3 Degrees of Freedom

Ep 122 - From W-2 to Property Manager to Multifamily Investor with Grant Warrington

October 12, 2022 Derek Clifford Season 2 Episode 122
3 Degrees of Freedom
Ep 122 - From W-2 to Property Manager to Multifamily Investor with Grant Warrington
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode on Elevate Your Equity podcast, we talked with Grant Warrington, a full-time real estate investor based in Southeast Michigan. In our discussion, we talked about his path from W-2 to being a property manager and to a multifamily investor. On the show, it was also highlighted:

• The things he looks for in due diligence when buying a repositioned asset.
• How his experiences as a PM and rehabber changed his approach to investing.


More about Grant, he is now focusing on syndicating 100 unit + apartment buildings. He started with very little money, limited knowledge and 1 single family rental. He quit his 24 year career job to take a pay cut to get into full time property management and oversaw around 800 units. He then called it quits with the property management job and W2 safety net to follow his dream of working full time in Real Estate. He now personally owns and self manages with his wife Monika their 41-unit portfolio.

Connect with Grant by checking him on WarringtonCapital.com. You can follow him on all social media platform just by searching his name.

Thanks a bunch Grant Warrington for coming on the show!

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5 Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!


If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Introduction:

Welcome to the Elevate Your Equity podcast where we, as married busy professionals, leverage real estate investing to unlock the three plus one degrees of freedom, health, location, time and financial.

Derek Clifford:

Today I'm joined by Mr. Grant Warrington. Grant, how're you doing today?

Grant Warrington:

Good, I'm doing great, man. I appreciate you having me on here.

Derek Clifford:

Absolutely, this is gonna be a blast. And for those of you who don't know, Grant grant is a full time real estate investor in Southeast Michigan, focusing on syndicating 100 Plus unit apartment buildings. He started as we're going to find out soon here with very little money, limited knowledge and a single family rental. That's one single family rental. Recently, he quit his 24 year career job to take a pay cut and get into property management full time and oversaw around 800 units. He then called it quits with the property management job and then ended his W two safety net as well to follow his dream of working full time in real estate. Right now he owns and self manages a couple of properties with him and his wife, Monica, you know, Grant, you're telling me right before you're hopping on the show what you guys have right now once you rehash that here so everyone can hear as well.

Grant Warrington:

Yeah, sure. Again, thanks, Derek for having me on the show. I've been looking forward to this really appreciate it. So it's my wife, Monique, and I and we're 5050 partners on everything. So I want if there are any husband and wife couples out there, I think you are too as well there. You guys are partners. We're 5050. So it's not just me doing this, it's my wife and I we have three apartment buildings. We have a 20 unit and 11 unit and an eight unit and then a duplex. And that's personally all just her and I know Parker's like you said started with one single family. We also just recently last week closed on a 98 unit in Alabama. That's were part of the GP team part of syndication on that one, so couldn't be happier.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, and congratulations on that you guys have worked well together. I know it takes time and energy to build that momentum up. But I think that that's, that's awesome that you guys are doing it together. It's really, really cool. So, you know, I know that that's where you are right now. But why don't we back up a little bit. And once you tell us a little bit about how you found real estate in the beginning, obviously, you know you worked a corporate job for a while but I want to hear where that sparked for real estate investing showed up in your career.

Grant Warrington:

Yeah, I can really go back in probably my 20s I started really reading I bought Carlton sheets a few I don't know if you remember Carlton sheets, if anybody else bought that program, listen to the cassette tapes. And man, I was ready. I bought three single family homes in like 2003. I had, personally I had a lot of personal issues back then a lot of things going on all my tenants will be $5,000 I wasn't good at what I did. And it was a disaster. I had no investors in that I had to declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy was finalized in like 2007. It was it was just a tremendous strain on my life back in that point, but I always knew I'm gonna get back into this. I love the idea of it. It just I didn't have the knowledge. And I wasn't in the right space personally. So in like 2011 I believe it was I quit drinking with the help of God. That was the number one step that changed my life. And in 2014, I met my wife and in December 2014, we bought our first single family rental. She had a passion for it. We talked about it. And I said well, I do too. And I always wanted to get back into it. And October 2014 I started listening to bigger pockets. And two months later, I was educated and we bought our first home together. And that's how we started with a little money and I had 20 grand, I'll be honest with you. I had 20 grand, she had 20 grand. We bought this house and had to rehab everything roof driveway, hot water tank furnace, air conditioner, electrical plumbing, we were out of money out of business, didn't know what to do, man, it was game over. We're like, well, this sucks. You know, now we got one house. And that's where we started. And it was exhilarating and scary at the same time. And then we just had to learn how to grow with no money.

Derek Clifford:

Man, you know that is that takes some dedication there for you to come in and buy a property. Did you guys know what you were getting into? When you when you first bought that thing? You're like, well, you know, it's a it's a shell of a house, I guess. And it's kind of a live in flip. But you guys used all your money to buy the house itself. And now you have to come up with the extra funds and the skills to be able to rehab it while you're probably living inside of it. Are you guys living inside of it as well?

Grant Warrington:

No, we weren't. It was probably four blocks away from where I live now and where we lived at the time. So this is where I grew up. My city know what like the back of my hand. It was $65,000 for this home. And I was like I mean, this is going to be a good deal. That's what we knew. We knew what the rent was going to be. We were kind of shocked on the rehabs and everything that went into it. It was a great learning experience. But we knew like this will be a good deal. And that's really why we why we went after pursued it, and it was in our wheelhouse it was$65,000. So we thought we can afford to buy it, and we can afford to rehab it. And we could but ran out of money. Yeah,

Derek Clifford:

I can imagine. And obviously, things worked out really well, which is usually the case when you hold on to property when you hold on to real estate. So that's great. And obviously, you know, the success is in the pudding. You guys are now on this growth trajectory. That's incredible. So let's talk a little bit about your superpower, which is construction, apartment rehab, managing a building, because you've done this for a while hands on. And what I'd like to do is maybe, can you walk us through how it was that you got this knowledge? How did you first get this property management gig that I guess started turned into more of a big thing for you?

Grant Warrington:

Yeah, and superpower might be a little misleading because I was thrown in thrown into this shit. You know what I mean? It's like, here you go, dude. Here's the ball. You know what I mean? And it's like, wow, that that's how I learned. We just bought these properties in the beginning that were distressed, right, like everybody else to add value to refinance them. And I just had to learn on the fly. I didn't have really when we first started this, I didn't really didn't have any knowledge. But I have a passion for construction. I was a construction worker for 23 years. So I was around it. I wasn't handy. I wasn't any of that I had become to a certain degree handy. But really, I learned on the job, I Googled, I read, I listened to podcasts. And that's really what I did, where I gained my knowledge from just trying to get as much knowledge off the internet as I could a YouTube. And it's all out there. And that's one of the reasons now I create a lot of content around this. And what I like to create is like, I'm not going to teach you how to buy an apartment building. There's a ton of websites out there that are better than me about that. But I want to teach people like, what the hell happens after you buy one? And I think that's where it falls off. Like what kind of paint do I use? What kind of flooring? Do I use click plank or glue down? You know, what kind of locks do I use what there's just so many different things that hit us all at once. And, and you know how it is you have to sit there and go shit, let me weigh my options. Let me sit and think about this. I wanted somebody I could just plug into off the internet and copy that's all I've done my whole career is just found people and copied them. There really wasn't anybody out there, I could copy for that. So that that's kind of what I just, I just throw my shit out there. And I'm like, Hey, man, this is what we did figure it out might not be the best step we might we might pivot in three years and change. But this is what we this is what we're doing now. And it's working, maybe it'll work for you. And that's kind of what I do, I just kind of throw that out there.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel, right. And if there isn't a wheel out there, and you have to either reinvent or try things out to see how they work, then that's what it is, you just got to do it. And I love the fact that you're not afraid to roll up the sleeves and just get some work done. So I think that's a great a great trait to have, and especially your work ethic is shining through here. And I have to remind the audience and you to grant that 2011 When you said you stopped drinking, that was only about 10 years ago. Yeah. And you know, and if you look at your trajectory over the last 10 years, it's just really, really cool. What you've done. So far, so So thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Now I want to take I want to I want to shift a little bit. Now we know what your background is the w two, we know that you had to figure stuff out as a property manager helping another investor out right while you're working full time job. Now, taking that knowledge, obviously, it was valuable. What type of things do you look for now, when you're doing due diligence when buying a reposition asset, from your experience that you've learned, right? If you're, if you're looking for a property, either reposition or do some sort of value add and it's one of the things to look for now, given your experience when you're going to purchase?

Grant Warrington:

Well, I'll be honest with you the things I'll go over the things we looked at to buy the apartments we have right basically, for one, can I get to the owner that said I'd always try and do because I bought to off market? Can I get to the owner, and it's really relatively simple. I would look for a property that needs some work like this is this is what anybody could do. I would go on Google in my area, and I look for large rooftops, right. Those are apartment buildings, and I would I know the area, but you're going to be surprised how many they're out there. And I would target those buildings. Look for distressed properties that aren't managed by big property management companies, things like that, that I could get to the owner. I would Google the owner, find the owner. Google is name and cell phone his or hers and then calling them or I would go there, talk to tenants. Ask them hey, I'm looking to live here. Can you give me the landlord's phone number? All kinds of ways to get owners numbers get in front of them and be So you, we want to look for properties that need work in the beginning, the reason being that we can get those, those would be in our price range, we didn't have a lot of money. So we needed to work with what we could like, yeah, we'd love to buy a bigger property that was fixed up and all that. But it's like, we couldn't take those down, we just didn't have the money. It was my wife and I. So if I can get in front of somebody off market, if I could, you know, we could add some value, then those were huge. So we know the area, we know what the in in my area, the rents are usually pretty, pretty low, because these owners have owned them for generations. And they don't raise rents, because they don't want to do turnover, so but it's hard to get your hands on those buildings. So if you could ever get one of those we know immediately we're like, boom, we can we can raise rents, we got to rehab, there's a ton of shit that needs to be done. But you hang on long enough, and you get yourself a good asset.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, I love it. Love it. That's so true. In talking about due diligence, let's say that you get a property under contract, or you get like a you know, you get a sneak peek, right? Either a tenant lets you in, or the property manager or the landlord's like, yeah, you can take a look at it before you write an offer or whatever. What are the things that you're looking for inside those units that have really done well for you. Four things that are maybe things to look out for,

Grant Warrington:

I can I can go over some things to look out for because in here's a tip, maybe I shouldn't tell people this but you know what, if something's for sale, and I can go walk it, I go walk it, I if the door is open, I'll we'll walk through there. And that's what I've done in the past. And you'd be surprised we lock all our buildings, but a lot of people don't. So that would be something I would I would do on the last one. It was a 1031 exchange, I can get into that later. But I needed to lock it down. The nice thing is, when you're buying buildings in your area, I knew the building, I had already reached out previously months before to try and buy this building. I was unsuccessful. So I knew this building. The other thing I knew is I knew it was GARBAGE. I knew I hate to say that. But I mean, I knew it needed everything right, because it's a 1960s or 70 building. That's been just just deferred maintenance. You can see, I had walked through it. I knew the building, I knew it. I knew I needed everything. It was on the market for four hours, I got it locked up under contract in four hours, and I never walked it. And that's what I told him, I don't need to see it. I already know it. I already knew it needs everything. It was boiler heat, you know, so So I knew about boilers through wall air conditioning units, you know, so basically, when we go into these, like, I knew that shut off valves are probably all broke for the for the hot and cold under the sinks, the toilets, right? The shower, those are probably all bad, we'll probably have to replace all those, the toilets going to have to go, we're going to rehab all the flooring. So I already know like we're putting it's a two bedroom we're gonna put eight to $10,000 into this probably closer to 10. You know, those are things I look at. And then the other wildcard right are the boiler. The boilers usually should still be pretty good 1960s You know, hot water tank, roof, parking lot, Windows and zone valves, depending on how big to part of that boiler system. But those are all kinds of things we keep in mind getting into this. But like I said, when you get it tie into a building like that, you just know where you're going to be spending x amount of time.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, of course, it sounds like these distressed assets are ones that you basically, as long as you're well capitalized, and you understand the building, like you've seen it. And I think that there's you know, one thing that I'm picking up from this is that there's no silver bullet, right grant, like, you know, it seems like you just have to know the market, you have to know what deals are what inventory is out there. What's distressed, right? If you're doing your Google search, and you're looking at roofings, for properties that maybe go drive by, you're gonna look at it, especially if it's an off market. And eventually when that market when that property does come on the market, you're going to be ready to pounce on it, right?

Grant Warrington:

Yeah, yeah, they're in just a couple of things we would do in that situation, you know, we always refinance, we would do blanket loans on our houses, rehab them, package them together, do a blanket loan, commercial loan, and then we took that money and we bought our first building. That's how we got into it right down payment. But another thing you can do is we would also take out some private money 50 grand or so. And we pay that and we also had our home equity on our home, sitting there too, and ready to put that to work if we have to. So like you said, I mean, it's important to be well capitalized. It's important to have those things there along with your capital in your account. Just in case things go wrong. And believe me they do we've had plenty go wrong.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, of course, of course. Thank you for sharing that. So now I want to talk a little bit more about like operations if you don't mind, especially with your your knowledge of property management and, you know, doing things yourselves for quite a while. It's a rare opportunity for us to talk with someone who's directly managed properties for a long time. Can you tell us how like, you're looking at vacancy and pricing when you're getting vacant units to turn or when you're looking at the overall economics Right other building, because I know you know, if you really want to keep the occupancy high, right, like at 100%, you got to be under market rents. And the vice versa is true, right? If you want to push rents high, then you're probably going to take a hit on on vacancy until the market tells you it's too is too high. So where do you guys like to, you know, operate around? Or where have you been historically?

Grant Warrington:

You know, where do we want our occupants? Occupancy to be? Obviously, 100%. Right. But we've we've gotten into some trouble with that we've tried to push some rents in this environment. And here's something that we we noticed, our rents are at 25. On our one bedrooms, right, right. Are in our 20 unit currently 825? Well, we push them to 875. Because we feel that a 25. Probably a little low, but it happened to be in February and March. Now the problem we ran across was we are getting applications. And we are getting showings. So that tells you the price is right. It's 75. Right, right. So we left it, we left it, we left it but we took these applications, we ran through them. And they didn't qualify not through our system, they might through others. But what that gave us was a false sense of 875 is is a good price to be at because it wasn't because we were filling those seats, heads and beds, right? We were not doing that. So that screwed us I'll be honest with you. And we kind of learned that and had to adjust. We lowered the rent, we're back to a 25. Again, it was in February and March, tough time to fill vacancies in our market on our one bedrooms. But that was something we learned. So yeah, we don't want to be the highest rent the highest market rent, we want to be just below that, like you said, the other thing we're we're starting to do, and this is what's really tough, is we have some people we put in that let's say they're at 700, rent a 25. And the rehabbed units, we put them in last year or two years ago, and they're staying with us. How do we catch them up to market? It's extremely difficult. So that's a tough conversation Monique, and I have to have with each other, do we increase them? $25 I'm gonna let the market and it's like, well, then they leave, and then we have to turn the unit over. Right? What's the cost of turning the unit over and losing this good tenant? So, you know, for us, it's just kind of a case by case basis, and we're at 41 units. So you know, there's probably a lot of people that are much more suited to answer that question than I am. But with ours, it's always having a conversation, her and I be honest with each other about it. Because you know, I might say, Let's do 950 And she's like, slow down, buddy, slow down, you know, it's like, it's at honesty, not getting mad at each other having a conversation and going, Look, if we do this, right, we push this lever, then this is going to happen. So it's always it's always a balancing act, and turnovers, you know, cost a lot of money. And you know, this unit we had to read all 20 are going to be turned, we have four left to turn out of 20 in three years. So we've been quite busy with this building. So, you know, that's where we're at effect.

Derek Clifford:

I can imagine. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's great. I appreciate the honesty. And also, I want to point out too, that you're making this decision with your wife too. Because again, this is a people based business, right? Like, you know, as, as we go through this process of renting out property that we own to potentially less C's out there, we have to understand these are people too, that are renting. So if you go in, like how would you feel if you know you're barely making it happen, and then your landlord comes and says, Hey, next month is going to be $100 more, which like a 20% increase, right? Or 15% increase on what you're paying already. That's no way to do it. I think there are approaches where you do like maybe a gradual increase, or you do something for them that's really special, like you install a ceiling fan, or do something that's actually improving the property but giving them an extra amenity, I found that those things also also help. But that conversation, though, that you take with your significant other to help give you an extra perspective, I think that's a really great, great way to go about it. So let me ask you here, too. There's a lot of people that are struggling with pm relationships right now, it seems to be a constant battle. Like it seems like there's always especially in the spaces that we're running it like, you know, between 50 and 100 units, there's it's third party management. So you know, you've got to you got to deal with what a property manager will give you to manage things off site, right. And how would you recommend people think about lining up incentivization so that when the PMs win, so do the owners creating those Win Win situations? Yeah. Do you have any advice on that or anything to think about from that standpoint?

Grant Warrington:

I don't really that's a that's an interesting, that's an interesting thought process. But I don't really have anything on that. I do know though, from the property management standpoint, the company and I just told the guy today I had an eye we were talking about the same thing and he's like, he's in Syracuse, and he's like, there's not a lot of good property management companies hear blah, blah, blah. I'm thinking of starting my own. I said, that's, that's awesome. But understand all those property management companies in Syracuse didn't start by saying, I'm going to be the shittiest property management company in Syracuse. That wasn't their point, right. So the company I worked for, we went above and beyond to try and do the right thing for the owners, we would get, I mean, we get shit 10, quotes, roofing, quote, sometimes we went out of our way, but it's just it's so tough to be a property management company. The owners don't want to make repairs, right? I mean, who really wants to replace a roof, the tenants pissed off because the roofs leaking, and you're caught in the middle, you know, in with an apartment building. Every time you know, my wife, and I go to the building pads that she's there all the time, she's picking up trash, right? You can't pay a property management company to go there every day and pick up trash because you have to pay them. And that's a problem, right? So when people say, Oh, the management company doesn't do as great of a job as I do? Well, if you want to pay him a lot more, they would do a better job. But it's it's a fine balancing act. And it's tough for a lot of property management companies, a lot of them have. They want to do good, they want to provide an excellent service. It's just tough, they're caught in the middle, and anybody that's been a landlord, you know, you know that I've seen every from an owner to a property, you know, working for a property management company, a large property management company, I see that in and, you know, it is tough. So just keep that in mind. Unless you're doing a really shitty job, then, then it's tough. But you know, don't be afraid to move on if you have to.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, of course, of course, I think that people expect a lot out of the property managers, and it's kind of an unfair thing. They expect problems to go away for no money right at all. And they expect them to do it for free as well. Right? And that's it's a very tough business. I completely agree with you. Is there anything that maybe since you were in the property management role, anything that like, that you can tell to investors or owners that would help the property managers do their job better? That increases the bottom line on NOI?

Grant Warrington:

Yes, here's the realistic thing, right? Don't buy a shitty property, like I would see that. Luckily, and it's true, but unless you're going to rehab it, right. And we would see that and luckily, with my old company, you know, we would go out there and we'd be able to evaluate and make the decision like, No, we're not going to manage that property, because it's going to be a ton of headaches. So we would see people buy these homes, and they're just in, they're terrible. They're there, they need to be a complete got rehab, but they want to put it back on the market and that condition. Now all that's going to have, you're just when you put someone back in that house, the house has been vacant, now the person is going to be using all of the the services, right, they're going to be running the water, the drains, everything's going to be used the electrical, you're going to have problems, you're going to have work orders, you're going to have constant, that the property manager is going to constantly be going out there to fix issues. And the tenant base that's going to live in that property, more than likely is going to be a little rougher. So you're going to have issues, filling the vacancy with a quality tenant, as well. So that's gonna affect your bottom line. So you know, when you buy a property like that, so you're out of state and you're buying a house in Detroit, we see that a lot, right? Both houses are on paper. They look fantastic, but usually they're a little rougher. I've actually went in to sell a few homes for a client of mine. I don't do it in Detroit anymore, but I would tell him, Look, bro, I'm in the living room and I can see daylight dude, I'm looking out. And he's like, no way there's that roof is supposed to be fixed. I'm like, yeah, it's there. rougher properties. So you know, if you're gonna buy something like that plan on, you know, getting your eyes on it and plan on put some money into it, and that'll help you on work orders.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, having owners that are involved in heavy repositions like that to, really makes a big, big difference to so if you have, you know, a property manager, if I was a property management, I saw an owner that was flying out and, you know, taking it seriously and not just leaving the pm to sort out all the mess, right? Yeah, I think that's one thing and then also being capitalized enough as an owner to help the property manager solve problems with that, right? I think and I think that's what you were saying already. Like, don't buy a crappy property. Just make sure make sure that it's in your business plan to be able to, to address problems as they come up and not be not be pinching pennies and trying to squeeze everything out its tenants, right?

Grant Warrington:

Yeah, meaning don't buy a crappy property and then try to put that product right on the market. Yeah, I get upset when the property management says no, we need to do this, this and this. And to your point, someone that is involved or is on site, I could go there and walk them through the property and I could show them everything. I I see that's going to need to be repaired, there's going to be an issue or things like that. So when you do have someone involved, yeah, I would love to go out there and go, Oh, look, here's the problem here. Here's the problem here.

Derek Clifford:

Fantastic. All right, last question that I have for you before we hop into the Rapid Round here, which is one of my favorite segments of the show. But you know, you've had a lot of experiences wearing a lot of different hats as a property manager, you know, someone who rolls up their sleeves, and does construction work and estimating work and trying to put deals together as a distressed property investor, right? How have your experiences as a person wearing these different hats, changed your approach to investing over time? What is it? What are you looking for nowadays that maybe you weren't looking for early on?

Grant Warrington:

I think one of the major things now I'm looking for help and partners. Okay, so one of the major things like I did this last year, and I made a huge mistake. We couldn't find a handyman. And I, like I don't have a job. So I'm like, You know what, I'll go be the handyman. Yeah, like, I'm halfway decent, I can fill that void, right. And I probably three months I was, I was the handyman and it was alright, I enjoyed it for a minute. I was making a ton of content. So I'm like, Yeah, this isn't bad, right? And then my buddy asked me two questions. He said, Are you are you creating money? Or are you saving money? And I was like, Shit, I'm saving money. And he goes, dude, you're doing the wrong thing. So that was huge for me. And right, then my wife and I said, That's it. I'm done being the handyman. And we found somebody, we hired it out. Because there's people out there and we found somebody in that roll, I've never gone back to that. So that was huge for me. And now that's that's the change. And that's freed up time for me to be able to to find other bigger deals and pursue that area we're headed into now.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, I love that. That's a microcosm of leverage. I think you guys have discovered leverage. And I'm glad that you were able to discover that, right? Because here's the deadly thing, right? It is awesome. If you are willing to work. If you have a great work ethic. I find it myself. I love to do everything in this business. Right. I love capital raising. I love talking with operators like you. I love talking with lenders doing due diligence, like underwriting. I love every piece of this because it's good in its own. Right, right. Yeah. But that's the problem is that it'll sink you in, and you won't be able to get to make any forward progress on what really matters. Because you'll really just be buying yourself a job if you're trying to do everything. So I love that shift in mindset and perspective, for you to be able to realize that it's time to move on and start to do things that will help you grow the business even more. So. That's great. Good stuff. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about team building and you know, things that you're looking at right now to grow in the next three years?

Grant Warrington:

Actually, we made a commitment in January to go abundance event last January, and I called my wife and I'm like, Look, yeah, I just talked to a GoPro and I told him, I'm going to syndicate 100 units, or I'm going to and I'm going to buy a 16 unit apartment building. And he's like, why would you buy the 16 unit apartment building isn't gonna be a lot of work. And I'm like, oh, yeah, it's gonna take two years, it's gonna be everything I just said, it's gonna be need a ton of work. It's going to be stressful. My wife and I, and he's like, why don't you just focus on syndicating? 100 units? And I'm like, You know what? I called my wife that night. And she's like, thank you. And that was it. And I actually talked to you, I reached out to you a while back. And because it's a problem when you're getting into it, right? We have all this experience in apartments, but finding deal flow was a problem. So we were fortunate enough to be able to jump on a team that had 780 million in assets under management. And they said, Hey, do you want to do some things with us? And we said, yeah, and then two months later, after being intentional, and then January 26, or whatever it was, two months later, we were on a team under contract on a property for 98 units. So I mean, just being intentional is one of the one of the biggest things that I've gotten out of abundance and just about, you know, moving us forward, my wife and I, and our team.

Derek Clifford:

I love this. I love this. Yeah, this is fantastic. And this is just an indicator of the things to come, right? Just directing that energy, right? Like, because you have the energy scattered, right. You're like, I want it 60 Yeah, for myself. And then I want this, like you're training like two separate businesses, and you're looking to expand into both right? Yeah, but it takes that perspective and the reality check and being able to talk with accountability partners on what it is that you truly want deep down through a different mechanism and step into it fully. And I think that's a mindset thing. And as you're growing your mindset, your team grows along with it. And I just got to say, bravo, because that's good stuff.

Grant Warrington:

Thanks. And that was one of the biggest things the problems I had, right? Just just, we had gotten from zero to 41 units, right? With no money, like I said, and, and I'm like, Dude, we're like this Rocky Balboa like come from behind shouldn't be here, chip on the shoulder kind of attitude, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, we're here, and I'm like, something clicked in, I was like, I'm never gonna get past 41 units, I'm never gonna get to 1000 units with that type of an attitude. Because nobody I know, at that level has that attitude, they have a giving and helpful and abundance mentality, right. And I really needed to change that. And that, and that really changed. You know, that's why I did join abundance, but I needed to change that mentality, and whatever gets me to 1000 units, there's going to be something there that I'm going to have to change that mentality to so it's just all about all about personal growth. And that's been a huge part of our business as well.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, absolutely. I always find that, you know, mindset is the leading indicator to any type of growth in business, personal anything, it's kind of like this, this, this bedrock, right that, yeah, that gives everything a place to grow. So good stuff. So, Grant, this is awesome. And we could be talking about this for hours. But unfortunately, what we'll do is we're gonna head over to our Rapid Round, which is the final part of our show. And it's five questions that we ask every one of our guests, and they're meant to be answered in about 30 seconds apiece. So if you're ready, we can jump right in. Let's do it. All right. Question number one, what book has had the biggest impact on you and why? And we ask that it not be either the Bible or the purple Bible known as Rich Dad, Poor Dad,

Grant Warrington:

How to Win Friends and Influence People, if you're an investor, or anyone in the world or in business or anything. I don't care what you are read that book, it teaches you how to be a better listener, and just how to get along with people been huge for me.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, that's an incredible book. People always forget that real estate investing is a people business. I think we talked about this already. Right? And that if your tenants, your tenants are people, your property management team is people, your investors are people. And so the better that you can do to work with people by working on that part of you, the better it's going to be. It's really counterintuitive, but it has worked like a gym for me as well. So I'm glad you mentioned that. Number two, if people want to emulate your success, what do you think is the first actionable thing that they could do to follow in your footsteps?

Grant Warrington:

Start listening to podcasts like yours, that's what I did. I went out there and got some information, I Googled everything, I could listen to podcasts. And that's where I would start and figure out where you know where you're gonna fit in. If you can buy a single family home, buy a single family home, whatever you can do to move forward if you're not ready for bigger properties yet,

Derek Clifford:

Bingo, take that action. Love it. Number three, what is one tool process or hack in the last three to six months that you've employed? That has helped save you time? And or effort?

Grant Warrington:

I would say probably that what I told you earlier, am I creating money? You know, or am I saving money? I think that's a great one to look at it. And I have been looking at my time and giving that away, hired somebody to cut my grass, these little things that I thought I'd never give away. I'm slowly giving those things away to free up more of my time. Time is very valuable to me now.

Derek Clifford:

It is, it is and really, these little things add up don't think, yeah, you know what, eventually, if you can outsource a lot of the things that that you either are doing just because you're doing them or you've grown up doing them, it just really opens up a whole new life you as well. So love that. Okay, number four, if the people that you know had to describe you with one single word, what do you think that word would be?

Grant Warrington:

Honest, I pride myself on not lying. I don't lie. So that's one thing I'm very proud of to say.

Derek Clifford:

Does that have anything to do with what you went through 10 years ago and escaping alcoholism as well?

Grant Warrington:

I yeah, I would say so. Because I was living this you know, this life that yeah, I wasn't proud of and I think coming out of that, I think yeah, that that's really helped me be a better person. And in the growth as well. Like I always say like you can you can be an asshole when you you know, you drink and you're an asshole and you can quit drinking and still be an asshole too. So just because you quit drinking doesn't mean your life is going to dramatically change you need personal growth. And and that's been huge for me, but I think that's probably where that does come from.

Derek Clifford:

Good. Awesome. I love it. And yeah, that's that's a great thing that you've learned from that because it's a blessing in disguise, not in disguise. In plain sight, obviously. So. All right, last question number five. What is one small thing that most people do not know about you?

Grant Warrington:

I love creating content, I guess is all I can think of offhand but I love it. Doing I love creating some content, helping some people out putting it out into the world and seeing the reaction, like, what comes back from it. So that that's one thing I'm really passionate about now is, you know, as well as investing in apartment buildings, the two for me go hand in hand and something I'm just super excited about.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, that's great, man. Well, Grant, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was awesome having you. But before we go, why don't you tell the listeners a little bit more about how they can find out what's going on in your world? Or if they want to contact you? How can people do so?

Grant Warrington:

Yeah, it's really three ways about our apartment investing Warrington. capital.com, get some information there. On Instagram, Grant Warrington and on Tiktok grant Warrington. I'm huge on those platforms. And, you know, you DM me, or reach out to me in any of those places. I also there's a link in my bio on all those and you can schedule a free 30 minute phone call with me.

Derek Clifford:

Awesome. Well, Grant, it's been a pleasure having you on and listeners, fellow listeners who have reached the end of the show here. I just want to thank you guys for being with us. And you know, we've recorded almost 125 130 episodes. And I know that there's folks out there that have listened to every single one of them. So I really want to call out those and thank them specifically for being a part of our family. And for those who just found us please make sure that you like comment, subscribe, wherever you're listening or watching this content. It really helps appease those algorithm Gods so that we can get exposure to more and more people and then bring on incredible guests just like Grant on the show. So Grant, thank you once more again for coming on. It's been a pleasure having you.

Grant Warrington:

Thanks for having me. Derek. I enjoyed it, man.

Derek Clifford:

Absolutely. Thank you and for all you listeners out there. Thank you very much. This is Derek. We will see you next week. I'm signing off for the day. Take care, everyone!