JF2335: Focusing On BRRRR With Anam & Aamir Hashambhai

Anam and Aamir Hashambhai are a husband and wife team. Anam is a marketing director for a local luxury auto group while Aamir runs a family dry cleaning business with several locations. They have been focusing on the BRRRR strategy, completing 19 properties so far, and have a goal of continued growth. 

Anam & Aamir Hashambhai  Real Estate Background:

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“Get started and focus on creating the best product for the best price ” – Anam & Aamir Hashambhai

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Theo Hicks: Hello Best Ever listeners and welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Theo Hicks, and today I’ll be speaking with two guests. We’ve got Anam and Aamir Hashambhai. How are you guys doing today?

Aamir Hashambhai: Great. How’s it going?

Anam Hashambhai: Good.

Theo Hicks: I’m great. Thanks for asking, and thank you for joining us today. A little bit about their backgrounds – so Anam is a marketing director for a local luxury automotive group. And Aamir runs a family dry cleaning business operation with several locations. They have three years of investing experience in real estate. Their current experience is with purchasing 19 properties. And they also do BRRRRs. So they’ve completed 15 BRRRRs, and have four in progress. Based in Dallas, Texas. You can say hi to them on their Instagram page, which is @rehabrental. So starting with Anam, can you tell us some more about your background and then what you’re focused on today?

Anam Hashambhai: Yeah, absolutely. So after graduating high school, I went to SMU, which is a private university around the corner from where I grew up. I went there for business school. Graduated with a degree in marketing advertising, and went into the field of marketing and advertising, and I’m currently in that field.

When it comes to real estate, basically, we sat down three years ago, and we were like “What do we actually want to do for the rest of our lives?” And we both kind of have a passion — he loves numbers, and I love designing. So real estate was kind of the path that we wanted to go down. So that’s kind of what I do now. I do a lot of the leasing, the designing, helping with what the best layout is, and stuff like that…. And then he’ll go into detail what he does, but he does numbers, that I don’t like doing.

Aamir Hashambhai: The way I got started – while I was in high school I was always helping out with my family business, and actually, throughout middle school, high school, I was helping out with my family business. Went to community college for about a year or a year and a half or so; I didn’t finish up over there… I just completely took over with the family business and ran that, grew it as much as I possibly could. After that, we decided that we wanted to kind of do something for ourselves… Because we were dating for a while, and like, we started talking about stuff like that.

We stepped into real estate, and we fell in love with it from the beginning. It was tough in the beginning, because it was a good learning curve… We really liked that it was like our own, and we started on our own, without the help of anybody else…. And we just took off with that.

Currently with real estate, like she said, I’m running most of the numbers, out on the field as much as possible, managing our contractors, the maintenance calls, anything to do with getting guys to where they need to be, getting materials to where we need to get them to, stuff like that.

Theo Hicks: Perfect. So can you explain in a little bit more detail why you picked real estate? You guys mentioned that you wanted to figure out what you were going to do with the rest of your lives, and you guys knew what you were good at, but for example, why didn’t you go into an interior design business or something? Why specifically real estate? Maybe tell us how you became aware of it.

Anam Hashambhai: So both of us actually grew up in a family that had family-run businesses, as in various service-based businesses, which meant you were there from 7 am to 7 pm, doing things on the weekend. It was just a lot of labor-intensive — and service business, so now you had people you had to please. Over the years, it’s done very well for both families. We became jaded a little bit. What people learn is we like people, but we also like being by ourselves and doing things in the background. But what business can we do that still projects us, we still interact with people, but on our own terms, on our own time, from anywhere, essentially, which is one of the reasons we decided to go that route.

Theo Hicks: That’s interesting. Yeah.

Aamir Hashambhai: And after the initial rehab, and the whole processing of getting the money together, getting the project completed, getting the backend financing – after all the major work is done on each of these projects, it’s very hands-off. Because it’s a smooth process kind of after that. You’ve got a couple of maintenance calls here and there and there’s some paperwork to do on a monthly basis, but other than that, it’s a very hands-off business.

Theo Hicks: Perfect. So you guys landed on real estate… And obviously, there are probably literally a million different types of strategies. So it sounds like you guys do BRRRRs. So the 19 you two have, were those all BRRRRs? So you bought them, rehab them, refinanced, rented, and then repeated? Or did you buy some turnkey properties and then get into BRRRRs? Or have you always done BRRRRs?

Aamir Hashambhai: We have specifically [unintelligible [00:07:26].10] BRRRRs. It just makes sense to us because you’re going into a property where you’re going to add some value to the property. You’re buying it in a very distressed condition, that’s why you’re getting deep discounts. And then you’re going to go in and add value, whether you’re adding square footage, or whether you’re just renovating it cosmetically, or whatever it is. And then you’re going to pull your money, most, if not all; you’re going to pull most of it back out doing a refinance because of the added value.

Theo Hicks: So you picked a BRRRR because of the value-add and the ability to pull money back out?

Aamir Hashambhai: Correct.

Anam Hashambhai: Basically.

Theo Hicks: Okay. So you’ve got four BRRRRs going on right now. Have you always done multiple at a time? Or did you start off doing one?

Aamir Hashambhai: This year was kind of a weird year where the first half of the year we had no idea what was going on with the world. For the last two years, we’ve done probably five or six, on average. The first half of this year, we only did one, because after March or so everything basically shut down. Some of our refinances that were in progress completely got halted. So a lot of our money was actually stuck in some of the deals.

We also didn’t know what was going to happen, whether we were going to get our rents on time… And then we had a couple of projects that we had to hurry up and quickly get done, so that we can get somebody in there to start getting some revenue back in. After July or so, when we kind of felt like okay, because the rents are coming in on time, and the lending market kind of opened back up, we completely jumped on in and I think we picked up five or six.

Anam Hashambhai: Six. We picked up six in three months. Yeah.

Aamir Hashambhai: Yeah. We picked up six units in the last three months. So it’s been a busy second half so far.

Theo Hicks: Are these all single-family homes?

Anam Hashambhai: All of them but our most recent purchase. We actually just purchased a duplex. So everything but those two are single-family rentals.

Theo Hicks: Is the plan moving forward to continue to do duplexes now? Or it was just kind of like a unique situation?

Anam Hashambhai: That particular deal was a super unique situation. We do want to eventually get into multi-family. Whether that’s another duplex, triplex, or bigger, like a 40-unit. I think in the next year we most likely will probably jump into one of those — like, it’s not big, but small multi-family, like 20 units plus,

Theo Hicks: When you got started three years ago, how much money did you guys start off with? And then where’d it come from? Was it money you guys had saved up from your jobs?

Aamir Hashambhai: So we had very little of our own capital. We did have some savings off our personal, but we opened up a lot of different credit lines and stuff, to get money for the deals. So what we did was for the actual purchase of the units we opened up a business line of credit against our business, and then we opened up a home equity line of credit against our home, so that we can use that for the purchase money. We opened up a couple of different credit cards for the renovations, so we could purchase the materials on those, and then basically with the money that we had saved, we use that for our labor costs. So a little bit from everything.

Theo Hicks: Okay, perfect. Is that how you still fund the deals, is with those lines of credit? Or are you using the money that was made from those deals?

Aamir Hashambhai: We amplified it now a little bit… Because in the beginning, in a way, we were kind of risk-averse, because we weren’t going to have interest payments on our personal capital, and very little on the business lines of credit, because they were given to us at like 4% or 5%, very low interest rates. But now what we did was we amplified that. We still use the same cash, but we also couple that with some of our private lending or hard money lenders, so that we can do more deals at the same time.

Theo Hicks: How are you guys finding your deals?

Anam Hashambhai: We are probably on a hundred different list of wholesalers in the DFW market. We almost pretty religiously just purchase from wholesalers; we don’t try to do it ourselves. Someone else can do that for us. And I think we probably look at 10 to 15 deals a day. We probably offer multiple offers a week, and then usually something comes to light from there.

Theo Hicks: So basically, you’re on these lists, the emails come out, you look at every deal, and then you send the offers on ones that makes sense. And then you [unintelligible [00:11:10].00] the ones that you get awarded?

Anam Hashambhai: Yeah.

Aamir Hashambhai: We know the areas that we want to stay specifically into, and then the areas that we completely don’t want to buy in. So the first thing is just to judge it out by the areas. There’s a specific price point that we’d like to stay in, which is the sub 120k or so on the purchase price. So any deals above that, we don’t dabble into. There are a couple of other items that you look at also.

Anam Hashambhai: So we basically use an acronym called AREA. We’ll basically scan it very quickly when it comes in our emails, using that. So literally, the AREA is “Is there investor activity?” We look at is there a lot of retail near? Is or Walmart? Is there Starbucks? Is there Chick-fil-A? Because that warrants a lot of foot traffic, which means the property would be rented easily. We look at education in terms of how close the school is. We like buying in neighborhoods where one of the schools are at least walking distance or super close. And then it’s a formula. If we buy at a certain price, but the ARV is a certain price, we don’t really even consider it. We will never put ourselves in a position where we’re stretching. We always run our numbers at worst-case scenarios, just to protect ourselves.

So it’s fun analyzing a bajillion deals a day when you also have full-time jobs at the same time… But the cool part is we’ve gotten so good at it by practice that we almost never look at any of the homes we actually offer on, and the ones we even buy. There’s some of them we will never look at, as long as it fits our criteria and the numbers work for us.

Theo Hicks: What was the first A?

Anam Hashambhai: The first A is area. Actually the area, so we look at the area.

Theo Hicks: Oh.

Anam Hashambhai: I know it’s kind of confusing. The acronym is called AREA, but the first A is area also.

Theo Hicks: It’s perfect. So, area, retail, education, ARV?

Anam Hashambhai: Yes.

Theo Hicks: Perfect. So you did mention not wanting to look at a bazillion deals while working full-time jobs. I’ll ask that in a second, but one other question that I had is – so whenever you’re looking at a wholesale deal, and this is for the ARV in a sense, so how do you know how much money you’ll have to invest into the rehab costs without seeing the property?

Aamir Hashambhai: Most of our cosmetic rehabs over the years – it’s very, very cosmetic, and barely anything to do. We’re roughly coming in around 10 bucks a square foot. If it’s cosmetics plus maybe a component here or there, like an AC, or foundation, or roof, we’re probably in the $15 to $18 a square foot range. And then if it’s a very heavy rehab, where we’re doing A/C, roof, foundation, full cosmetics…

Anam Hashambhai: Down to the beams.

Aamir Hashambhai: Yeah. Then we’re talking about somewhere between the $20 to $25 a square foot. So when we look at pictures, we can kind of get a pretty good idea of which ballpark it’s going to be in, and then we’ll run our numbers based on that.

Theo Hicks: That’s very helpful. The last question before the Best Ever question… So maybe tell us for each of you how your weeks are structured? So when are you working at your full-time jobs, and then when are you doing real estate stuff?

Anam Hashambhai: So for me, I have a more corporate job, so it’s super structured in terms of timing. I go in, I’m at my day job from eight to probably [5:30], 6 o’clock. So real estate for me is very much nights and weekends. We start our weekends at 7 am, we work Saturday and Sundays, just because I like touching and feeling our properties and making sure everything passes my personal design inspection. [unintelligible [00:14:33].04]  I don’t think it would always be what I want it to be. There are times if something comes up in the middle of the day, I’m able to handle it. I have a very great job that allows me to be a little flexible, but most of [unintelligible [00:14:43].09]

Aamir Hashambhai: Yeah, I like to start my mornings early off at my family business, and then as we need to, I just make adjustments. So like whether it’s meeting contractors, or appraisers, or the city officials, or whatever it is, I’ll structure my day accordingly. But usually, my mornings start off right around six or seven at the family’s business, and then probably in the afternoon I’ll go back to the real estate side between 12 and 4, 12 and 5, I’ll focus on that, meeting guys on projects, or whatever it is. And then I’ll end my day back at the business.

Theo Hicks: Alrighty. Starting with Aamir, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?

Aamir Hashambhai: The best advice ever is to get started. There’s a lot of people who just focus on reading and learning as much as they can, but you’re not going to get the experience until you fully get going, until you jump in.

Theo Hicks: And then Anam?

Anam Hashambhai: You want to be the best product at the best price. You never want to be at the higher end and you never want to put too many high-end finishings if the area isn’t warranted. So mine is the best price for the best product, for the area.

Theo Hicks: Perfect. Are you ready for the Best Ever lightning round?

Anam Hashambhai: Yeah, we are.

Theo Hicks: Perfect. Alright. First a…

Anam Hashambhai: [unintelligible [00:15:52].07] lightning speed here.

Theo Hicks: I think I said the Best Ever lightning round, at lightning speed, so I guess you didn’t understand me. Alright. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

Break: [00:16:02] – [00:16:52]

Theo Hicks: Okay. So we’re going to do Anam and Aamir, for each of these in that order. So Best Ever book you’ve recently read?

Anam Hashambhai: Actually, I’m in the process of reading Girls Stop Apologizing book. It’s a self-help book.

Aamir Hashambhai: I don’t think I’ve ever read a full book. If I do read, I’m reading articles and just blog posts. and stuff like that. Just on items that I’m looking for.

Theo Hicks: What’s your go-to source of these articles and blogs?

Aamir Hashambhai: Bigger Pockets.

Theo Hicks: Bigger pockets? Okay. Let’s see. If your business were to collapse today, your real estate business, what would you do next?

Anam Hashambhai: Sleep on it. Think about it, and probably start back up the next day.

Aamir Hashambhai: Yeah. Alcohol, sleep and then get back started. You can’t lose your mind. So you figure out what you need to do. So if you’ve lost everything, you would just basically go, start day one, and get restarted. It’s not that big of a deal.

Theo Hicks: Exactly, yup. The concept of the first million is the hardest. And after that, you know how to get it. Okay, what is the best deal you guys have done so far?

Anam Hashambhai: That we’ve actually finished? Our best deal would be one of our Fort Worth deals.

Aamir Hashambhai: Yeah.

Anam Hashambhai: Yeah. I guess it’s a shared answer.

Aamir Hashambhai: Yeah. It was the Fort Worth deal. This was one that came out to us early in the morning and we were able to lock it up like five minutes after it came out. We purchased that one for 80,000. It took us about two weeks on the renovations. The renovations were super light; I think we came in at 12,000 on the renovation budget. So we were all in, with closing costs, renovation, everything, for about 95k. The appraisal came back at 160k, so we were able to pull out not only what we were in it for, but an extra 20 or 30,000 on top of that, and get it rented and still cash flow about 500 bucks.

Theo Hicks: Have you guys lost any money on any of your deals?

Aamir Hashambhai: Technically, we do a BRRRR strategy, so it would just be leaving more money into the deal. So technically, no. Our appraisals have never come in lower than what we were in it for it, if that’s what you’re asking.

Theo Hicks: Okay. What is the Best Ever way you like to give back?

Anam Hashambhai: I like to give back by being very active on our Instagram. I like giving advice to people. We occasionally do calls here and there just to get newbie investors started, because sometimes they just need that extra push to make it feel real. Real people that are similar to them in age are doing what they want to do.

Aamir Hashambhai: Yeah, she handles Instagram. But a lot of our callers will just call me or text me if they know me, and just be like “Hey, I got a quick question on this.” And then we’ll hop on a call or answer any questions in text or whatever.

Theo Hicks: Okay. And then lastly, what’s the Best Ever place to reach you? I think I know the answer to this, but go ahead.

Anam Hashambhai: You can reach out to us on our Instagram @rehabrental. We’re not very active anywhere else.

Aamir Hashambhai: Definitely, that’s probably the best place to reach us.

Theo Hicks: It’s like a solid Instagram handle. You think that’d be taken, but I guess it wasn’t.

Anam Hashambhai: Yes, I would have liked it to be @rentalrehab but that was taken.

Theo Hicks: That was taken? Okay.

Aamir Hashambhai: She also had DFW on there, which we dropped that, because it made no sense.

Theo Hicks: A good point. Alright Anan and Aamir, thank you for joining us and kind of going into a lot of detail on your strategy, as well as how you guys started. So we talked about why you guys chose real estate in the first place – kind of jaded from growing up in service businesses, and so you wanted to find something that was your own, but you can choose your hours and choose when you have to deal with people. And then it’s hands-off on the back end, once the actual deal is completed.

We talked about why you selected BARRRR — or BRRRR… And that’s because of — I’m not sure where the A would be, I think I’m getting ahead of myself with AREA. [laughter] The BRRRR strategy, because it’s the best value-add play, you’d pull all the money out, and rinse and repeat. We talked about how you’re funding the deals. Originally, you guys really just did lines of credit to do it. Now you guys have some private lending you use.

Deals are all through wholesalers. We talked about your AREA acronym for when you quickly analyze deals. So thank you for sharing that. Again that’s the area, so the geographic location, the market, you know your market very well, so you guys can do that pretty quickly… Retail, so what’s the retail situation nearby – Walmarts, Starbucks, and

Chick-fil-A’s. You said education, so schools within walking distance. And then the ARV.

I really liked how you broke down the rehab cost, so you said $1 per square foot for those three different categories, that’s very helpful. Because when you do look at the pictures,  you can kind of gauge and estimate what the rehab costs are going to be.

Then we talked about when you are actually able to work on real estate. And since you guys work a lot, so nights weekends for Anam, and then for Aamir – your job is a little more flexible… So you kind of have both situations going on. And then Best Ever advice – Amir was education is important, but you’re not going to make money by just reading books. And then Anam was “the best product for the best price”. Don’t have the best house in the block, don’t have the worst house on the block. Find that sweet spot. So thank you again both for joining us today. Best Ever listeners, as always, thank you for listening. Have a Best Ever day and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Anam Hashambhai: Thank you.

Aamir Hashambhai: Thank you. See yah.

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