Dr. Vanessa Peters is the founder of VMD Investing and has been investing in real estate for 11 years in single-family homes, commercial retail, apartment communities, short-term rentals, self-storage and manufactured home parks. She has invested in over 2500 units across 11 properties and 4 funds.
She is passionate about helping busy professionals build wealth through passive, income-producing real estate that provides attractive returns and a proven roadmap to financial freedom.
She is the author of The Busy Professional’s Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing – A physician’s path to building wealth, creating financial freedom & leaving a legacy.
Vanessa Peters earned her medical degree at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada and moved to the US from Canada in 2002. Dr. Peters is a Family Physician and Chief Physician Officer for Graybill Medical Group, a primary care owned medical group in North San Diego County with 12 locations and 80+ providers.
She is involved in her community and is on the Board of Directors for Interfaith Community Services, a nonprofit that focuses on reducing homelessness in San Diego County. She lives in Escondido with her husband and son and enjoys hiking, traveling and yoga.
Connect with Vanessa:
Key Takeaways:
- Becoming an accidental landlord
- Doing your Due Diligence on Syndicators
- 2500 Doors in 9 Properties in at least 4 states
- Leveraging $$$ to acquire time
- What’s in store for you in 2020
- Accredited vs. Sophisticated Investors
Episode Affiliate:
Links mentioned in this episode:
- vmdinvesting.com/book
- EARN. INVEST. REPEAT. T-shirts
- Real Estate Investing for The W2 Employee Facebook Group
raw transcript
[00:00:01] Dr. Peters, welcome to the show, or should I say Vanessa, happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. So I’m gonna do an intro for you. After we hang up. But I think your journey just fits perfectly for what we’re trying to encourage people to do here. The Debbie to Kabbalists move. Right now I’m saying refer. Somebody asked me, though, that, hey, what’s a Debbie to Cathles and that sort of thing. It’s like it’s multiple things. It’s the community is the person. It’s the movements of podcasters, a lot that goes into it. But the ultimate thing is it’s trying to encourage people to invest while they’re still working. And you’ve done that for quite some time, right. So you’re you’ve been a physician. You’re still practicing. I am. Awesome. I want to talk into that. But you’ve been a primary physician for 17 years, investing in real estate for eleven. Twelve years. Twelve years now. So there’s a lot I want to dive into. I really don’t know where to start. And your promising thinking. Yeah. You just woke up from your Sunday afternoon naps and why would you. But what started it? Twelve years ago. It’s. So I’m trying to think where I was twelve years ago. What caused you to start looking into real estate investing?
[00:01:18] Yeah. Yeah, I. I always liked real estate. When I was the when I was vacationing with my family as a kid, I was always stopping at the little shops that had the the, you know, the real estate advertisments in the windows and like, hey, how much does it cost when you’re in, you know, Florida? When I or wherever and I always dreamed of like owning multiple homes and things like that. So that’s always interested me. But, you know, I went down a different path. Obviously, I’m a physician. And when it actually happened, rather by accident, I ended up with two single family homes. And one of them was I was an accidental landlord because I got divorced and then moved out of that house and into the house that I live with now with my current husband. But that happened in 2007 when that switch was made. So the house with open water at that point, because I, like everybody else, had treated my home as an A.T.M. and didn’t know any better. So the house was highly leveraged. And so it was pretty a couple hundred thousand under water. So I had to rent it out. At that point, I felt I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know too much about short sales or real estate or anything like that. But I thought the right thing to do would be to try and get renters in there. And unfortunately, I had to feed it about fifteen hundred dollars a month to, you know, because of the rent, just didn’t cover it.
[00:02:39] So then a year later, a real estate friend of mine had expressed an interest in real estate, and he said that the market was low and the county just north of us. I’m in San Diego County. The county north of us is called Riverside County. He said, you know, the inland valley is going to do amazing. You know, in eight or eight years or so, you should buy up there. And so I trusted him. I bought a large single family home up there for pretty darn cheap. As a short sale. And that was the kind of the quote unquote, end of my real estate investing career at that point. I jumped on pretty early and then the market continued to drop for like three more years. And whenever I looked at the value of my new home, it had gone down and I was like, maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do. And unfortunately, I wasn’t as educated regarding it as I could have been if I had died down. But I was getting married. I had a baby. I was busy and I was working. So I pretty much left it and forgot it. I did end up doing a short sale on the home. That was the Accidental Home 2012. And it was a bummer because, you know, I fed it for so many years and it was just going to take way too long. It probably is back to its original value now, maybe a little bit more. But that doesn’t wasn’t worth it wasn’t worth it.
[00:03:58] I mean, if you look at the numbers, you still even though the values there, you you probably would have came out on top.
[00:04:05] Right now, all the hassle of having tenants and stuff. Right. Unfortunately, is only a mile from here. But fortunately, though, the one up in Riverside has done extremely well. And so about two years ago, for some reason, I started getting excited about real estate again. And I think it was because I saw the House and Riverside County double. And I said, wow, this is awesome. Let’s set let’s do that again. Rinse and repeat. Right. So I had some extra money and I was like, I really want to invest in real estate right now. And so I started combing the area in around where I had the original house down here closer to me in in north San Diego County and was quite disappointed when I could see that, you know, nothing was going to work. I went on bigger pockets. I did a lot of reading. I got their calculators in the back of the napkin. Math kind of looked OK for some stuff. And then in the, you know, the maintenance cap ex and the vacancy and all that, I was just like, oh, wow, nothing is gonna cash flow. Maybe I’ll get a break even or $30 dollars a month. And I had a a realtor friend trying to convince me that I had to feed something for a little while. I was like, no, I don’t want to feed anything. So I started I was pretty determined at that point. That’s my nature. And so I had to find a way. So I went to meet ups, found out that other California investors are doing out of state investing turnkey type stuff. And so I looked into that a little bit, but that made me uncomfortable because I don’t really want to be responsible for actual house. That’s in another state that I can’t attracted. And I don’t if I had like some family members somewhere and that’ll be OK. But I didn’t have anybody that I could really trust. So I kind of nixed that idea.
[00:05:46] Yeah, well, unfortunately, you’re unfortunately for me. You’re probably the only Californian that did that because we weren’t into California money all the time here in Pensacola. Oh, yeah. It’s it’s it’s crazy like to you guys. Well, not you, but the other investors have kind of pushed us out. They’ve really pushed our market up to where we’re we’re in. I only have one property in Pensacola now, head of our. 20 something doors. There’s a long way to go, which is fine. It’s it’s it’s good. You know, it’s it’s amazing that, you know, this really. I’ve learned something a lot in the last couple years about how my investing criteria specific cap rate is getting to larger mortal families doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody else is looking for the same thing. Right. Lot of folks who are in those higher markets that are only going to get a 2 cap rate, they’re really excited when they see a 5 cap. Right. And that’s that’s just is interesting. So.
[00:06:46] Yeah, absolutely. Because they have a different opinion of how much real estate is worth. And so when they see the lower values, they’re like, wow, that’s amazing. I’m going to buy that hundred thousand dollar house in Missouri and it’s going to be awesome. Yeah. But I just didn’t like that. I’m pretty conservative with my money. I didn’t care for that idea. And so I kept digging doing my research. I’m not there has to be away and on bigger pockets. I read about syndications and at first I had no idea what that was. I thought, like me, this is like a Seinfeld rerun, syndication TV on bigger pockets. But I got I called up an operator, too, and I spoke with them. And when they kind laid it out for me and told me about it, I was floored, frankly, to hear that returns and what it actually entailed. And I realized after doing some research for me was that this was actually true. And it wasn’t some, like, scam or something. And it wasn’t speculative, like venture capital or something like that.
[00:07:54] You know, wouldn’t flipping either. Right. The flip was sexy thing to do.
[00:07:57] No, that’s exactly like flipping luxury home or just doing something kind of like out there. It was pretty solid and made perfect sense to me. So I thought, well, I’m going to I’m going to try this because I’m an accredited investor and I don’t need to work my way up through small multifamily and single family homes to Drolet and 10:31 it. First of all, I’m in my 40s and I don’t feel like I have a ton of time. I don’t work. I’m not twenty five years old and getting started. So I figured I was kind of like leapfrog over all that. Just go straight to syndications. And so I started I took out as much as I could from my Forro Inc. That was a roll over and created a solo for one K invested all of that money as well as any bonuses and any extra cash headline around. Yeah. So yeah. So now I mean like I think nine different syndications also.
[00:08:48] So how do you sort two-plus tap into that a little bit. How do you get to know and get to trust the sponsors for the deal or the general partners for the deal to say yes I will. Invest with you. I have a kind of rule of thumb that I need to know you for at least six months before. I’m going to do anything with you. I don’t know why this is that has been kind of my timetable for every deal I’ve been involved in. And, you know, there’s there’s a group they’re out of. Well, I’m gonna give you the name of a record and I’ll give it to you afterwards. But there is like a read. They’re trying to do some crowdfunding stuff and they hit me up like, hey, what can we introduce? Can you introduce us to your audience and we’ll give you some equity in the company. All along, we’re trying to do another round of funding, which generates 50 million this time in like. Yeah, that’s fine. But look, you know, let’s talk let me get to know you. You know, total my rule, six months minimum. And now they will not leave me alone. They call me they’ve call me about once a day for the last couple of weeks. And the last message or I think the last thing I looked up on them is they’re trying to complete this last round of funding in February.
[00:10:10] I like your every ARDS. February the 2nd or whatever doesn’t fit. So how do you how do you. So I’m kind of just ignoring those guys and going about our business. But how do you evaluate a syndicator to know, OK, my money? Because you do seem very concerned. By the way, we have a very similar start and what I like to call false start. Right. Because I bought my first and I’m using air quotes investment property in 2006. I ended up hold on to it for about 10 years and it was a I was dumping money into it every month. Not 50. It was like $300 a month. I was dumping into it to cover everything. Not like fifteen hundred dollars a month, but it was still there. It’s usually very similar stories. But how do you get to know a syndicate or somebody who’s sponsoring a deal to eliminate those risk? Right. Those fear factors, especially in the first one or two, because that once you get the first deal or two under your belt, you start feeling more comfortable about the process and all that. Does that make sense?
[00:11:18] What, out early? Yes. So that’s that’s been my strategy is to get a few solid operators. And then I don’t have to worry about doing due diligence on new people all the time. So initially, my due diligence for my very first deal. I’m still a bit concerned. You know, I didn’t know these people too well, but the returns looked great. The whole performer looked great. But I was gonna give them fifty thousand dollars. And so I I flew out to Dallas and I met them in person. I toured the property, met the property manager and just basically got a gut check by meeting them. You know, I can face to face. Also, I did criminal background checks on everybody. I know I was a little suspicious, I guess. And I just want to know that they were who they said they were. And you have to pay for criminal background check. But I felt like it was worth it. Yeah. You tell them that you you’re doing a criminal back check. No, I didn’t. I didn’t cause you to do it. You need to get their social or there actually is the data that you need. And so I really just did more like detective work. We had mentioned the name of their wife. And so then I’m like, okay, well, that’s him for sure. And yes, about that age and you know, that kind of get you Detective Peters, the wrong guy, you know.
[00:12:37] But I mean, it does it does make sense. If you I mean, you’re about to hand him some money, right. And you don’t have to run away. So.
[00:12:45] And the first time, I think, is the hardest, you know. Absolutely. Did you wire this large chunk of my name like, oh, my God, did it just get like diverted into some weird bank account and like a like a Bernie Madoff scheme or something like that?
[00:13:00] Yeah, wiring money still gives me the adrenaline rush like the moment it goes out or out of the bank. I’m calling from senators. And how how’d you get it? You get it yet? Get it? You’re like my dad. It’ll be there at 2 o’clock or 1 24 hours.
[00:13:15] Make it worse. I had a investor mail a cheque over the holidays and it practically got lost. Sounds like he’s are better wiring made more way more secure. Yeah. So trust in the operator is huge. Looking at their track record, you know, I’m not going to invest with someone who it’s their first deal unless they’re a friend. And I’m just kind of getting a little bit of money to try it out. Yeah, but I always invest before I ask investors to invest with this operator because I want to try them out. Like you said, get to know them. It’s going to take it to your audience or your investors. You want to make sure that they’re legit, that they have good communication and that her deals are gonna go as they say they’re gonna go. So I have like four operators that I work with and that kind of keeps the deal flow going. I’m looking for four more. But I do like the larger operators that work in the larger markets as well.
[00:14:07] And I do my homework correctly. Twenty five hundred doors in nine properties across four states, at least four states.
[00:14:16] Yaka one of those is a fund. And that’s where the doors are so large. But they’re in like, I think five states in the southeast. Such a gap. Definitely. Phoenix, mostly Arizona, Texas and Florida would be the top tier of states.
[00:14:31] And do you have any single family homes in your portfolio? No. I know you’d like mobile home parks, which is a hot topic for people to talk about.
[00:14:40] So I have just one single family home right now. And that’s the one that I’ve got up here in Riverside County. And I’ve leveraged it. You know, it has a lot of equity. So I leveraged it with a heat lock and some utilizing that to do more investing.
[00:14:53] That’s also such a amazing, too. We’ve done that a couple times now where we leverage our home, make a lot of credit, just people still understand it. I’m like, where have you been? What rocker you got under? How do you know?
[00:15:07] I think people are a little they’re a little scared about what happened in 2008 if they were around. And as a homeowner then and even with the heat lock on my primary and my investment property, I’m only at 60 62 LTV, so I’m good.
[00:15:23] So what do you do when you talk to folks? Because you have a VMT investing, right, which is where you are. You’re sponsoring deals now or.
[00:15:33] Well, I’m a GPE on. What’s with these like these operators that I know? Well, they’re the ones who are sourcing the deal and who are operating the deal. They’re the key principle. I’m a Koji, which just means that then I’m basically doing investor education, bringing in a group of investors and providing all of their follow up and, you know, providing them with the numbers and answering any questions that they have some the leads on. And then I’m also, you know, just I usually try and visit the properties when I can and review the underwriting and how off how how often.
[00:16:07] There are so many different questions I have. The reason why I have so many different questions, I want to give you a little background. This is or it’s not horrible, but it’s it’s weird for me to talk about myself. I guess my previous job, I was a consultant, I.T. consultant to probably probably held health care industry. Oh. So I dealt with a lot of doctors and CEOs and things of that nature. So when I’m really excited to talk to you about that aspect, because I never really cross that line with those guys, because a lot of the folks that I dealt with there was this. Ego mentality that I just didn’t want to approach. Right. And and I see you laughing. No idea what you’re talking about. Well, there’s there’s a there there’s this and I get it right. They see me as the I.T. guy. What am I gonna know about how I’m definitely not gonna give them advice on how to. I’m not going to take advice from from some financial advice from somebody who’s not doing better than I am financially. Right. So I get it right here. And I’m making some not too dramatic assumptions that they’re doing better, funnier than I am. But but for you, you’re kind of their peer. Right. Which is which is really incredible. I hope to be able to get this into their hands so they can get introduced and they can connect with you and all that good stuff.
[00:17:34] But what are some of the things that you run up against for people who are. Because I run ins with my peers. Right. Is there like, you know, I I get a lot of nicknames thrown at me, like Junior Trump or, you know, real estate mogul or something like that or Apple SDR. Yeah. And that’s like, man, if I can only trust you enough to show you what this has done for us financially, you would understand. Yeah. Yeah. But until I go to that point or get comfortable providing that to them, what are some of the things that you help those folks who are doctors and non-doctors like get it, especially where we are in the cycle, the market. Right. Because there’s a lot of information out there that seems like everybody’s got a copy of this crystal ball that says we’re headed for a correction or a downturn. How you classify do. How do you get those? Potential investors, too. How do you eliminate some of the risk on some of their concerns? Right. Just as you had when you went through your first film and you ended chromo. I’ve never heard of I do criminal background checks on Zenica reform. But I think it’s all the time.
[00:18:43] Now, I know I’m a lot more relaxed.
[00:18:45] I’m I’m I’m Warner wondering, OK, what does she look up on me? Not that there’s anything out there.
[00:18:52] Right. Yeah. Quite clearly, though, I have that I have a lot of trouble with my peers. I don’t really do much good. There’s a couple that are on board and they’re an amazing referral source for me. But I think that doctors are really good at learning something. They’re being told something make. And this is like this is this is the way it is and memorize it and then go and do it. And that’s what medicine frequently is. You just have tremendous body. Doesn’t change. You know, it’s like this is the way it is. And then go and act on that. So they’re very good learners. But the people who have already got to them live with the traditional methods, the financial planners or their CPA or whatever has told them you must invest in your four one K. You myself, a lot of taxes. And if you want a deduction, you should probably buy a gigantic house or something like that to get the tax deduction, you know? So the information they’ve already been given isn’t necessarily true. But when you when you go outside that box that they live in, kind of rich, they’re kind of rigid folks, a lot of them. And they have an ego as well. That is I know best.
[00:20:12] Well, in that rigidness may be that get what I’m interpreting as the ego, right? Not necessarily. They have an ego, but it’s just like you just said, is that’s what they’ve been taught. They’re doing OK financially. You’re right. So why would they try to do anything else, which I love is an aspect. What your your book covers is that you’re not really trying to build more wealth. You’re trying to buy time back.
[00:20:36] Yeah. Right. So which was a disaster here. Yeah. Because you can always work harder and work longer hours and get more procedures done or see more patients. Yeah. For what?
[00:20:49] Yeah. Because most most physicians don’t have a very good home life or work life balance or whatever you wanna call it. Right. Home life is probably not the correct tag, but the work life balance because most of the guys that I was introduced or or were close the closest to there were cardiologist, surgeons or orthopedic surgeons of like that where they’re on call. You know, they’re if they’re not in the surgery, they’re in clinic. And it’s just like, how do you guys have time to say hello to your wife for your kids baseball game or whatever. But. So two questions here really is how did you break out of that mode? Is it because you just always had this fascination of real estate when you’re younger and it kind of led into that? Or what kind of led to that for you to break them all? Because even just talking to you here, I don’t get that it’s probably an accurate label. But that ego coming across is as most I get from most physicians. But how did you break that mold? And then. I forgot my other question, so I answer that one. Go back to well.
[00:21:56] I’ve always been pretty open minded when it comes to earning money. I was I was never an entrepreneur because I grew up in Canada and it was really OK. You’re a smart kid. You can be a doctor or a lawyer. Those were kind of my two choices and nobody around me was an entrepreneur or had any business experience. So gotcha. For me, I was like, okay, I want to I want to earn a lot of money and I’m good at science and I like people. And this will be this will work out well. I’ll become a doctor a lot lossing. No, not my not my committee, but. So but I always have it. Okay. In the back of my mind. OK. How can I earn more money? And when I moved down here from Canada for for the weather. Mostly. But a side benefit is the taxes are improved. You know, there’s universal health care up there and the taxes are 50 percent. And when I started here, though, you know, I wasn’t earning a lot and I was kind of shocked, too. Like while they’re taking a lot of taxes. And so for me, an immediate an immediate return on investment is reducing your taxes because that’s money you get to keep her off the bat that you already earned. You don’t have to wait for syndication to sell. You know, hard to get ideas to get it right now. So I’ve been with the tax team, a tax planning team for about for about 12 years now. And they have helped me drastically. So I corp- on the side and an S corp and so that, you know, I’m definitely open to that. Breaking the mold in terms of taxes as well as investing in real estate.
[00:23:36] Very cool. Yeah. I still didn’t think of my second question, but we’ll roll with it. Right. So I will say this circle back to your comment about not asking your partners to invest with you or look at some deals with you. It makes me excited maybe more and more less relieved that if you’re not doing it, then I would have just as much trouble, more trouble doing it. So that’s. And you’re shaking your head. Yes. So that makes me feel better.
[00:24:06] Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s just that they they don’t. They don’t put you in. They put you in a different box and even. Oh, definitely. Yeah. As a colleague and I have a feeling that as I get a few more colleagues on board, it will snowball and be like, oh shit, just something cool. And so are they. They don’t wanna be the first one. Yeah. Yeah. You got to find the guinea bag. Right. Herd mentality. It’s like, oh Adele’s doing this and it’s actually legit then. Yeah, I’ll give it a try.
[00:24:34] Now are you, are you investing too. Obviously you’re investing to get your time back, but are you investing to retire early? There’s a lot of movements that we see now. Little bigger pockets, right.
[00:24:47] I mean, that was never my plan. But you’re right. You get into groups of people who that’s their main goal is to get out of their W2. And I was actually just on a panel for a multi-family investor nation last month. Dan Hanford’s and the panel was called from W2 to full time apartment investor. And when they put me on that panel, I wrote them back. And like, I think this is the wrong panel for me because I’m still working and I’m gonna be in my office when I’m on the panel, so I won’t be able to hide it. You know, the office, the diplomas, you know, they’re like, no, no, that’s OK. It’s for everybody. And different levels of transition. But that’s what drew me to your group, though, is the earned investor, Pete, because for one thing, I have a damn good source of capital. I mean, I was I leave my job. I don’t want to do the fire thing where I have to be frugal for the rest of my life. If anything, I’ll do Fat Fire, where you have tons of money and you don’t even care.
[00:25:45] But I haven’t heard a fat fire. But it’s pretty it’s a pretty funny knife. I’m more on board with that. So for now, my job is providing me with a great source of capital. And my goal is to keep investing it as much as I can and also compounding any distributions that I get from any kind of syndication, you know, payouts to to really get my net worth up to a point where I don’t need to work anymore. But I could, you know, and then I think that takes the pressure off of I’m here nine to five because I don’t dance to my house. I’m gonna you know, I won’t be able to pay the bills. I won’t be able to do this. I don’t get to do that. So I feel like the freedom that I’ll get is going to be in the mindset. I’ll have mental freedom and then I can decide what I really, truly want to do. Right now, I’m just the medical director of my group. So I have a lot of a lot of administrative work, you know.
[00:26:40] And the other thing that I hear is I don’t have the money, which I do think it takes money to invest right now. There’s several different ways you can go about trying not to do it. There’s several different resources out there that’ll show you how to do that. The WSU Catholic is not what I mean. That’s not my story. It’s not what I started with. I’m just not that much of a hustler. But the other thing is, is what you just said is you have this money generating engine that allows you to have the capital do it. But when you get to a point where you start replacing that income, at least some of it, it is such a mental shift of why I really enjoy going to work. I do. But. And I think part of that is because I don’t have to be there like that. I actually have to be there. But, you know, I think, you know, to me, it’s not necessarily before we’re okay. If something happens and I’m going to provide for my kids and my family and all that stuff, and it’s just not there anymore. It is such a relief that that financial stress is now off loaded onto those investments that we have, those cash flowing assets that we have, which is which is huge. Yeah, our our stories are very similar. It’s kind of a pretty eerie, actually, but I of it. So. Here we are. This is February 2nd, 2020. What’s in store for you this year? What do you what are you trying to focus on?
[00:28:09] I’m promoting my book right now. I wrote the book The Busy Professionals Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing. Yep. It’s basically just a primer on investing in syndications. And it’s for folks who don’t know too much about it, kind of runs through that explains. But it also talks about the why and sort of what we’re really, truly after, which isn’t just to take in millions of dollars, it’s to buy back her time and also use our time to its greatest effect. So I learned to in this because sometimes, like I said, when you’re around the folks you’re trying to get out of a job, it’s easy to almost jump on board and be like, yeah, I want to quit my job, too, but then I don’t wanna work full time as an apartment investor either. Right. Yeah. Like I was trained in medicine and I went to school for like nine years for that so I can make good money doing that. And it’s what I’m good at and I’m natural at it. Why would I give that, you know, source of income up for another source of income where I have to kind of learn a lot of new things and and, you know, I have to hustle and be doing stuff that’s like, you know, I don’t know how to do the spreadsheets and stuff like that. That’s not my thing. So it seems to me like I should continue to work earning a good income until I’ve got enough investments that I can back off or or stop.
[00:29:30] Yeah, I apologize if you you know, those kids get it. So we have a we have a five year old, a two year old and an eight month old. An eight month old when she gets. Laughing her before me, she just starts cracking up. She can’t turn it off. And I think they got her cracking up and then cause other kids kind of. Dive into that and kind of feed off of it. So there’s like there’s a big laugh fest going on right now. So let’s keep hitting me. Don’t hit me. I apologize if we can, but that’s awesome. So. So let’s talk about the book for a little bit. It seems to be. I do have a copy of it. But as I told you earlier, I haven’t read the whole thing from cover to cover. But it seems to be a pretty quick read. It seems to be such as the high points. Right. And it’s available on Amazon everywhere. Right. Amazon. And you mentioned something right before, which I was not expecting. But there you’re going to actually give away the first few chapters of the book, right?
[00:30:32] I think I had a sneak peek of the book at my landing page, which is VMT investing dot com slash book. And there you can download the first stuff, first few chapters if you like it, and you can pick it up on Amazon.
[00:30:46] Definitely recommend it again. It’s a pretty quick read, but all the title, I’m kind of jealous because I’ve gotten to this, actually. I don’t know if you can see it right there. Oh yeah. Uh-Huh. So that it is that says write a book for twenty. So. Kind of jealous, so your title, Who Had to pick your brain happy to help. This is this is your second book, this you’ve released, right? Not just the first first isless for the mix up there. And it’s a little weird for me, but I highly recommend it. Well, I’ll put that link in the shown us as well. So let’s talk about VMT investing for a minute. What is that? That that is basically where you are a co-sponsor. You providing the deals or you’re communicating with everybody. Do you have to be a physician to invest with you?
[00:31:38] No, absolutely not. I had a title of my book that was the doctor’s guide to pass real estate. And I realized, hey, that’s not fair to exclude all the other businesses. I’m happy to welcome anybody, generally accredited investors who are accredited yields. I occasionally get one come across my desk that does have a few spots for credit, non-accredited or sophisticated investors. But those are, you know, kind of few and far between. So yeah, my target market is really accredited investors with W2 jobs mostly. I mean, actually, there’s plenty of self-employed folks out there who are, you know, very savvy business people. And those are also folks that I love to talk to as well. There is they understand quickly how this type of thing works and the accreditation piece.
[00:32:28] It doesn’t matter if you have a W-2, you’re self-employed. The requirements are the same. Right. It’s just networth and or any income. So I speculate, right?
[00:32:38] Correct. Correct. Yeah. Not in the networth. Not including your home. If one million dollars and two hundred K of income as a single person or three hundred K as a married couple. Most of the deals that I’m involved in are five or six b the right regulation de 5:55. B and they are it’s a checkbox, it’s kind of honor system that you do the test that you are accredited. We’ve done a couple of 50 60 deals as well, and those ones require you to use a third party software to verify your aunt approve.
[00:33:08] You have to prove that the checkmarks you’re making is accurate, which got a letter from your CPA.
[00:33:14] You know, that’s OK for folks who are, you know, like docs and stuff. But those folks who just have a lot of investments, you know, it’s not as easy to prove that. It is not.
[00:33:25] You’re right. It’s I know we were talking about this that this morning and my mastermind where a guy he’s in his first year of hitting that accreditor piece of him and his wife did very well last year. And he was like, how does it change things? And that’s like, well, for me, it really hasn’t changed anything because the deals that I’ve looked at have been the five or six B. And I just haven’t done a five or six C deal yet. I’ve looked at one, but I didn’t like it, so to speak. And I told him, I said, here’s the thing and I wanted to get your input on this, too. But maybe this is because my circle was improving or the folks that I’m around. But there seems to be a lot of syndicators kind of everywhere now. Maybe this has always been the case. And I’m just now tapping into this world, you know. But what I’m seeing is the ones that I have relationships with, their minimal participation level keeps going up and up. Right. Which is good for them because they don’t have to have they don’t have to deal with somebody different investors. But I told them, I said so it’s it’s not an accreditation thing that worries or not necessarily worries me. There’s going to keep you from doing a deal. It’s when you’re starting building those relationships. What does that minimum investment going to be? Mean you can. Are you starting to see that as well? Or on these deals that you’re working with or. No?
[00:34:51] No. The operators that I work with generally have the 50k minimum, but for repeat investors, it’s twenty five. So you know, so don’t go down to twenty five, which is nice, especially for folks who are just going to dip in their toe in the water and test it out. Of course like I tell people you’ve got the money but 50 k into a deal because the one hundred and thirty three dollars that you’re going to get per month just doesn’t seem like very much when you put in 25k. Yeah. It doesn’t move the needle. You know, it’s just like you can like whatever you know. But if you put in 50 or 75, 100 and you start to see some real money coming in passively.
[00:35:28] Yeah. And now, you know, I have a I have an issue with the word passive, but I’m getting to appreciate it. To me, nothing is truly passive. Right. It’s more passive than, say, in managing your own single family homes. Right. So, you know, investing in these larger apartment and we were able to do participate in to this last year that have I told the guys this morning and they were on the calls like I found my new addiction and it is being a limited partner. Apartments. It’s a really good thing because I have done very little work to receive those distributions.
[00:36:10] Yeah. It’s not truly passive, but the past, but the act of nature is limited to reviewing the deal. You’re doing your due diligence on the deal and then going over the bank and worrying your money. You know, after that you can choose to review the financial statements and you can choose to dig into it if you want to, but you’re going to get a monthly update. A quick email that you can just kind of glance at. OK. World’s not falling apart. Yeah. No need to worry about that. But I think the other benefit, though, of working with like my pool of investors is that once you trust the person who’s your connection to these deals, your level of due diligence can go down a little bit. Bighead, you’re not being approached by the operators themselves in a way that arm’s length is a good thing because I don’t have as much skin in the game. I mean, I I usually invest my own money when I want to have it, when I have capital invested. I mean that I’m aligned with the investors. But it’s not my baby either. You know, I can I can go to a different operator. So if I think it’s a good deal, that’s been another set of eyes that’s not totally attached the deal. Whereas directly with the operator, of course, they want to, you know, get investors.
[00:37:22] Absolutely. All right. Vanessa, I want to make sure to give you the last say here. Wrap it up on time. What are the. Anything else you will leave us with? And what is the best way for people to connect with you and find out more about the BMD investing in your book?
[00:37:40] Sure. I’m easy to connect with me by email. Vanessa at BMD investing dot com and my website VMT investing dot com has a couple of sign-up sheets. You know, I have an investor club or legacy club. I’m going to be rebranding it where I’d like to have folks that have been pre-screened just be part of the club and then you can just look at the open deals because at that point I’m sure you’re your audience knows. But Regulation D five or six B means that you have to have a prior relationship and you can’t just send out the deals via email. So if you’re an somebody who happens to be on a list and you keep getting actual investment summaries attached to the e-mail, then maybe it’s a five or six C. Those ones can be publicly advertised and just given to anybody. Yeah, it is. Yeah.
[00:38:31] And with those things, you know, if and I’m sure you’re in the same spot. You’ve talked to your legal team and gotten their advice on all that because those rules are great for a reason. Right. They’re open for interpretation. And every every lawyer is gonna have a little bit different twist on what you can and can’t do. Right. So but I think I think it’s really cool that you’re engaging that to have a relationship with those folks. No, that’s that’s pretty cool. Hey, one thing I wanted to ask in this is I think this may have been my second question earlier. Now, remember, this is. Are they changing the rules when it comes to accredited investors? A shift in that stuff. I heard some kind of noise about shifting this. Not as much about your net worth. Is there something else?
[00:39:17] And I have heard that. Oh. Is this the government? So who knows exactly that could happen next month or in 10 years?
[00:39:28] Absolutely. Vanessa, thank you very much for for joining me today and having this conversation. Really loved it. I look forward to diving into your book some more and I will let you know when this comes out, okay?
[00:39:41] Absolutely. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate it.
[00:39:43] By the way, I wanted to make make it make light of this. So now you’re a physician, which we talked about the perception of of work life balance. You’re a wife, you’re a mom and you’re a real estate investor. So if anybody’s listening, they’re thinking, hey, I don’t have time for this. Look in the mirror. You’ve got time. You just need to put put the remote down and go find some stuff today. Writers and delegates is the magic word as well. I am warning that they need to learn a little more. But yes, your exact delegation is awesome. Thank you. We’ll talk to you soon. OK. Take care.
[00:40:21] Bye bye.