Today on Unstoppable REI Wealth I am joined by an incredible woman in Jhanel Wilson. While being a full time chemical engineer, Jhanel used loans and credit cards to stop her dads property from being demolished and sold at auction. After going through the usual ups and downs of the renovation process, she successfully completed the project and began cash flowing, immediately seeing the power of real estate. Through the years, she has strategically used leverage, built relationships, developed different strategies which lead her to be financially free since 2012. Today, she is the Founder and CEO of The Savvy REI with an eight-figure portfolio and on a mission to share her 17+ years of hard lessons & personal strategies to help people understand, master and succeed with real estate investing. At the age of 22 Jhanel's first property came with all of the challenges and then began cash flowing $700 a month. At that point she realized she could definitely make more money in real estate than she ever will with her engineer job. Jhanel teaches how to utilize credit cards and hard money loans while building your real estate portfolio. Key Moments: * [00:03:47] And then I had to actually refinanced and use the equity in the house to pay for the rest of it. So since I started on libraries, I continued through leverage * [00:07:48] You know, the tenants would complain about them. They would pay the wrong bills and it was just a hot mess. They were more to manage them. So we decided to get property management software, we use building them. And so we can pretty well, we just use what they use. We do a better job than most property managers, I would assume. [00:08:05] Plus I rent with the section eight and a lot of property managers don't like section eight. I feel like they just know how to manage them. So we manage our section eight. We know how to use the tenants. And so we do every job I was thinking about having a harden management company actually. [00:09:58] Billy: Take us through how you go about vetting your tenants to make sure they're good tenants. [00:10:22] Jhanel: So, this is the thing, because I don't have to worry about getting paid. I don't pop out people based on their income. So that gets split up a huge qual heart that people have to go through. So it's like first you got to find people that can afford it. And then you have to find people who I have a good personality. [00:10:36] So, because I don't have to worry about the income part that leads me to. On the personality and other things about them. And so the biggest, the worst kind of tenants are entitled tenants. And it's because you can never make them happy, no matter how awesome you fix things, no matter how often you try to fix them, that we're talking to them, they're just not happy. [00:17:49] I'll put in a new vanity and once you put a layer of paint on everything, it looks good. So I just focused on painting kitchen and bathrooms, and I like Hardwood floors. That's probably the only thing that I consider first, but it looks really nice too, but it lasts forever. Thank you all for listening and I will see you on the next episode. When you are ready head on over to https://billyalvaro.com or go grab your tools to help you at https://billyssecrets.com
Today on Unstoppable REI Wealth I am joined by an incredible woman in Jhanel Wilson.
While being a full time chemical engineer, Jhanel used loans and credit cards to stop her dads property from being demolished and sold at auction. After going through the usual ups and downs of the renovation process, she successfully completed the project and began cash flowing, immediately seeing the power of real estate.
Through the years, she has strategically used leverage, built relationships, developed different strategies which lead her to be financially free since 2012.
Today, she is the Founder and CEO of The Savvy REI with an eight-figure portfolio and on a mission to share her 17+ years of hard lessons & personal strategies to help people understand, master and succeed with real estate investing.
At the age of 22 Jhanel's first property came with all of the challenges and then began cash flowing $700 a month. At that point she realized she could definitely make more money in real estate than she ever will with her engineer job.
Jhanel teaches how to utilize credit cards and hard money loans while building your real estate portfolio.
Key Moments:
* [00:03:47] And then I had to actually refinanced and use the equity in the house to pay for the rest of it. So since I started on libraries, I continued through leverage
* [00:07:48] You know, the tenants would complain about them. They would pay the wrong bills and it was just a hot mess. They were more to manage them. So we decided to get property management software, we use building them. And so we can pretty well, we just use what they use. We do a better job than most property managers, I would assume.
[00:08:05] Plus I rent with the section eight and a lot of property managers don't like section eight. I feel like they just know how to manage them. So we manage our section eight. We know how to use the tenants. And so we do every job I was thinking about having a harden management company actually.
[00:09:58] Billy: Take us through how you go about vetting your tenants to make sure they're good tenants.
[00:10:22] Jhanel: So, this is the thing, because I don't have to worry about getting paid. I don't pop out people based on their income. So that gets split up a huge qual heart that people have to go through. So it's like first you got to find people that can afford it. And then you have to find people who I have a good personality.
[00:10:36] So, because I don't have to worry about the income part that leads me to. On the personality and other things about them. And so the biggest, the worst kind of tenants are entitled tenants. And it's because you can never make them happy, no matter how awesome you fix things, no matter how often you try to fix them, that we're talking to them, they're just not happy.
[00:17:49] I'll put in a new vanity and once you put a layer of paint on everything, it looks good. So I just focused on painting kitchen and bathrooms, and I like Hardwood floors. That's probably the only thing that I consider first, but it looks really nice too, but it lasts forever.
Thank you all for listening and I will see you on the next episode.
When you are ready head on over to https://billyalvaro.com or go grab your tools to help you at https://billyssecrets.com
[00:00:00] Billy: This is Unstoppable REI Wealth. I'm your host, Billy Alvaro, the Unstoppable BA. And today I'm interviewing Jhanel Wilson from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Do you know, got her start years back, 2004 by bailing out her dad who had a tax lien and multiple violations on his property. She got creative on her first deal, bought it with no money down on her credit card.
[00:00:22] And turn that one, flip that one property that she flipped into a rental, into an eight figure rental portfolio, where she basically sits back her and her fiance and they do Cha Ching, they collect. This interview is 35 minutes long. It's packed with information and how she. How you can too. And her key, her niche, she focuses in on, believe it or not one bedroom section eight apartments.
[00:00:48] And that niche has led her to very little turnover and a killer cashflow portfolio. Hope you enjoy it. Welcome to unstoppable real estate investing wealth. My name is Billy Alvaro, AKA the unstoppable BA former billion dollar mortgage banker gone bankrupt turn professional real estate investor where each week you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems, and secrets myself
[00:01:15] and other highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs use to start, grow and scale their businesses, creating massive profits and how you can too. And we'll teach you how to put those profits to work. So you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth.
[00:01:34] Now let's get started.
[00:01:38] What is going on, everybody building out our back in the house and know the episode of unstoppable REI wealth. And today this young lady we're going to have. It is living the unstoppable lifestyle. This young lady has eight figure portfolio. That's used accumulated. I want to get into that and also want to get into how she buys properties from credit cards and how she scaled her company is using section eight and veteran housing.
[00:02:02] Jhanel Wilson? Welcome to the show.
[00:02:05] Jhanel: Thank you so much I'm happy to be here.
[00:02:08] Billy: Thanks for coming on. So you're out of the Philadelphia.
[00:02:10] Jhanel: Yeah. I'm from New Jersey. I'm from New Jersey and I invest in Philly now.
[00:02:15] Billy: I love it. Yeah. I'm from Jersey too. I just moved out here about a year and a half ago, loving the Jersey lifestyle.
[00:02:20] So give us some backstory. How long have you been investing in real estate and how did you get involved in investing?
[00:02:26] Jhanel: Well, I started as I said before at the age of 22. My dad had a property that was. Being sold or about to be sold at auction, a tax lien auction. And it was going to get the demolished. And I decided to get out a student loan and a credit card to pay for the violations and to pay the back taxes.
[00:02:44] And that was how I got started. I kind of got thrown into.
[00:02:49] Billy: Yeah, the first deal, it was a doozy violations and tax lien.
[00:02:53] Jhanel: Yeah, that was just the beginning. So after I got the urgent things taken care of, you know, I had the regular other drama, like contractor drama, neighbor, drama, city drama, you know, all the things that people deal with.
[00:03:03] So I got an all my first property all out the way to make me kind of fearless.
[00:03:07] Billy: That is fantastic. And so what, 2004, once you got into your first deal, you got bit by the bug and what happened?
[00:03:14] Jhanel: Yeah. So when I did get that property finished, I started cashflow in $700 a month. And that was like, sounds like I could definitely make more money in real estate than I ever will in my rear, because, you know, I've read the books about, you know, max your 401k Roth and save it.
[00:03:31] And I was going to do all that I had planned on pan up all my debt and saving it and becoming a millionaire by the time I retired and I was set, But then when I discovered how much I can make in cashflow for real estate and I did it all loans. So, you know, I didn't have any money at the time. So I used my credit cards, it was still alone.
[00:03:47] And then I had to actually refinanced and use the equity in the house to pay for the rest of it. So since I started on libraries, I continued through leverage and that was how I was able to scale so quickly. But yeah, I caught that bug, that cashflow bug, and I just been buying the same way ever since I like small multifamily, I might duplexes triplexes quads.
[00:04:05] Those types of deals is what I specialize.
[00:04:07] Billy: So this is good stuff. So I want to get into the nuts and bolts. I want you to train people, give your knowledge. I'm going to suck, go in your head and suck out that knowledge and how you go about analyzing. Let's talk about first small, like family one to four is how do you analyze that to see what's a good deal to put your rental portfolio?
[00:04:25] What do you look for? How do you analyze.
[00:04:27] Jhanel: Yeah. So that's how everyone cashflow all depends with cashflow. I do not invest for appreciation. I don't invest for tax benefits is all based on cash flow. So I use a certain ratio. Well, I kind of have a good eye for an eye by undervalued property. So this is like a big old property and it's only like a hundred grand.
[00:04:44] It's like, wow, why is this household cheap? And then I'll add units or I add bedrooms just to drive up the cashflow to support, you know, the price of the house so as I'm very flexible in how I achieve my cashflow, so I'm make sure whatever I buy it for and renovated for a meeting added by whether it be units, apartments, whatever.
[00:05:01] And then the casual has to support that. And also net me, you know, some profits. So that's how I determine what I buy. It's all based on the cashflow,
[00:05:09] Billy: always on the cashflow. So is there a certain ratio of cashflow you're looking per door, per house, per unit? What is that?
[00:05:15] Jhanel: So average is about $350 per door.
[00:05:18] This is single family. I want to make sure I cash out on money. So those, I don't catch all that much. You know, my might like $300, but I consider myself making the money upfront from the cash out. My multi-families I'm okay. If I break, even on how much I put in versus how much I cash out. But those cash were more like a duplex might be 700 to a thousand.
[00:05:38] Triplexs is, might be 12 to 1800. So it all depends on how big it is and the cash out versus cashflow. What I primarily want is just more cashflow
[00:05:49] Billy: cashflow. that's it. Cash is king., so you're not looking for a cash on cash return. You're not looking for Capri. You're looking solely on how much you can make per door.
[00:05:59] Do you look at that? Like you said, where your singles, if you put in all your money for purchase and acquisition, then you do a refinance in a way out. You looking to pay all that off. And after you pay a little off, you still looking for a positive cash flow of $300, $350 per door.
[00:06:13] Jhanel: Yeah, for the singles, I need to cash out cash.
[00:06:15] I need to cash like 20,000 on the refinance. So I get investment back. Yeah. And I'm a bird investor, so are pretty much my return. You know, I don't have any money in the houses. So cash on cash return return on investment. Doesn't really apply because I'm a burn.
[00:06:32] Billy: I love it. You would just varying it out.
[00:06:35] So was it just your dad's property that you purchased that home on a credit card or were there others that you did on the credit card?
[00:06:41] Jhanel: Oh I use credit cards all the time. So when I discovered the 0%, which was back in 2009, how does it really work? Well, they're still kind of cheap, but they were pretty cheap. I could buy a house for 10,000 or 20,000.
[00:06:52] And so I was using credit cards alone for those. And then when I discovered hard money loan loans, I started to pair them together and just use that for my. So then I could buy bigger properties. I triplexs places that were like a hundred thousand. I will put down, you know, 20% on my credit card and pay the rest of the purchase and the construction with the hard money loan.
[00:07:11] So once I started doing that I started scaling even faster, and that was actually when I quit my job, when I discovered hard money loans and I discovered the commercial lenders. So we financed me out and it's like, I just didn't believe this.
[00:07:22] Billy: This is fantastic on this, the properties that you do when you have a project, a property manager that runs it, or is it you that's managing.
[00:07:29] Jhanel: So I've been through several property managers and I've just decided that they're all terrible. Anyone who's got a good problem. And if they were good, they were good initially, but then they got bad. I think they just discovered where they were bad. But yeah, we started to manage our own because we were just having so many problems.
[00:07:48] You know, the tenants would complain about them. They would pay the wrong bills and it was just a hot mess. They were more to manage them. So we decided to get property management software, we use building them. And so we can pretty well, we just use what they use. We do a better job than most property managers, I would assume.
[00:08:05] Plus I rent with the section eight and a lot of property managers don't like section eight. I feel like they just know how to manage them. So we manage our section eight. We know how to use the tenants. And so we do every job I was thinking about having a harden management company actually.
[00:08:19] Billy: Yeah, it's a lot of work for sure, man, but you know what, if you could bring it in underneath your umbrella and you saving the six, eight, 10%, as long as you're efficient at running, and it's not hurting other job for yourself, because look, the name of this game, right Jhanel.
[00:08:31] You know, is to pull yourself out, have that cashflow flow. So you can go live life in a way where your family, with your husband, kids, whatever. Friends getting tied to it and doing that property management. It's not really the right way. Could it be a job? Tell me how you've scaled quickly with section eight.
[00:08:47] And I don't know what turn is. TRN and veteran housing.
[00:08:51] Jhanel: Well, there's just, there's all kinds of programs, but is just another program. So unless you advertise on a section eight website, all the other programs they contact you. So we work with about four different programs that pay rent and because of rent is guaranteed, it allows.
[00:09:06] To scale and use a ton of leverage comfortably because we know it will be covered. So the rent rule that we get from section eight, we just made sure whatever construction or hard money loans that we use is going to be covered by that grant. And then we still get the rent from the tenants later. But the guaranteed money is what we apply to our construction projects is going on because you know, that that payments has to be managed.
[00:09:27] So we just make sure we just keep our numbers within what gets paid by, by the government agencies and other agencies that we go through. But I just want to make a note that the reason why our management is so easy is because of the tenants that we picked. So if you pick good tenants upfront, they're not a lot to manage.
[00:09:43] You know, they don't complain a whole lot, you know, it's certain tenants that complain a lot. So we found that. As long as the tenants are, picked well upfront to really, all we had to manage is the money and just to maintenance costs and the software makes up pretty easy,
[00:09:58] Billy: Take us through how you go about vetting your tenants to make sure they're good tenants.
[00:10:03] Cause this is like the number one problem. We'll say where they don't want to get into investing massively into single families and multi's is like, look, I don't want to deal with tenants that had one rental with the worst thing. And it really does simple to them, not having a process for vetting the tenants coming in.
[00:10:20] What's your process? What do you.
[00:10:22] Jhanel: So, this is the thing, because I don't have to worry about getting paid. I don't pop out people based on their income. So that gets split up a huge qual heart that people have to go through. So it's like first you got to find people that can afford it. And then you have to find people who I have a good personality.
[00:10:36] So, because I don't have to worry about the income part that leads me to. On the personality and other things about them. And so the biggest, the worst kind of tenants are entitled tenants. And it's because you can never make them happy, no matter how awesome you fix things, no matter how often you try to fix them, that we're talking to them, they're just not happy.
[00:10:55] And so, and
[00:10:57] Billy: how do you vet somebody who has entirely personality upfront? What's your trick for that?
[00:11:02] Jhanel: So I decided,
[00:11:04] I recently decided that I'm going to start a questions and I decided to, because I have a property manager who is now finding tenants for me, and she has been putting in entitled tenants. So I need to sell, even though I can do this intuitively I need to figure out a process, but I know one of the, yeah.
[00:11:22] Yeah. So one of the things I do is I see if there accountable and I'll ask them what's going on with the current landlord? Why are they moving? Why this and that? And if they tell me problems like, oh my landlord didn't do this. I had to do this because I had to move out because this is inconvenienced and they complain a lot about everyone else around them.
[00:11:38] And like, nothing is their responsibility. Yeah.
[00:11:42] Billy: If there is a bunch of problems and nothing is their fault then you know their the problem
[00:11:47] Jhanel: Yeah, exactly. They move a lot. So yeah. I just try to figure out who is really the problem in here. And if this sound like they're a problem, they're always a victim always complaining that everything's negative. I'm like, Nope. So yeah, I think that's the biggest thing. You always have to interview the tenant and see what kind of person they are.
[00:12:04] And those negative ones are usually the ones who are problems. They complain a lot.
[00:12:08] Billy: Are most of your properties fill with section eight?
[00:12:11] Jhanel: Pretty much. Yes. Yeah. I would say about 90% are section eight and other programs. And. Only in my upper skill neighborhoods, do I don't have section eight tenants.
[00:12:22] Billy: Got it. And, uh, just for the listeners out there, if they're not familiar with section eight, does the property have to get approved by section eight? Or is it the tenant that gets approved by section eight?
[00:12:32] Jhanel: Both. I think so for the tenant side, I don't know everything that I had to go through, but I know they have to have a clean background and be below the poverty line.
[00:12:40] And for the landlords, they have some, it depends on how big your voucher program is. I'm in Philadelphia. So we have a huge list. And so we're pretty sophisticated. Uh, so they have a landlord training program. They kind of walk me through the whole thing, so, you know, everything, but for the most part, as long as you're placed passing inspection, it really just has to be habitable.
[00:12:58] It doesn't have to be like anything. Great, but you get more money if your place. Is nice, but it's not that big of a deal. People shy away from the inspections, but they're not that bad. Some inspectors can be bad if they take the job too serious, but yeah. And they just get the, like, I don't know, I have a chip on our shoulder or something or.
[00:13:18] This is false sense of importance, but sometimes if I recognized I have a certain inspector on this cancel inspection. I hope I get a different one.
[00:13:29] Yeah. It's about section eight. So there's people out there that think if I rent to a section eight tenant, the tenant has no portion of the rent is a hundred percent from section eight. Is that true or not? It's true if they have like zero income, but for the most part, when the previous administration came into office, they want to tend to pay our bigger portion.
[00:13:49] So they do have to pay more than what they paid before previously. They could be in like a beautiful apartment, like top operate and best neighborhood and have no income. And then their housing with our, we pay a hundred percent. That's not the case anymore. So if they're in like a really nice place, it's kind of like, they want them to contribute towards that.
[00:14:07] So they want them to pay. Yeah, they do have to
[00:14:10] Billy: give us an idea of the rents in Philly. So typical two bedroom, one bath. What do you get on the section eight, the section eight portion. What are you getting there? And then how much on top of that is the tenant.
[00:14:22] Jhanel: So I have a ton of one bedroom apartments. I, I have duplexes triplexes, and a lot of them are older people.
[00:14:30] You know, there's a lot of big of bloomers out here who need to place a lot of them on a one bedroom. So for my one bedrooms, I get about a thousand to 1100 right now. Um, my lab what'd you say,
[00:14:41] Billy: Is the from the section 8 portion or is that the total rent?
[00:14:43] Jhanel: That's the total rent? So my last, where the rent is 1100, the total rent, my tenant pays about 200.
[00:14:50] Billy: Wow. And now let me ask you about when they move out of the places or wreck, this is another concern that newbie investors, like, I don't want to get involved because they wreck my place. They crush it.
[00:15:01] Jhanel: Yeah, that's that's from screening. That's what I'm screening. So my tenants don't move out. A lot of them pass away, unfortunately, but they don't move out long as you're a good landlord.
[00:15:10] They stay forever, which is what you want. You know, you don't want to be able to turn over. You want to focus on your next project, your next property. So I hate turnovers and I don't really get that many of them. So why don't we just screen up front? You don't have a lot of turnovers. And if you have people who are accountable, um, and you get a landlord records, they do not wreck your place.
[00:15:28] Billy: Do you think you're having this much success because of the clientele you're actually targeting? It sounds like you're targeting the older, the elder, right? So family three, four bedrooms. Do you tend to hear horror stories where a lot more people end up moving into the property that's on the lease where the houses get wrecked. Is that a fair statement?
[00:15:49] Jhanel: Yeah. So I used when I was young and I was kind of like going through the different things. I started getting into four bedrooms because you also got paid a lot for those. I was like, oh, I can get the same amount as I would as a duplex, but it would cost less because a single family would cost less to do the duplex at that time.
[00:16:07] So, but then I discovered the way the housing authority structures, their vouchers for, they want two people in each bedroom. And then if someone has a baby, the baby doesn't get their own room until they're two. So you can potentially have 10 people living in a. 4 bedroom.
[00:16:26] Billy: And it's wear and tear on that property.
[00:16:29] Jhanel: That's a lot of wear and tear, but like I said, they pay a lot.
[00:16:33] I don't know what they're paying now, but I know back 10, 15 years ago, I can get like 15, $1,600 for a four bedroom. It would be a lot of wear and tear. So I will get, you know, maintenance calls. So you just have to decide where you are in your career. If you don't mind, all the maintenance calls are not that bad.
[00:16:51] And you want that $1,500 a month. Um, maybe it might be worth it for you, but I prefer to do more work upfront, get a little less money and not get any phone calls. You know, it's more passive.
[00:17:02] Billy: So on the no-fault whole side, tell our listeners, what do you do in your rehabs as far as level of rehab? Do you harden the property?
[00:17:09] Do you put in the cheapest crap? Cause it's section 8 like talking about your, your thought process and what goes into doing a section eight. To make it durable.
[00:17:19] Jhanel: So I do the old school, which is focused on the kitchens and bathrooms. I don't do total renovation unless I buy like a full gut renovation. So a lot of people are buying houses.
[00:17:31] Now let me just tear it out, even if it was okay. But like I leave up the plaster. I have old wiring and some places I'll upgrade the panel. So I don't do like full of rehab. I'm pretty much in and out a cosmetic we have in a month or two tops. And I just focused on the kitchen and the bathroom. I'll paint cabinets.
[00:17:49] I re glazed tile. I'm in glazed tubs. I'll put in a new vanity and once you put a layer of paint on everything, it looks. Yeah. So I just focused on painting kitchen and bathrooms, and I'd like Hardwood floors. That's probably the only thing that I, I mean, it's considers first, but it looks really nice too, but it lasts forever.
[00:18:09] I don't like vinyl. Cause it gets scratched up. Wood does gets to this crash, but you can just, just like you patch a wall, you see it a little bit and restate it and it's good to go.
[00:18:18] Billy: What do you do in your cases? You're doing laminate on the, on the tops. You do.
[00:18:23] Jhanel: So I invest in C neighborhoods. So I do put formica countertops cause they don't really expect that kind of stuff.
[00:18:30] I feel like it's a waste of money. I focused on return on investment and I get an low return on spending a thousand dollars on a granite counter. And a C neighborhood. It's just not worth it. It's like it takes time, but you gotta get a template. It takes that takes an extra week. So I consider all these different costs involved and maternal investment.
[00:18:47] And I, I never see a return on it. I don't get higher rent from section eight, tenants, I'll say, oh, where's this stone countertop. They're just happy to have a nice place. Heat that works in a fair landlord. That's all they really looking for in those type of neighborhoods now, and b and a neighborhoods, they kind of expect a stone countertop.
[00:19:05] So I would use them there. And if I use it, there is some remnant, so it was going to be cheaper
[00:19:10] Billy: and that's smart. So, I mean, listen, you're very smart what you do cause you're rehabbing to the level of the. And the clientele and you can't over rehab and you can't under rehab. Cause you just going to hurt yourself.
[00:19:20] You either going to spend too much or too literally in place, it's going to get wrecked. I want to get into how you built up over the last 15 years, how you build up a, an eight figure rental portfolio. Like what are you doing to get there first? So if you have partners in your business,
[00:19:37] Jhanel: so 11 properties with my fiance, but the rest of them are mine.
[00:19:42] Billy: So he jumped on your coattails and said, you know, you know what, maybe I'll hop on this train.
[00:19:47] Jhanel: Yeah. I taught him the game. He left his job after four years of investing. Um, and he, he hit the ground running. So he might scale faster than me actually. You know, it, it took me about to learn everything I think had I got the blueprint.
[00:20:01] So I think he will actually surpass me eventually. But what's different about.
[00:20:07] Billy: How long would it take you to acquire that many properties?
[00:20:10] Jhanel: So I worked as a full-time engineer for eight years when I left my job. I don't really know what my portfolio was worth at the time, but I cash flowed a at about 70,000.
[00:20:21] And then, um, I kind of slowed down a bit and had some kids. And then when I pop back in again, My property is appreciated so much. I was like, oh, so I, I pulled out about $200,000 and things just went crazy. I found like a little loophole where I was doing conversions. I was buying a single family homes and converting them into duplexes and triplexes and cause no one really was up on the game.
[00:20:50] These houses were selling for so cheap.
[00:20:52] Billy: Now we're making bank.
[00:20:55] Jhanel: Yes. Yeah. So I was turning out the cashflow, increasing the value. I found another good contractor. So I had three sets of contracts rolling at the same time. So, because I felt like I'm good at reading people. And so I had these three great teams.
[00:21:11] I was on these conversions and that was kind of how I got the scale. Uh, and then I had my hard money lender, who he was giving me cash site unseen. So it was like a combination of having a lender who trusts. To just let me havethen money for whatever I wanted. I had three great crews. I had this loophole with the zoning and that's how I kind of scaled pretty quickly.
[00:21:32] Then once that loophole kind of closed, cause people caught on to this, those prices come to increased. And then I changed my strategy again to buying properties that were, that were occupied. So I started buying a bunch of triplexs that were occupied. I know what they can appraise for. And I was buying for sellers who didn't really know what they could appraise for.
[00:21:48] So I was buying them for like one 50 and then when I got them to praise, once I burned them out, they were praising for like 300,000. So I was spending like 25,000 in rehab. Yeah, but just paying everything. Painting would be glazing and I'm putting new handles on the cabinets and new backsplash, and they were praising for $300,000.
[00:22:06] So I was able to cash out even more money than they're on the COVID when that happened, what initially happened, a lot of lenders dried up and that caused a lot of deals to hit the market. And I was able to take advantage of some pretty huge deals, which is what Abel that's what helped me get to the $10 million mark.
[00:22:24] I bought 3 million just last year.
[00:22:26] Billy: Good for you. So tell us your strategy for buying off market on market. What does that look like?
[00:22:32] Jhanel: For the most part it's off market. I also buy from all the auctions, but because of COVID, there hasn't been any auctions, but one only, but for the most part, I have a pretty good deal. So with wholesalers, they call me, they know exactly what I want.
[00:22:44] They know I can close quickly. They know I'm easy to work with and know, I know how to solve problems. So they bring me all the good deals, clown, as long as you're a great person to work with your problem solver. You can close. You can get deals brought to you all the time.
[00:22:58] Billy: So it's that easy you knew in joint venture, you're doing bird dogs.
[00:23:03] Wholesale is finding you deals all day long and you, you grew at $10 million portfolio from that simple strategy. Simple.
[00:23:09] Jhanel: Yeah. I
[00:23:10] mean, I think it was key is just having easy money and because I have the credit cards, I can have money in my account within a couple of days and they're all 0%, you know, I use the balance transfer offers. So having the quick cash is what makes you a valuable seller?
[00:23:24] Billy: You mean a valuable buyer.
[00:23:26] Jhanel: Yeah. Valuable buyer, yes..
[00:23:28] Billy: So the business, is it you and your fiance?
[00:23:31] Do you have virtual assistants that help you? You have a team? What does that look like?
[00:23:34] Jhanel: Yeah, so we do, we have hired our first VA this year, um, which was a new thing. I've always wanted to do it, but it's like. Something new. You don't want to try it. So we try the first one and she takes phone calls from the boomers who don't want to use their phones.
[00:23:50] And she scheduled the maintenance. She has like a, a list of commands are a list of people to call for certain things. So, and then we have about 200 units between the two of us. And so. When we got to about a hundred when we needed to bring someone else in, and we read that for every 50 tenants, you kind of need one person and it's, it's pretty accurate.
[00:24:08] So it's about 200 units. There's the two of us. And then we have a VA and then we have another person who helps us property manage. I'm hoping that eventually that particular person can kind of take over the property management and then work with just the VA's and kind of work us out of it. But we don't do that much in a day to day.
[00:24:24] I do have rehabs going on, so I'm still involved in the rehabs, but for the most part, I only get involved. It's something that's unfamiliar to R or something escalates, and they kind of need me to problem solve.
[00:24:34] Billy: I love it,
[00:24:35] man. What's next for you? What are your goals or ambitions? What do you see yourself in five and 10 years?
[00:24:41] Jhanel: Uh, well, I've done the problem taken a break. I didn't really want to buy 3 million worth of properties last year, but it was such a great deal I had to. So I'm doing this project very tired and then leap strained with, uh, you know, construction. And good workers. A lot of my team members just like me and we all have young kids.
[00:24:59] And so we were all really strained in the past year. We just need a break. So once we were moving, um, I've planned a refinance a bunch of my properties. I should be able to pull out a few hundred thousand and I will probably look into buying some large multi families in the next few years. I'm hoping that the market corrects a little bit.
[00:25:16] And, uh, I can get some deals on that end or find some off-market multi-families I don't really know that space yet, but I think that's what we'll probably do. It seems easier to get money from the refinance and a number of other huge, much bigger
[00:25:30] Billy: yeah. The returns in which begin to cash flows a lot better.
[00:25:32] And, uh, it's just more zeros on the deal. You know, I said you've been, you've been really good to interview your a natural.
[00:25:40] Jhanel: Oh, thank
[00:25:41] you. And because I feel like I started from the bottom, I pretty much know every step I know everything that's involved. And so it was just be on a bigger scale. I will understand what people were telling me, different things that are happening.
[00:25:51] So even though I hopefully won't be involved in that, I'll still understand it and be able to optimize and, uh, make some good return.
[00:25:59] Billy: I love it. How do people find you?
[00:26:01] Jhanel: I have the website, Jhanel Wilson, J H A N E L wilson.com. I'm also on Instagram. I post a lot of stuff about drama, them going through it with contractors, tenants, and, and I tried to teach about commercial lending, hard money loans and credit cards.
[00:26:20] Try to get people out of the FHA loans and to focus more on getting this easier money from the commercial side. So those are the types of things that I'm teaching and I'm hoping I can help people get started when they're young and really learn that once you invest in real estate is really better than working on 9-5.
[00:26:35] Billy: It's the absolute best. There's nothing like in financial freedom at pinnacle, for sure. You've been great having you on Jhanel. Thank you so much for sharing some of your wisdom and your time. Congratulations on everything you've built. And I look forward to seeing you in the future, even maybe doing some deals together, cause I'm looking.
[00:26:51] In the Philly area and just going out there for some multifamily. So you get your cost for sure. Good having you thanks so much.
[00:26:59] Jhanel: Take care Bye-bye
[00:27:00] Billy: thank you so much for listening to today's episode of unstoppable real estate investing wealth. My mission is to give you my listeners, the blueprint for success inside of secrets for starting growing and scaling your real estate investing business, you could experience.
[00:27:18] Unstoppable lifestyle. I've made it simple for you to catapult yourself success. Go to Billys secrets.com. That's B I L L Y S secrets.com. There you will find every single tool tip trick strategy system and secret you use to make millions of dollars as a real estate plus everything. My team usersand my guest views all in one place for you to tap into.
[00:27:46] So you could start grow and scale your real estate investing business. I really hope you implement what you're learning. I hope you utilize these tools, tips, tricks, strategies, and secrets, and I hope to see you on the next day. God bless. Bye-bye.