Blog Post Title Two
Eric Martel (00:00:00) - You've all heard of online training for real estate investing, and that really doesn't work that well. Then you have the coaching, mentorship, and stuff like that, that work in some situations, but it was not enough. We had tried these things with our investors, but it didn't cover everything that was needed.
Drew Breneman (00:00:21) - Listen, everybody, we all know that real estate is the most proven way to build wealth. But why isn't everyone wealthy from real estate then? It's hard to know where to start, and most of the education out there is just complete trash. You end up investing your money in a series of courses instead of in real estate.
That's not how this podcast works. We give you the blueprint to successful real estate investing and bring on guests actually willing to share their secrets. I started my real estate investing journey as a freshman in college when I bought my first duplex and have been in the trenches doing deals ever since. And today, I now own hundreds of millions of dollars of investment property.
On this podcast, you'll learn what you actually need to know to be a successful, active, or passive real estate investor. And we'll offer our takes on what's happening today so you can navigate this market and build wealth.
Drew Breneman (00:01:09) - I'm Drew Breneman, and this is the Breneman Blueprint.
All right. Welcome to the Breneman Blueprint podcast. Excited for today's episode. We have Eric Martel on, co-founder of Flip System. He's also got a really good book out. It's called Stop Trading Your Time for Money, which obviously I think that's a great lesson. I stopped doing that ever since I was almost at the end of to my teenage years. So it's something that I was fortunate to learn early. It's great you got a book out.
So welcome, Eric.
Eric Martel (00:01:38) - Yep. Thank you for having me, Drew. Yeah, starting to work nine-to-five is a very bad habit, and it's better if you never get into it.
Drew Breneman (00:01:47) – Yeah, don't get addicted to that paycheck. That's a good lesson for everyone. But yeah, you're in real estate. I guess let's maybe start at the beginning. How'd you get into real estate and where you're at now?
Eric Martel (00:01:58) - Well, I always like to talk about my background and how I got started. Because when I wrote my book, Trading Your Time for Money, it was really an introspection into why I got to where I was today. I always go back to my parents and their view of the world was very simple.
They really didn't understand how banking works, how business works, how insurance works, or any of that stuff. It was just go to work, make a little bit of money, save a little bit of money. But basically, they were living paycheck to paycheck like most Americans. They didn't have an open mind about business and stuff like that.
Eric Martel (00:02:48) - And I saw some evidence that there was a gap between my parents' understanding of the world and how the world actually works. And I said, "I prefer this other world here when I'm looking at this guy that has a business and this guy that makes money doing investment or real estate or something like that."
I knew there was something out there, so I was always very curious about that. And eventually, I met someone that was a community college teacher. I met him through a friend at university. Just a regular guy, a community college teacher, no smarter than my parents or anything like that in terms of education level. But really smarter about investing and all that stuff.
So I asked him to be my mentor and this is how I got to buy my first eight-unit apartment building with no money down and still cash-flowing. And that's through him, through his encouragement and guidance that I learned about the real estate business and started investing in real estate at that age, even though I literally had no money.
Drew Breneman (00:04:08) - How did you put that first deal together then?
Eric Martel (00:04:11) - That first deal, I mean, obviously there's a lot of research. I was money poor, but I was time rich. I was going to university at the time and you would spend like three or four hours a day for university stuff and then you have the whole day to yourself to keep yourself entertained.
So I was spending a lot of time to find the right deals. I probably analyzed over 400 deals to find one or two that numbers worked when they were fully financed with the bank and somebody else or an investor.
Drew Breneman (00:04:47) - Eric, where was this geographically at this time?
Eric Martel (00:04:50) - It was close to Montreal, actually. I was living in Montreal at the time, so that was about 45 minutes outside of Montreal. I basically went through, and out of the two, I asked, "Well, how do I... Can you do a seller financing or something like that?"
Only one of them was willing to do seller financing for a portion of the loan. And that's the one I bought. I went to look at the banks and credit unions and get a loan actually from a credit union. And the seller basically lent me the rest of the money at a decent interest rate. I think it was like a 6% interest rate, so it's not cheap.
Drew Breneman (00:05:36) - Right. It's interesting your observation even at a young age, where I've noticed the same thing. A lot of people who are successful real estate investors or have a successful business, it's not necessarily because they were the smartest person in the room on every scenario. Usually, it might almost hold you back in a way.
A lot of times, I joke with some other real estate investor friends like, "We're just dumb real estate guys." We're not actually dumb, but compared to people writing algorithms or high-frequency trading or something. This is pretty simple. You gotta be willing to put in the work and take a risk. You did that and I think also, over time, then you develop an expertise.
Drew Breneman (00:06:19) - So yeah, maybe you don't need to be a straight-A student to invest in real estate, but you do it for a while and you really know a lot about it. You get good at it, and then it's similar to the person that you're talking about that was like your parents, but then had a different outlook. Also, he ended up having a different expertise. He spent his time talking about investing and then had a different outlook on it.
Great. Then, what happened next?
Eric Martel (00:06:45) - So this was really my Rich Dad Poor Dad. That's how I describe it because he was kind of my rich dad, even though he was not that rich. But he had a 36-unit apartment building and he was planning to do a shopping center and all that stuff, and a nursing home. He just knew how to do things.
And I make a differentiation also between IQ, like you mentioned, like a straight-A student, and being smart. You can be very, very smart and, in some situation, in some investment or whatever, you will outdo or outperform someone that has a high IQ because you're smarter than the higher IQ person. So I make a differentiation on that.
Eric Martel (00:07:34) - And real estate is a great equalizer. I mean, it’s easy enough for everybody to understand what's going on, how you make money, how you profit from that, where your costs are, and all that stuff. And once you have a good understanding of that, it's very easy to build a portfolio and be a real estate investor.
But to answer your question about what happens next, after that, I graduated from university as an actuary. And I started working with corporate pension plans. Everything I was doing day in and day out was basically destroying something that's called defined benefit pension. So basically pushing all the risk of people saving for retirement from the employer who was guaranteeing a certain level of retirement, and then moving that to the employee.
Eric Martel (00:08:43) - I was doing that day in and day out and I was like, "Oh my God, this is going to be a nightmare when people are going to start retiring and then they're going to realize that they don't have enough money to retire."
And this is exactly what's going on right now is that most people, 55 to 60, they've saved just under $100,000 and they're planning to retire at 65, 70, and stuff like that. And if they need something like $1 million in savings in order to retire, it's going to be tough. It's going to be a tough road when you're 55 years old.
Drew Breneman (00:09:26) - And even if they had a million saved, that actually sounds like a ton of money. But if you're going to try to live on that, you don't generate that much income. It could be 30 to 60 grand probably depending on what interest rate you're going to be able to earn. So they're going to end up spending that quickly.
It's interesting that you had a position where you saw that at a young age. Because you hear about that where retirement plans are going to be paying out less or they're going to be going away. Who would've been a part of that retirement plan then? That was for public employees in Canada then?
Eric Martel (00:10:02) - Yeah. In those days, it was everybody. I would say like 50% of the employees had some form of defined benefit pension plan. But then the government kind of got involved and then started putting restrictions and told employers that, "You need to index the pension. You need to pay for this. You need to do this, do that." And it just kept adding on to the cost of that.
And every once in a while, employers could have a surprise where they say, "Oh my, your pension, the stock market went down, and the reserve for your pension plans are below what they should be." Then the employer has to write a check now, all of a sudden, for a few million dollars to cover that gap.
So, the employers were not too happy about that system from that perspective, but it was great for our employees for sure. The important thing is that the employees are the ones now that are responsible. So that gap that the employer had to fund now is the employees that have to fund that gap.
Unfortunately, they realize that there is a massive gap when it's a little too late; when they're like 50, 55. That's when they start realizing that "Uh-oh.."
Drew Breneman (00:11:28) - And these were companies that were offering pensions, to be clear?
Eric Martel (00:11:36) - Right now, the only people that are left are large corporations with unions and then the government.
Drew Breneman (00:11:44) - Yeah. That seems to be the same in America, the same way where it's in social security there. That doesn't seem sustainable. That's interesting. You were able to learn that at a young age. You saw that and realized, "I need to do something."
Eric Martel (00:12:00) - Yeah, that really helped me. The real estate investing really opened my eyes to something. I knew I could make money without putting time into it. But unfortunately, I just graduated and I said, "Okay, well, I better do some... I need to get more money so that I can invest in real estate."
I eventually moved to California in 2000 and I had a lot of stock options at the time, like millions of dollars in stock options. Then the .com crash, and then these few million dollars that I had were zeroed out. So I was like, "Okay, so I guess this is my..."
But even when I had that money in the stock options, I said, "Okay, well I have to do something with it."
Eric Martel (00:12:48) - And I was looking at real estate. But really, I was in California, so the numbers didn't make sense. It was very difficult to find something that was cash flowing, paying for itself, unless you put a ton of money into it. But then your return on equity was horrible as well. You would make like a 1% return on equity.
So then I thought I might as well keep it in the stock market and let it ride. But I diversified within the stock market. I sold some of my stock options, but I still had like a million dollars of stock options. And when the stock goes down, it goes down very quickly, the value goes down very quickly. And I say that with a smile, for some reason. I don't know why.
Drew Breneman (00:13:32) - Because the options probably....
Eric Martel (00:13:33) - I should be crying right now.
Drew Breneman (00:13:34) - Yeah. The options probably went away very fast when the stock crashed.
Eric Martel (00:13:37) - Oh, yeah. The options went away very fast. Luckily, I had invested some money outside. I had cashed in and then bought some other stock. But the whole stock market was down, so there was no place to hide. It's kind of like what we experienced last year and what we're probably going to experience again this year.
Drew Breneman (00:13:56) - So what did you learn during that period of time? What were some key lessons?
Eric Martel (00:13:59) - So what I learned after that when I was hit by the .com crash, I said, "Well, I have to be more in control of my finances and my investments." I mean, I invested in the stock market in some good companies and all kinds of different things. And then, all of a sudden, the whole stock market crashed. And a lot of the money was in stock options.
And I know the company that I was working for was a great company, blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't matter. Because the stock price went down, all of a sudden, the stock options are worthless. I was like, "Okay, well, I want to be in control. I want, to a certain extent, at least to see ahead of what's happening, what's the road ahead."
And then, if I'm in control and if I fail, if I lose money, at least it's my fault. It's not some random stock market thing that's hitting my portfolio that I can't do anything about.
Drew Breneman (00:14:59) - Right. So you wanted control. That's the key lesson?
Eric Martel (00:15:03) - Yeah. That was the big thing. Then when I started going down that road, I said, "Well, what else do I want now? I want to be in control. I want something that's cash-flowing, that can grow to a certain extent."
I was thinking, if I start a business, if I do this, I was trying to do real estate, but in California, it didn't make sense. So I was looking at doing businesses, doing other things, and that would also be cash flow. And then the idea was that I want to be cash flowing, I want to be in control. I wanted it be a passive income, and I want to be able to run the business from anywhere. That was the idea.
I did a couple of different businesses. One of them was a Gomez sauce company. It went okay, but it was really not enough to say, "Okay, this is what we're going to do."
Drew Breneman (00:15:59) - And you did that as just an investor, or you started the company?
Eric Martel (00:16:02) - I started the company to do that.
Drew Breneman (00:16:07) - That seems like a lot of work running that compared to these others.
Eric Martel (00:16:10) - Getting started, yeah, because this was something that I knew nothing about. We had done a catering business before, so there were some recipes that we wanted to do that were great and were very popular. I said, "Well, let's put that in in a bottle and then sell that."
But yeah, that whole process of putting that on a shelf, on a grocery store shelf, this was very educational. It is a lot of work that's involved. And at one point, we were across the United States in over 400 stores and another few hundred in Canada. So it was going pretty well, but the profits were not there.
Drew Breneman (00:16:53) - Yeah. Anything food related seems to be super hard.
Eric Martel (00:16:57) - It's extreme. You have to break some significant habits.
Drew Breneman (00:17:03) - Any key lessons from that experience, then? I'd be curious.
Eric Martel (00:17:09) - Yeah. I mean, that was very complicated. For that sauce business, I had to learn a lot. Luckily, I had a lot of different skills and I had money to invest and all that stuff. We operated that business for five years and then we shut it down. It was a lot of work for me and my wife to get that done.
In the end, was it worth it? I think it was worth it, but it was not worth it in terms of my ultimate goal of being financially free. So that's when I went to real estate. The world was a little bit different at that point.
Eric Martel (00:17:58) - We had electronic documents signing. Because I got back into real estate in 2015 or something like that. So we had the iPhone where you can talk to anybody and they can video-walk you through a property. You had electronic document signing and all that stuff. So it was a little bit different.
Then I thought, "Well, maybe we don't need to invest in California where I live. Maybe we can invest somewhere else." Then I went to the drawing board and I said, "Well, real estate's great because it’s simple. I don't have to learn a lot like I did for the sauce business or anything. So that's a good investment. Now, with these two technologies, I'm not stuck in California. So I'm going to invest where it makes sense."
Eric Martel (00:18:47) - So I started looking at, okay, what are some of the different types of real estate investments that I can do that would be passive and relatively easy to do? And then we started looking at single-family rentals out of state that were cash-flowing.
And obviously, you couldn't find these single-family rentals in California, but in the Midwest, in Cleveland, in Memphis, in St. Louis, there were tons of those properties that you can buy that are cash flowing. So that's what we started doing. The first house I bought was in Memphis, Tennessee. This one was more like a bur. So basically bought it distressed, renovated it, rented it out, and then refinanced it on the back end.
I bought it for $40,000, put like $10,000 or $20,000 in rehab, had a tenant paying $750 for it.
Eric Martel (00:19:51) - So all in, I was above the 1% rule. And then I ended up refinancing it. I had put like $50,000 or $60,000 in, and it appraised for above $80,000 or $90,000. And I was able to get all my money out and there was still a little bit of money left on top of that.
And I was like, wait a second. So I have more money than I had when I got started. I had an extra $10,000 and I have an asset that's cash flowing. I was like, wow.
Drew Breneman (00:20:31) - Yeah, and that money is pulled out tax-free because you've borrowed more.
Eric Martel (00:20:38) - This is amazing. I said, "Let's do two more of those." So that's how that grew and we built a portfolio. Then people were always wondering because we had done all kinds of different businesses. A lot of our friends and family started asking and saying, "Hey, what are you guys doing now? You haven't done the saws business and blah, blah, blah."
I said, "Oh, we are investing in single-family rentals in the Midwest in Memphis and Cleveland, and St. Louis." And our friends and people we knew were just like, "What are you doing?" It kind of blew their mind. So then I showed them and said, "Yeah, this is what's happening?"
Eric Martel (00:21:26) - And they said, "Well, I want to invest with you. How can I invest with you? Can I buy the property when it's done?" So this is when we started MartelTurnkey, which was a turnkey single-family rental provider. MartelTurnkey would buy this fresh property, renovate them, rent them out, and then we would resell them to investors who wanted to build a passive income portfolio.
We're still running that business called MartelTurnkey and it's great. Last year, we did 180 single-family rental flips that we sold to investors. So there's a big demand for that for investors that want to build a passive income portfolio, but they're working 9-5. They don't have time to look at anything to manage renovations and stuff like that.
Drew Breneman (00:22:25) - And they still want that control where they're the owner. They don't have a partner. They can just buy it themselves. I mean, 180 deals, that's a lot to find and renovate. But I'd be most curious, how did you find the end buyers? Because you just have a list at this point, and I'd imagine, that you built up, but how do you...?
Eric Martel (00:22:45) - Yeah. That list grew over time. Obviously, we didn't have that many. But basically all my contacts, all the people that I knew, I knew would be interested in this because this is about their financial freedom and being able to retire one day. Nobody had any defined benefit pension plan like I mentioned. Everybody was in 401k.
And with 401k, I'm responsible for saving enough for retirement. And then what happens at retirement? What happens when I want to get the money out of the 401k? But nobody's thinking about that. And this is when, for me, working as an actuary, I said, "Well, this is what you have to do, blah, blah, blah." I start doing calculations and saying, "That 401k strategy doesn't work well. It works great for Wall Street, but it doesn't work well for the normal people."
And that's why I focus more and more on single-family rentals because that made a lot more sense. You don't need as much money retiring with a single-family rental portfolio as you do with 401k. So that was the big wake-up call for me.
Drew Breneman (00:23:58) - And that list, was it developed word of mouth essentially over the last seven or eight years?
Eric Martel (00:24:03) - People that I knew, people that I knew on LinkedIn, people that I had worked with, and all that stuff. I was an independent consultant before, so I knew a lot of people all across the US. I just put them on my mailing list and said, "Hey, I'm starting this new company if you're interested, blah, blah, blah." And then that's how it got started.
Drew Breneman (00:24:27) - And then you've somewhat automated that. I mean, that's a lot, obviously. There's so much going on. You renovated 100-plus properties, you bought and sold.
Eric Martel (00:24:38) - Yeah. I mean, we have a CRM system, customer relationship management software. We keep track of all of that. So we're big...
Drew Breneman (00:24:45) - Which one do you use?
Eric Martel (00:24:47) - I use Zoho CRM and I've configured it a lot. So right now, all our properties, as they go through the stages, as we sell properties to investors, depending on the stage that it gets to, it automatically sends an email to the right people, to the property manager, to the realtor, to escrow, to the customer, the investor. All these things are all automated. So just a lot easier.
That's why we're able to do so many deals. We did a lot of automation, but we also had a good team. We had a couple of acquisitions people, someone that managed construction across all the different markets. We also had somebody on the ground that was managing. Basically, the realtor managing the contractors on the ground and the property management company.
So you have to build a solid team on the ground to be successful as well as a team of salespeople and all that stuff.
Drew Breneman (00:25:53) - Yeah, because you still live in California, right? So these are all out of state still?
Eric Martel (00:25:59) - The same market that I invested personally, so Memphis, Cleveland, St. Louis are still very strong markets. Now I'm doing like Detroit. I'm doing Gary, Indiana, a couple of other markets, Cincinnati and so on.
Drew Breneman (00:26:17) - I'd imagine those are all the lower appreciation markets on the value, but then you get your return almost all from cash flow.
Eric Martel (00:26:25) - Well, that's how it used to be. That's true. It used to be that, especially when you compare to California, the appreciation in California was, let's say, 6%, 7%, 8% on average. And then you would look at Cleveland and it was like 3% appreciation.
But what happened was that as we were investing more and more in these neighborhoods, we would see the appreciation increase dramatically in these neighborhoods. Then we had appreciation of like 10% and 15% in the markets where we were investing. So it's outpacing California.
Drew Breneman (00:27:07) - Yeah, the coasts have slowed down a lot, at least in California and northeast.
Eric Martel (00:27:10) - Yeah. Right now, the market is stabilizing a little bit. Obviously, 10-15% is unrealistic for the long term. The other thing too is that, I mean, we've talked to a lot of investors that invested with us at MartelTurnkey, or they just want to invest, but they want to be more hands-on. They basically want to do what we're doing.
This is why we created another company this last year called FlipSystem. And Flip System basically, you've all heard of online training for real estate investing, and that really doesn't work that well. And then you have the coaching, mentorship and stuff like that. That worked in some situations, but it was not enough.
We had tried these things with our investors, but it didn't cover everything that was needed.
Eric Martel (00:28:06) - And this is when we decide to package it to give more. What else do you need? Well, I need to have someone to find deals for me. I need someone to coach me along the way. How do I do that property management? How do I get a property manager on the ground? How do I get a team on the ground together? All that stuff.
I said, "Okay, well, here's the offer for FlipSystem. You're going to get the online training just to get you started. Then you're going to have a coach. We're going to give you access to our acquisitions teams. They're going to find deals for you; the same deals that we would buy ourselves. And we'll give you the team on the ground."
Eric Martel (00:28:48) - We're going to identify a market for you. We're going to give you the contractor, the property manager, the realtor, and the same group of people that we have worked with over the years. Here they are.
We're going to give you a software that's going to help you track all your deals and it's going to calculate the return. We're going to automate that. The same way that we've automated our business, we're going to automate yours. So that's what FlipSystem is about. I
We connect all the dots, we give you everything, and we connect you even with, like, if you need a CPA, or money lenders, we're going to make all the connections for you. You have all the stuff you need to be successful.
Drew Breneman (00:29:31) - So, you have all the stuff you need. It's set up and you just follow the system.
Eric Martel (00:29:36) - We started that in October last year. We already have over 150 customers right now. And everybody's at different stages so it's pretty interesting. We had a few students that actually went through the whole cycle. So they bought a distressed property, went through the construction, rented it out. Then one of them refinanced it. I think the other two are selling them.
And one of them is going to make a $30,000 profit on his first deal with us. If you go to FlipSystem, you're going to see his testimonial there. It is just amazing. We know it works because we've done that over the last 10 years, but it’s so nice to know that now the system works.
What we've put together, the training, the coaching, all of that is working and is helping someone that didn't know anything about real estate investing, had his first deal under contract within four months, and then ran through, did the construction, all of that, connected with the team and everything.
Eric Martel (00:30:47) - I'm proud as if it was my son or something like that. But it is like the firstborn out of FlipSystem of a new investor that was born out of that system.
Drew Breneman (00:31:02) - It's exciting to see success with that where you made those processes and then someone... And probably what set him apart was he just did it. He didn't hesitate or overthink it. Like, I have the system, I'll just follow it. Take action.
Eric Martel (00:31:17) - And this is the thing too, is that not everybody can do that? That's why the online training doesn't really work because you need more than that. You need the confidence, you need someone to tell you, "Yes, this is what you want to do."
The coaching kind of helps with that, but it’s still not enough.
The other thing, too, that I should mention is, with FlipSystem, you're part of a community. So there's a discord group and then you can talk to other investors. And now you're part of a tribe that is going in one direction. And instead of being a tribe of the people on the highway going nine-to-five, now you're in another tribe that you're following towards financial freedom.
Once you're surrounded by these people, when you're surrounded by a crowd of people, it's hard to go in a different direction. So, I think a lot of the people in the community are going to be able to help each other. And we're seeing that right now, answering each other's questions and helping out. And then, eventually, these people are going to be successful.
Drew Breneman (00:32:26) - Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Then the same Zoho system you have built out, is that what they're getting access to?
Eric Martel (00:32:33) - Well, the software right now they use is on a Zoho vertical. What I'm working on right now is creating a completely custom application. That's going to be released in the next month or so. The advantage of that is that then I have complete control over the aesthetic and the rules and stuff like that.
Zoho is great, but it has some constraints that we have to address basically.
Drew Breneman (00:33:01) - Yeah, I'd imagine. But then it'll be your own software in the very near future that you move it to the next step, it triggers the email and set it up.
Eric Martel (00:33:10) - Yeah. And that software is going to be pretty exciting. There's going to be a lot of stuff that is going to be great.
Drew Breneman (00:33:17) - How did you go about making the software? Have you got to find a company engineer to do that? Or what was all involved with it?
Eric Martel (00:33:23) - We started with a contractor because, at the beginning when we started building that application, we didn't know exactly how this thing would evolve. And then it's been so successful that we've hired two developers to work on that. And then we're going to wean out the contractor so they can work on another project. Then we're going to build our internal team to continue the development.
Drew Breneman (00:33:56) - Yeah, that makes sense. At this point, how many houses do you own then yourself or your company?
Eric Martel (00:34:02) - Right now I have different... because I have them also with MartelTurnkey, some of them that I'm selling. But I would say I have over 60 houses. Sorry, I have to look it up.
Drew Breneman (00:34:22) - No, I know. It’s the same way where, for the longest time, I said I was in 30 properties. Then I sold three, I think and then I didn't know the number. I was still saying 30 for a while. Then I saw my sheet and it was like, no, you own 28. I was like, it is a good problem to have, but I've done the same where it is you’re buying and selling. So it's hard to remember the number because it's always...
Eric Martel (00:34:44) - Yeah, exactly. And you know what happened too is a lot of people that are getting started or haven't started in real estate investing yet, they're going to think, Oh, these people. How can you not know how many houses you have?"
But yeah, I think after maybe 10, you forget about how many you have and you see it more like a portfolio.
Drew Breneman (00:35:13) - I can see that. What other advice do you have for people invested in real estate? I think you went for this cash flow first strategy. That makes a lot of sense to me. It seems a bit safer than some strategies where if you're buying a building, you need to renovate it just to get to a point where it would cash flow, and then you have to sell it because it's in a place like California where still even post-renovation will be almost no cash flow.
That makes sense because then prices could go up or down, but you always have your cash flow as long as the rental market is still there.
Eric Martel (00:35:49) - Yeah. For me, the cash flow positive housing is great because I'm building an asset. I'm building wealth really more than anything. And then I have a lot of different strategies. I mean, I can continue to get the cash flow. Over time, the cash flow is going to increase. This is building equity, the tenant is paying for my loan. I get interest expense deductions, depreciations, stuff like that. So there are a lot of tax advantages involved there too.
And it's just like, you're going to wake up 20 years from now, you're going to have this asset almost free and clear, and then you can refi. You have a lot of options. That's what I like about single-family rentals is that you can do that. And if you don't want to rent it anymore, you want to flip it, sell it to a retail investor, you can do that as well. You just have to do a little bit more renovations, get the tenant out, and you can do that.
Eric Martel (00:36:51) - I like that. I like the fact that you have a multiple-exit strategy.
Drew Breneman (00:36:57) - Nice. So then MartelTurnkey, you've got FlipSystem, your book is out. What else? Anything else you want to touch on? I mean, that's a lot.
Eric Martel (00:37:06) - I think this is great. If you're thinking about real estate investing, the kind of investments that we've been talking about, I highly recommend you go at look at FlipSystem and explore that a little bit. I know there are a lot of programs out there, but, as far as I know, we're the only program for real estate investing that's coming from a real real-estate investor.
Also, I'm sharing my team, I'm sharing my acquisitions people, my contract manager, I'm sharing all the contractors, all the people that we have, and the team on the ground. I mean, this takes years to build, this kind of team, this kind of infrastructure. And we'll help you all along the way.
And with a few months, we already have one of the students that made $30,000 in profit. Not saying it's going to happen to every one of them, but yeah. He was pretty happy about that. So, if you're interested in real estate investing, you should definitely look at flipsystem.com.
Drew Breneman (00:38:18) - Nice. And for Breneman Blueprint listeners, people watching this, how do they get in touch with you?
Eric Martel (00:38:24) - For me, on social media, pretty much everywhere is Eric Martel Official.
Drew Breneman (00:38:31) - Okay. Nice.
Eric Martel (00:38:32) - Yeah. I mean TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Drew Breneman (00:38:37) - Awesome. Thanks, Eric. A lot of good stuff in this. You have a lot going on. And yeah, most people that have all these contractor and broker relationships, they're not sharing them. So I think it's an interesting product for sure because you're actually opening up that stuff. Great. Thanks for being on. Appreciate it.
Eric Martel (00:38:57) - Thank you, Drew.
Drew Breneman (00:38:59) - If you learned something from today's show, leave a review and hit that subscribe button wherever you enjoy your podcast. Dive deeper into real estate investing on Breneman Capital's website breneman.com, where we have numerous free resources and information that can help both active and passive real estate investors.
Accredited investors can get started today as a passive investor in our multi-family investment opportunities by hitting the "Invest Now" button on our website.
Disclaimer (00:39:27) - The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of Drew Breneman and guests as of the date of recording, and do not purport to reflect the views or opinions of Breneman Capital LLC and its subsidiaries. Views and opinions are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon or deemed disinvestment or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell securities. The speaker cannot be held responsible for any direct or incidental loss incurred by applying any of the information offered.