Ryan Chaw became a pharmacist in 2016, but he soon realized real estate was the best way to create generational wealth. He purchased his first property — a single-family home in Stockton, CA — that he repurposed as student housing and rented out by the room. Today, Ryan has six such properties. In this episode, he shares how he got into student housing and his tips for marketing to tenants and finding deals.
Getting into Student Housing
Ryan worked two jobs for a year and a half in order to save up the $100K he needed to purchase his first property. He rented out each room for $600–$700 per month, so with five tenants, he made up to $3500 each month in rent. “I basically bought one per year,” he says. “Now I’m at six properties with 29 tenants, and I make $17,580 per month in rental income after just the course of five to six years or so.” He also house-hacks by living in one of his own rentals.
Marketing to Tenants
Ryan’s marketing strategy has played a major role in helping him land quality tenants. He follows the PRIME method:
- Placement of Advertising: Go where your tenants are. For Ryan, that’s college Facebook groups, Facebook housing groups, on-campus bulletin boards, campus newsletters, and even off-campus web listings.
- Review Social Media: Ryan checks potential tenants’ Facebook profiles to learn more about them. He wants to know if they smoke, do drugs, spend lots of time partying, or if they appear to be serious about their studies.
- Identify Type of Tenant: Ryan identifies the type of tenant he is dealing with based on how they communicate with him. Are they constantly asking for a cheaper deal? Are they difficult to communicate with? Do they have a quick temper? These are the types of tenants he avoids.
- Measure Responsiveness: Responsiveness when it comes to communication and paperwork generally indicates responsibility and professionalism to Ryan.
- Ensure Proof of Income: Ryan asks for the last two months of bank statements and the credit score from whoever will be paying the rent — typically the student’s parents. He also accepts student loan/financial aid documents, or paystubs if the student has their own job.
Finding Deals on Properties with Student Housing Potential
Ryan purchases large single-family homes, typically around 2,000 sq. ft. He can afford to overpay because, while most homebuyers are looking at comps, he is focused on the income he could potentially bring in. “I’ll buy a $300K house but make the cash flow as if I bought like a $500K house,” he says.
He looks for homes where he can add in bedrooms — extra family rooms or oversized living rooms that could be divided in half are ideal. He also converts libraries and offices into bedrooms. “They have a kitchen, they have the backyard, the garage, they have storage space and all that still, and they are paying half the rent [of a dorm room]” Ryan says. “So it just makes so much sense. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.”
Ryan Chaw | Real Estate Background
- Full-time pharmacist who invests in student housing. His process is purchasing single-family homes, creating extra bedrooms, and then renting out by the bedroom.
- Portfolio: GP of 27 doors across six properties
- Based in: Sacramento, CA
- Say hi to him at:
Greatest lesson: Never quit, even when things seem impossible, such as when COVID hit and the college where I invested went to fully online learning.
Click here to know more about our sponsors:
.svg)
TRANSCRIPT
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, Ryan Chaw. Ryan is joining us from Sacramento, California. He is a full-time pharmacist who invests in student housing. Ryan is a GP on 27 doors across six properties. Ryan, thank you for joining us and how are you today?
Ryan Chaw: Hey, I'm doing great, Ash. Thanks for inviting me on the podcast, man.
Ash Patel: Ryan, we're glad to have you here. 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?
Ryan Chaw: Yeah. So I actually graduated as a pharmacist in 2016, and I was inspired by my grandpa who bought a couple of properties in the San Francisco Bay area back in the '50s when they were dirt cheap. As we all know, the price of those houses went up like crazy and he was able to retire early. Not only that, but also helped fund part of my college education and that of my brothers. So I realized that real estate is the best way to create generational wealth.
Basically, I just wanted to get started as soon as possible. I saved up a lot of money, I worked two jobs, I worked a lot of overtime, I was eating like $5 footlongs for the first two years, and I amassed $100,000 during the first year and a half or so. That's when I bought my very first property. It was a single-family home in Stockton, California, for $262,000, and it was in my local college town.
Basically, what I did is Irepurposed these single-family homes as student housing, as a rent-by-the-room co-living situation; kind of like pad-splits, in a way. Basically, I'd rent out each room for $600 to $700 per month, and that means now a five-bedroom place would make me around $3100 and a six-bedroom place will make me around $3600 or $3700 per month. I basically bought one per year; now I'm at six properties with 29 tenants, and they make $17,580 per month in rental income after just a course of five to six years or so.
Ash Patel: Do you live in a house, or are you renting?
Ryan Chaw: I'm actually house hacking. This house that I'm living in right now, I'm just basically living in the master bedroom; the other tenants pay about $3650 per month in rent, and my mortgage is about $2300. So I'm making about $1300, and minus some expenses, of course. But yeah, I'm basically living here for free. On top of that, I get a $1,300 per month bonus.
Ash Patel: That's awesome. So you're living in one of your rentals.
Ryan Chaw: Yes, that's correct. Yep.
Ash Patel: Are you still a full-time pharmacist?
Ryan Chaw: I'm part-time now. I work 32 hours, four days a week. But basically, what happened is when I started out as a pharmacist, I would see these 50-year-old pharmacists... One of them gave me a tour around the facility, and I asked them, "You guys make a good amount as a pharmacist, right? When are you going to retire?" He said, "Dude, I can't retire. I've got bills to pay. I'm basically going to be here till I'm 65." I'm pretty much here just to collect my paycheck at this point.
So I realized, looking at all these older pharmacists who were tired of working, I realized I didn't want that for myself. I didn't want to work nine to five until I hit 65. I wanted to create financial freedom for myself, so that I can be able to do what I want, where I want, with whom I wanted to, and wherever I wanted to do it with. That was my goal for getting into real estate.
Ash Patel: So the first two years, you worked your butt off and you saved a lot of money. Now, I assumed you would either go all-in on real estate, or you would just keep working hard and just go all-in on everything. Why are you working 32 hours a week? Why not 60, or why not zero?
Ryan Chaw: Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, next year I do plan to retire. I'll be around 31 by then. I'm going to probably just sell one of my properties, and pay off the loans on a couple of properties just for peace of mind, so I know that, "Hey, I don't have a mortgage payment on these properties, but I'm still getting really good rental income and really good cash flow on the properties." So actually, next year I do plan on retiring. But with that being said, I did put in five years for schooling as a pharmacist, and I still want to use my license here and there. Maybe work one day a week or something like that. But at that point I can choose. I don't have to be stuck.
Even as a pharmacist where we make a good amount of income, I still see everyone working until they're 65. In order to create financial freedom for yourself, you can't just work nine to five. You have to do something on the side, you have to be an investor, or be an entrepreneur and start a business. Because the nine to five, even with six figures income, it's just not going to cut it.
Ash Patel: Ryan, I'm going to push back a little bit. When you sell one of your properties next year, the remaining income that you have coming in - is that what you're good with for here on out?
Ryan Chaw: Yeah. Actually, the first house I bought, I said it was $262,000. Because I live in California - I know it's across the nation, but especially in California, I had quite a lot of appreciation. So my first house is now worth $450,000. It basically doubled in price. So I'm going to be selling that to pay off three loans. And those three houses that have the loans on them - they make about $2500 to $3200 in rental income each. So after taxes, insurance, and all that type of stuff, I'm still making about $8000 per month in rental income, from those houses and some of the other houses that I'm cash flowing on.
Ash Patel: And is that your goal? Just live on 1000 From here on out?
Ryan Chaw: Definitely not, no. I'm always going to be expanding my portfolio, and growing. I'm going to probably get into doing crowdfunding deals as well, because I have some people I met that are really interested in crowdfunding student housing. They feel like it's a great space to get into, because you're basically doubling or tripling your cash flow on these deals, while the students are basically cutting their rent in half. Because on-campus dormitories, they usually charge $1200, while we're only charging $600 and $700. So it's a blue ocean market, basically; it's an untapped market. There's a ton of potential in it and I think anyone could get started in this field.
Ash Patel: Alright. I'm a little confused on why you're going to sell one of your properties if you're wanting to continue to grow and scale. Even more so, on why you're going to pay off the loan on another one. What's the mindset behind that?
Ryan Chaw: I'm going to use it to pay off the primary loan on it. But I also have a couple of HELOCs on it in case I needed to expand. So I actually got to HELOC this year, home equity line of credits, for $200,000. I can use that as seed money to invest in these partnerships and crowdfunding ventures as well. But I want to pay off the houses because I want to have some peace of mind. I don't want to be over-leveraged, I want to have a portfolio where I own a good chunk of it so I don't feel like, "Okay, if the real estate markets going to crash or anything, I'm going to be in trouble.
With that being said, I invest in a very strong asset. I believe in this asset 100%, because the college that I invest there has been around since 1850. It's not going to go away anytime soon, so I know I'm going to constantly get tenants. Plus, the other cool thing about this is -- sorry, I'm kind of going on...
Ash Patel: No, please do.
Ryan Chaw: The college has about 6000 students and I have only 28 of those students at my house. That's less than 1% of the total market share. I'm fine with that, because I'm making multiple six figures from just having less than 1% of the total student housing market share.
Ash Patel: Alright. Ryan, I'm going to keep playing devil's advocate here. When I hear people say, "I'm going to retire and I'm going to sell my house off. This way, they can never take it from me, it's mine. I own it." That's a false sense of security, because if you miss enough property tax payments, they're going to take your house.
Ryan Chaw: That's correct. That's right.
Ash Patel: I get into these conversations a lot with people that are retiring... And when I have these conversations with investors like yourself, young investors, I'm thinking in the back of my mind - so in two years, you're going to go get another loan for your next property, and you're going to crowdsource it, potentially. That loan is probably going to be at 6.5% or 7% interest. Right now, you're paying off a loan that's probably 3%-4% interest.
Ryan Chaw: Yeah, that's correct. That's another thing to keep in mind. Crowdfunding, I would say, that's like 6%-7% preferred, and then on top of that, there's the upside split. But for me, I'm very comfortable with making $8000 per month in rental income. And you make a very good point. For those who aren't comfortable with how much they're making in just base rental income that's guaranteed, then it makes sense to continue to purchase using the very, very, very low interest rate conventional financing that we have available.
Now, with that being said, interest rates are definitely rising for conventional financing. I think they've hit at least 5.5% for investment properties right now, while crowdfunding it's 1% or 2% more. But here's the thing about crowdfunding - you don't have to put in as much as you own. I could put down 2% on that whole deal and crowdfund the rest. Basically, crowdfund the 20% down, and then have the other 80% be funded by some investment bank at a 5%-6% interest rate.
Ash Patel: So I wasn't clear about where I was going with this... Let's take the crowdsourcing, and crowdfunding out of this. Let's just say you, Ryan, you want to continue to scale. So in five years, how many units do you think you'll have?
Ryan Chaw: In five years, I'll probably be sitting around somewhere between 10 to 15 to 20. I don't want to put a cap on it, of course. Right now, I'm already going to be buying two more this year, and probably two more next year with the HELOC that I took ,out which is $200,000.
Ash Patel: Okay. This is again, why I'm baffled that you're going to sell a property. All your goals, you're screaming you want to continue to scale and grow; you want to be at 10+ units in five years. Why are you selling?
Ryan Chaw: For me, again, it's the peace of mind. I want to play both games, where basically I want to scale... I want to continue to grow, obviously. But I want to also have enough paid off so I have enough cash flow so that I could have that financial freedom. So if I wanted to, I guess I could purchase two per year so, and then at the end of two or three years, I would reach my goal of $8000-$9000 per month in cash flow. Or I could just sell my very first house, which is completely paid off already, to pay off three loans, and I'm in a position now where I feel safe that I don't have mortgages on these properties, and I can continue to use the HELOCs to purchase other properties.
Ash Patel: Alright. And I know you didn't expect this to be a debate on selling property versus scaling. But it's a great conversation that I have with so many people... And believe it or not - it's probably easy to believe; I'm not the smartest person out there - I struggled with the same thing for a long time. I would pay extra on my properties. And I had an epiphany; it was a conversation that I had with an old-time commercial real estate investor. This guy bought shopping centers, 80 years old... And his philosophy was always, whenever you build up enough equity through appreciation, do a cash-out refi and keep pulling cash out. I never understood that, because how do you really build equity if you're just taking cash out all the time?
But at the end of the day, taking that cash out, reinvesting it in other properties, or even just sitting on it, it decreases your liability exposure. So if you have a $5 million strip mall that's paid off, and an attorney is representing somebody that slipped and fell, they're salivating, because that equity is there for them. If you owe $5 million on it and it's worth 5 million, they're going after the insurance proceeds, and that's it. So that was his reasoning for doing that. But that really made me think about why I'm overpaying on properties. So after probably months of having my wheels turn and looking at different scenarios, I started doing cash-out refis.
At the time, I didn't have a place to put the cash; I didn't have any deals in the pipeline. But I sat on it. And when the time came to find deals, or when I finally did find deals, I had the cash ready to go. So again, if you do your two, five, and 10-year projections, I think selling this property may give you a sense of safety. I think it goes against what you're trying to accomplish. This is a conversation that I've had with so many people. I want you to think about that for a second. Again, this is my opinion, this is not fact; I'm not telling you what's right or wrong. Best Ever listeners, by all means, comment and tell me I'm wrong. But again, if we're looking to scale, I would recommend talking to other operators that have scaled significantly, and get their take on what you're doing.
Ryan Chaw: Yeah. I think it's definitely an age-old debate. Should you pay off your properties really quickly, so you have more cash flow per property, but you also have more liability if someone were to sue you and take all the equity that you have on the property? Or should you leverage as much as possible, don't hold any cash, basically have as little equity as you can on these properties, but still have control over all the properties. It's definitely a good debate.
Ash Patel: Yeah, and I'm not saying over leverage. So if you want to cash out refi, do it. I'm not saying spend every last dollar on as many properties as you can; make sure you have a comfortable nest egg and you have comfortable reserves so if something does go wrong, you're not beholden to foreclosures and the banks. So by all means, do not overleverage, and that's another lengthy debate anybody can have. But I'm not an advocate of overleveraging. So don't get me wrong, everybody needs that safety net of cash. I just don't think having that safety net tied up in an asset that you can borrow at 3%-4% is the right thing to do. But let's get back to your rentals. Student housing - have you considered short-term rentals instead, or in addition?
Ryan Chaw: Yeah, definitely I was interested and intrigued by that. I would say short-term rentals are definitely good for more like vacation homes, or areas where people vacation, like near beaches and all that. I might eventually go into that, to be honest, but I just don't like the maintenance part of it. I could definitely hire out for that. But trying to manage all that, and what if we get a party group or something and they destroy the property... For me, in student housing, I have a lot of control over what tenants I bring in. I can screen them, I can see their social media and look through it to see what type of student they are. I also only invest in colleges that are top colleges where you have to have straight A's, 4.0 GPA, well-rounded, all that type of stuff. So most of the students that I have, they're like the perfect tenant base. Very low maintenance, they can handle a lot of things themselves, they even have parents to help clean up after them if needed, and the parents are the one paying the rent, so I never have to worry about not getting the rent paid.
Break: [00:17:30.14] to [00:19:16.13]
Ash Patel: When you say clean up after them, you mean pay their rent when they can't?
Ryan Chaw: Also, if they're a person who's really messy. I've actually had parents come in and actually vacuum the whole house and everything. I'm like, "Wow, that's pretty cool."
Ash Patel: Interesting. Top student, top college, and mom's coming to vacuum your apartment. Interesting. Student housing is very competitive; how are you finding deals?
Ryan Chaw: It is at the commercial level. I would say what I do is I repurpose a single-family home. I'll buy a big single-family home, usually like 1900, 2000+ sqft, and then I'll add in the bedrooms where there's like an extra family room, or if I can divide the living room in half. You've got to realize that these students don't need all that much space, because most of the time they're at school, or they're at the library and studying, or they're out with their friends, or whatever. They usually just come home to eat and sleep. I've never had anybody really complain about the lack of space. I still have one common area, but anything else like a family room, a library, an office - they don't need all that space so I just convert that into a bedroom. For them, they have a lot more space compared to the dormitory still, they have a kitchen, they have the backyard, the garage, they have storage space, and all that still, and they are paying half the rent. It just makes so much sense. It's a win-win situation for everyone.
Ash Patel: So you can afford to overpay on a house, because everybody else is looking at comps and you're looking at the income that you can have coming in from it.
Ryan Chaw: Exactly. So I'll buy a $300,000 house, but make the cash flow as if I bought a $500,000 house.
Ash Patel: What's been your biggest challenge with this model?
Ryan Chaw: That's a good question. I would say there are actually not too many challenges. Sometimes if my contractor might have a lot of work to do... Like, if I'm buying two or three rentals at a time, he can only work on one at a time, so I have to look for more and more contractors. A lot of contractors have definitely been getting tied up during this time. It's been hard to get material sometimes. But other than that, I haven't had too many challenges using this model. At the very beginning, I did, because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to advertise, so I couldn't find students, believe it or not at the very beginning because I just didn't know where to advertise.
Then I discovered over time where I could post my ads. Once I built up to a certain scale, I could just rely on referrals. I have 28 tenants; each one of those tenants has maybe three friends that might be interested in staying at the property. All of a sudden, I have 90 people potentially who could be interested in staying at my property if I just asked them, "Hey, do you have any friends who want to come and stay for the next year?"
Ash Patel: Ryan, you said when you figured out how to advertise - what was that?
Ryan Chaw: Yeah. I actually have something called the prime method for advertising. It's P-R-I-M-E. P stands for placement of advertisements; you have to go to where your tenants hang out. For me that's Facebook groups, college Facebook groups, and Facebook housing groups, it could be bulletin boards on campus, it could be through maybe one of the newsletters or off-campus listings on the web... It depends on the college. So you have to go where they are looking, otherwise you're fishing in an empty pond. If you put the sign on the lawn saying "For Rent", that's basically like fishing in an empty pond and you'll get all sorts of people calling you that aren't students.
R stands for reviewing social media. I go through their Facebook profiles to see what type of tenants they are. Are they smoking, are they doing drugs, are they going to a bunch of raves and partying, that type of tenant? Or are they somebody who is in the Dean's honor roll, or they look very studious, they are very serious about their studies or getting their doctorate degrees, something like that?
I stands for identify the type of tenant from basically how they're communicating with you. If they're constantly asking for a cheaper deal, if they're difficult to communicate with, or they get angry easily, I tried to stay away from those types of tenants.
M stands for measure responsiveness. I find that the more responsive a tenant is, the more responsible they are overall. If they're getting back to me right away, with the paperwork and everything, I can tell that they're professional, they're the responsible type of tenant.
E stands for ensuring proof of income. I asked for the last two months' bank statements from the parents and the FICO score, their credit score as well, if they'll be paying for the rent. Or they can also provide student loan docs if that's what they're going to use to pay the rent, or financial aid, or pay stubs if they have a job or something like that.
Ash Patel: How important is the timing? Because I remember when I had student rentals, I got them ready a month before the semester started, and nothing; I couldn't get any tenants. Because I later realized all the tenants for September have secured their apartments by March.
Ryan Chaw: That's correct. This is actually peak advertising season right now. I start advertising at the end of March and the beginning of April or so, and I basically fill my rentals from August to August. With that being said, you can still buy definitely during the middle of the year. I bought as late as October, I bought in February/March time, I bought in the summer... I bought all over during those times.
The thing is, these students have three sessions, they have Fall, Spring, and Summer sessions usually, so there's always going to be somebody who's looking for a place to stay. Because they're either moving out there spring semester housing, going into summer housing, or whatever... So I always have people interested, during whichever season.
With that being said, it's important to advertise as soon as you can. As soon as I basically have my offer accepted, I start advertising. I asked my current tenants, do they have anybody who they can refer, anybody interested? Then I just advertise for the whole time from when your offer's accepted to closing, I advertised while I'm doing renovations... Eventually, after a month and a half or two months, I should have somebody in by the end of when I put in the bedrooms and everything's all done.
Ash Patel: Yeah. Something I had also learned is that there are student-accessible systems only for each campus. I had a tenant moving out, and what I would always do is give them some kind of bonus if they can find the next tenant upon them moving out. One of them is like, "Oh, yeah, I'll just put an ad out in this system." I'm like, "What is that?" She said, "It's a student-only system for that campus that nobody from the outside has access to." So you now have a captive audience with a lot less competition. Do you have anything like that that you can utilize?
Ryan Chaw: Yes, definitely. That's the P for placement of advertising. You have to do your market research. What I recommend you do actually at the beginning is to talk to as many students as you can and ask them, "Hey, how do you find off-campus housing? Hey, is there an internal website where people go to look for housing and that type of stuff? Where are the neighborhoods where a lot of students like to stay because they're safe neighborhoods?" Doing the market research at the beginning is very important, and definitely figure out that P because that's the most important part of marketing.
Ash Patel: Ryan, do you self-manage all of your properties?
Ryan Chaw: I do, actually, and I'm still working as a 32-hour pharmacist. I would say, even when I was working overtime, I was still able to self-manage this. At the beginning, don't get me wrong, it was tough. I was getting calls during my lunch breaks, on the weekends. I really hated it. But then over time, I learned how to empower my tenants to create systems. You have to realize that after five years of doing this, there are certain things that always happen. I would say once a year or so, I will have a tenant versus tenant conflict where one says "Oh, that girl, she's so messy. She brings her boyfriend over all the time. I hate it." That kind of thing. I have a way of dealing with it very, very simply. It gets solved as soon as I send out that email, basically. Having systems in place and knowing how to empower your tenants is extremely important.
Ash Patel: What's in that email?
Ryan Chaw: First, have a face-to-face discussion with that tenant, and come up with an actionable plan you can both implement, and implement the plan. Two weeks later, if you're still having problems with them, then you can go ahead and contact me. I would say nine times out of 10 or 10 times out of 10, I never get contacted again, because then they know to take responsibility at that point. They know that we're doing the best we can. I'm not going to be able to convince them to do something that they aren't able to convince the other person to do themselves.
Ash Patel: That's great, and that's going above and beyond as a landlord. Do students typically pick out their roommates, or do you just assign whoever's interested?
Ryan Chaw: For that one, I usually try to keep people who mesh together, together. If there's a group of friends, obviously I'll put them into one house together. A lot of times, I'll get a group of pharmacy students or a group of dental students. I'll basically have a pharmacy house, a dentist house, an engineering house... Because they're all going through the same classes, so they can study together and hang out together and all of that.
Ash Patel: I love that. That's cool. What's another example of empowering your tenants?
Ryan Chaw: Little things like if the internet goes down, for instance, I used to be the middleman guy. I would call up the internet company and say, "Hey, what's going on?" They would say, "Hey, you have to reset the router." Now I'll call up the tenant and say, "Reset the router." Then I have to call back the other guy and say, "Hey, I reset the router." I realized that all I have to do is tell the internet company that, "This person is under my account, so they can call you directly to go ahead and solve the internet issues." So I just tell the tenant, "Hey, call this number, they'll troubleshoot it with you. It should be up and running within an hour or two if you do all the troubleshooting steps." So far, I've never had problems after that.
Ash Patel: Great example. Ryan, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?
Ryan Chaw: Get started as soon as possible. At the very beginning, as you mentioned, I think it's very important to try to leverage yourself. Don't try to pay it all off at the beginning; you want to just try to purchase as much as you can with the amount of money you have. Obviously, not try to over-leverage, do what you're comfortable with. But real estate grows over time; it's like planting seeds. You plant a seed, you watch it grow into a tree. You don't wait to plant the seed, you want to try to plant as many seeds first, and then wait five to 10 years, and then see where it's gone.
Over time, like over just five years, my houses have gone up to $700,000 in just equity, just appreciation alone. That's not including equity paydown that I got from the mortgage, that's not including the cash flow I was getting from these properties, all that type of stuff. With inflation coming on we're able to raise the rents... But of course, we kind of have to because materials are costing more and things like that as well. With that being said, real estate grows over time, so you want to get in as soon as you can. Even if it's house-hacking with a 3.5% down FHA loan on a duplex or triplex or whatever.
Ash Patel: Yeah. Ryan, are you ready for the Best Ever lightning round?
Ryan Chaw: Sure. Let's do it.
Ash Patel: Alright. Ryan, what's the Best Ever book you recently read?
Ryan Chaw: I re-read Rich Dad Poor Dad, but I would say one of the best books on real estate investing is Gary Keller's Millionaire Real Estate Investor. It really goes over the whole mindset piece behind it, and also the importance of creating teams, empowerment, all that type of stuff.
Ash Patel: Ryan, what's the Best Ever way you like to give back?
Ryan Chaw: The Best Ever way I like to give back? A lot of times actually I give back to my tenants, believe it or not. I provide a lot of the cleaning supplies. But also, a lot of them have questions for me as a pharmacist, because they're going through pharmacy school. They're asking me, "What do you recommend I do? This is my first year as a pharmacy student. What clubs should I join?" All that type of stuff. Going through the school itself, I can give them great advice for that. That's one way I kind of give back to my tenants.
I feel like if you treat them very well and they have that respect for you and that trust for you, you're never going to have to worry about not getting tenants, or getting tenants that get angry and don't pay their rent or something like that.
Ash Patel: I think it's very cool that you tutor them a little bit, pharmacy students. But I think giving them cleaning supplies is self-serving; you just want a clean apartment, a clean house. [laughter]
Ryan Chaw: Yeah, I do. Yeah, that's true. I do it once a year, at the beginning of the year.
Ash Patel: Yeah. Ryan, how can the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?
Ryan Chaw: I have a website, you can reach out to me -- I actually have a free PDF guide for how to get into student housing. Just like as a new investor, a lot of the things that I went through, a lot of the mistakes I made, and how I solved them... You can access that at www.newbierealestateinvesting.com. To get the guide, it's www.newbierealestateinvesting.com/guide.
Ash Patel: Awesome. Ryan, thank you so much for your time today, sharing your story of becoming a full-time pharmacist and building a rental portfolio at the same time, having your financial future laid out and engaging with me in a debate of cashing out, refi-ing, selling. Thank you for your time today.
Ryan Chaw: All great questions. Thanks again, Ash. I really appreciate being on the show.
Ash Patel: Best Ever listeners, thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five-star review, and share the podcast with someone you think and benefit from it. Also, follow, subscribe, 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.
