In this episode of The Passive Income Attorney Podcast, Seth discusses with rock star property and construction manager, Colin Douthit, how to effectively manage a property for profits after the purchase is closed. Colin tells us how he helps his clients after the deal is closed and gives us some insight about investing in the Kansas City market. For him, passive income added stability to his life, which a 9-5 just couldn’t offer. Enjoy!
“Passive income added a baseline stability to my life that a W2 job didn’t always have. You can get fired one day at a W2 job, so just having that baseline is really great.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
3:02 – Colin talks about his background and his transition into real estate.
5:04 – Seth and Colin discuss if college is really worth it.
7:21 – Colin talks about switching from being an engineer into an owner of an apartment building.
7:46 – Seth asks if the engineering degree helped in his real estate career.
8:03:46 – Colin describes how the knowledge of construction was useful for his real estate business.
10:05 – Seth asks Colin how he started his property management company.
11:09 – Colin explains how he built his real estate portfolio.
12:55 – Seth asks Colin how did he scaled his property management company so quickly.
15:44 – Seth asks when a real estate client should engage with Colin’s services.
15:57 – Colin discusses the importance of speaking with your clients about their goals and how they want to grow.
19:05 – Colin explains how he puts a plan together before the deal closes.
20:30 – Seth asks about the relationship between the property manager, the construction manager and the sponsorship team.
22:19 – Seth asks what makes the Kansas City market so strong.
29:39 – Colin talks about why he likes real estate investments over traditional investments.
30:25 – It’s time for the Freedom 4.
30:18 – What’s the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?
30:53 – In an alternative universe where you weren’t involved in real estate, what else would you be doing?
31:25 – Where were you at five years ago and where do you see yourself and your business five years from now?
32:03 – How has passive income made your life better?
FIND | COLIN DOUTHIT:
Website: www.atlas.rentals
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Seth:
Good day, everyone. Thanks for joining us for a new and inspiring episode of the Passive Income Attorney Podcast. Before we jump into the interview, I want to invite you to go to escapethebillable.com and snag our free passive investing guide. It’s absolutely free and has some incredible insider content that I know you’ll find useful. So have you ever wondered what actually happened after you close on a real estate deal? It seems like all the work is upfront by finding and buying the property right? Well, most people will lead you to believe that once the property is closed, the book is closed, and you’ll magically just get checks in the mail. But closing is not the whole story. It’s just the beginning. Whether you buy single family rental or an Airbnb vacation rental, or sharing a crowd funding platform or read or invest in a syndication there is someone somewhere that must execute the business plan post closing to make the project successful and therefore deliver returns to you the owner or investor. This means someone either has to manage the property or manage the property manager, someone must complete construction of any capital improvement or renovation. Someone must lease the property to tenants Someone must hire and fire, evict non paying tenants keep accounting records, draft and negotiate contracts and leases, and so on and so forth. Without going into too many intricacies I’ll just generally say for now that many of these tasks button at all can be handled by a property manager. So finding a great one is of utmost importance. It’s a relationship of which it’s important to just can’t be stressed enough. Today, our guest of honor is one of the great ones. Colin Douthit. Colin is a rock star property manager based in one of my favorite markets, Kansas City, Missouri. He’s the owner of Atlas Property Management, which manages over 600 doors and growing by the second. He’s also an experienced real estate investor and general contractor. Alright, let’s get into it.
Seth:
Colin, what’s going on brother Welcome to the show.
Colin:
Thanks for having me. Seth. Glad to be here.
Seth:
Yeah, excited to have you on man. Well, let’s just jump right in brother. What’s your story? Tell us? Tell us a little bit about your story and feel free to brag a little bit.
Colin:
Yeah, what’s my story? Yeah, I grew up in Kansas City. Played a lot of football as a kid went to college, played college football, got a couple undergrad engineering degrees went on got my master’s in engineering management and was sold on the corporate world right engineer, project manager construction you know living the quote dream a high income professional and very dissatisfied with my life. And yeah, so that was kind of how I got started about six seven years into my professional life started reading some books about real estate investing you know, the gateway drug Rich Dad Poor Dad, which I’m pretty sure all real estate investors do. Yeah, and it’s bad. That’s a great paradigm shift. But then you look at your life and you’re like, what am I doing? I am right employee and I know where I am in the cashflow quadrant, this is not where I want to be. And then job security is not a thing. So I started researching real estate for about a year and pulled the trigger on my first investment was a seven-unit property. A multifamily building was under contract on that got let go. Because this whole I’m a better entrepreneur than I am employee things started to really bite me. They decided they didn’t want me there anymore. I was kind of having the same feelings. I can kind of set my course into real estate after that.
Seth:
So cool, man. Did I count that right? Did I count four engineering degrees or three engineering degrees?
Colin:
Three and engineering license. Yeah, so I am a moderately overqualified property manager.
Seth:
Nice. I love it, man. Same here, man. I went to law school, med school, MBA all the above?
Colin:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I love having a string of degrees and stuff that I can put together and make Well, these are pieces of paper now.
Seth:
Right? Right. Yeah, at the time, I was like, Okay, I want I want to make sure I get these pieces of paper. But you know, now it’s like, you know, when I have kids, I don’t even know if I’m gonna encourage them to go to college, it’s gonna be like, you guys can do what you want to do. If you’re entrepreneurial, you don’t even need a degree.
Colin:
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I’ve got, I’ve got two kids now. And I’m like, I’m not saving for your college, your grandparents are like funding the college and I’m like, that’s great. You guys do that. But, you know, just with my personality, and, you know, my desire to not be stuck at a desk all day, I really was really, you know, I enjoy being active as I think I would have a whole lot better if I’d gone to a trade school and worked with my hands.
Seth:
Right.
Colin:
I know, if I were, you know, welding school, I don’t know what it is fill in the blank there with some sort of trade school. So I think that’s an opportunity that we have a lot of kids that are missing the boat on where they should be. A lot of kids go into student loan debt that they still owe on as of this date. And you know, that that don’t have a degree that’s worth anything. They’re not in their field.
Seth:
Yeah, and I mean, there’s zero financial education for kids. Anyways, I mean, let alone just getting into you know, debt and all that other kind of stuff. But I mean, there’s just zero financial education. I mean, Rich Dad, Poor Dad should be required reading probably when you’re in middle school.
Colin:
Yeah, there’s a four kids version. And so my oldest, my boy, he’s four and a half. And I’m like, Is that too early for him to start reading the Rich Dad, Poor Dad for teens? Maybe get him started early? Yeah. So but you know, my parents are both professionals. My dad, like yourself was an attorney. And they’re like, we’ll just go to engineering school and you know, get a high paying job and put in your, I don’t know, however many years and fund your 401k and then retire. And I was driving myself to work every day, like there’s got to be something more and I got stuck in one office that had no windows, there’s three of us in an office, about the size of mine right now with no windows and no windows in the hallway. And it was just like, staring at just just brick walls and just gotta be more than this.
Seth:
Yeah, same boat, man. I grew up just in a blue collar family. And it was just like, you know, my dad was a coal miner. My mom was a teacher, and it was just like, okay, we’ll get the best paying job you can possibly get. And to me that was being a doctor. And I hated that. So I was like, I’ll be a lawyer. And then I finally snapped out of it and figured it out.
Colin:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, I took a major pay cut for the first while you know, right. And so within this recent timeframe that you went took a huge pay cut. And, you know, going from a professional engineer high paying job to owning a seven unit apartment building. And that was my income. It was it’s a it’s a big shift. But, you know, I learned a lot over that timeframe.
Seth:
Yeah, big mental shift from getting that check every two weeks to, you know, trying to figure out where you’re gonna buy the next property and if the tenants are gonna pay and now, do you think your engineering degrees helped you along the way, though?
Yeah, big mental shift from getting that check every two weeks to, you know, trying to figure out where you’re gonna buy the next property and if the tenants are gonna pay and now, do you think your engineering degrees helped you along the way, though?
Colin:
Probably, to an extent, you know, some basic understanding of construction. While I didn’t have any home construction experience before I started in real estate, you know, I did have some basic knowledge of construction foundations, because I was civil and architectural engineer. So, you know, some of the way buildings are put together, I just had a base knowledge there, which helped, I think, also have the analytical mindset of an engineer to be able to put numbers down on paper and build out pro formas that that really helped me out with understanding ROI noi all that sort of stuff.
Seth:
Cool. Cool. Now, how did that that transition out of your W2 work? Was it abrupt all of a sudden, was it?
Colin:
Oh, yeah, I got fired.
Seth:
Oh, you got fired. Okay.
Colin:
Yeah, yes.
Seth:
Yeah, they let me go. My boss and I were always butting heads, because I was like, I think we should really be focusing on some more customer service. We’re really just focused on the bottom line and not taking care of our customers. You know, my example was, you know, we were working on doing a Walmart or a subcontractor building a Walmart, you don’t mess with Walmart when you’re building Walmart’s right. Like, that’s just right. They have the sledgehammer and I was like, this product we put out, it looks like crap, we should probably pull it down and redo it, because it looks bad. And we were always butting heads, like, no, that’s gonna cost too much money. Let’s try to patch it in with some really bad fix. It’s going to take a long time, and it’ll cost a third of the cost of replacing I’m like, okay, like, he forced me to sell it. And I did. And then a week later, like, I get ambushed on the job site by, you know, Walmart executives, the architect the GC, like everybody and they’re like, nope, you have to replace us all my knowledge better would we have looked, if we just replaced it initially and said, We screwed up. And that was really where everything started to go downhill when we lost focus on the customer. You know, and then once I was able to start my own company, you know, after I invested for a couple years, I started the property management company. I was like, we’re gonna make sure we take care of the customer. Right. And if we screw up, we’re going to admit that we screwed up and not make that mistake again.
Seth:
Gotcha. Now, how did that come about that the property management company after you started buying some real estate? I mean, how did that come from? Yeah.
Colin:
So, you know, I started building my portfolio, and I started partnering with some people. And so we got up to about 60, doors under management. And I was the manager, right, because they all had their w2 jobs still. So I was doing the management, I was coordinating maintenance, I was showing I was doing some of the maintenance, you know, I was, I was involved. And I said, Well, this would be really great if we could do enough third party property management that I could hire a full time property manager that could just manage my property, so I don’t have to deal with that anymore. And I started looking at the numbers on it, I actually looked at acquiring a property management company. And that fell through, I started, you know, seeing how the companies worked everything as well, maybe I should just build this into a legitimate property management company. And so no, took my properties, handed them over to our property management company, and then started growing the portfolio business after that.
Seth:
Gotcha. Yeah, it sounds like it was just kind of a natural progression. And after you started acquiring properties, yeah.
Colin:
It was felt like that. And part of it was like, hey, let’s, let’s get some more funds, get some more jingle in the pocket. So we can go out and buy real estate. And if I don’t want to go back to the W2 job to build that, what’s yet another way I can do that? And stay in the industry? and super cool. Yeah, let’s focus on property management construction.
Seth:
Cool. Now, what kind of property and clients you take on at the moment?
Colin:
So you know, currently, we have a broad base of customers that we take on, I don’t want to say that we say no, to a lot of people will say no to certain parts of town, or certain types of properties where we don’t want to be in that. You know, I live in a small town outside of Kansas City. So kind of a more rural area. So we invest out there, that just because that’s my backyard, but our offices in Kansas City area in the metro. So you know, we manage in both of those kind of those areas, because there’s opportunities in both areas, we work with investors that want to buy more of a, you know, high B turnkey property. And we also work with investors that want to, you know, bring in a property that needs a lot of value. And we’re doing a couple $100,000 worth of rehab to it, repositioning the property. So
Seth:
gotcha. Do you only work in the multifamily space or do other types of commercial properties?
Colin:
Um, you know, we’ll do some mixed use. And then we’ve got, you know, handful of single families as well. Right now, we’ve just seen a lot of growth in the multifamily space through our through our network. So that’s where our growth has been. But we do bring on smaller stuff, you know, we’ve got a triplex coming on, we’ve got a duplex coming on single families, you know, one or two of those a month. So
Seth:
Gotcha. Cool. How many doors? Do you use everything right now?
Colin:
Currently about 600? Yeah, yeah, well over 600. And our pipeline for the next 90 days is showing that we’re probably going to crack 1000 by the next book in the next 90 days.
Seth:
Nice, nice, what’s, you know, what’s enabled you to scale so quickly?
Colin:
Some good referrals early on, to help to help build that base, and then performing well afterwards. You know, I’ve had a lot of good referrals, I’ve had some really good success, networking with investors with syndicators, etc., that’s been very beneficial. We’ve performed on the property management side, whether it is more of a turnkey, or it’s a reposition, we’ve been able to get in there and on the repositions, where there’s a bad tenant base, we’ve had to, you know, fight it out slug through the mud to get the bad tenants out and just change the culture on those properties. Additionally, there’s Atlas property management, and then there’s Atlas construction. Me and my partner, we co own both of them at this point. And so having construction in house has really been a big value add as well, since it’s all under one roof. You know, it’s one single point of contact, there’s kind of two people that you’ll be dealing with, I’m on the property management side, he handles more of the construction side, but we, you know, we work together. And so you know, try to streamline everything, and communication flows easily within the Office.
Seth:
That’s cool. That’s interesting. You have both companies under the same the same roof. I mean, it makes sense. But you don’t see that that often.
Colin:
Correct. Yeah, you don’t. And, you know, we, you know, we’re forming this company. And, you know, our goal was to serve as out of state investors, wanting to invest our market and make it easier for them. Because I knew the struggles of being an investor locally, when I didn’t have my own construction crews, you know, trying to find somebody that I could rely on, bit me more than once. And, you know, managing my own properties. You know, I know what it is the headaches of managing a property. I know what the headaches are doing construction. It’s like, well, how can we make this a better experience for out of state investors who are investing a significant chunk of money, and they can’t even see the property every day or they can’t drive there within an hour.
Seth:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I can definitely relate to that. All my investments are out of state and trying to, you know, find trustworthy Are the property managers and contractors, and trying to manage those folks from out of state is very difficult to do. So if you could find someone like yourself that does both. And you know, you’re obviously professional and do the things the right way. I mean, that’s really what you’re looking for when you’re looking for out of state investments.
Colin:
Yeah. And we, and we tried it, we try to take care of it. My partner, Adam, you know, he’s a professional engineer as well, we went to college together, and we both played football. Yeah, he’s bigger than I am. We’re both offensive linemen. And so, you know, we have, you know, we had, he has a construction background as well. So naturally, you know, he was a good bet to just run all over the field operations, and I kind of focus on the property management side. And so you know, we have a qualified team to help take care of people.
Seth:
Cool, cool. Well, let’s maybe walk our listeners through a typical scenario where, you know, real estate client comes to you, and wants to engage with your services. At what point? Do they engage you?
Colin:
You know, informally, they can engage me as early on as they want. We have a lot of investors reach out and say, Hey, I’m starting to look in the Kansas City Market, I want to have a team, you know, yep, I got a recommendation for you. I saw you online, I say on bigger pockets, wherever it is. And you know, I would like to start talking about property management services. Okay, well, then we start having that discussion with them. What are your goals? What do you want to do? How do you want to grow? What are your plans? And oh, do you need construction as well? Because we can offer that right? A lot of a lot of people want a value add and forced appreciation comes through constructions and rent increases. So we, you know, we start working with people early on, and we say, okay, whenever you’re looking at a property, bring it to me, and let me take a look at it for you. Let me check your assumptions on rent amounts, let’s check your assumptions on construction costs, and vacancy and etc. To help give them a an accurate idea of how we think the property is going to perform, so that they’re going in with good information when they’re evaluating and, and putting their price together. Sometimes we get brought on and they’re like, Hey, I have this under contract. I’m closing in two weeks, I had that phone call this morning. Hey, you know, calling and closing on the 28th, I’ve got a duplex under contract. You came as a recommendation. Let’s talk. Okay, we have the conversation. Great. Send me over your paperwork, and we’ll go ahead and get started. So you know, that’s a very, you know, basic conversation, then some of them are much longer terms, we’re working together for six plus months to get something across the finish line.
Seth:
Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people don’t realize that the property manager is an integral part of the team. Even before the closing, you don’t just engage with the property manager after and be like, okay, we’ll take care of my asset, you provide a lot of very valuable services in the acquisition process to evaluate the market, evaluate the deal, the building, you know, what kind of tenants and, you know, rents you can get in the in the particular building, and you gotta engage early to get the full.
Colin:
Absolutely. And we know, we like, we’d like to look through the leases, and make sure you know, the correct amount of prorated rents are being sent over the correct amounts of security deposits, because we’ve had our owners haven’t brought us in, you know, when that 620 unit complex, and they didn’t collect the prepaid rent, that this one tenant still had five months of prepaid rent, right, so $4,000 for the prepaid rent that they had to go and collect, and then they go back to the owner. And then also, they are missing about $2300 worth of security deposits. And we’re like, Hey, this is the deficiency we’re seeing as we’re building out the tenants and in our system, because at closing, we typically get the prorated rents and the security deposits just sent directly to us. So then we have some operating funds to go off of for the rents as well as the security deposits go into our trust account. So we have to audit all that money coming in.
Seth:
Gotcha. Yeah, got to do and got to do that lease audit for sure to make sure you’re getting everything you should be getting.
Colin:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Seth:
How about post closing? What is what does that look like? So the deal closes? You know, everybody celebrates they think the deal is over, but it’s not. It’s just getting started. Yeah, Where do you help out the investor at that point?
Colin:
Yes. So you know, I always tell people, you know, the first 30 to 90 days are gonna be bumpy. This, just expect that because you know, whether it’s a duplex, or it’s 50 to 100, or 100 plus units that we’re taking over, there’s going to be bumps in the road, there’s going to be Oh, this is new, or dealing with new people we’ve got to pay. So what we’re doing is the day one, we’re going to meet with the old property manager, meet with the agent meet with the old owner, depending on who’s got lease paperwork and keys and kind of do a turnover walkthrough with the old whoever that we need to be dealing with. And then also we’re posting you know, welcome letters, welcome packets on everybody’s door, knock on the doors, trying to meet them possibly and say, Hey, here’s who we are. This packet has all our contact info, this is how you pay. Please fill out this contact information sheet and send it back to us so that we can know how to get ahold of you. We can put your into our system so you can pay online. So always encouraging people to pay online and communicate through that. So you know, the first 30, 60, 90 days, we’re getting people on board or under our system, we’re having conversations with the owner about, hey, here’s what our plan was, before we closed, let’s start executing that, whether it’s filling vacant units, rehabbing vacant units, starting construction on large deferred maintenance items, whatever that may be, we start to implement the plan that we put together. Before we closed.
Seth:
Gotcha, what is the relationship look like between you and let’s say, the asset manager of the sponsorship team?
Colin:
That really depends on how much they want out of the relationship. We have some investors that we don’t talk to except every couple months, whenever they have a question, right. And they’re collecting their rents, they see the monthly income and expense statement as well as the money if their account, they’re happy. They log on to the online portal, check a few people out, check some numbers, maybe look at a few receipts that have been posted online. They don’t have any questions, they just, you know, just go along, no big deal. Other times, we have sponsors, owners, whichever that we have weekly standing calls with their assigned property manager. Hey, what’s changed from last week? You know, were there any outstanding items that we needed to address, Have they been addressed this week? What’s our plan for this coming week, and we have those calls weekly, we have one owner where we have a heavy repossession. So you know, we’re doing 350 to $400,000 worth of construction, when we took over property at 40% vacancy. And so we are, you know, she has a 30 to 45 minute call with the property manager. And the next day, she has the same link call with Adam tracking the construction, because we’re really having all the down to units and all the common areas etc. Yep. So, you know, those relationships, really, we can give as much into that as the owner or asset manager wants.
Seth:
Gotcha, gotcha. Well, let’s switch gears a little bit. A lot of folks don’t know a lot about the Kansas City Market and you are obviously a Kansas City guy. So tell us a little bit about the Kansas City Market. What makes it so strong?
Colin:
It’s the best market in the country. Now. It has been a it’s been a very, very solid market. You know, financially we are, you know, a growing city. Some companies are moving headquarters here. They’re investing a lot of money into the city. You know, people are saying at the Silicon Valley of the Midwest, right? There’s a lot of tech going into Kansas City right now. Additionally, transportations huge out here, we’re in the middle of the country. So we have a couple of major interstates that run north, south and east west to Kansas City. So you can start trucking all different directions. Additionally, Kansas City has always been a huge rail town. So we have a lot of rail traffic, more what’s called intermodal facilities, where they take those shipping boxes, and they take them off of trains and put them onto semis, or they take them off of semis and put them onto trains. There’s manufacturing, there’s health care, the government services, it’s just a very diverse, you know, economy here. So we don’t have any one thing that we’re going to rise or fall with, you know, we do have a couple of auto plants here in town, one for GM, one for Ford, if one of those were to shut down, that would be detrimental. But it wouldn’t shoot the whole economy in the foot for this right. Which is, which is really nice. So we’ve seen a lot of growth here. And you know, people are wanting to move to maybe some smaller cities maybe get away from the coast or some of that stuff that’s going on. I mean, we’re not a small city, but compared to Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, fill in the blank, we are significantly smaller.
Seth:
Yeah, I mean, the metrics are all there, the population growth and the job diversity, you know, a very good economy that’s going there. And like you mentioned, the transportation thing, if you just look at Kansas City on a map and look north, south, east west, there are major cities that if you go from one to the other, you have to pass through Kansas City. So to me, you know, it’s not going anywhere. It can’t go anywhere, because you have to go through Kansas City to get everywhere in that area.
Colin:
Yeah, and we have to reverse the Kansas River merges into the Missouri River right here in Kansas City. Missouri river runs right in Mississippi. So we have barge traffic as well coming up and out so it’s a really interesting location. And it always has been a transportation hub. I grew up on the Kansas side of the state line and every time we’re growing up and everything big or there is Oregon Trail stuff because everybody’s always been passing through Kansas City.
Seth:
Yeah. Well, now that you mentioned that, let’s talk about Kansas City, Kansas versus Kansas City, Missouri. What’s the difference?
Colin:
Population and size. So yeah, everybody’s like, Oh, well, maybe yes, I’m from Kansas City. And then Okay, well, I’m from Kansas, you where are you from and Kansas City then you can really drill down in the city, but for most people, that dark matter that yes, I’m from Kansas City great. They know where Kansas City is relatively on a map. In the state line does the county display the city, a majority of the city is going to be on the Missouri side as far as the downtown areas all Kansas City, Missouri, most of the, you know, shopping and stuffs on the Missouri side. Then Kansas City, Kansas has its own, you know, little smaller downtown area. Just two different sides, two different animals, two different state lines, which makes you know, okay, which side of the state line Am I on for legality for property management in terms of days for notifications, eviction proceedings, etc., security, deposit law, all that sort of stuff. You know, Kansas City, Missouri is more downtown, more urban. Kansas City, Kansas is also urban and can be a little bit rougher in certain areas. The Kansas side south, on the south side of is actually a very affluent area. So most people that are fluent that live in the Kansas City metro, they actually live on the Kansas side in Johnson County, Kansas.
Seth:
Gotcha. And you operate in both right?
Colin:
Yeah, we operate on both sides of the state line, we kind of hit about an hour radius within Kansas City. And what people to understand sometimes too, is, since our population density is a little bit lower, we have at one point where the most highway miles per capita of any city in the country. So us driving around, we’re able to cover a lot of ground really quickly. So we can get an hour. We’re gonna travel 60 miles an hour. Like that’s, you know, very, very common once we get on the interstates I was when I live, you know, I still live in that small town. But when I was commuting to the city to work, I was traveling 37 miles and 45 minutes.
Seth:
Wow. Yeah, definitely can’t do that here in Southern California.
Colin:
Yeah, so it’s always a paradigm shift for people that are from those areas that like, Wow, it takes a while. That’s a long ways like, well, it’s long miles, but timewise it’s not that far.
Seth:
Right. Yeah. I mean, when I visited man, it was it was incredible to see, I didn’t know what to expect from Kansas City. I, you know, I grew up around Pittsburgh, so I thought I was gonna look like Pittsburgh, or like Cleveland. I’ve invested in Cleveland before. And I kind of expect it to look like one of those Rust Belt cities, but it definitely does not it’s a it’s a much more beautiful city. No offense to Pittsburgh, and Cleveland because Pittsburgh, you know, that’s where I’m from. I love it. But, you know, Kansas City is just it’s got kind of that, you know, it’s got that vibe, that it’s just, it’s growing compared to those cities, it’s like it’s stagnant or even declining still.
Colin:
Yeah, absolutely. And since our economy is not built on some of those other things that are either suffering right now, or that are not as boom and bust as you know, say the movie industry or in a technology or the financial sector, we have a lot more stability out here, I would say.
Seth:
yeah, for sure. Let’s switch gears and again, I mean, so when you jumped into investing to begin with, you bought it you say seven units to start out with. So you know, how did you get involved with you know, jumping straight into kind of a commercial property rather than a single family asset. A lot of people just jump into flipping or wholesaling or you know, buying a single family rental.
Colin:
Yes, so I had been looking for a while I kind of had been thinking that I wanted to buy something multifamily, just a for financing and B for a little bit of scale pretty quickly. So it’s a very simple story. Honestly, I do live in this small town so again, I’ll Second City about town about five to 6000 people and I’m driving down the main drag one day and there’s an apartment building on the main drag says for sale by owner cool. The call it the owner. I made him out there. He’s the you know, kind of a good old boy. He you know, I get out of them the owns the property free and clear, because he’s owned it for like 20 some odd years. And so I’m like, cool. How about owner financing, and get them to owner finance it and how that that happens? So it really, you know, driving for dollars, I guess, right? If I were to use a buzzword, but really I was just driving home.
Seth:
Just driving home and finding dollars.
Colin:
Yeah, exactly. It’s like, oh, man, I like that building. I should make a call. Let’s just see what it’s worth. I was like, Oh, that’s a really good price.
Seth:
Yeah, that’s awesome, man. Not times luck. Luck goes a long way.
Colin:
Yes, it does. Yes, it does. So I was I’m thankful for the opportunity.
Seth:
Cool. So a lot of our listeners invest in traditional assets rather than real estate or alternative assets. Do you invest in stocks and bonds and mutual funds and that sort of thing as well or anything else? Are you really involved in real estate right now and that’s it.
Colin:
I do have an IRA and 401K and stuff like that. As you can imagine with a quick cut off on your income when you don’t have your W2 anymore. Collecting and you know, investing money seems like the least of your priorities at that point. So I did I did pause on that. I do still have some money in traditional investments, some just regular investment account, some, you know, other retirement accounts. I’m really focused on the real estate right now. And I will probably diversify a little bit more. But at this point I really like real estate for the long term.
Seth:
Yeah, for sure, man. All right, well, let’s jump into the Freedom 4.
Colin:
I try to exercise that now. If I can be outside, preferably, you know, I live. I love the country. So walk through the pasture. Go for a walk near this lake that’s near our house. Just out in the country. Get some fresh air get some exercise?
Seth:
Yeah. Well, you’re a fit guy. Man. Did you lose a ton of weight since you played offensive line in college?
Colin:
Yeah, I’m about 40 to 45 pounds less than when I was in college.
Seth:
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Cool, man. So in an alternative universe where you want to vote on real estate, what else would you be doing?
Colin:
As I continued to read entrepreneurship business book, I’d definitely be building some sort of business. Probably some service industry business, some, you know, some recurring revenue business.
Seth:
Gotcha. That entrepreneurship bug just runs right through. Yeah, exactly.
Colin:
Wouldn’t go back to W2. You know, but I would, I would try to start another business in different industry.
Seth:
Cool, cool. Where are we at five years ago? And where do you see yourself in your business five years from now.
Colin:
Five years ago, I was still living in the same house. And I was working for a commercial, road and bridge contractor that had side development, and probably just starting to think about real estate. And the second part was, where am I gonna be five years from now? Yeah. Continuing to co own growing property management and construction companies, and hopefully have acquired more of my own assets, you know, maybe trying to double the number of assets that I currently own.
Seth:
Awesome. How is passive income made your life better.
Colin:
It’s added a baseline stability to my life that a W2job didn’t always have, because you know, you can get fired in one day at a W2job. So just having some baseline stability. There is nice even though it’s not all that we need at this point, you know, start to run the business but there’s some baseline of stability knowing I’ve got that safety. That’s really great.
Seth:
Love that man. Love it. All right, call. I really appreciate you coming on today, man. Where can our listeners find out more about you?
Colin:
Oh, yeah, you can check me out on LinkedIn. Just Colin Douthit. Look me up there. Atlas property management as well. Our website is www.atlas.rentals.
Seth:
Cool. And we’ll link to all that in the show notes. Brother. I man appreciate you coming on today.
Colin:
Thanks for having me Seth. I enjoyed it.
Seth:
Man, Colin brought it, you can really hear this sincerity in his voice. He’s such a great guy. He’s incredibly knowledgeable, of course, you know, starting with his engineering background and now moving into general construction and property management. He’s an absolute Rockstar, and an awesome human being as well. I hope that the takeaway from the episode is that the story doesn’t end when the deal is closed. You need a really good property manager. Whether that’s you yourself or someone like Colin in your corner to help execute the business plan to make the property reach its highest potential, which equals cash flow and value appreciation. If you want to get more information on investing in alternative assets, get over to passiveincomeattorney.com join the Esquire investor club and download the freedom blueprint our free guide to passive investing. Okay, gotta run y’all enjoy the journey.
