Ep #1,059 - MFRS - How She Scaled to 1,200+ Doors in Multifamily Real Estate

[00:00:03] So you know that apartment building or complex you drive by every day? Someone owns it. And it's probably someone on this podcast. Multifamily Rockstars. Join the growing numbers of real estate entrepreneurs who have made the jump to buying multifamily properties for lifetime cash flow. Multifamily Rockstars. Using OPM for an OMG ROI. Now, here are your hosts, Rod Khleif and Mark Nagy.

[00:00:29] Welcome to Multifamily Rockstars. So as you guys know, these are the episodes where we deep dive into our guest deals and, you know, give you some actionable items so you can get started, some practical items so you can get started. And, you know, so you can do your first deal, especially if you're brand new to multifamily. And I've got my co-host Mark Nagy with me here as usual. What's going on, Rod? Good to be back in 2025. New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, brother. Good to be here. Well, we have got a real treat today. She's what you would call an original. If you watch that vampire.

[00:00:58] Empire series, you know, in my warrior program. And her name is Jennifer Barner and she's a founder of Lighthouse Ventures and just a beautiful, beautiful soul, beautiful human being. And she actually, we did do an interview with her way back when, I mean, we're at, I don't know, how many interviews we had now? 800, 900? A lot.

[00:01:20] Yeah. Anyway, so a long time ago. So a lot, a lot of water under the bridge since that interview. So it's just a treat to actually have you in the Rockstar series here. It's long overdue. Welcome. Welcome back, Jennifer. Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, Rod. I just love the warrior group so much. They've added so much to my life, both personally and financially. So thank you for having me on.

[00:01:44] Oh, no question. Now, I know you're now in almost 1200 doors in five states and you've achieved your goal of putting your four children through college debt free.

[00:01:56] You've, you've, you've six, six plexed your net worth. You know, you've done coaching for us is just, just a incredible journey from where you started. But why don't you tell us how you started? Okay. And take us back and tell that little story about your transition from single to multi as well. I love that story.

[00:02:17] Well, I didn't know anything about real estate. I have a finance degree and I had always been asking our financial advisor, how do I invest in real estate? And they kept saying, well, you can't. And then I was invited to a real estate conference. It was the rich dad conference. And she stood up there, the gal that was presenting and said, you know, I started out using my IRA and real estate. And I'm like, wait, what? How'd you do this?

[00:02:43] And she said, if they're telling you, you can't, it's me means they can't. They're not a qualified custodian. And that was a game changer for our life. We have four children and they were fast approaching college. We had four in six years. And so I knew after 2008, when the market collapsed, that we lost half of everything we had saved for. And so I was looking for something.

[00:03:11] So real estate came into our lives at a really important time. And after one year of being in single family, I just started praying, Lord, show me another way. And all of a sudden, monopoly kind of came into my mind. And I was thinking, I need to pivot to big buildings.

[00:03:28] So I started listening to as many podcasts as I could. I kept coming back to you, Rod, over and over and over. And I think you'd only been doing the podcast probably six months. And then you said, you know, I'm thinking about doing some coaching. And if you're interested, reach out to me. So I saw, you know, I got to actually sign you up personally. Yes, you did. Holy cow. Wow. You really are an original. Holy cow. 2017?

[00:03:57] It was 2017. Your first boot camp. I was there on the front row in 2018. It was January, 2018. I was on the front row. That was Tampa? Yes, that was Tampa. And 350 people in that room. It was a great boot camp. And I'll tell you, your boot camps are the same. And they're so good.

[00:04:20] Even, I mean, it was so good back then. And it's still so good. That's what I love about the program. Yeah. Thank you. Well, now we're up to 1,000 people. So we've improved our population a little bit. And we're now at, I don't know, what, 2,000 Warriors mark? I don't know. Somewhere around there, yeah. Yeah, somewhere around there, 2,000 Warriors. I think they're at 250,000 plus units that they own. We can't keep track anymore.

[00:04:49] We've got a coaching call today, actually, right after this interview. And I've got, you know, every now in these coaching calls, I go through, oh, they closed this deal. They closed this deal. They closed this deal just to inspire everybody. And I think I saw like 8 to 10 that I'm going to bring up on this call just in the last three weeks or month, rather. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy what's going on. So anyway, so you came to the boot camp. And it's been all downhill since then, right?

[00:05:16] No. You know, I jumped in with both feet. And I was like, this is it. This is my path to getting into something, you know, going faster. I needed to go as fast as I could because I had four kids that I got to put through college. And although my husband has a great job and we'd been saving so diligently, we still didn't have enough because of escalating costs of tuition.

[00:05:39] So, you know, about a year and a half into your program, though, I called you and I said, Rod, I have been looking high and low, turning over every rock. I've underwritten 250 deals and I still don't have a deal done. And you said, well, in the meantime, go back to doing what you were doing. And so I went back to flipping homes and then as life would have it, COVID hit.

[00:06:04] And when everybody else started putting on the brakes, that's when I saw my opportunity. And I said, now's the time. And so I left my backyard of Kansas City and I went to another market where I saw huge signs of growth, which was the Northwest Arkansas area where Walmart is headquartered, J.B. Hunt, Tyson Foods. And they're building new highways down in that area. And it's just exploding.

[00:06:34] So I got together with a broker and I just mentioned my frustration of being in multifamily and no brokers will ever call me back. And I was whining, lots of whining. And he took compassion on me and said, you know what? I think I got a property for you. I haven't listed it, but you know, why don't you take a look at the financials? Because I'm telling you what, I underwrote it. And I was like, wait, I got to do this again.

[00:07:00] Something must be off of my spreadsheet because it turned green, meaning it's go time. Right. And we got that deal under contract and it's been the best deal. So when was that? That was 2020, 21? That was 2020. We closed. Yeah, it took us. Where in Arkansas was it? Bentonville? Where are they or where at? Springdale. Springdale, which is sandwiched between Bentonville and Fayetteville. Gotcha.

[00:07:27] That's so funny. We just bought a deal two weeks ago in Northwest Arkansas and Fort Smith right up there. There you go. Yes. And I bet you probably rode the COVID boom up from there if I had to guess. Yeah. Tell us about this deal. I know you said all the lights turn green, right? What about this deal looked good? What were you guys going to do to this deal? Well, bring us into this.

[00:07:48] Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that you always love to see is a high expense ratio when you're looking at a new property because it's a sign that it's probably being mismanaged. Mismanaged. Yeah. So that was a clue.

[00:08:06] And then the property management company, they didn't seem like they were overly concerned that they were sitting at a 7% vacancy in a market that was most other properties in the area were all 100% occupied. And their rents were sitting at $450 to $625. Wow. And it wasn't a property where hubcaps are missing off the cars and cars are up on blocks. I mean, it's a nice property.

[00:08:35] So those, and it was sitting right next door to the central water government office that was brand new. So I'm looking at that property going, this is a home run. I just don't know how we don't succeed on this property. And financing was still really low at 3.51. Nice. We were able to get fixed debt.

[00:09:01] Now we missed out on getting interest only because it was a smaller market. But yeah, we were very, very conservative. I partnered with Ed Mazel. That was the first deal. He's another warrior, by the way, right? Just had him on a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Yes, we did. That's right. Okay. Yeah. The beautiful thing about that is, and you're going to love this. We underwrote it.

[00:09:29] We submitted our letter of intent to buy. And they came back and they kind of laughed at our offer because it was $500,000 under what they were asking. And then Ed said, you know, we need to go back and let's look at our underwriting and see if we can come up at all. So as we're underwriting it, we noticed the square footage that they were representing was larger than it actually was.

[00:09:55] So we tweaked our offer and we came down even further on our offer. Wow. It's like, he said, go ahead and submit that. And I said, Ed, they already declined our first offer. He goes, I know, but you never know. These things could turn and they may decide that they want to get out. And so we better go with the number we would really want to buy it at. I'm like, all right, fair. I'll submit it. So I submitted the new one.

[00:10:24] And three weeks later, they reach out and they said, hey, we accepted your offer. And I'm like, I said, which one? And they accepted the lower offer. Wow. Did they tell you why? I'm just curious. They were just ready to move on. They were done. They were done. Yeah. And guys, that's the way it works. Let me interject something real quick before you move on.

[00:10:50] You know, very often, and I tell my warriors this all the time, you know, if they say no, circle back because, you know, they may get other offers. They may even accept another offer that falls through. I can't tell you how often you get it if you circle back and stay at top of mind with the broker. And well, that's fantastic. So how many units was it? And how did you finance it? What was the debt? Yeah. So we got Freddie May.

[00:11:19] Oh, it's Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac debt. Okay, good. Excuse me. Freddie Mac. We got a seven-year term. Okay. And it was a step-down prepayment penalty. Right. And we started getting offers just a year later on this property, people wanting to buy it. But we didn't sell because of that prepayment penalty that we were going to have. Yeah. Let me explain real quick.

[00:11:47] You know, that's called conforming debt, guys, meaning it's non-recourse, meaning if they foreclose, they're not going to come after you personally, which, of course, you don't want them to foreclose regardless. But they're only going to take the property back, which is it's conforming non-recourse debt. But with that, they have very steep prepayment penalties. And what she means by step-down is like year one, it may be 5%. Year two, 5%. Year three, four, three, two, one, down to zero ultimately in year seven or six.

[00:12:13] And so, and that's significant when you're talking about millions of dollars. That's big money that you'd lose. And so, you know, the best way to sell an asset like that for you today would be an assumption, but you're probably pushing up against, you know, year five or six at this point, aren't you? Yeah, we're heading into our fifth year. Yeah, fifth year. So an assumption may or may not be feasible this late in the game, but that's, you know, that's a very appealing interest rate because that's a fraction of what they are right now.

[00:12:42] So, but anyway, please continue. So step down interest rate and the rents were $450 to $600. Is that what I heard you say? Yes. Good Lord. So where are they at today? Just out of curiosity. So today we're sitting at $850 and $925. Nice. We're 100% occupied again. Wow. And so you had asked about what was our plan going into it? So we thought we'll go in here.

[00:13:07] We had budgeted $1,800 to do light fixtures, change the classic gold colored walls to gray, and then replace supply, not appliances, but the lavatory sink faucets, you know, the tub faucet, those kinds of things. Also the kitchen sink faucet, just upgrade them a little bit and also get rid of that old classic

[00:13:32] gold on the door handle and the hinges and bring them up a little bit. Do the silver. That was, you know, the polished chrome was popular a few years ago. Yeah. So that's what we were budgeting. And we started to implement that. But as fast as we were doing that, the classic units were approaching. They were within $25 of our renovated units, our lightly renovated units. So after three months, we stopped all renovations.

[00:14:02] Stopped all renovations. Yeah. By the way, guys, just so you understand, what she means by classic is that's the way they are today. Okay. That's a term that's used for the condition of the units today. And then, so you call them classics. And that's very common where you start doing renovations, you're not getting the multiple that you need to make sense. I'll tell you, and let me give you a rule of thumb on this, guys. If you, you should be able to recapture the amount of money you do in your renovation, ideally within three years. Okay.

[00:14:31] So if you're going to spend, what is it? 3,600. I can't do the math in my head, but, but whatever you spend on your renovation, you want to recapture it in three years. Okay. So if you spend 3,600, you want to get at least a hundred dollar rent bump. That math is correct. That's it. There you go. There you go. But, but so, so you just realized that the bump wasn't there. So it's like, why spend the money? Um, okay. Got it. Okay. Fantastic. So what happened after that then? Did you just start renting out all the classics? What, what, what happened then? Yeah.

[00:15:01] So now what we're doing is we just decided, all right, we're going to scale back that plan, not, not touch anything other than the paint color. So we just started changing the classic gold walls to gray and that's all we needed. And we're still doing that to this day. And we're still a hundred percent full. And we gotta, we gotta push them again. So about every three months we have the conversation.

[00:15:29] Is it time to push another $25? So we just keep pushing $25 every three months. Those rents, those rents, you know, uh, if you look at it on a national scale, are still very low. Uh, 850 and 950 is very low if you look nationally. So yeah, I think you still have a long way to go. Um, so you've, you're in now, uh, almost 1200 units in five States. And you said, I think you told us before we started recording, they're all with other warriors that you've partnered with other warriors. Is that accurate? Yeah.

[00:15:58] By the way, guys, if you are interested in applying to our warrior program, text the word crush to seven, two, three, four, five. Um, and, uh, I mean, it's, what, what would you say about the program? If you had a few seconds to talk about the program, Jennifer? Well, I, I, as a coach now, I tell people, you don't, you want to do people, you want to do business with people that are being trained in the same manner that you are, that are learning

[00:16:27] the same underwriting skills that you are, that have the same characters and integrity that you do. And so what I love about your program, Rod, is you attract that same kind of person. And so, you know, it's, it just makes it way easier to do business that have been trained under the same philosophies and skills that you're trying to train, train everybody. I have so much more confidence in doing deals with people that have been, have

[00:16:57] went through your program. Cause I know that they've gotten a good education. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So again, guys, if you're interested, text the word crush to seven, two, three, four, five, and, and we can help you crush it in this exciting, exciting business. Um, go ahead, Mark. One thing I, you kind of, uh, glossed over there a minute ago was you said it took you, you know, a year and a half, right. In this without getting any deals done. And a lot of people listening and be like, oh my God, that's so long.

[00:17:26] Like they would quit before that probably, but now you're at 1200 doors and you've done once you did that first deal, as you know, very often we see that domino effect, right? The second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, what happened after that? And how did you, what was that key moment or catalyst that kind of got you to scale up to where you're at today after that first one? Yeah. So after that first one, six months later, I was invited to be a loan guarantor with Ed

[00:17:53] on another deal in North Carolina. So I think I proved myself worthy of being a good business partner. And so he invited me to come be, um, his partner on that deal. And then he invited me to be a partner on the next deal and then the next deal. And so it just worked out that we worked well together. Um, I think our skillset probably complimented each other.

[00:18:18] So, um, and then the latest deals I've been doing, I've been raising capital for other people's deals. Cause I haven't had time to look for my own deals and, you know, just kind of our head down on asset management at this point also. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what were those initial roles then, you know, going back to that first deal, you know, you said you and Ed kind of played complimentary roles. What, what sort of roles did you take on? What did he take on? I don't know if there were other team members involved as well.

[00:18:44] What did that look like for the listeners listening who may need to figure out what they want to do? Yeah. So, um, Ed really quickly put together a spreadsheet of all the things we needed to do to have success at the property, you know, you know, starting with, you know, week one, these are the things we need to do. Thankfully, I was coming from a single family background where I already had a single family

[00:19:12] portfolio of about 30 doors and I had been managing those myself. And so I already had management experience. And so I was able to manage our expenses or watch those expenses as we were, you know, initially we were renovating. So I was really keeping a good eye on idea on that. And then we would meet every single morning and make sure we went through our checklist and who's doing what.

[00:19:40] And we would just assign roles and tasks to each other to make sure we were handling everything that needed to be done so that we would come out of the gates really strong. Oh, that's a very, very good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. I want to interject something. You know, you had those 30 houses. You didn't just have management experience. You had construction experience as well. So you, you, you were used to dealing with vendors and, and, and repairs, minor, major, whatever with 30 houses and you've encountered major repairs as well.

[00:20:07] And so, and probably some major renovations also, which is fantastic experience on the asset management side. Now I know that Ed is fantastic at raising money. He'll talk to anybody. He's, he's a networker extraordinaire. Would you say you brought in more of the analytical piece or, or because you're raising money now as well, or were you both? I know he's a little analytical as well, but he's, he's great at networking. Yeah.

[00:20:34] Um, so that was one of the hurdles because I wasn't going to be investing in my own state. And it was one of the hurdles that I had to overcome is how do I get all these people that I had been talking up multifamily with in my own community? How do I get them to now pivot and go to Arkansas? Arkansas. And so what I started finding is the more I started talking about Arkansas and the different markets.

[00:21:04] And I was just, I created a meetup locally and I invited all my friends and people I knew that were in real estate from single family to come over here to multifamily and let's talk multifamily. Let's, let's work together. Let's try to build a community of investors that want to invest in these. And so what ended up happening is as I was striking out on local opportunities, I started

[00:21:31] sharing with them about the other markets that surrounded the Kansas city area. And, you know, they started to listen to me and started realizing, Hey, Jen, you know, we need to take this seriously. Jennifer doesn't think she's going to be able to find anything in Kansas city. So we need to be preparing ourselves that we're going elsewhere to invest. And so what I now do, I mean, just like you all do, you look at the growth factors in

[00:22:00] the different cities and who's booming, who's not. And so it's very easy now for me to look at a city and say, okay, here's the reason I'm going over here. And I invite you to join me because here's what I'm seeing. And as soon as you can share with your investors, the growth indicators of a market, they're going to go with you. But when you're talking about complimentary skills, Ed and I share a lot of the same skills.

[00:22:31] I've become a good capital raiser, but I think I became a good capital raiser because I was posting about all the different flips I've done over the last five years, I've done 45 flips. So when you're talking about construction experience, I have that now and people just, when I was reaching out to them to say, do you want to be part of this deal?

[00:22:56] I kept hearing over and over that we have confidence in you after watching you over the last three to five years in this space, that you know what you're doing and we feel comfortable investing with you. Isn't that interesting? So, so I'd, sorry to, sorry to interrupt, but, but so you going back into single family, showing what you're doing has springboarded the multifamily capital raising piece. Isn't that interesting? Wow. It's funny how it all builds on itself. Wow.

[00:23:26] Well, you know, Rod, I look back and when you told me to go back and do, you know, I always think that it wasn't a set back. It was a set up for set further success. And it really did give me the, the courage to go back into multifamily and say, you know what? I know what I'm doing. I, you know, I can spot when somebody has taken advantage of us and a heartbeat. Now when I get, I'm like, what the heck is this? Come on people.

[00:23:55] You know? So I think when people come into multifamily, you have to partner with somebody that has already got a portfolio of single family homes or some kind of portfolio experience or building or construction just so you're not taken advantage of. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's super, super helpful. You know, if you've done some single family and that's the natural progression anyways, to go from single family to multifamily.

[00:24:23] So again, if you're considering getting some guidance, you know, so you can experience the life you're looking for this year rather than, you know, seven, eight years from now, text crush to seven, two, three, four, five, just to see if the warrior program might be able to help you, you know, overcome any challenges that you have so you can accomplish what you want. And, you know, and, and I don't remember where my mindset was when I suggested for you to get back into it. I think you, you were floundering and I was like, okay, you love single family. Just do that. Keep playing with this.

[00:24:52] Stay, you know, keep, keep consuming information. I think that's probably the way the conversation went and, and, and, and don't give up on this and, and, and you didn't. And so. So I know you talked about the different markets that you've been looking at doing all the research. I am very bullish on the Midwest myself right now as well, because it hasn't had the inventory spike, you know, from the COVID building and everything. What do you like moving forward? Can you share any secret markets that you like or. Yeah. Where are you invested now?

[00:25:22] Where do you like moving forward? Yeah. Where are you invested now as well? All of that. Yeah. I love that. Um, so during COVID we pivoted down to North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. And we have seen insurance just escalate to the point where it's not affordable in Florida anymore. So we went up 340% in that market alone.

[00:25:47] So I doubt I'll be looking in the near future in that market till we can, they can get all that figured out. Um, I like the Midwest. I still like the Northwest Arkansas area. I like Dallas a lot. I like, you know, Fort Worth. I don't know if people are aware, but there was a tycoon that used to own a lot of the land. Um, just to the, I want to say.

[00:26:16] You know what? I don't know who it was. Well, Perot owned all the land where they built the airport. That was, that was, he was a billionaire. What? No, not him. Okay. That's not it. No. So they were landlocked, which is why Dallas had all the growth. Fort Worth really never continued to grow. And it's because a tycoon owned a ton of the land and he wasn't willing to sell it off. Well, in the last two years, he started selling off the land. So Amazon's taken a big chunk.

[00:26:45] Um, I want to say Microsoft has taken a big chunk of it. So you're starting to see that land explode. And so I really like these bedroom communities in Fort Worth. A lot of them were built in the eighties and you know, as well as I do Rod and Mark, that cap rates have decompressed and we're starting to see fire sales on a lot of buildings.

[00:27:11] I've already started to see a lot of properties come to auctions, but anything in Texas that's surrounding the Dallas Fort Worth area is just, it's crawling. It's that urban crawl. And I'm starting to see a lot of similarities between it and Northwest Arkansas. So Mark, we should partner up. We should. I was going to mention that after the podcast here.

[00:27:37] Well, that's, that's the benefit of being in a group like this guys is, is, is it's all about, I just had lunch with a warrior, uh, an hour ago and, and we're, we're looking at doing something together as well. And, uh, but, um, well, listen, um, Jennifer, I really appreciate you taking a few minutes of coming on the show. I know you're going to be at the bootcamp here in a couple of weeks and doing a presentation. Um, and, and, you know, we do case studies on deals.

[00:28:03] You'll be doing a case study on, on, I think that the deal we just talked about, maybe showing what you did with the more detail. And, um, and so, yeah, if you're not guys, if you're not signed up for the bootcamp, it's coming up January 25th and 26th. Uh, what were you thinking? Cause it, uh, is going to be awesome. Uh, I don't sell anything there. It's just training for two days. So, but, uh, Jennifer, thanks for coming on, sweetie. It's so great to see you. And I, I, I just love it every time I I'm around your energy. Oh, well, likewise. Thank you so much again.

[00:28:32] It's been a pleasure and I'm so grateful for this group and for you, Rod. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you for watching multifamily rock stars. If you loved the show, please subscribe and leave us a five-star review.