on that list, talking to either Grey or one of our team members fill out that form. And also just remember we are staffing up and going to start doing deals in other markets like Atlanta, and you need to listen to our Atlanta podcast if you're interested in that as well. Matthew Whitaker: Let me say something about that. If you know somebody in Atlanta that can help us be an agent, worked for the evernest team, please send them our way. You can send an email to that brokerage@evernest.co. Also, Little Rock and Jackson. I mean, we are proactively hiring A-players in those markets to help us. We're going to be the ones, they don't necessarily need to be trained. I mean, it'd be nice if they had a real estate license already, but we're doing all the training. We're teaching them what to look for. This new person is going to be riding around with me some here in Birmingham. And Gray's going to spend a lot of time with the people that we hire. We're going to educate them to be your partner. But if you know somebody, we are in desperate need of hiring some really talented people. So please send them our way. Gray Hall: Yeah, great opportunity to learn. I mean, I've even learned a ton in the past couple of five months, but I will teach you everything about analyzing deals, what to look for in property, how to network with wholesalers and other agents, how to run a rehab, how to give deals on a contract. So if you're interested, this is a great opportunity to become, join a really fun business that we're building. Also, get a ton of experience. You see a hundred deals come across your desk, it's definitely, position to kind of know exactly what to look for. So yeah. Please reach out if you know anybody who's interested or you think would be a good fit and you can reach out. Yeah. G, Gray dot hall at Evernest dot co, or brokerage at Evernest dot co. Matthew Whitaker: We'll put all that in the show notes. Spencer Sutton: One last request from me as we are signing off today. I just want to ask a favor of our listeners. We have gotten some really great reviews on Apple iTunes, but I want to ask you, if you have not left us a review, please go give us a five star review. And if you found value in any of our podcasts, would you just write a short note about that? It actually helps people find this on iTunes. And so we'd appreciate it. And we will be back next week with another episode of the Birmingham real estate investor podcast.
