Full-time firefighter Seth Teagle started his investing journey five years ago. Now, he focuses on multifamily and commercial properties. Today, Seth’s sharing how he gained thousands of units in a short amount of time, the process of raising under-market rents, and how he offloaded mundane tasks to scale his investments further.
Seth Teagle Real Estate Background:
- Firefighter/paramedic and owner/operator of the Stream Group, a vertically integrated commercial real estate company based out of Columbus, OH
- Focused on buying large multifamily assets and apartment complexes, as well as some retail and mixed-use spaces
- As a team, they are currently operating 2,162 doors and own over 75% of this portfolio themselves
- Based in Columbus, OH
- Say hi to him at: www.thestreamgroups.com
- Best Ever Book: Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork
Click here to know more about our sponsors:
TRANSCRIPTION
Ash Patel: Hello, Best Ever listeners. Welcome to the Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever Show. I’m Ash Patel, and I’m with today’s guest, Seth Teagle. Seth is joining us from Columbus, Ohio. He is a firefighter/paramedic and owner/operator of the Stream Group, a vertically integrated commercial real estate company, which focuses on multifamily and mixed-use properties.
Ash Patel: Seth, thank you for joining us, and how are you today?
Seth Teagle: Doing great. Thank you for having me.
Ash Patel: It’s our pleasure. Seth, before we get started, can you give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and what you’re focused on now?
Seth Teagle: Yeah, so I’ve been in the fire service for 21 years, basically most of my adult life. I got into real estate investing about 5-6 years ago, and right now we do strictly commercial multifamily. And then one of our partners does some mixed-use property, ground-up construction, and whatnot. But for the most part, I’m heavily involved in just the commercial multifamily space.
Ash Patel: Seth, how did you get started?
Seth Teagle: So I had been a fireman for a long time and wanted to get financial freedom, change the way that my life was going, just from what my parents had, and whatnot. So I met a guy that was flipping houses and started talking with him, and long story short, I managed property for him for a while, and then I was doing project management for him, and realized quickly that single-family and flipping houses was not really the way that I wanted to scale. So I worked with him for about a year, and then put a deal together and bought my—first deal I bought was a 50 unit, and it’s been going forward ever since.
Ash Patel: The first unit you bought was a 50 unit. Tell me more about that deal.
Seth Teagle: Yeah, so like I said, I’d been working with him for a while, I realized quickly that having everything underneath one roof would be very scalable or more efficient… And I was still having a career, I worked 24 hours on and then I had two days off. That seemed to be the path of least resistance for me, so I went to an investor that I knew that had a decent-sized portfolio and had a lot of equity in it, and took the money that I’d been saving, and talked to him and just said, “Hey look, if we partner together on this, I’ll run it, manage it, renovate it, everything, and just kind of handle the whole transaction. I just need somebody to kind of go in with me.” I put a whole presentation together for him to kind of give him—to boost his confidence, kind of see what I’ve been doing, what my experience was. So I went and looked in the markets around me, where I could get the most doors for my money and that was a deal that I found, and we bought it and have taken a full cycle now.
Ash Patel: Can we dive into that deal?
Seth Teagle: Yeah, so that deal specifically, I went into a tertiary market. So I’m in Columbus, this deal was up in Zanesville, Ohio, which is a rural town, and if you look at it on the map, or you look at data, if you’re looking at markets, it wouldn’t be somewhere that you would ever probably look at… But being local and knowing the area, I knew the demand was high. The population out there is less than 50,000, but over half of those people rent. So I knew the demand for rentals is really high out there. I found the deal through a realtor who knew the owner, and he had had the property for about 12 years, and really he kind of ran it into the ground. I think it had always kind of been a rougher property, but he was using it as just a place to park money for a while. So I went and toured it, I saw the tremendous upside that could be there if it was ran right… So I put the deal together between myself and the investor, and we bought it and renovated it, over a year we did 40 units, and at month 13, we refi’d and pulled out a million dollars of equity.
Ash Patel: Seth, what was the purchase price of that property?
Seth Teagle: $1.7 million.
Ash Patel: And how much did you raise on that deal?
Seth Teagle: We put in 25%, initially, to buy it. So we split that cost between the two of us. And then I realized quickly, being my first deal, that I was undercapitalized. So I went out and had some other people that were interested in real estate that didn’t know how to get into it, but they were willing to lend me money, and so they just were debt investors. I raised probably doing that over $250,000.
Ash Patel: And was that for renovations?
Seth Teagle: Yep. So it was strictly just a blue note, contract with a promissory note. And they lent me the money; no second position, no first position, nothing like that. We used that money basically to do the renovations, and then once we refi’d, everybody got paid back. So it went really well.
Ash Patel: That’s interesting. So you closed on the deal. You guys were 50/50 equity partners.
Seth Teagle: Yep.
Ash Patel: Why didn’t you go back to your partner and say, “Hey, we need more money.”
Seth Teagle: Because I knew at that point in time, he had no more to give. He had refi’d two of his properties to get the money that he had, and he just wasn’t in a position to add more money to the deal. It was interesting… It caused me to learn a lot through that deal, because I had always, in my life — like, I had a good construction background, so I found myself down there doing a lot of the work while I was managing the contractors, but I was also working right alongside them, because I only had so much money and I needed to go as far as I could. The place needed a lot of renovation, so that very first deal, I put a lot of sweat equity into that to really get it to work, but the payoff was great.
Ash Patel: And what a great thing you did from your partner’s perspective, where you didn’t rely on him for more money, saying, “Hey, I forgot about this huge expense renovations.” You went out and found a solution and got it done. A 50 unit property for your first deal – I would imagine you learn a lot of hard lessons. What are some of those other lessons you learned on this?
Seth Teagle: Well, the number one lesson I learned was that it went amazingly well compared to what it could have done than other properties we’ve done since then. At any point, it could have gone really bad. And I didn’t know what I didn’t know back then, so I just had no idea that just around the corner it could have really went downhill.
But some of the other things I learned is like I said, sweat equity is super-important on your first deal, trying to do whatever you have to do to get it done, and for it to be successful. I knew that if I could get it done, and it could be done right, and we refi’d, and it worked, not only would I prove the process to myself and to my family, but it would enable me to get into the next deal, and it would help me to build a resume and a track record.
That was one of the things I learned early on, was that it takes a lot more than just having the money to be able to buy a deal like this. I went to, I think, five banks, and was told at each one of them that I looked good as far as an operator and experience and credit, and all the things I was good to loan to, and the property looked good, but they would not loan to me because I had never owned a property of this size or done a deal like this. And we were very close to thinking the deal wouldn’t go through, but then through my network, an attorney had introduced me to a lender that actually kept their loan on their own books, and they agreed to do the loan, but they wouldn’t give me any money for construction. So I had $50,000 in the bank, thinking that that would be enough, and I learned quickly that that was not going to be enough… And like I said, so it really pushed me outside of my comfort zone, and I was not going to give up. I knew that blood, sweat and tears, I was going to get this deal done and it was going to be a success.
Ash Patel: That’s a great story. What kind of interest did you pay your debt investors?
Seth Teagle: I gave them 10% interest on their money. So that was great for them, but it wasn’t like hard money lending terms.
Ash Patel: Yeah. And do you still use that lender today?
Seth Teagle: No. So I used that lender, and then when we refi’d, they weren’t offering me a very great interest rate. So I went away from them. I still could use them, but now we’ve gone into using more of a loan broker out of Cleveland, Ohio, because I’m in Columbus, and we do more bridge debt now. But again, I learned then that just getting the deal done is the first part, but then what are you going to do [unintelligible [00:07:34].02] construction. So if you don’t raise the capital, then you have to get it from the lender… But those can sometimes be tough loans to do as well, because the process to get them to release your money, similar to a construction loan, it can be painstaking and slow, and sometimes it can slow your renovation down. So there’s ups and downs and I think you have to kind of weigh that… If it’s your first deal and you don’t have a lot of capital to pull, that might be the way to go. But now what we do, I guess, is – if I use a bridge loan, I don’t have to dilute my equity down that much. If we don’t do it, then I end up giving up more equity to bring in more investors.
Ash Patel: Seth, what kind of terms do you get on a bridge loan?
Seth Teagle: What we’ve seen right now is about 6.5% interest for 12 months, and then after that, we can refi with no penalty. Usually, the term is good for two years, with an ability to extend for two more years and that’s really it. It’s usually one point in, sometimes it’s one point out, it just depends. But yeah, about 6.5% interest is what we’re seeing.
Ash Patel: And do you find using a loan broker is beneficial?
Seth Teagle: For me now, because of the size of our portfolio, it’s just time. It is. They’ll lend some money, put the loan together but I don’t have to go to five different banks.
The one thing that I learned was that you could go to a bank and a loan officer can tell you all day long that they’re going to be able to do the loan for you, but then when it gets to the credit committee, the whole story can change. So I use Chris Litzler and Jamie Litzler, the owners of Marcus & Millichap out of Cleveland. They underwrite the deal, they look at it alongside us, and if they say they can do it, it’s done. And that’s a great relief off of my shoulders, because that’s always the problem – you’re working hard, trying to put the deal together, move the needle, and then also you’re financing. You’re two weeks, three weeks away from closing, and then your financing falls through – that’s never good when you’re trying to build a reputation with brokers and sellers and everybody in the marketplace.
Ash Patel: I would imagine the rents were under market and that’s how you added a million dollars in value. Is that correct?
Seth Teagle: Yes. We did a lot of renovation, but the seller was getting around $500 to $550 for a two-bedroom, and we’re getting almost $800 now. And he was getting $450, I think, for a one-bedroom, and we’re getting around $650 to $675. So we’ve refi’d very early, just for me to have proof of concept, and to kind of move on. But if I went back now and tried to refi – there’s even more equity to pull from that. But that was something else, again. Lesson learned was, there’s a reason why most people go 18-24 months before they do a refi on a deal like this, is because it takes usually 12 months or so to get the thing turned around and start cash-flowing, and then you have to have 3-6 months of kind of seasoning period of those new rents for the lender to really kind of believe that that’s going to be something that’s sustainable.
Ash Patel: What did your renovations consist of?
Seth Teagle: All new flooring, paint, lighting, all new windows throughout the complex… We tore the decks off that were dilapidated and kind of falling off, we redid all the decks, redid the parking lots, redid a bunch of exterior work as far as landscaping, and just cleaning the place up. We did full unit turns, new cabinets, countertops, sink, fixtures, flooring. Bathrooms got fully renovated. But that’s one of the big things I think that I learned too, is not over renovating. So I really tried to study the area and like what I thought the cost would be for the rent, and then we would renovate to that. So like in this instance, granite or some of these other high-end fixtures, tile backsplashes – they’re not going to get us any increase in rent for that, so we didn’t do those things.
Ash Patel: And what was your total renovation expense?
Seth Teagle: I think we were all in on renovations for $225,000.
Ash Patel: So that million dollars in equity really filled your pockets back up along with your investor.
Seth Teagle: Yeah, I did really well, for him and for me, and like I said, it allowed me to get into my next deal.
Ash Patel: And multifamily is hot right now, why not sell it?
Seth Teagle: I don’t know; it cash-flows very well, it’s just the two of us still in it, and we make really good money on it. And I have a total of a hundred units down there in that market right now, and we’re in the process of getting close to finishing another complex down there, so we may package those both together… But I’m in it for the longer-term hold. So you know, I still might be in it for 5-7 years, but it’s performing very well right now… And the problem is, if I sell it, then what property am I going to get into?
Ash Patel: You’ve got to find the next one, bigger and faster and better.
Seth Teagle: Yeah, that’s true. Yes, most of my portfolio that I get directly involved with is here in central Ohio. I haven’t ventured into other states; we have some holdings in other places, but it’s through one of our partners in the group. But we’re integrated now, where we do construction in-house and we do all of our property management… So anything that I touch is all here in central Ohio.
Ash Patel: So Seth, you’ve only been doing this a few years. Can you take me through the evolution of your first 50 unit that you’ve gotten refinance out of, to where you are today?
Seth Teagle: Yeah, because Columbus is such a hot market right now, there’s a lot of out-of-state and overseas money that comes here looking for deals, and part of what I noticed or saw when I was trying to grow the business was, I’m an owner-operator here locally that could be an equity partner, could be a KP, could be somebody that can be boots on the ground per se, in our team, that can do a lot of things… So we’ve kind of built ourselves out around that.
So I did two deals on my own that I structured together, then I partnered with an out-of-state company on two of them. So I have equity in those deals, they helped raise capital, and then we run basically all the CapEx and property management. That enabled me to kind of build a team out, to start our own property management company, construction company. We did two deals with them, and it opened me up to outside investors that wanted to get into Columbus, but didn’t have the connection in the market. And so like I said, it’s helped me just put together other deals. So those two are with another company, but then this year alone, we’ve done almost 20 million in real estate. So I think we’ve closed on four transactions this year.
Ash Patel: And how do you get in front of out-of-state and overseas investors?
Seth Teagle: Really, it’s social media doing things like this, I’ll speak with you guys, and then broker relationships. So a lot of the brokers in Columbus that we know, we have good relationships with, we’re local, we meet with them regularly… So they’ll have a buyer that might be coming from New York or California or Oregon or wherever they’re coming from, and they were wanting to buy something, but they have no presence here, so the brokers will connect us.
Ash Patel: What a great lead for investors. Have you also reached out to your network for investment capital?
Seth Teagle: Yeah, so most of the stuff that I’ve done right now – I bought two pretty much on my own, and then the rest of them we’ve syndicated, and it’s all been 506(b) syndication. So it’s all been, like I said, friends and family, or people that I’ve met through networking and whatnot.
Ash Patel: What’s been the biggest challenge with taking on investors?
Seth Teagle: I think just operating at a higher level, there’s all kinds of things that—I guess the reason why we integrated was because I couldn’t come to you and say, “Hey, if you’re going to give me $100,000–” there was no way for me to really truly know if I could get the returns that I was promising you. It wasn’t even necessarily me directly, but the people that worked for me overseeing the project and understanding what the goals were, and then trying to go and achieve those. I had a couple different bad experiences with third-party property management companies, so it forced me then to develop our own company. And then contractors – that’s always a bottleneck for everybody, I feel like. We went to a contractor that we knew that had a decent-sized team and we basically partnered together, where we did a trade agreement where he exclusively worked for us, and any properties that we’re involved with. And then that eliminated the bottleneck of trying to find work, trying to find laborers or licensed electricians, plumbers. He had those connections where we didn’t. So again, I utilized my network.
Ash Patel: What’s the benefit of a contractor signing an exclusive to only work for you?
Seth Teagle: I think, at least with talking with him, is that it’s just the consistency and the scalability. If he’s keeping his own company and he’s wanting to scale, coming on board with us – 90% of what we do is the same, right? We use the same countertops, cabinets, and the same style flooring, the same paint. Again, that’s why Rick does multifamily, because of the scalable nature of it, and he knows our system now so well that they can turn more units faster. So he ends up making more money that way. Versus going out and doing retail, bathrooms, kitchens, decks, all these different things. I mean, there’s tons of that work out there, but I think it’s probably easier for him to do what we’re doing [unintelligible [00:16:07].17] in the retail world.
Ash Patel: Interesting. What is the typical return for your investors?
Seth Teagle: We usually shoot for deals that are 8% to 10% cash-on-cash, and then anywhere between 18% to 22% IRR. So usually, if we present a deal to investors, that’s what we shoot for.
Ash Patel: And is there an anticipated hold period?
Seth Teagle: I would say the minimum is three years, but usually we shoot for five. Like I said, we’ve been buying just in the tertiary and secondary markets around Columbus.
Ash Patel: Seth, if you can go back to your multifamily experience in the beginning, what’s one thing you would do differently?
Seth Teagle: I would probably either pay for a mentor early, or try to link up with somebody… When I got in it, I just didn’t know, and I didn’t know that there was so much out there, one, of free content, but people in groups that you can get involved with that are already doing it. There’s a guy that I met through, again, networking, that was in Cleveland, and he had about 900 units. And I would talk to him probably once a quarter, and some of the conversations that we had early on – it was just mind-blowing the things that he was telling me, and it really, really helped me along early on in my journey. So that’s kind of how I give back as well now is that I do the same thing for other guys that are trying to get into multifamily, or trying to get where I’m at.
Ash Patel: What were some aspects of that conversation from the person in Cleveland that still resonate with you today?
Seth Teagle: I think the one big thing that when I realized I was undercapitalized on that first deal was him telling me, “You’re way undercapitalized”, and just the fear that he put in me that, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got into this thing and I’ve got other people’s money on the line, and I’m doing it wrong from day one.” That’s probably a big one.
The other one would just be, like he said, blood, sweat or tears – it doesn’t matter. You have to be good stewards of other people’s money. And it doesn’t matter what happens to you in that process if you’re operating with integrity; if you tell them, “Here’s what you’re going to get in return,” or “Here’s how this is going to work.” Above all else, you take care of those people.
Ash Patel: So you were under the gun when you needed to raise money on that 50 unit. How did you convince investors to give you their money at a 10% return? Because you really didn’t have a great story. It’s like, “Hey, guys, I screwed up. I need money to do these renovations.” What was the pitch?
Seth Teagle: Well, one, I never said “I screwed up.” I definitely didn’t lead with that, right? The interesting part of it was I had a lot of single-family guys that wanted to get into a big deal like that and they just never believed that it was possible. I guess, limiting beliefs on their end. They prefer flipping houses or they had a bunch of single-family rentals. So I went to them and I just said, “Look, here’s the deal, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s an opportunity for you guys to be private lenders.” They have these single-family homes they have equity in, and they can refi. Instead of going and buying another one, you could lend me the money at this interest rate, but then they can also see what I’m doing from the cockpit, versus just hearing about it or reading a book about it or whatnot. And it only took 2-3 guys for that to kind of resonate with… And then they would, they’d come down to the property. One, they’d see me working, but they’d see what we were doing, and they’d see how we were returning it…
I had a plan the whole time of what I was doing and how I was going to do it, and I knew just from my background in construction, and again, property management and project management prior to buying that, how I needed to get there. So that was kind of the trade-off, was they got to be involved and see it firsthand. I think that was kind of like the sell.
Ash Patel: That’s a great approach, because not only are they getting a return on their investment, but they’re learning by having a front-row seat to what you’re doing. So I loved how you pitch that. That’s great.
Seth Teagle: And we still do it today. I’ve got two different people right now that I’m talking with. They want to learn what we’re doing, so that’s what I’ve told them, is like, “Hey, if you [unintelligible [00:19:33].25] deal rather than pay me a fee to teach you, put it on the deal, that way it’s going to be the greatest return for you, but the return is the education.” So we sign them up and they do due diligence with us, we will do calls with them weekly, we walk through our underwriting, we walk through the whole construction process, they can come on-site and have full access, it’s full transparency. But it gives them the ability to be in with us until we refi, then they take their money, they’re gone, and a little bit they made, and now they have the resume, they have the experience, they have the ability to go and try to do their own deal.
Ash Patel: So when they go to five banks, they have a bit of a track record.
Seth Teagle: Exactly. And then two, if I don’t know them really well, it helps me get to know them better, and it gives me an opportunity I’m hoping in the end to be a KP on one of their deals, or help them structure their deal. And then again, it’s ultimately, hopefully, it’ll be some deal flow for me too, that I wouldn’t have come across without them.
Ash Patel: Yeah, I love that, because for years, I’ve mentored people, never expected anything in return, and now when they’re finding deals, they ask me to partner up with them on that. So yeah, the unintended byproduct of mentoring others has been you get to get in on some great deals. So yeah, the universe rewards you for sure when you mentor people. That’s awesome.
Seth, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?
Seth Teagle: Oh, my best real estate investing advice ever would probably be somewhere along the lines of – in line with a book by Dan Sullivan on Who, Not How… I think for me is understanding where you want to go in real estate, whether it’s single-family or it’s flipping, it’s multifamily… If you’re listening to this podcast, I would assume it’s going to be multifamily. But how do you get there, and figuring that out, and then as things come, as you grow, or you get into bigger deals and things come on your plate, figuring out what your specialty is, and then anything that’s not in that lane, giving it off to somebody else. That’s how I’ve been able to scale to the sizes that we’re at, is that the minute that I recognize something in my path that is not my expertise, I start looking for who can I hire, who can I partner with, who can I get to come in and handle that for me?
Ash Patel: Seth, you mentioned mixed-use properties earlier. What are you doing with those?
Seth Teagle: In our portfolio, we’ve got a couple strip malls, we’ve got some self-storage, strip malls on the front and they’ve got apartments up top… It’s not a huge part; most of our stuff is all multifamily or ground-up multifamily.
Ash Patel: And are the returns on the mixed-use higher than multifamily?
Seth Teagle: I haven’t seen them be that. We’ve got a couple in Dayton, Ohio. It’s more of a stabilized asset. So if you’re buying it, it’s more of a longer hold play. At least in my experience. I don’t have a ton of experience with it, but where I have been, I feel like the C class or the stuff that we’re buying is on that C Class border, making it be—I’ve seen much better returns across the board in that arena.
Ash Patel: So you purchased those and they were fully leased?
Seth Teagle: Yep.
Ash Patel: Have you looked at vacant or value-add mixed-use properties?
Seth Teagle: I have looked at a couple… But I’m also a firm believer in like staying in your lane. And so we did the mixed-use because one of the guys that’s in our group from Utah, he had experience in that, and so when we found these deals that were closer to us, he kind of gave us the opportunity to kind of get involved in those. And so it’s kind of like me dipping my toe in the water with that kind of stuff. It has not been bad, I would say I probably leaned on him a lot more. Now, if he says it’s a good deal, I would probably go that route. But my specialty, like I said, is multifamily. But again, to broaden my horizons, I got involved with somebody else that’s doing these other asset classes.
Ash Patel: Well, I’m going to push you a step further. And for the Best Ever listeners, I think this is good advice. Mixed-use properties often fall under everyone’s radar. So commercial people like me – when I say commercial, I’m a non-residential commercial investor. I don’t want them, because I don’t want the apartments. The residential guys don’t want the commercial, and lenders hate mixed-use buildings; for whatever reason, they just hate them. So there’s a bit of a barrier to entry, and often, you have to find a local lender to finance them… But mixed-use properties are often underpriced or they have some vacancy, especially with the commercial unit, and they fall under everyone’s radar. So there’s some steals out there. I would encourage you to keep looking at mixed-use.
Seth Teagle: Yeah, you’re exactly right. I see them sometimes where it might be like a six-unit, but then it’s sitting on top of retail spots, or a restaurant or something like that, and normally, I would skip over them… But he was the same way, kind of pushing me like, “Oh, no, we need to do this,” and so it was kind of me expanding my horizons on those.
Ash Patel: Yeah. And I think to really make money on them, get them where the commercial units are either vacant or undervalued, lease that’s expiring soon… Because often, the apartments pay all of your expenses on that property, and then some. So whatever you get from the commercial unit is just pure profit.
Seth Teagle: Yeah, it’s great.
Ash Patel: I want to have you back on the episode once you find some more mixed-use buildings.
Seth Teagle: Oh, yeah. And there’s a lot of them around me, and like I said, I have to start digging into those more, because a lot of times – I’m just like you said, I skip over them.
Ash Patel: Yeah, and a good way to do some due diligence on those is look around, and if there’s a ton of businesses or a ton of commercial spaces that have for-lease signs, that are boarded up – probably not the greatest area. But if everything in the surrounding area is fairly well leased, you know, you can easily get a tenant for it right? You can even put a Craigslist ad out before you purchase it, and see what the demand is in that area for commercial tenants. Walk up and down the street, knock on doors, and talk to other business owners that are renting commercial space, and kind of ask them and pick their brain about the area; how easy it is to get tenants… And again, it’s just under everyone’s radar.
Seth, are you ready for the Best Ever lightning round?
Seth Teagle: Yeah, let’s do it.
Ash Patel: Alright. Seth, what’s the best ever book you recently read?
Seth Teagle: The best ever book that I recently read would be—I’m going to probably stick with Dan Sullivan’s Who, Not How. I can’t preach that book enough. It’s changed my life with that mentality. And I think that if people haven’t read it or heard of it, that they need to check it out. So I’m going to stick to that one.
Ash Patel: What are some of the mundane tasks that you offloaded? And how did you offload them?
Seth Teagle: One of the mundane stuff for me would be dealing with the tenants directly. So we have 3-4 staff to do that. And then we’ve recently partnered up with a company to do all of our project management over our construction. So that was something that was really taking up a lot of my time and it was really derailing me from what my specialty is, which is finding deals and networking and meeting investors. So we brought in a company called Project X. They’re here local in Columbus, and we’re building a whole system for them to be able to help us expand and 1,000 to 2,000 doors. I wouldn’t necessarily call them mundane, but the tasks that can come on my plate that eat up my time and my bandwidth – they’re huge for us to continue to grow.
Ash Patel: Are they just a professional project management company? Or do they specialize the construction?
Seth Teagle: They do a little bit of both. You could use them for doing your construction, or you can use them just for project management. But here in Columbus when Facebook has come here and done their warehouses, their data centers, they handle all the project management for that. Some of the big hospitals here, like the multi-million dollar renovations, much bigger than what we’re doing… But I knew the owner and so I went to him and said, “Hey, look, you know, here’s my bottleneck with multifamily, and there’s a huge market for it, because there’s all kinds of operators out there that — this is a big struggle.” So what we’re doing is we’re kind of building it up together where I’m kind of the guinea pig, and then we would be able to take on — if there’s an operator in Cincinnati that buys a property that needs renovated, they could call and get the project management handled, the GC and construction handled… Like, everything. It’s a one-stop shop.
Ash Patel: I love that. One of the keys in project management is that the project manager has to be independent of the actual work. So having a third-party project manager – I’ve never heard of that, but that’s a brilliant move.
Seth Teagle: That’s why, like I said, that Dan Sullivan book – I always think about that, and it’s great for what we’re doing right now. I couldn’t imagine adding another 500 doors under what we’re doing. The nice thing about bringing a company like that on is I didn’t have to hire another three, four or five people to my payroll. I’m just paying them a fee to do it on an annual basis, and they have a huge team. They’re professionals. What they can do is amazing, and the benefits that our investors are going to see is tip-of-the-spear type stuff going on.
Ash Patel: That is great. Seth, what’s the best ever way you like to give back?
Seth Teagle: I think for me right now is, again, I have a heart for first-responders, nurses, military, people that are kind of like the blue-collar, workers like myself that work hard every day, day-in and day-out, and they still struggle with regular things. So I always seek out people like that to try to help. But ultimately, like I said, I love teaching, I love mentoring. I love to try to give back. And I’m not the biggest and best guy out there, but I’m learning from other guys that are farther down the road than I am, but I always like to try and turn around and reach a hand back to anybody that’s coming up from where I was at, to try to help them and try to help steer them from any of the things that they could run into that could completely derail their investing careers.
Ash Patel: Seth, how can the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?
Seth Teagle: They can check us out on thestreamgroups.com. They can look me up on Facebook underneath Seth Teagle, or they can look me up on LinkedIn, and they can email me through the website as well.
Ash Patel: Yeah, Seth, I want to thank you again for being on the show. You’ve only been a real estate investor for five or six years, and your first deal was that 50-unit that could have gotten derailed, but you found solutions and you’ve really come a long way in a short amount of time, so thank you for sharing your story with us.
Seth Teagle: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Ash Patel: Awesome. Best Ever listeners, thanks for joining us and have a best ever day.
Website disclaimer
This website, including the podcasts and other content herein, are made available by Joesta PF LLC solely for informational purposes. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions expressed in this website do not constitute and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC are providing or undertaking to provide any financial, economic, legal, accounting, tax or other advice in or by virtue of this website. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions provided in this website are general in nature, and such information, statements, comments, views and opinions are not intended to be and should not be construed as the provision of investment advice by Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC to that listener or generally, and do not result in any listener being considered a client or customer of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC.
The information, statements, comments, views, and opinions expressed or provided in this website (including by speakers who are not officers, employees, or agents of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC) are not necessarily those of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC, and may not be current. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC make any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions contained in this website, and any liability therefor (including in respect of direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage of any kind whatsoever) is expressly disclaimed. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC undertake any obligation whatsoever to provide any form of update, amendment, change or correction to any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions set forth in this podcast.
No part of this podcast may, without Joesta PF LLC’s prior written consent, be reproduced, redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in any form, by any means.
Joe Fairless serves as director of investor relations with Ashcroft Capital, a real estate investment firm. Ashcroft Capital is not affiliated with Joesta PF LLC or this website, and is not responsible for any of the content herein.
Oral Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. For more information, go to www.bestevershow.com
