Podcast Episode 94 Transcript

Episode 94: From A Simple Facebook Group To REI Mentor With Becky Nova

Are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level? My name is James Prendamano. I'm the CEO and founder of PreReal. And over the past 25 years, I've closed over a billion dollars in transactional real estate. Each week, a meeting with outstanding investors, high performing individuals and visionaries operating in the real estate space. These are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now. Getting it Done this podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level. This is the Prereal Podcast welcome everyone, to The Prereal Podcast. We're joined today by Becky Nova. Becky is a cancer researcher by day, a real estate investor by night. She has an amazing Facebook group of 250k plus followers, an outstanding website with courses, a great blog to follow, and all sorts of good information. Becky is the founder of The Lady Landlord. She's based in New York City. So it's great to have a fellow New Yorker in the house. Becky, thanks so much for taking the time today. Of course. Thanks for having me on, James. So you talk about financial freedom and we're going to get into everything that you're offering and your journey. But I wanted to frame for everybody, financial freedom means something a little bit different. Could you share with us? What does that actually mean for Becky? Sure. For me, it's more freedom of choice, freedom of time. So to me, I want to be able to wake up in the morning and then decide what I would like to do with my day. It's not that I have to go to the office because I need to make money. It's not that I have to answer to anybody or have to do something because I need to pay my bills. It's the idea that I can wake up in the morning and say, you know what? I'm going to go to the beach today and that's going to be perfectly okay. So everybody arrives. Not everybody. A lot of people actually never arrive at that place right where we're at a point in the world where I think one of the positive things from COVID is people really started to take a look at their lives, how they were living them, and decide that there were alternatives. There were other ways to get to the other side of the rainbow, if you will. Real estate investing, especially in New York, is a challenge. Could you give us a little background? From what I saw, there wasn't this crazy real estate background leading up to this. So I'm curious about your backstory. And then what led you to the point where you said, I'm going to jump in and I'm going to do this thing and try and attain that financial freedom? Sure. I always tell people I hate sharing this story because it has to have me admit that my husband was right. So every time we always talk about real estate, investing or success or anything. It always, of course, has to start with, well, my husband was right. So here we go. I never wanted to buy property. I never even wanted to live in my own property. Back in my 20s, I actually left Kansas to research for a little while. I moved to Europe. I've lived in multiple different countries. I've owned businesses in different countries. The idea of settling down the white ticket fence was still not at all really what I was looking for. My husband, though, was different than that. When my husband is actually an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, he really had that American dream, 2.5 kids, that whole type of thing. We were living in the South Bronx, actually in a 6th floor walk up. And at the time I was running my own business. And he said to me when we were still dating, he's like, I really want to take things in our relationship to the next level. I want to be able to buy a house and move up to Westchester County as we as New Yorkers do. And he said, unfortunately, though, he goes, you're not in a great financial situation. You've been running your own business. It was not going well at the time. Every dollar I made went back into the business. I didn't have great credit. I was kind of stuck. So it really then was up to me to say, hey, I need to kind of change some things in my life here. I'm now at a point where I need to grow up. I need to figure out what I can kind of do to put myself in a better financial situation, because I just always avoided financial literacy and anything of that nature. I was raised with the people that have money or the devil kind of idea. So that was really what got us started, is I needed to start and take stock of what was going on my own life and educate myself on finances. And that just led me down how to improve my credit. I then went out and was able to get a consulting gig that covered some of the money. I needed to be able to get myself out of debt to be able to get to that down payment. And I actually a couple of months later went back to my husband and said, I don't actually want to just buy a single family home. And I tell everybody I have the best idea ever. And that was to buy a multifamily live in one unit, rent out the other. I had no idea that it was called house hacking or that it was a popular strategy, but it was really at that time that I said, I've worked so hard to save this money. I don't want to just pay mortgage payment to mortgage payment every month. And that's what we did. We ended up buying a Duplex. We lived in one unit, rented out the other. And it was literally at the closing, James, that when I got that check from my tenants after literally signing my life away. Right. If you ever do a closing, you sign your name a thousand times. And then they gave me a check and I said, right there in that room, I'm like, that's it. We're doing this again. And like my realtor, my mortgage broker were like, you can't do that again. And I was like, I'm going to figure out a way. But that was really what started for me. So it is an amazing feeling, an amazing moment when you get that first check on an investment property and you see that there is a pathway for a lot of us that are not born into a life where there's a lot of real estate ownership or there's a lot of capital. To be candid, it is a pretty profound moment when you although it's simple to talk about it, when you actually get the check, it is a moment where you go, wow, I can do this right. There's a pathway here. Now, leading up to this, you had mentioned financial literacy, which is something I talk about constantly on the podcast. Any books or tips for the audience on what kind of kickstarted your journey in helping you through that? Sure. It was actually podcasts for me. I used to still commute down to the city when people actually had to go to offices back in the day when you used to have to go to an office. So I used to listen to different podcasts on My. Commute. And that was when I really started between either bigger pockets and Susie Orman was actually who I used to like that she had a question of the day, and it was literally somebody would write in a question and kind of get that answered. And it always just kind of gave me that little bit of extra something I can think about. But that was to me, it didn't matter like who it was. Just listen to something get started somehow. And any mentors that were real estate investors at this point or all really kind of self taught. No, it was really kind of all self taught. I was actually very lucky with the first property. I was very lucky to find some great people for my team. Right. They always talk about real estate. You need to have your team. I found some really great people for my team, and I found some really horrible people for my team. So it worked out because I knew what I didn't want to work with. And then that made me go find different team members. But then otherwise, I found some really great people that, for example, my mortgage broker, my realtor that I was really able to call and be like, hey, I got this question. I want to learn this and that relationship. Those are still the people that I'm now using and have used multiple times now over the past four years. So you close on this unit, you lived in this first one, right? Correct. Okay. You get bit by the proverbial real estate bug and you decide this is something that you want to scale. Or at that point, was it, hey, let's look at one more unit or what was the thought process then? For me, it made me realize that this is a way to leave day job. This is a way for me to be able to go live in another country again and still be able to kind of bring in that income. So I saw this on a very large level, but I had to start with just telling my husband it would just be one more. So many New Yorkers in particular that are taking this next step are opting to buy outside of New York. Walk the audience through why you think New York or how you've made it work. How are you able to identify deals, get them underwritten, make sure your cash on cash is up to par. What's the secret sauce that Becky's using? Sure. Secret sauce for me is keeping my living expenses as low as possible and keeping my income as high as possible. It really is just that the amount of money that my husband and I are able to save from property to property is really what's been able to help us purchase the next one. There are people in other States, absolutely. That could buy another property much faster than we can, but they're not necessarily getting the same cash flow as us. To me, my goal is to own the least amount of properties for the most amount of money. So, for example, I don't want to own 30 doors. Right. People always compete about the number of doors you have. I don't want to own 30 doors or 50 doors. That's not impressive. To me. That sounds like a headache. I want cash flow. So to me in New York, it might take me a little bit longer. We average buying a property a year, but if I can then buy a half a million dollar property every year, that's going to bring in a $1,000, $1500 a month extra. I'm going to take that over buying a property where I'm making $75 a month, $100, that doesn't excite me personally. So if I can just expand on that a little bit, I think what's so important here and people get lost in this, and I refer to them as TikTok investors. You see constantly people boasting about the amount of doors that they have and what people don't understand. They hear passive income. Passive income. Yes, it is passive income, but it's not. It's only as passive as your team is competent. I think, number one. And if you have to generate ten doors for the same cash flow that you're able to generate out of one door, that's ten less sets of tenants, ten less sets of calls, ten less broken refrigerators or problems with the air conditioning, whatever it may be. So for you, you wanted really quality over quantity. That was the strategy, correct? Okay, that's a great way to phrase it. So you're now going to go pursue multiple properties. You want to get to a place where a previous guest had framed it this way. I thought it was brilliant. I want to wake up on a Saturday or I want to wake up on a Tuesday and not know what day it is and it doesn't matter. Correct? That's the dream for somebody like us. Yeah. And it's so sad. But as he said it, I was thinking, well, I wake up that way every day, but for the wrong reasons. I'm constantly grinding. And I was like, wait a minute, I don't think that's what he meant to say. All right, so we're going to start identifying other properties. Are we looking at multifamily? Are we looking at single units? What are we running down here? Sure. For us, it's multifamily. Same kind of thing like you alluded to with multiple sets of tenants, multiple sets of refrigerators. We like the least amount of roof that we can find, the least amount of grass that we can find, or those types of things. So everything that we own is duplexes or clock plexus. And you're finding these deals through a broker online? A little bit of both. So what's interesting, even though I have multiple different ways that I look for properties, we always end up coming back to properties we find on the MLS. How crazy is that even in New York? It's not crazy. We just finished writing a software that because we feel there's gold in the MLS. We feel that there are properties every day that are being overlooked. So we basically put together a script that will allow you to for us neighborhood wise, let's say it's Great Kills. You want to buy in Great Kills. And let's say you're someone that wants to do roof raises. I don't know. You want to buy ranches that are at a 20% discount to current. Comp. You want to have 1000 sqft of buildable floor area available, and you only want to be in great Hills. It basically scrubs MLS. And as the listings come on for you, and then it just emails you those properties that are categorically hitting those metrics that you set up. And I don't know why there's this obsession for off market deals. I feel that people just have this perception of what's on the MLS. It's going to be too expensive. And that's just not the case here. I'm buying all these properties on the MLS, making great money. And even in New York. Right. So if I could do it in New York, I'm sorry, we can be doing this in some other States. I just feel like that's a lot of the perception that to get a good deal or to not have to buy retail, that it's okay when we have to go these other routes and always buy things off market, and that's just not true. No, I couldn't agree with you more. Can we almost go through like a mock I'm a deal junkie? So I'm curious, when you're scouring the MLS and you're looking online, what are the things that jump out? Is it a cash on cash return? How are you doing your underwriting? Is it just you want to have X percent or X dollars over the payment? What are the metrics that make it pop for Becky? Sure. For me, the number one thing that I look for is the cash flow. So what I do is really look at great. How much is this going to cost me? What's my monthly payment going to be? What other rents coming in? The same thing. People find this very controversial, but I tend to be a person that's willing to accept tenants, and I've been able to do that even through the pandemic that we've been living through. And most people are like, oh, that's a horrible idea. But if you screen them right away and if you can make sure to do your due diligence, same thing. I'm getting money on day one. I know that there are tenants that are there, and I know what those rents are going to be. So I know exactly what my cash flow is going to be by the time I'm even looking at a property, I know what my mortgage is, I know what my taxes are, my insurance is going to be. So I know what my all end is for the month. And now I know what my current rents are. Okay, we referenced that as pressure tested. When you have tenants that are seasoned and they've been there, everyone is obsessed now with lost to lease, and how much more can I get in the market? There's a real value in having someone that has been there. They've been paying it for X amount of time. There's not a change of circumstances. The grass is always greener, and people are running to get rid of the current tenants, fixing it up because they know they're going to get more. But then you've got a lot of unknown variables that you have to contend with. Correct? And then it also kind of goes back to a little bit of time as money. Right. If now I have to get those tenants out, then by the time I get tenants moved in and settled and I get that work done and who knows? The price of wood this month is changing. And sometimes maybe you overshoot on putting in additional items that you feel like are going to get a higher cost and then they don't. And then you wait for your number. To me, some of those things just don't make sense if something's working and if I can still make the cash flow that I'm looking for. Even with the tenants in place, there's no reason for me to kind of change it. I feel like the most uncomfortable time that you can have with a tenant or where the most things can go wrong are at move in and move out. So if I have tenants that are already moved in, they know that the dishwasher. You have to kind of jiggle a little bit to get it open. They know that the hot water will come out. They just have to wait two minutes. They know what days the trash is. They know all of those. They already have it worked out. We're in the Northeast here. They already know who's shoveling the snow. I don't have to worry about that. To have tenants that already know all of those little nuances of a property. There is, to me, a cost saving factor to that, and I tend to take that. I tend to take that. And there's the time that the unit is vacant. There's the time to market the unit right. There's the time to market it. There's a time to get the work done. We all know construction always takes much longer than we expect and also takes longer than we expect and always cost more than we expect. So with this, I don't have to worry about those problems. So, Becky, when you're acquiring these units, we have a pretty diverse audience, but much of it is centered around real estate investors, some very seasoned, some that are looking to jump in the game. Are you setting up individual entities, corporate entities, LLCs. Are you buying these personally? How are you taking these things down? Sure. So we do put our properties in LLCs. So the earlier ones, especially what we live in, then that way you've bought and done personally, then we're able to transfer that otherwise into an LLC. Otherwise, we purchase an LLC. And are you setting up a new LLC for each individual transaction for us? We do. I definitely understand. I personally, I'm on the side. I know there's always kind of a debate. Is it okay just to have umbrella insurance versus the LLC? I am on Team LLC very much, but there are reasons that I can see people that would put multiple properties in an LLC. If I was buying cheaper properties somewhere else, maybe I would consider doing that. But buying in New York, where my cheapest property is $400,000, that's all the risk I want in one LLC at a time. So that's why I personally have a different LLC for each property. So for the audience, what Becky is referring to is essentially assuming there's no fraud and there's nothing else that is out of the normal circumstances or if there's a situation and God forbid there's a lawsuit and someone is pursuing it, typically you can get them backstop at the assets of that individual LLC. So Becky doesn't want to go by two 3510 units, have them in the same LLC, because then theoretically they can attach those other assets. Is that correct? Correct. Okay, 100%. So as you're setting up these individual LLCs, are you financing these transactions? Yes. Okay. And have you run into, I think last time I had checked a recent podcast, you had ten or eleven units at this point. So we have ten. We're about to be under contract for another two. But remember that once again, it's multifamily that I deal with. Right. So everything duplex or complex. So ten doors across, six properties. Okay. So you're buying these properties in LLCs. I assume the banks are requiring personal signatures on your debt. Correct. And have you run into any issues where the banks are saying, hey, you've got X amount of dollars in loans at this point and you're hitting a ceiling, or are they allowing you to use the revenue from each individual transaction, the ladder. So it's exactly that. I've not had anybody. I actually just had this conversation with one of my workers brokers the other day. There were actually two properties that I came across, and I called him basically to say, hey, I might want to consider actually buying both of these. How can I do that if you're going to be checking my credit or going through on one property? I'm clearly assuming debt on that property, but yet I want to be going through the process to get another mortgage for the same time. And he was like, I'm assuming that both properties are going to be cash flowing. Right? And I said, of course they are. So he goes, Great. He goes, why would I have a problem giving you a loan if they're making money? Sounds good to me. Yeah. So that's a misnomer, I think, where folks get lost in the weeds there, and they think that there are other pathways they have to pursue. Is it a local lender that you're using? The bank? It's a mortgage. It's a broker. But the broker is local to New York. Yes. Okay, great. So you're building this model out, you're acquiring units. Is there a certain threshold? Is it you want to be X dollars over your debt service or is it X percent over your debt service? What is it? There's a lot of properties to look at. Right. Which are the ones that you go, no, that one's for me. So what I look for kind of my buying criteria when I'm looking through properties. And once again, this is regardless if it's the MLS or any other property there, first thing I'm really looking for at least $500 a door per month in cash flow. Right. In actual profit. After all expenses. I get that question a lot. After all expenses, I want $500 a door. Also, I look for paying tenants in place. Right. So once again, I'm now getting paid on day one and three. I usually am looking for no more than cosmetic work. I've done rehabs. I am not the person to come to that burnt down building or that flooded building. Those are not properties for me. I really like a little bit more of the turnkey type category then yes, if a tenant was out, we do rehab or if they need to update, we take care of things at that point in time. But I really look for properties that are up and running that I can just assume. Okay, so what is your infrastructure look like? Are you taking these calls personally if there's a leaky, faucet or an issue? Yes. My husband and myself manage all of our properties here in New York and also the property we own in the Dominican Republic. And do you find that you have to at this point have like, a handyman or a worker on salary, or are you still able to, as situations arise, just kind of address them as a one off and more is the latter. It's very much triaging. Right. Call comes in great. What's the actual problem? Is this something that my husband and I, we're both rather handy? Is this something that we can kind of go and fix or at least kind of do a once over to make sure that the problem really is a problem? Right. For example, I've had a tenant that called that the gas stove was out. Okay. She didn't know how to light a gas stove. Right. So problem solved. I had another tenant that was so upset about the bug in her apartment, and then she realized that the screen was open. Right. We're not calling an exterminator because you opened your window here. So sometimes it is kind of nice. My husband and I usually kind of do a first look, if you will, see if those are things that we personally can fit. Like I said, we're both rather handy. Then if we need to kind of take it up a notch, we have a handyman. Then if we have to take that up a notch, we have our plumber on call, we have our electrician on call. We have a contractor on call. Then we know the right person to call. But we don't automatically get a phone call saying, hey, my stove is not working great. I guess we've got to get a plumber in there. Okay. I guess we got to go to Home Depot and buy a new stove. You make sure what the problem is first. So that's how we kind of go through this very tiered approach, which helps really kind of keep our costs down from having service calls. Was it a challenge to land on the right vendor for each individual issue? I assume you didn't knock it out of the box with every single contractor. Right. We've actually done really well knocked on one. We've been rather fortunate with that of finding the right people in the right places. But yes, we've definitely had okay, this situation that didn't work, this situation. But in general, we feel very much when you find the right person, you kind of do what you can to keep them there. Right. So that's either making sure that you show that you're giving them repeat work, that you refer them to other people. So that way, maybe I don't have a job, but we're still in touch because I'm calling you for different things. And we've just been really fortunate with finding some great people. So are you doing diligence on the Internet? Are you reading reviews? Because a lot of people have a hard time with that. A lot of investors come up against, especially when they're just getting started. This person didn't show up. That person charged way too much money. This one did wrong. The wrong work. What type of diligence are you doing to find the right team? Sure. Best way to go about that referrals. Ask other people who they are using. So, for example, we actually own two multi families on the same street. So we were able to just speak to some of the other neighbors and found out that there is a super at one of the buildings right next door to us that is a retired licensed plumber. Okay, fantastic. Get them over. That's what everybody in the neighborhood uses. Fantastic. That's exactly the person that we want to use. Otherwise, I do believe in networking a lot. So that's talking to other real estate investors. I am part of my county's owners association. I attend my neighborhood quality of life meetings. I attend my city Council meetings. So then when I go to those and I'm meeting other people there, it's very easy for me to ask like, hey, who is the electrician that everybody is using? Because that's who I want to use, too. Yeah. So good old fashioned groundwork, right? Getting out there and pressing the flesh. And for me, I've found that that has always been the best way and of course, initiating that through referrals. When you're going through your diligence, are you doing engineers inspections on these properties? Like structural engineering, you mean? Yeah. If you make an offer many times, they'll give you a period of time to bring an engineer in. That could be costly. Are you actually doing that, or are you and your husband kind of troubleshooting it yourself? No, we don't do the engineers. We had one property that we walked away from because it was recommended by our home Inspector, who was a very trusted member of our team, really had concerns about the structure. And just when we talked to the structural engineer about not only costs, but the time involved to get some of that work done, it was just not really the project that we wanted. It didn't really fit with our turnkey model. Got it. Or close to turnkey. Look, a lot of people are doing what you've done, but the growth and the networking. I mean, on your site you've got courses, blogs, videos that run from as basic as goal setting and introductory stuff all the way through creative financing. Right. So where along this journey did you find the time or was it a conscious decision to say, hey, there's a niche here that I want to pursue and build this up to 260 followers on Facebook. What was that journey like? Sure. Actually, it was one of those kind of businesses, if you will, that started out of the pandemic mid March here in New York. We all remember things shut down. My husband lost work, kind of came home and was like, I lost my job. This isn't really great right now. What are we going to do? My response was, oh my God, we have to buy another property. And he was just kind of that similar back. He was just like, you're nuts. He goes, I just told you, like, I'm out of work. Why would we buy another property? I'm like, that's exactly why we need to buy another property. We need that income coming in. So that way it doesn't matter if you're back at work. If you're not back at work, we have that coming in regardless. So he kind of just shook his head, walked away, slammed the bedroom door on me. And my response was, I guess, let me see if I can make some friends with some strangers on the internet. And I went and I started Lady Landlords as a Facebook group. I thought it would be me and my mom hanging around the group and that nobody else would join it. And I was completely incorrect. All of a sudden, we started having over 1000 women join us on a monthly basis. And what I realized was that they're looking for certain resources that just weren't out there. I've owned multiple businesses before. I have a very strong creative outlet Besides the fact that I work in science and numbers and cancer research daily. So I really needed a place where I could be creative. So it really gave me the perfect opportunity to use that other set of my skills to create courses and to create resources that I knew our members needed.

Well, let me not guess, what was your goal? What was the reason for kicking off Lady Landlords as you started to produce this content? Sure. For me, my goal was to make just one other woman's journey easier than mine was. I feel like I had to dig around and figure out the answer to this and then go dig over here to get the answer to this. And I had to go research how to be able to do this. And I was just like, this is just another that's a whole other job. Just trying to figure out how to put this together. And real estate investing is not that difficult. It's a proven system and we just really need to see what people did before that worked and duplicate it. It's not that complicated, but it's like all these resources are just in different places. And one of the things that, oddly enough, has made my content successful is because I think about, well, what did I want to know? Okay, I guess that's what I'm going to share with other people, and that's kind of what's been my secret sauce on that. What has been some of the biggest challenges that you've faced? Let's start with Lady Landlords. What are some of the biggest challenges you faced as you've built this amazing network? Nobody in graduate school taught me how to run a Facebook group. So when I first started the group and it started growing so fast, being over here on the East Coast, I realized that people would wait until kind of later on in the day, later on in the evening when I would literally be asleep. And then that's when they would spam the group. That's when the Bitcoin people would come out. That's when people that were in the group for the wrong reasons would start to show up. And I started to have nightmares and waking up in the middle of the night being like, I have to check the Facebook group. So my solution to that, actually, I do have a virtual assistant that is my eyes and ears while I get to sleep, which is fantastic. And also, once again, I didn't go to school for marketing. I didn't go to school for graphic design or how to make TikTok videos. So it's been just trying to keep up with how to market, especially when our group grows so fast. How do you continuously stay in front of such a large community and make sure that they're always aware of the different resources we have? So the digital toolbox, as I refer to it, is amazing, right? There are so many tools that we didn't have available to us. I started in the business 25 years ago, and I can tell you the difference between picking up the book, as they used to call it, every two weeks to now. It's been so profound. It's been such a dynamic evolution, but it's hard to keep up with. Right. It's tough to stay on top of the latest and greatest, and it's just always changing. For example, a couple of months ago, I created one. Like, the big thing at that point in time was to have almost like a pamphlet, like a PDF document that shared your service. And I went through and learned how to create that document and how to put that together. Then now it's like, okay, well, now that we have that, now we need to create this funnel. Okay. Now that you created the PDF, now how are you going to share that document? So then it's becoming you are constantly changing your method of communication. And it's a lot to keep up with, but it's always learning something new, which is one of my favorite things to do. So it's interesting that it's still my passion project. I would never be one of those people that when I got to financial freedom would just be like, all right, I guess I'm not going to work anymore. I will probably always be figuring out what's the new thing I can create or what am I passionate about today that I want to work on and for right now, it's lady landlords. So I don't think it's possible to truly achieve financial freedom if you're not a lifelong learner. I think that the game is changing so rapidly that you have to not only be open to it, I think you have to have a passion for it. Right. And it is constant work. And this, as you alluded to earlier, saying that rental properties are passive income, that's a huge misnomer. They always take kind of something, and we always should be improving properties or improving our systems or what our lease looks like or how we collect rent or how we handle maintenance requests. And we can actually save us a lot of time by implementing some of these systems and improving them. But we kind of need to to come take a look at what we have going on and say, what can we do to make this a little bit more efficient? And what can we do to make this better for our tenants? And what can we do to make this better for ourselves? I found that as we were growing the business and we were adding systems, part of really a core piece of prereal is we wanted to take the nondealmaking elements, the marketing and the ad placements and the algorithms, SEO, SEM, all of the craziness and take that out of the deal makers purview as a brand, we're going to provide all of those services so that you can stay focused in what you do best in actually executing the deal. And as we started to adopt new systems and we started to layer in different platforms, we found that there's programmers and then there's real estate folks, and they are two very different thinkers. And many times the platforms optically seemed great. But when we got in the weeds on them, we found that they were not practical for our workflow and our daily tasks. Have you encountered that as well? Yes, oddly enough, I encountered that a lot more in my day work and cancer research during clinical trials. Back when I started back in the early 2000s, a lot of that was done by paper. And then all of a sudden now we started to move to electronic systems. And one of my roles for a while was actually sitting down between a doctor and a computer programmer and basically translating English to English, because there just wasn't a way for those two places to really kind of relate and come together where whatever that electronic document would look like would actually be correct and serve kind of both purposes. And I feel like within the real estate world, it's very similar to that. It either fits with programming or it fits with real estate. It's very difficult to make something fit from that human factoring perspective. And there's very few people that can actually explain how that should be done properly. And they're few and far between. Yeah. We went so far as we've now got a full time programmer that's just writing code and writing programs for us because is the workflow just didn't sync up with all of the intermediate steps. So it's a challenge. And like we said, you have to have a passion for it. Otherwise it becomes cumbersome, it becomes too much. And people need to be experts in what they're supposed to be experts in. Right. Meaning that if you are focusing on real estate, taking on learning computer programming so you can build a website, it's probably not the best use of your time. That has to be an ex boyfriend of mine always said you either needed to know how to do something or be smart enough to know how to pay somebody else. Right. And it's kind of that same idea. Let's then have somebody that is the expert take on that responsibility and be able to execute well. So that way we can really focus on what we're best at. Not only will they not excel at it, and in part, they won't excel at it because they don't enjoy it. We found so many of the seasoned deal makers that are our top performers here didn't grow up with an iPhone in their hand. They're deal junkies. They love that part of it. And they started to really get discouraged as this constant change was coming, that it pulled them away from what they really enjoyed. And it's true. If you love what you do, it's a hell of a lot easier. Correct. I feel like that's one of the reasons people tend to quit on entrepreneurial pursuits, because, for example, they say, great, I want to be a health coach. I have a passion for people living a healthy lifestyle. I want to make sure that people know what they should and should not be eating whatever it may be. But then all of a sudden they realize they have to figure out how to invoice clients. They have to figure out how to market. They have to figure out how to build a website. They have to figure out how to run a podcast. Right. All these different things that all of a sudden completely distract them from what their actual original mission was, which was to help people live a healthy lifestyle. Absolutely. To get back into the deal component for a moment. If you had a magic wand and you could eliminate any challenge that you face, what would it be? What's the biggest challenge for you on a day to day or just in any tone or temperament of your workflow. What's the biggest issue that you're facing today with my real estate investing portfolio or Lady Landlord in real estate? Honestly, it's kind of an autopilot. That's right. That was important for me from the very beginning when we bought that first Duplex, that one that we were house hacking. So we just had that one set of tenants. I ran that unit as if we had a hundred. Everything was I ran it and put systems in place from one. So then since we've grown, it's just opening up that system again. It's not been scrambling for, oh, I don't know where to get a lease from now. I've had it before. Oh, I don't know what I did with it. So honestly, I feel that from a real estate perspective, I don't spend that much time there. You built to scale. I built to scale. I ran one property as about 100. And was that just in your DNA? You're super organized and it just was part of your makeup, or was that something that you learned through the podcast books? No, that's just me. I feel like everything I look at is just how do I make a more efficient system? I get a lot of people that ask me how I can kind of do everything that I do in a day, but when you are able to put systems into place, like, I can be incredibly efficient with my time, and that's served me well. I'm very fortunate that I got that part of the DNA, for sure. It's a critical component of scaling. Growing pains are very difficult to manage and where a lot of folks that have had some success, unfortunately don't once they get to that point, scale is very difficult to achieve. Are you at a point where or have you entertained or are you syndicating? Are you taking in outside money? Is that part of the plan or. No, I don't know how you knew that, but, yeah, actually, one of the things that I started with Lady Landlords was to bring syndication deals to that group, and it was actually something over the winter, fall, winter, I really went and was researching the best way to put it together, the best way for me, the best way for our ladies. And then that was something that I really pulled the trigger on in February, my husband and I definitely believe putting your money where your mouth is, we actually invested in the syndication, and then that was actually something that we also opened up to the Lady Landlords community. So now that's something we're actually working on. A second deal. That's kind of my new project, I guess I'm looking into purchasing a portfolio up here in Westchester County. And that would also be the idea of what we would do is it would really come from a Lady Landlord's fund. That's great. That's great. I had a few months ago, the net worth nurse on. Yeah. And when we were talking about potential guests, we were so excited to have you on because we saw a lot of similarities where you identified this niche, and I think you're going to have even more amazing success with it. You're obviously clearly super organized, and that's why I asked about syndication, because we're always looking for opportunities to be on the more passive side of it. We have our own portfolios, but we're always looking to expand, so best of luck with that. Thank you. It was really a point where, like I said, we self manage our properties, but you need to kind of diversify. So that was something that we said, let's look where else we can kind of park some money and syndication just made the right sense. So you have an asset now in Dr, correct? Correct. And any similarities is it a completely different ball game there. They have tenants. That's pretty much the only similarity there is. Mortgages are just different the way the laws about it are just different. It's a very different beast. But once again, I'm very fortunate. My husband is a dual citizen. He's actually still to the States, spent more time of his life in the Dominican Republic than in the United States. So it's been very helpful that he, for the most part, knows how things run there, and then that's the place that I have to take a little bit more of his lead on the way that functions. But that's just been a fun addition to the portfolio. So before I let you go, the legislative threats is something that we've kept a close eye on, and we've been kind of at the forefront of trying to report and see trends and try and stay ahead of them. Clearly, in New York, there's a very high bar. I think that what people don't understand is much of the legislation is very well intended. It's just sometimes in practice, it doesn't align with the realities of what would be fair on both sides of the table as more and more legislation comes down the pipe that tend to favor the tenant. What's your forecast? Are you comfortable with the legislative changes and you think that there's a pathway to adapt here? Some things I'm okay with. Some things I definitely feel we need to kind of keep an eye on. There were laws, especially here in New York, that changed back in the middle of 2019. I kind of get on board for the most part with those. I do feel that there is some legislation and some rumblings of some legislation that I rather disagree with. But I feel that that's where myself and every other real estate investor has to understand that we are really the CEO of our own businesses now. And because of that legislation, the politics are things that we actually need to pay attention to. We can't just go and be like great. I'm going to buy your property. I'm going to rent it out and that's all I'm going to have to care about. We need to get involved in those things. We need to be able to protect our businesses. It's why you will see me at quality life meetings. I go to my police precinct meetings. I'm on the planning board in Yonkers so I see all the new developments coming through. I'm able to meet the right players and then you now know what's going on and then it's also lady landlords is now a platform where I can share especially with other new Yorkers. Hey, we have good cause of action. That is something that maybe we don't all want. Let's discuss it and if you don't like it, let's talk about it. But it's something that we need to understand that we are now business owners. We're not just a person that's just going to collect a check. This is a business and we need to treat it as such and because of that we need to get involved in what's going on in our communities. So good cause. Eviction is one of the big ones for us that have us concerned and now candidly with such a big platform there's power in numbers. You've built a heck of a platform here to get the message out for like minded individuals that are fair and moderate in their approach. So again, Becky, Congratulations on all of the success wish you nothing but the best. If there's anything you ever need out in Staten Island where just a Hopkins and jump away. Absolutely. Can you tell the audience the best way to find you? Sure. If you are someone that identifies as female you can find us on Facebook by joining our Facebook group at lady landlords. Otherwise everyone is welcome to find me on Instagram at Becky Nova 24. Okay. As always, all the links and information will be below. Becky, thank you so much for the time and best of luck. Thank you. Thank you. Everyone out there please stay safe.