#08: Nice Guys Finish First in Multifamily Round 2 with Doug Benson
Jun 19, 2019
I have been training, teaching, mentoring multifamily investors for over a decade and I always talk about how nice multifamily investors are as people. Doug Benson and his lovely wife Debby are case studies in why I say that. Meet one of my oldest students, Doug, and learn how he buys value-add apartments with other people's money, rehabs them, turns them, refinances the people out and owns them himself lock, stock and barrel, all while remaining one of the nicest guys I have ever met!
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Nice Guys Finish First in Multifamily Round 2 with Doug Benson
Doug had been working in IT until he left his job in 2017 to go full-time in managing and owning multifamily properties. While Doug left his job in 2017, Doug and his wife Debby have been owning multifamily properties since 2004. The first property they bought was a 4-unit. From there, they took out equity to buy their next property!
When Doug had been working his IT job, he knew that he would always be working under someone and wouldn't be independent. He had bought and flipped houses in the past, but was looking to generate a steady passive income flow. Doug had house hacked for a while and even bought apartments and flipped houses through the crash of 2008.
When Doug is looking to purchase a new property, he makes sure that he understands exactly what the costs of the property are going to be and how much revenue he's going to be able to generate. You need to know your numbers.
Doug buys 'C' class properties in good neighborhoods. Once he buys the property he works to make the property beautiful by rehabbing every single unit so that everything is new. This leads to your maintenance and repair budget being low.
Doug has always been a conservative investor and uses a buy and hold strategy. The buildings he purchases tend to be the only apartments in the neighborhoods.
In order to fill his apartments, Doug has videos and photographs of every building with an application on his website. All of his marketing drives people to his website and he receives between 8-11 inquiries each day about his apartments. Doug's marketing expenses is around $500 per year because he has a system in place so prospective tenants will come to him. Your core business is getting the best possible people to live in your units.
In this episode we also cover:
- How to become very good at vetting tenants
- Doug's checklist of what he fixes in apartments
- A simple fix most people overlook
- The mistakes Doug made early on his career
- Why you just need to start
Connect with Doug:
Links mentioned in the show:
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