From Hip-Hop to Housing: Rebuilding Life Through Real Estate Investing with Kris Haskins

[0:00] Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Matthias, an agent and investor. And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let’s do it.

[0:24] Welcome back to the REI Agent. We have Erica here today. Erica, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Happy to be here. As a co-host. Yeah, no, we had a fun weekend. You know what? One of the goals I’ve had for our relationship really the past full year. It has been a whole year now of me doing this, right? This like goal setting and tracking and whatnot. Yeah, it has been to do things to help our relationship. I think I talked about this in other episodes where I kind of saw it as a trickle down. Economics. Where, you know, our relationship is good. The kids would follow and things like that. And this time I’m kind of hybriding, you know, making sure I spend quality time with the kids as well as you.

[1:11] And that seems to be better. But anyway, so one of the things we’ve been tracking and trying to do is a different amount of dates per month or per quarter. And I think at one point we got really brave and crazy and thought we could try, what, two dates in a month? Mm-hmm. That was the goal. And that could include like an at-home date. Like one time we built a fort and watched a movie. That was a lot of fun. But somehow two a month is just hard to do. Yeah, it is. And you had the idea, which is a good idea, to try and do something once a week at home. So we didn’t have to go out anywhere. But after the kids are in bed doing something intentional. And then we ended up having a conversation about what that would be.

[2:03] Because we had to figure out how much energy we’d have after the kids go to bed. And what we’d be up for doing, something that we could realistically keep consistent. And we decided TV. Yeah. We’re going to find a TV show to watch. That’s really brainless. Either it has to be really good or just trash. And we decided to go with trash. Unless somebody has a really good one they can recommend. We did the Penguin. That one, you know, you got to focus on. And it was so good that we were, you know, hooked immediately. But, yeah, I think otherwise it just needs to be something that’s easy to do. You know, the TikTok of TV maybe where it’s brainless and just can turn it on. Because, I mean, we really only have like 30 minutes before we need to start sleeping.

[2:50] Like it’s just there’s not much time. And, you know, we’ve had these ideas of like maybe doing a puzzle. Or doing, having a game, like playing chess or something. I don’t know. Like there’s like things that we think would be really cool to take on. But like when it actually comes down to it, it’s just too hard. I know. I had that puzzle set up the whole month of December. And what ended up happening was your sister and your mom and your dad put most of it together. And you and I haven’t touched it at all. I don’t even know what that puzzle was of.

[3:27] So, dates are a struggle. Yep. Yep. Yep. But we had one this weekend. And we used it to plan our future dates. Yeah. A date to plan dates. We had an opportunity to drop the girls off. There was two young, like 14-ish year old girls that were brave and invited like 30 kids to their house. I think their parents were there watching too. But to kind of, yeah, like cool, like suggested donation of like five bucks an hour or something like that. It was very reasonable. But when you have a lot of kids there, it does become a pretty good paycheck for them. And so, we dropped the girls off there. Took my son, our son, to my parents’ house so we could go. And we got some food and went to a brewery. And we, yeah, brought our planners and things like that.

[4:24] Mm-hmm. And started diving into what dates would look like for us or what trips were going to be. Yeah. Spent a little time planning the summer. And that was, I think that’s been the, probably the point that we fail at usually with this date stuff is that we just can’t get together to actually plan it. It just seems to be, there’s just that barrier there. Like if, I think if we like had a date to plan the dates for the whole year, for example, we could almost do it. Like just like, it’d be funny to text like a January 1st, text a babysitter. Like these are the dates we’re looking at for all of 2025. Are you available? Yeah. But it’s almost what we need. But in February, we have those planned out.

[5:14] We have a, this is sort of a date. We have a gala we’re going to. We’re going to a concert. Yeah. And those, I guess, are kind of our two. And we already had one. That was on the first. That’s true. Oh, that’s right. That’s right. That was on the first. Yeah. So, I mean, we’re going to be knocking it out of the park this time. But yeah, no, I think we also have talked about, I mean, I think just being able to communicate in general. I mean, I’m sure a lot of parents with young kids can relate to this, but just having the time to be able to plan things. It’s just really, really hard. And it’s definitely not my natural inclination either. So that adds another barrier. But we’re kind of thinking that maybe on Sunday mornings around coffee time, maybe when the kids have eaten, it’s less chaotic, that maybe we can kind of look at the week and do like kind of a mini planning session.

[6:04] And then maybe, you know, coffee time in the mornings would be good kind of refreshers as well to kind of make sure that I’m aware of what’s happening. And then maybe we can try to, you know, make that a little bit longer on, you know, around the first of the month or something to plan. Yeah. So when we talk about the scheduling piece between us, just scheduling dates and knowing what’s coming, I’m just sitting here thinking about how many calendars we have between the two of us. Because I have the wall calendar. I have my spiral bound paper calendar. And I have my digital calendar that we share, like invites back and forth to each other. How many do you have? Well, I just got a digital planner trying to get more intentional about like being aware of what’s happening.

[6:54] And because I’ve used, you know, I just use like my calendar that’s on, you know, my iCal or whatever on iOS. And that’s on all my devices that are with me all the time. So that is usually what I put in like work stuff. But I think, you know, trying to have this intentional time where I’m looking at the week and writing it down in this digital calendar, that also can go with me wherever I go. I think I’m hoping that gives another element, gives a ritual maybe, like a routine of some sort that kind of raises the awareness. And yeah, something I could hopefully build in and yeah, be more aware of like, oh yeah, there’s this thing that our kids are doing this week. Or, you know, that’s the me and you piece.

[7:39] Or just even remembering what’s on my calendar for the week and trying to fit in all the million things I’m trying to do. So like, you know, I try to get a four hour or five hour book writing session in and trying to find that amongst a busy schedule can be hard. And if you don’t actually plan it out, then it’s just going to get filled. So yeah, yeah, that’s true. I guess it’s the difference of sometimes it feels like life just sort of happens to us. And when we can get ahead of it and plan, it feel like we can be more intentional about how we live the days that we have together.

[8:14] That did not mean that to sound as morbid as it did.

[8:22] Agreed.

[8:25] It’s very stoic of you. Thank you. What were you going to say before I left?

[8:33] Now we don’t know. I don’t know. I think, oh, I also have a magnetic weekly calendar on the fridge. Oh yeah. Yeah. I noticed that it seemed that definitely the targeting for all these calendar products are women. Like in the marketing of like the digital calendars that you can write with your Apple pen or whatever. And I think a lot of the planners that you can find are mostly targeted for women. And I just, I feel like, is that more common? Like to have like four different things you write and do on? I think so. Because I think, I mean, this is probably just speaking for me, but I feel like friends have had similar experiences. Because I think women often think, you know, there’s something on the calendar, like the actual event.

[9:19] And then women tend to be more adept at thinking about all of the things that have to happen in order to be prepared for that particular event. Like all the coordination that needs to happen, like all of the small tasks. This is like the mental load, you know, that women often carry. That’s probably why. Because a lot of these planners have all of those things like goals and individual goals meet bigger goals and important dates to remember. And women tend to be tasked with more of that stuff. Aren’t you glad you asked? Yeah, that’s also probably a generalization. Because we definitely know people that, yeah, that the guys are much more of a planner. But anyway, let’s steer away from these dangerous waters.

[10:12] And introduce our guest today. Chris Haskins is actually another Virginian. He’s coming out of the Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach area. So it was cool to have another Virginian on the podcast. He is a good example of how you can really recreate or think outside of the box. And how much there is the, you know, standard real estate practices where you, you know, you get a pre-approval letter. And, you know, you get the house on the MLS. And you buy it, etc. And then he’s kind of completely different. And he is thinking through all sorts of different creative ways of getting property. And that’s through financing, through finding the deals, all that kind of stuff. So if you are not familiar with that side of the world at all, that side of real estate, I would definitely suggest listening to this episode and checking him out more.

[11:09] But without further ado, Chris Haskins. Welcome back to the REI agent. We have Chris Haskins here. Chris, thanks so much for joining us. You are another Virginia native. That’s awesome to have. We don’t get many of those. Yeah, I’m glad to be here. It is an honor. A lot of California. That’s probably number one. Our guests come from California. And then maybe Texas. It’s next. So, yeah. No, it’s great. Thanks for being here. I just said that. I’m like, we don’t know. Virginia people, we got to get more of us on the camera. Cali, Texas. I just, we just said that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, you’re in the Virginia Beach area in general. Tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate investing.

[11:56] I’m curious about where you’re investing and all that kind of stuff. First of all, thank you for doing this, bringing this awareness to the community. We need more of your images on here. Husband, wife. Thank you guys for bringing that to the screen. You know? You’re welcome. Thank you. Yeah. So, I had a publishing deal back in 2002. I got tons of money from working with Jay Praise and having a song with 50 Cent. We did his first single on the B side in the club. It was called Wangsta. So, I got a chance to hang out with Jay Praise. Shout out to Jay. I got hundreds of thousands of dollars in my pocket. And then, in a few months, I was completely broke with $80 in my pocket living on my friend’s couch.

[12:40] And that’s when I realized, like, you know what? I’m a dummy. I’m a dummy. So, that’s when my whole light bulb turned on. And I realized that you can make money and earn all you want. But if you don’t have no strategy, you’re going to always, by default, you know, the default switch ends up to being broke. So, that’s when my quest for financial literacy kicked in in 2004. I’m like, oh, I got to do something different. Of all the intro stories, I don’t think I expected that one. That’s amazing. No, that’s so awesome. And you hear that a lot about. I mean, like, isn’t, I think Shaq has a really famous story about, you know, meeting with an accountant or a financial planner or something. And you’re like, you’re going to be another broke person and just another broke athlete and a couple if you keep doing this.

[13:27] And then, yeah, now he’s, like, insanely limited. Like, got his, like, PhD, right? Honorary PhD. No doubt. That’s awesome. Yeah, what a great, great story. And that’s so true. I mean, you hear about also the people who win the lottery, right? They win the lottery. And they spend it all because they just don’t know what to do with it. But, yeah, it’s such a muscle. It’s such a skill to learn. So, yeah. It is a skill. The problem is it’s such a young industry. You know, it’s not like the automotive industry or the housing industry. It’s been around for 100. You know, the financial education industry is only, you know, 30. I mean, it’s only been around for a few decades. So, you got to figure it out.

[14:10] Yeah. So, how did you figure that out? 80 bucks in your pocket. Where did you go from there? Thank God. Thank God. I had a who, not a how. You know, so I had dudes around me doing real estate. You know, and I’m like, I had these huge publishing checks. You know, we come in 60,000 and 90. You know, I was just so fortunate. But I was the stupid lifestyle that my culture and community is served on the internet, on the TV, drinking, drugging, partying, sexing, and traveling. And I bit into that lifestyle. And I thought that’s what being successful was about. You know, $1,000 a night, homies around, bottles, you know, plate with the powder. I’m just like, you know, just passing around plates with powder on it, dude.

[14:58] It’s just insane. And to think about this, I’m so embarrassed. But I have to get it out. I don’t want my daughters to fall prey to this stuff. I’m like, you know. So when I went broke, I had another publishing check coming in. And the who’s around me were getting in real estate. So I just kind of started blending in or amalgamating into them, if you will, to what they were doing. So my first real estate deal was 2003 or 2004. And they used my credit. And I helped with the down payment. And we made 50 grand. And I did nothing. And I’m like, damn, I wonder if I actually do something, you know, could I make more money. I did nothing. By then, how long have y’all been in the game? So I got licensed in 2014.

[15:39] Oh, wow. Yeah. Holy cow. You ain’t seen nothing yet, brother. You had all good times. Yeah, I know. Well, it was slower when I started. But it was kind of recovering from what you’re probably talking about. 2005, 6, 7, 8, 9. I’m sorry. 2004, 5, 6, everything was going up. Right. You could buy. You could actually buy and have a house sit vacant. And then sell it and make 20 grand. You know, you could do. That was possible. And is that what you did? Did you all fix anything up? Or when you made that $50,000? That first 50K. Yeah, it was in New Jersey. We did fix it up. It was one of those. They call them. It’s not an apartment. A co-op or something? Like in a building? Yeah. Is it a co-op? I don’t really understand.

[16:25] I think it’s like a nuance between a condo and a co-op. It’s just kind of how they run things. But yeah. Okay. One of those buildings. So we fixed it up. And then the guy came in and bought it from us. I’m like, damn, it’s worth 50 grand more than we bought it for a year ago. So that was cool. I thought that was real estate at the time. Yeah. So then reality hit at some point. And how many deals had you done? And were you caught holding anything when everything kind of fell? Was I caught holding anything in 2008? Yeah. Yes, sir. Yeah. Who wasn’t? Right. But I did a few of those big deals where we bought them. Didn’t do a little bit of work and made $20,000, $30,000. I thought I was doing it.

[17:06] Right. Paying fair market value. And then the appreciation would save me. Right. I thought that was investing. I didn’t know that you had to actually have the skill to buy below market. I didn’t know that was a thing. How do you buy a house that’s worth $150,000? How do you buy it at $80,000? How is that even possible? And I think a lot of probably your listeners and my listeners don’t even know that that’s a thing. Yeah. Buy below market value. So that’s when I learned you can’t buy at fair market value and then sell a year later. I just got caught holding all these houses and the market just dropped out. So I was done. Yeah. I think one of the things you’re talking about is one of the two worlds I’d describe, kind of the wholesale versus the resale.

[17:50] And being an agent and investor, I can kind of see both. And yeah. So that makes a little sense. What happened when everything fell? I mean, you were caught holding stuff. Did you have to liquidate? Did you hold on to it? Like what happened there? I like the way you say that. Did I liquidate it?

[18:09] Is forced liquidation the thing? I don’t know. Is that a word? They took it, dog. What do you mean? Shit. I didn’t think of the stuff. It wasn’t like, I mean, it was just sitting there. I remember. I bought it at $120,000. These prices are so low. $120,000. It was maybe worth $50,000. I mean, what am I going to do? I mean, it’s nothing to do. Yeah. I should have never bought those products. They were horrible products. Two bedrooms needed work. I mean, I remember one of the flooring was off. But at the time, it didn’t matter. I mean, you could buy anything and sell anything. It was the wild, wild west. So I lost a bunch of houses to foreclosure. My rents were $1,000. My mortgage payments were $1,200.

[18:53] So I was losing $200 a month on a bunch of houses. So all that stuff. Eventually, it just had to get cleaned up. It just wasn’t sustainable. And the strategy was you could buy a house, negative cash flow for a year, and then make $20,000. You know, you can make. I’m telling you, this was the strategy. Negative $200 times 12, $2,400 you would lose. But you’d sell it for $20,000 more, right? So your system was, all right, I’ll lose $2,400, make $20,000. But I would still make $1,800, $1,700. Okay, that ain’t bad. I did a ton of those. A ton of those. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Hindsight’s 20-20, right? I mean, we flipped some properties. We had some sales throughout, you know, the 2021 run-up with, you know, all the cash coming in, low interest rates.

[19:48] And it definitely felt that way, too. I mean, that scene, that sounds exactly very similar. It’s been a lot harder now, for sure. So I was just thinking, the way my mind often works is thinking through what this has been like for you. I don’t even know how you ended up getting involved in the music industry. But getting into that and then trying to find a different way out of it and into something new and then it being pretty easy for a while and then all of a sudden just crashing. I’m just kind of curious what your experience on the human side was of that, just trying to make it and feeling like things are working out and then they’re not. And then they’re working out and then all of a sudden they’re not again.

[20:31] Well, I’ve came to the realization, Erica, that in every market, somebody’s winning. If you’re losing, somebody else is winning. Because when we had our publishing deal in 2002, three, four, that’s when 9-11 hit and so many people were just getting wiped out of whatever, the Twin Towers. And we were just getting influxes of cash. I’m like, shit was everywhere, right around me and my crew. And people were complaining. I didn’t comprehend. I didn’t even understand that you could be. I’m like, hold on, dude. We just got a check for $200,000 last week. What do you mean this is a bad market? I didn’t even, so I know for 100% sure, I’m certain of it, that whenever you got a down, somebody down, somebody’s way up.

[21:22] And it was the same proof during COVID. I know guys that got wiped out and we just did extremely well. People don’t know. I’ve seen both sides. I’m sure you probably have too. So I had to figure out, going back to that, when all my stuff went away in 08, disappeared. Not all of it, a lot of it. I learned the skill of raising money. That’s when I’m like, you know what? I need to understand how to raise money. Once you learn the financing game, you can pretty much write your own ticket. You can finance any piece of real estate you want. So you were into more or less single unit deals prior. You were doing it. Still am. So when you set your targets on raising capital, you stuck with the single family kind of property purchases.

[22:09] Yeah. What other strategies? What were you getting into after with the raising capital and investing strategies after that? So after the crash, I had to learn creative financing. How to buy without using a bank. That’s my tagline. How to buy a house without begging for a bank loan. That’s like, that just swirls and whine in my head. That’s every day. I’m like, I don’t know how I’m going to do this without dealing with the banks. Because the banks hated my guts after I got all those foreclosures on my record. I had to learn how to raise money. I had to learn how to buy creatively, taking over debt, lease options, subject to stuff, creative stuff. What’s the other one? Contract for deed, land contracts, how to buy and trust, all this stuff.

[22:51] You got to learn this stuff if you want to have. I remember 2010, people were looking at me coming and going. They were like, this dude is still in the game. Most people had just scattered to other industries. They were gone. They were just out of it. People would bring me to the side. I’d just be walking. They were like, are you still? Can you really make money in real estate? It’s like real estate is popping now. Everybody knows. But in 2010, if you said you were his investor, people would think you broke. They would look at you like, are you crazy? I mean, everybody’s losing houses. The market’s in the trash. Yeah. No, I remember coming into the tail end of that. We bought in 2013 our first house.

[23:33] That’s kind of what inspired me to get licensed, et cetera. I remember one of the guys in my office was focused on short sales, for example. He did a ton of short sales at that time. Just totally different. I mean, this was, again, that was kind of phasing out probably then, but he had done a ton before. It was. So there’s just, you’re right. I mean, you have to really adapt to the market conditions. One of the things you just mentioned, subject to, is a popular strategy now with how many people have the low interest rates here from the recent low interest rate season that we had through the pandemic. So tell me about some of these strategies. Some of them I’m not as familiar with. So subject to, you can start there if you want.

[24:17] Well, that’s just where we just take over debt. You know, we can buy real estate. I just wish everybody would just take a big gulp of humility and understand that when you see everybody going this way, traditional real estate. I’m not hating on the realtors, but realtor, lender, mortgage company, home appraiser, all that stuff is cool for some people, but not everybody’s going to fit in that box. So we had to go to the left. And we just take over debt from people that have already acquired the debt that can’t either afford it or they don’t want the debt anymore. So we make the payments for them. That’s just true. That’s how I built my empire. That’s how I bought the house for my family to live in.

[24:59] I mean, that’s the only way I could buy. I didn’t have any other option. Yeah. So how are you finding these people? Are you doing cold calling? How are you reaching out to people? Well, I always say, as Larry going says, it’s better to have 10 ways to find one deal than one way to find 10 deals, right? Because one can cut off. Social media is big for us. You know, we’ve got 150 something thousand subs on YouTube. People just come in. That’s a big way to raise money, too. Sure. People want to sell us houses in the area. We only buy in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, though. That’s big. We run ads, PPC, SEO, search engine optimization. I do a little bit of cold calling and a little bit of direct mail.

[25:41] But this Internet, dude, man. Internet is the only place I know you can turn that on. I’ll never forget. This month has been a crazy month. People call it on Saturday, and they want to close Friday. I’m like, I don’t know any other vehicle that you can do that with. It’s true. Yeah, that’s a really good point. So, yeah, well, tell me some of those other strategies, though. So subject to taking over somebody’s debt, if somebody has, you know, a 3% interest rate, that sounds amazing. But let’s say they really can’t afford to sell it. Maybe the market shifted a little bit, and they’re just not able to sell, or they want to get out fast or something like that. This is a good option for them to, you might pay them a little bit of a fee to move or something to kind of make it worth their while, but probably not a full down payment type situation.

[26:29] And you’re going to take over the mortgage payment and take over the house. You should hold classes for your realtor friends to help them folks understand this stuff, dog. Because you know they don’t be, why don’t realtors, what’s going on, man? Why can’t we educate our realtors so they will get this stuff and help these homeowners? And that’s one of the goals here. Because I have come across in the day-to-day where that definitely was the only way out for somebody. And it is definitely, you know, the more tools you have in your toolbox, right? The better you can, the more effective you can be in investing and in sales, right? Yeah. With the realtors, we need guys like you to get the word out.

[27:15] Because most realtors, they’re scared they’re not going to get paid. And that’s not true. We pay your fee. I’m like, we are going to pay. If there’s no equity, you still get your realtor fee. We’re going to pay you the 3% or let’s say we pay 2% or whatever. Right. So it’s not like we’re cutting out realtors, but we need y’all to get the word out, man. Because this is where over the next few years, dude, if you understand creative financing, you can just write your own ticket. Because there ain’t no equity. I mean, people, you know, if you bought in 21, 22, 23, you ain’t got no equity, you know? So that’s how we help people to get out. Chris, are you working on your own? Do you have a team that you work with or kind of like a mentorship group that you work with?

[27:56] Or are you kind of out there on your own? Oh, God, yes. I have a team that my team really does a lot of the lead gen and managing construction. Like I’m horrible with dealing with the contractors. Those dudes, they just rip me alive. But my guy, Ron, Ron is the, whew. Like I’m the, if you’re familiar with the disc analysis, like the D-I-S-C. I’m a high I. But Ron’s a D. No talking. No. This dude. All right, what are we doing? Straight to the, so I’m in the front. And then he’s just in the back. So yes, my team, Ron, I got to have a team. In fact, if you don’t have a team, as you know, real estate is a people business. You can’t do it all. You can’t generate leads, go to see all the houses, manage all the contractors, go raise all the money, do all the sales.

[28:48] It’s just virtually impossible if you want to scale to something that’s bigger than a few hundred thousand dollars a year, you know?

[28:56] Totally. Yeah. You mentioned the disc. Did you have your team take that before you chose or hired them? Well, luckily, I’ve been with these dudes so long that they didn’t even know what it was at the time, but they took it over time. But I didn’t. I would now, though. I would. Absolutely. You want to know exactly who you’re dealing with because the personalities. You don’t need two I’s. They get nothing done. Yeah. Yeah. And for listeners who don’t know the disc or aren’t familiar with it, can you talk about what an I is or how that is for you? Yeah. Driver, influencer. I can’t remember the other two, but they can go to Chris Disc if they want to get their own test. I think it’s a hundred bucks or something.

[29:37] But yeah, you need to know that influencer, like obviously being an influencer, I’m on camera and talking and creating content all the time, just like you guys. So we need somebody to say, hold up. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. So I look at it like I’m the cruise ship moving around 3,000 people, 5,000 people. I feel like I’m the shit, right? I’m the crew. I’m carnival or whatever. But then if I don’t have an anchor, I am literally nothing. I’m just out in the ocean forever, right? I can never go to port. I need that anchor to say, look, this is what we’re doing. Boom. So yes, you’re big and bad, but my wife, my anchor too. So the people around me, they’re just all anchors. They’re like, all right, let’s slow down.

[30:25] So you say this, AD? Yeah. This is sounding very familiar. Absolutely. Matias would also be floating around the ocean with you forever. Yeah. I also call it a rudder, you know, needing a rudder. Yeah. Yeah. Where are you going? Yeah. I was, well, I’m glad you mentioned your wife because that was my next question. I was curious if she’s somebody that would anchor you. And can you talk about what that looks like for you guys while you’re kind of working around with the investment side of things? Yeah. My wife, she’s got, thank God. She’s got great credit so that we use it as a team. She does borrow some money for us from time to time for me to go flips. We got a huge line of credit on the house here that she helps a lot with that, with the traditional financing.

[31:11] And my wife keeps me like after five, because you know, being an entrepreneur is 25 hours around the clock. She’s like, look for his five o’clock. Mm-mm. No, we’re done. Dinner, six o’clock. I need, I need structure. Cause if not, you know, it’ll just be, it would be. In fact, when we met, I was the party house. People were coming over at 10 people. I would have parties every day. So when I met her, she’s like, we’re done dinner at six, you know, get this stuff, some type of structure. So, you know, we think we all big and bad, man. But when you look back, it’s like, you, you know, you need somebody to keep you in line. Yeah. I feel like my, my serious life really started when, when I got married.

[31:55] That’s good. Me too. Yeah. You can take stuff seriously. Stuff serious. Um, yeah, no, I was that. That’s awesome. I mean, that’s, that’s such a good thing to know yourself. And I think that’s really where I writing a book. Yeah. Teaching, teaching some, uh, agents, you know, if they want to get started in the business sales, but also encourage them to invest while they go. And one of the things I talk about is, yeah, that self-awareness and, and, and understanding yourself to help set goals and to know what you need to get things done, et cetera. But I’m also kind of encouraging people to invest when they’re starting. And if they, if they were to go first, you know, full on into real estate sales, they could be making a killing in theory, right?

[32:38] If they had no other job and they somehow struck some kind of vein and they were able to sell a ton of money, like sell a ton of houses, really good income, but they’re not going to be bankable because they haven’t been doing it for two years. Right. So, so you’re kind of an expert in this realm. Um, what could that person do to try to find a house to, you know, start house hacking or whatever? How could they get into a place to live in or to, to invest in, in a different way? Yeah. You know, I spent a lot of time trying to think about this as I’ve been doing this since 2004, things have changed a lot. You know, and I would do so much different if I had to do it over again, this traditional financing is just, if we have the mindset that this, that’s just one way to buy a house, you know, it’s like, everybody thinks that that’s just the only way.

[33:26] And I’m just, I have to break people’s arms and twist next just to kind of, and people pay me. I’m like, you’ve paid me to teach you this stuff. And you still want to go do this the same traditional way, which I’m not mad at it. But, um, when you talk to you, you must get skilled. You’re going to have to learn a skill. And I believe that’s the, the, the big disconnect because you don’t really have to have a skill to go pay full market value for a property. I mean, anyone can do that. Anyone can do that, you know, but the real skill comes in. You got to take some time to learn motivated. If I were starting out for the freeway is just with pre foreclosures. I mean, people, um, I tell people all the time, uh, we don’t buy based on market conditions.

[34:12] We buy based on social issues. So if you can just remember that in your mind, I don’t care if the market’s going up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards, or sideways, you can still get a house. If you know how to buy on social issues, death, divorce, drug abuse. Loss of job, job transfer, sickness, all those things where we go in and help somebody, not just go try to get a house. We want to help the community, you know? Yeah. That’s, that’s a really good point. I mean, I think people often will hear about getting something under market value and automatically assume that somebody’s getting taken advantage of, or, you know, like an investor, a wholesaler, whoever is, is screwing somebody over.

[34:57] Uh, but often not that case. I mean, often there is, I mean, as an investor, sometimes you’re taking on a property with a lot of risk. You’re taking on the risk of, you know, fixing it up. You need to get paid to do the work to fix it up. Right. If you’re looking at a flip kind of situation. Um, and there are people that just in a situation need to get out of a house so fast and really have limited options. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s not, you know, uh, certainly there are people that probably have taken advantage of people. Like I’m sure that happens everywhere, but, um, but it doesn’t have to be that at all. Well, I think just, we got to just make our, we have to educate the community so they understand and we educate them always.

[35:38] If you deal with us, we can’t pay fair market value, but I can close Friday and whatever time you want to close and you don’t have to do nothing but walk in and get a check. And so far I’ve never held a gun to anybody so far to sell me a house. I pride myself on that one. I’m, they don’t have to do it. And a lot of times I encourage people, look, I’m not your guy. I mean, we will do the deal, but I’m like, look, why don’t you go list it with a realtor and then you can get the top dollar. Cause some people do in fact need to get as much money out of it as they can. Well, most of the people we deal with, it’s funny how money is way down on the totem pole, my brother, way down. Like they need peace of mind.

[36:21] They want the soft pillow. They need to relocate this day. How many times, how many sell buyers, you know, can close on the exact day that you want? Yeah. Only a few guys. Yeah, for sure. Do you feel like, um, the Hampton area, Chesapeake area is pretty like, I don’t want to ask this. Are there, are there a lot of investors in that area? Do you feel like you have, or is there a lot of competition around you? Oh man, it’s fierce here. Really? But I don’t want to sound like everybody else. I hear it every day. My market is the hottest market. You don’t know. You don’t know, Chris. It’s hot here. Everybody says that, man. We’re no hotter than the next market. We’re not like New York, LA, or Miami.

[37:07] You know, not that hot, but it’s fierce here. I mean, just so much money. It’s just so much money floating around. But you can call it. It’s just like, um, I’m telling you, I’ve seen, I saw Raising Cane’s. Is this chicken? Have y’all familiar with that chicken, fast food chicken place? I don’t think so. No. It’s called Raising Cane’s, right? So I’ve seen them just penetrate. They come in, you know, Chick-fil-A was the Mac Daddy. They’ve been owning the chicken tenders or whatever. Raising Cane’s comes in. Boom. I’ve seen them in there. They’re in Manhattan now. I mean, the line was out the door. I went the other day and they’re right. You know, as long as you come in and have a good product and you serve the community, I think anybody can do this business.

[37:49] Mm-hmm. So, um, I have a friend who lives in Newport News and has, has had some interest in becoming like an investor. And there’s, and I’ve heard this question, not just from her, but from other friends too, who know we do this podcast. And they’ve, they’ve heard about lots of investors who have lots of different properties, but I often get the question, like if I’m, and for her case specifically, you know, I’m a single parent, um, single family, single income. How is it possible for me to invest in my first property? Yeah. And, uh, I think that, that people struggle with how do I do it for the first time? If I don’t have a lot of cash behind me, what would you, yeah. Yeah. How would you encourage them to get started?

[38:36] If I was doing it over and this is what I did. I just partnered. I still do. I love partnering with people. So somebody might have a down payment or part of a down payment. Say the down payment is 15,000. You can split that. Somebody might have great credit. They can go get a loan. So I’m just a huge advocate of just partnering because I don’t want to do all the work. I did. I’ve learned that I can do more deals and get small of a chunk. I would rather do more deals and get smaller than do less deals and get the whole chunk. It just, to me, it just worked out. So partner, tell her partner with some other people, man. That’s what we did. That’s what I did. Yeah. Especially if they have experience, right?

[39:19] I mean, there’s a lot of different pieces that can be helpful, but when you’re getting started, fear is often one of the biggest hindrances, right? And that’s what we did for our first flip. We partnered with somebody who knew what they were doing. Okay. What’d you bring to the table? Well, so it was a coworker that had done a few and could have been kind of like, hey, we should do one sometime together. And we had set ourselves up. We had been getting equity lines and that kind of stuff to kind of be ready for it. The perfect property came up a couple of days before you’re going to give birth. So talk about fear and not wanting to make that jump. It was bad timing, but we did it and it was a good one.

[40:05] It was one of the best flips we’ve done ever. Yeah. We’ve improved it. Yeah. That particular deal seems to come up every so often in these podcasts. It’s like the perfect example for us. When we got into real estate, it forced us to kind of work through some of the stuff with our relationship with even just like jumping in on investing deals and managing stress together. And it worked out really well, but it is funny. It just keeps resurfacing because it’s such a good example. Yeah. Partnership. Stuff works. I’m glad you did that.

[40:41] I’m glad you did that. I don’t know people when I was coming up, everybody was like, don’t do partnerships. Do it on your own. Yeah. The main thing. It was in my mouth. It was burned in my brain. So for years, I just tried to do it. And then when I got on a partner, I’m like, I make more money. I do less work. I don’t have to think about. Do you know you can work with partners? I learned that are actually better than you. I’m like, you’re better than me. Come on, let’s go. So now when I uplift them, I’m like, dude, you’re better than me. It’s funny. People will see me around town with my guys. And they’ll ask me, did I train them? I’m like, no, dude, just train them. I’m like, they’re actually the ones that are running.

[41:21] I’m just the guy in the back. It’s so cool to be not the main guy all the time. It feels great not to have to run everything. And you got guys that are actually better than you, man. I remember when I found that out. I’m like, this is really cool. Yeah. Talk about that team and leaning in your strengths, right? We can all kind of lean towards what we’re good at. And like me and you, sounds like, we kind of need a detail-oriented driver to kind of help get things done. So yeah, so that’s definitely critical. I love it as well. Tell me a little bit more about your raising capital side. So you’ve got this social media. You’ve got YouTube. You’ve got this kind of lead magnet, if you will, right?

[42:08] So that could be for financing as well. How do you structure things? Is it deal by deal? Do you have some sort of fund in place? What do you do there? I haven’t done a fund yet. I’m a little nervous about it. I just, I like the security. I like, I’m like a giver, man. So I’m known as an empath. So I hear people’s stories. I love the security of the property. Not to say that I wouldn’t do a fund, you know, I just haven’t done it yet. I got friends that do them. So I like it if I go to bed at night and something happens to me, then my lender can actually liquidate the property and get their money back. It just makes me feel better, you know? So I know that they’re secured by the property, not necessarily little old Chris Haskins because I’m just a guy.

[42:56] You know, I’m vulnerable. I’m not Superman. I could get struck by lightning, hit by a car, taken out of the equation. And I’m sure I know funds, they can be liquidated too. But with, we use a promissory note and a deed of trust or mortgage, depending where you’re at. So, and if the house burns down, they get a check. If I don’t pay, they sell the property, they get a check, you know? So it’s like, it’s less hassle regarding to get the, I’ve learned that the more you give the people with the money, like before, you know, when you think about business, you think about me, me, me, what do I need? I need the money. I need the money. You know, I need the finance and I need to finance. And I’m like, no.

[43:36] When I turned it to, when I learned to turn that around and give more security for the money, I’m like, look, here’s two houses worth 300,000. All I need is 100,000. Money just started to just stick to me. It was, it was crazy. I’m like, I’m giving out way more security than the money that I’m getting. It just fell out of the sky, right? So it’s like the more I give, it just seems like you get way more, you know? So yeah, we, we do the security based financing, if you will. Yeah, that makes sense. So like in that circumstance, you’re talking about, say two properties need a hundred thousand dollars. That would be like, including like purchase, a hundred thousand recover, like the purchase and like the rehab or whatever’s needed to, to get you to the end game.

[44:20] Is that, is that accurate or? Well, let’s take us out of acquisition and finance. Let’s take us out of, I want to take you, let’s take us out of a deal, right? Let’s just, let’s just talk about the financing itself. Say if you, you have money or a, an IRA, say you’ve got a couple hundred thousand. I’m doing deals, right? Doing deals in and out all the time. So I will secure you. We’ve got a rental portfolio. Of pure equity, you know? So it was like, I don’t even think about it. Like if you want to be secured, okay, we got one, two, three, easy street. Let’s secure them there. We’ll go do this deal over here. You know? So it’s not like it’s for the house that I’m doing. Okay. Per se, right? It might be depending on how much we got out, a couple million out.

[45:09] But usually, usually for us, we got so much rental property that I can just say, Erica, you got a hundred thousand. Okay. We’re going to secure you over there. Boom. That’s done. Let’s go get, I’m over here doing something completely different. So I got the rent from this property. I got the money. And I got the new property that we’re buying. So I’ve kind of structured it. Not to say I’m that great, you know, but I’ve structured it. What I told myself was years ago. I’m like, dude, if I could just show the marketplace that I know how to pay down. What I did is I paid down all my rental properties, just paid them off. And I figured, dude, if I, if someone would notice what I did paying off all my rentals, they would be happy to give me money.

[45:53] And this shit really worked. So I went to people with IRA money. I’m like, look, I got all these rentals with no debt. How about I just stick you? So I literally have home equity lines of credit with people. So I’ll call up. I’ll say, Hey, I need X amount of dollars. They wire the money because they’re already secured on one, two, three, easy street. I don’t have to, I don’t have to discuss anything. So I’m buying, buying, buying, buying, buying. They’re secure, secure, secure. They’re, they’re already, they’re already secured. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that’s cool. We need additional, if we need additional security, then I’ll give them on the, let’s say if I’m a new guy, I’m like, look, you can secure this property and the new one we’re buying.

[46:30] I mean, this is no brainer. If I screw up, you get my rental property and you get the house dip. I mean, this is no brainer. Right. And, and can you do, I mean, I would imagine without like the bank regulations and stuff, you could probably have like a couple of liens on one property in theory, right? Like you could have a couple of people secured like a first, second, I don’t know how you’d have to structure it. As many as you want. We put maximum, max two. I mean, usually one is somebody got, we do one usually. Because you got to still probably make it make sense with the payments and all that stuff with the rent coming in. Well, we do no payment loans. All right. I don’t, we don’t make payments.

[47:11] I don’t mean, hopefully we can bring your listeners over to no payment loans too. Okay. Yeah. It’ll break that down for me. So when I learned about no payment loans, I’m like, what the heck? A no payment loan. I don’t even make. So we borrow the money. Let’s say, man, we got so much to go over. Let’s say we got to, we want to buy this. We want to, we want to buy property A, right? Usually what people do is they borrow the money to buy property A, then they make monthly payments, right? Right. So let’s say we do borrow money to buy property A, then we will say, okay, let’s say the property’s worth 200, we’re buying it for 100. We borrow that 100, lien, deed of trust, mortgage, all that. But we say, Mrs. Lender, from January 1, when we bought it, your interest will accrue.

[48:01] And then when we sell it in January, whenever the date we sell it, we’ll just pay you the interest at that time at closing with all your principal back, right? So that’s, we just let it accrue. I learned that the more outgo, how people get taken out in this business, your outgo exceeds your income. That’s how we go down. That makes a lot of sense. So that’s primarily like a flip kind of strategy you would use for, like, so you wouldn’t necessarily do that for a buy and hold unless it’s like a short term kind of thing. You can buy and hold. I’ve got some lenders with IRA money. We just cash them out. You can set it up with, I have, shit, you can, I’ve got some guys that I pay principal some months.

[48:42] Some months I pay interest to, you know, with all their IRA, they can’t use it anyway. It’s just sitting in an IRA account. So let’s say we’ve got a rental property. I borrowed 100 grand or whatever. I want to pay. I just say, I send them an email, a text. Hey, I’m making an ordinary payment this month or next month might be a little tight. So I’m just making an interest only payment. That’s the magic of dealing with when you got two humans doing business as opposed to a human doing business with an institution. Shit gets hard then, man. That’s why I don’t tell people to use bank money. It’s so true. I mean, there’s so many different things you can structure a deal. I mean, if you’re dealing with the owner directly, that’s totally different than what you’re talking about.

[49:24] But yeah, I mean, it just becomes a huge strategic puzzle, if you will, right? I mean, you’re probably second nature now. You’re like, this is obvious. This is the easiest, cleanest route to do this deal. But some people are just used to the traditional models. Like it’s probably blowing their mind right now that this is a possibility, right? Well, I look at it, my mentor used to say the sport of real estate acquisition and finance. Once you master it, it’s like taking the chessboard and moving the board with the pieces on it. And when he showed me that shit, I’m like, wow, dude, I really have been in a box my entire life. I’ve been in a box.

[50:10] Yeah. Moving around, cross-collateralization, substitution of collateral, moving debt. This is just amazing. This is amazing. How did you, when you were growing up in your family, did your parents, did they buy properties? Was real estate, was that a part of your lifestyle? They did. My parents, God bless them, they had one rental property. I remember when they put a bathroom in the house. They had to raise the guys rent from like $130 to like $180. I remember that conversation. That’s a pretty big job. He goes, you know we got to raise your rent now. Because he had an outhouse. Oh, wow. This was back in the 80s. Oh, wow. It was that, he had an outhouse. Did y’all know what an outhouse is? Oh, yeah.

[50:55] Uh-huh. People used to go to the bathroom. So I remember them putting this bathroom in the property. And he’s like, you know, we got to raise your rent a little bit. I’m like, damn, this is cool. That’s my really own. I have all the experience. There are so many questions and so many things we could dive deeper into with what you’ve talked about. I’m going to throw a curveball, though. Are you still doing any music? I mean, were you in the creative side of that project you talked about? Were you producing? Or what was, are you doing any music still? No, strictly I took all my musical skills and bring them to creating content for my community. Because I just don’t want, we don’t have any time to shake booty and dance and party.

[51:39] Like, we have zero time. I don’t want to divert any of our attention to, we need to be using our creative juices, if you will, and using the muses to be making assets. You know, and not to say that a song can’t be an asset, but it’s just so much diversion with that. I had to get out of it. It’s so much, it’s a destructive lifestyle. I had to get away from it. No, that makes a lot of sense. I think I found it interesting as well for me that how much creativity I could express or, you know, have that side of myself be expressed when I got into like the entrepreneurship kind of, you know, real estate sales or whatever. There’s a lot of different angles for that. And it’s not something I would have thought of, you know, when I first started that I could be able to get that side.

[52:24] Because I feel like I need something, an outlet of it, you know, always, right? You do. And yeah, so I thought that was cool. You need to do it. You have the universe. The universe is creation. I mean, that’s what it does. That stardust is inside of us, man. So we can keep growing and making new things. You got to get it out. Yeah. Chris, when you, if you were to, you know, aside from joining your community, if somebody was getting started and wanting to know more, do you have any fundamental books or any just mindset, business books, books that you’re reading right now that you’d recommend to somebody? Yeah. Yeah. I’m reading Atomic Habits. I can’t remember who it’s from. James Clear. James Clear.

[53:07] James Clear. James Clear. James Clear. James Clear. James Clear. Let me see. James Clear. Tell me how to quit your bad habits. Maybe he’s got that too. That’s right. James Clear. Yep. You got it. You got it. James Clear. That one, who, not how. Stop trying to do, learn how to do everything and just work with people that know how to do it. And that’s those two. I would say, man, if you can get those two down, I didn’t know there’s habits. I had no idea how these habits are formed and all that stuff. I’m like, okay, I need to really retrain the way I’ve been thinking. So those two, and obviously I got to put a plug in for myself. If you’re a new investor, the best negotiating book is the real, the, uh, the real estate negotiating Bible.

[53:52] It was, it has been number one on Amazon, but if you need to learn how to negotiate, and I don’t know why it’s challenging for some people to just have a conversation with a homeowner. I’m like, they ain’t going to kill you. I have not yet had one homeowner stab me, threaten me. You know, they, all they can say is no, not to sell you the house. So you open your mouth and you’d be surprised, but you wouldn’t even believe the deals that I’m sure. Well, you’re an investor. People will give you a hundred thousand dollars worth of equity if you know what to say to them, you know? So those three, I would get those today. But so is that your book? Is that what you’re saying? Mm-hmm. Oh, nice. Cool.

[54:33] So the real estate negotiating Bible is right there on Amazon. You can get it. If you want to get the audio, you have to email us, but you’ve got to learn how to negotiate. You can have the best deal in front of you, the best leads, but if you don’t know how to close them, man, you ain’t know that. Awesome. Yeah. Cool. And if anybody else wanted to reach out to you or get more information about you, I see your websites there. What else? Social media, anything like that? Yeah. The best thing is YouTube. That’s what I use. I live on that. I’m on there all day. If you comment, most people, we just communicate on the comments on the videos. Sure. We get a million minutes a month, watch time, and I just get to meet some amazing people, money people.

[55:14] That’s a great way to raise money, too. If you need money for real estate, get your social media popping, man. Money will show up. Cool. Great. Thank you, Chris. This has been a pleasure. It’s an honor with you guys. Thanks for what you’re doing. Thanks for listening to the REI Agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week. Visit REIAgent.com for more content. Until next time, keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.