In this episode, Chris Clothier sits down with Portfolio Advisor Marq Cobb to discuss how working from home has changed the game for sales teams. From new sales tactics to keeping connected to clients, we uncover different ways to ensure the Experience Matters for every client. We take a look at the stability of certain markets emerging during the Covid-19 Crisis.
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Get experienced-based insights into the world of passive, turnkey real estate investing with host Chris Clothier and special guests that will share their successes, failures, and processes to make you a smarter investor.
Chris Clothier: Hey guys, Chris Clothier here with Experience Matters podcast. Getting ready to start off another great week, another great episode, hopefully, as we are nearing the end of May. We're coming up on the weekend. We're coming up on the holiday. We're coming up on a time when everybody's starting to reflect and look forward to the summer. And so, I thought what a great time for us to bring on a good friend of mine, a guy that has been around real estate for about a little over 10 years, almost 15 years, now worked with our company, friend of our family as well.
But before I bring him on, I got to do this as always. Guys, listen up, so when we talk today, everything that I'm saying, everything that he's saying, this is not considered and should not be considered financial advice. You got to always remember if we talk about stuff such as self-directed IRAs, if we talk about 1031 exchanges, if we talk about any taxes or anything that we do from a legal standpoint, it's all as real estate investors. We're talking about our personal experiences, make sure that you consult the professionals in any of those industries. You consult anybody that knows, certainly more than I do, about taxes, somebody that knows more than I do about legal issues or self-directed IRAs. Always consult with those that are licensed and professional and don't consider anything that I'm giving you actually as advice. This is just my experience. Got to make sure we say that always on the front end.
So, look, as many of you know, that look, I've been investing in the real estate industry now for almost 20 years. Built big portfolios, lost lots of money, made lots of money, made lots of mistakes, made lots of good decisions, back and forth. That's what Experience Matters is all about. But today, I'm going to bring on a guy that has not only invested himself and built a nice portfolio, I'm sure he'll share the same thing as I have, that he's made some good decisions and some bad decision, but he's also, he's worked here with our company REI Nation for man, a number of years, probably one of the very first people that we brought onto the company.
I wanted to bring him on this week at the end of May because as we're heading into the summer, a lot of people are starting to reevaluate the first half of the year and think about the second half of the year. So, I asked Marq Cobb if he would join us today to be able to share a little bit of his experiences and also man, the guy has worked with probably close to a thousand of our clients through the years to help them build their own portfolios. So, what better person to talk about, look, evaluating where you're at and building out for the future through the rest of this year and into next year, then Marq Cobb. So Mark, thanks for joining me today, man. I appreciate you making some time to jump on the podcast with me.
Marq Cobb: Yeah, man. It's almost like we're in the same room. It's good to see you after a couple months working in different places.
Chris: Yeah, dude. So tell me, dude, you're right, that's what a lot of people may not know, that I'm in the office. And I think there was maybe four or five of us that stayed in the office. Of course, the three Clothiers and then a couple of people that worked very closely with us, including our CFO, Jessica. But for the most part, 20, 25 of our team members, we in some respects made them, in other respects, we gave them the option to get home and do what everybody felt was safest and best for their family. So, what's it been like for you man, working from home?
Marq: It's good. It's been great in a lot of ways. There's a lot more positives to it from my perspective. My wife and I were talking about this last night. We've never felt as close to our kids as we do now. I can definitely say that. My wife Brit, she works from home full-time. So, she had to adapt to having me at home much less than she had to adapt to working from home. For me, it was a huge adjustment, but it's been great. The kids are loving it. They're loving having mom and dad home. So, that's cool. For some reason they still wake up very excited to see me every morning. And at this point, I think Brit and I, we're both just clawing, ready to get out and have fun and do stuff, but the kids, they're having a good time. So, we try to keep the right perspective on it.
Chris: We've been sharing some conversation in our private Facebook group called REI Nation Property from Passive Real Estate about what's this COVID-19 thing going to do to the commercial real estate market? What's it going to do to the office real estate market? And then, what people think is split half and half because people are thinking that obviously, now you can work from home and be successful, you've proven that. Right?
Marq: Sure.
Chris: And of course, you're, wait, now I just want to skip over to you, you just mentioned your wife she's a successful entrepreneur out of the house herself, right?
Marq: Oh yeah. She's got a really important job. She actually has about 2000 direct reports. She runs an incredibly large sales team and she does it from home with three kids under the age of eight or under the age of nine at home.
Chris: Yeah.
Marq: Yeah, she's-
Chris: So, she's an example of you can absolutely do this from home or work from home, I guess, is the proper way to put it, but some of the stuff we've been discussing is that for people like yourself, even for people like me that are not accustomed to working from home, this can be very spin us on top of our head. Right? So, suddenly, one of the points that was made in one of the articles that we shared in there, in the discussion in that group, was that a lot of people find themselves working all hours of the day now. You start at 6:00 AM because you're there in your office at 6:00 AM and it might be, oh man, I forgot to do something. It's midnight, let me go ahead and do it. Is that the case?
Marq: It's funny because my initial answer, when you ask me what's it like being at home, if I wasn't trying to spin it into a positive, my initial answer would have just been it's exhausting. It's really tiring because someone always needs a snack or someone always just spilled a snack, somebody always just needs a band-aid or somebody needs a punishment for causing a situation where someone else needed a band-aid. So, it's one of those where you start, stop, start, stop, but what's been one of the things that I've noticed is when the kids go to bed, my wife and I both, we end up doing a lot of our work between 8:00 PM and midnight, sometimes even a little later, but that's when my clients are also, they're available to talk because they're going through the exact same things and they're trying to do their day job during the day. They're trying facing the same challenges of parenting during the work day as I am.
Chris: Right.
Marq: They're able to free up and actually look at investment real estate after the kids go to bed. And so, that actually has lined up really well. It's been interesting, but-
Chris: Well-
Marq: Yeah, the-
Chris: And to be fair, you've always worked those hours, right?
Marq: Yeah, totally. What I do is always been a 24/7 job when you have a high percentage of your clients on the West coast and Hawaii, when my Hawaiian clients are getting home from work, that's almost midnight our time. And I remember 10, 12 years ago when you and I-
Chris: That's what I was going to say.
Marq: Yeah, go ahead. You probably tell it better than I do, but I remember multiple midnight webinars where you and I would order pizza, go get a six pack of cola and record it-
Chris: You stuttered on cola there.
Marq: Right. A live webinar for our Hawaiian class at midnight.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. So, that's funny. That's the same thing that I was thinking of, that I was remembering back that you and I used to do those live webinars to people in Hawaii when our day would end at five or six o'clock, but then we'd stay at the office because we would have a 11:00 PM starting webinar to get it on the right time for investors in Hawaii when they could get home and watch. Some of them are probably going to watch this or listen to this podcast, maybe even watch this video as we share it and remember that, that's what's funny. Because a lot of them are still clients today.
Marq: Most.
Chris: That's interesting. All right, dude. So, listen, with all that, I know that this has kind of created a topsy turvy world for all of us, but everybody that I've been talking to here lately, I've been asking them, what's changed? Now that we have a different environment, what's changed for you? Have you picked up any new hobbies or habits or anything in this time?
Marq: I don't know if I'd call it a new hobby. One thing that I've really gotten into a little bit, and my wife has been super tolerant, but I think she's about reached her max capacity of my home improvement attempts. But one of the first things we did was, I was actually following one of our vendors that we use at the company on Instagram. It's all power washing videos and before and afters and I started thinking, that looks awesome.
Chris: Yeah.
Marq: So, that was one of the things that I did when we started this whole thing back in March, went to Home Depot, ordered online, got a pressure washer and my oldest son and I have, we completely, we have a lot of brick on our property, so we've gone to town. So, done that. We've had some attempts at staining some furniture, some outdoor furniture, which didn't go perfectly.
Chris: It's not quite the same as power washing.
Marq: No, a little bit more detailed. But no, it's been fun. But I think my wife is definitely over the power washer.
Chris: Yeah. She's probably ready for you to move on. I tell you what, power washing man, that's a workout. That'll leave your shoulders, the vibration, that'll leave you sore the next day and wonder what the heck happened?
Marq: Yeah, it does. It's funny that one of the side benefits of it is it's so loud, you got a big gas motor and whatnot, is it's loud enough where it actually scares the two younger kids away for a few minutes. So, you actually just get to focus in and just get your mind right for about 30 minutes and you don't have to worry about anybody coming bothering you for a second.
Chris: That's funny. All right. Well, let's shift over for everybody's that's on here that's watching and listening man. Let's talk for a second about real estate, because that's really what you and I do to begin with. Hopefully, nobody's on here listening to my podcast for anything other than real estate. I feel sorry for them if they are, but let's touch base here, man.
So what's going on out there in the real estate market? Give us your overview and tell us a little bit too, about yourself. Because a lot of people on here, I didn't do quite justice at the beginning. You work with a lot of our clients, and so you can talk real estate from a standpoint of what others are telling you and the conversations you're having with them, but also you're an investor yourself. So just kind of talk a little bit, man. Share with us what's going on with the real estate market out there and what you're hearing and who you're hearing it from.
Marq: Yeah, sure. So my wife and I we've got, any given time, right now between six and ten investment properties in our own portfolio, all single-family. Being a full-time real estate person, we tend to buy and not hold our investment real estate as long as non-real estate professionals do, just because we depreciate things a lot faster. So right now, we kind of found ourselves in the part of our portfolio cycle where we were actually selling a couple of our rental properties with the intent of recycling them, for lack of a better word, and buying new properties. So that's what we're doing right now.
On the buying side for the rental properties, things look really outstanding as far as the numbers you're getting. I remember when we first started, when we were doing those midnight webinars that we were talking about earlier. I remember when we started my first day here, it was 7.25 on the interest rate on a 30 year fixed Fannie Mae mortgage. Right? And now, today, I have a client who locked in sub-4% yesterday. I think it was 3 3/4 or 3 5/8, somewhere around there. So on the buying side, that enables you to see better cash flow. Basically, there's as good of deals out there, in terms of the numbers, as I've seen in five, six years in almost all of our markets. So in that way, it's really nice. My wife and I, we've basically, essentially, done a few flips and we do some private lending and all that good stuff. But when we're selling these rental properties, which you could equate to them being basically a long-term flip, it's actually been more challenging.
One of our properties was scheduled to close, we thought we were selling back in March. I think it was March 12th and we had put this property under contract back in February. And the closing has actually been delayed and we still haven't closed, yet we were scheduled to close again today, and then now it's pushed to Tuesday. But what happened was, the buyer was using an FHA loan and the minimum credit requirements were increased. And suddenly a guy who has had a very stable job with the utility company here in Memphis for seven years, his salary didn't change, really, he didn't do anything different during the credit process. But he went from qualifying with a 640 to suddenly not qualifying when the FHA increased it to 670.
So where I'm going with that is, there's certainly some challenges on the flip, on those who are doing the flip on the full-time. Possibly a smaller qualified pool for buyers for your projects when you're selling. But on the buy-side, those who are in a acquisition mode, if you are comfortable with, like everything else it's risk-reward. If you are comfortable with what you're seeing and you're comfortable that you're going to be able to rent property and keep it rented, right now, if you're in a acquisition phase it's one of the, probably the best time, to be in that phase that I've seen in five or six years, just professionally speaking, and personally speaking, for my wife and I being in that phase right now.
Chris: All right. But a couple of reasons why. Like, is it because of a mix of interest rates? Is it because so many investors have themselves, second-guessed and decided to pull back? Is it for those that, and I know you qualified it, you said those that are ready to move forward, those that are prepared or their portfolio lines up? I mean, it's a great time to buy. Why?
Marq: Well, yeah, you're exactly right. It's not just interest rates, although that is a big piece of it. We haven't seen any fluctuation in pricing because that's a longer buying cycle and whatnot. We haven't seen foreclosures, maybe we will, maybe we will not, but I don't think it would be in large waves. Certainly not like nothing we saw 10, 12 years ago.
A lot of folks who are kind of sitting back and waiting, that's great. There's a lot of wisdom to that and whatnot. But if you are the first one who's coming out of that waiting period, if you're the first one pulling the money out of your mattress, there's going to be a big benefit to you because of the available inventory that is out there right now. To come in and get first shot at some really ... Right now, for example, I probably have more properties that were, if you are into a certain market, or if you have criteria where you would love to have a house that was built after 1990, which is more or less pretty rare on what we do. Most of the markets where we invest, the average age of the property is 1965, 1970 to 1990.
Chris: And we're talking, when we say "we", we've switched over, we're talking to REI Nation at this point.
Marq: I'm probably going to switch back and forth.
Chris: Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. No, I just want to make sure that everybody kind of gets that because ... Yeah, so go ahead. This is really stuff where you're helping people.
Marq: Yeah. So, if someone was wanting to jump on a property that was built after 2000, today, I think I have multiple of those properties available. Whereas, usually it would be the one property that comes out like that every other week or once a month, whatever the number is. I've got four people who are boat racing and all want to jump on it.
So, if you're still the quote, unquote scared money, which I'm not trying to say anybody's scared, but if you're still sitting, having your money under your mattress, that's great. I'm not trying to talk you out of it. But for those who are brave enough to recognize that it's still business as usual in the markets that we invest in by, really, design. We went into these markets because they're not big, volatile markets. Especially Memphis, we've already been through a down cycle in the economy and we saw 10, 12 years ago, we still rented properties. We didn't have a single client who lost a single dollar. I'll qualify that by saying they had to hold onto the property, right? It was so cash [inaudible 00:16:26] the whole time.
So if you're the first person to pull your money out of the mattress, or out from under the mattress, right now, there's incredible opportunity that on rare inventory such as an example, properties that were built after 2000.
Chris: Right. So look, I'm going to qualify that real quickly with something that ... I started to go back and grab my notes from yesterday. So again, talking about REI Nation. So REI Nation has a management company called PPMG, Premier Property Management Group, it operates in Memphis. PPMG of Texas operates out of Dallas. And those two companies manage all 6,000 properties for us in the seven cities.
I don't know if you knew this, because this comes up in our executive meetings, but right now, as of 1:00 PM yesterday afternoon, we had 79 houses available for rent across the seven markets. That's it. We're managing 6,000 houses. So then, we dug a little deeper because we don't want that number to be misleading. There are some investors who have a property that had a vacancy, maybe March, April, or even early May, that right now is in the process of being renovated and already rented, but waiting to close.
So we went back and we said, "I want know what that number is." It was yesterday, and, of course, that number changes each day, but it was 37 houses. So 37 and 79, you ended up with 126 properties that are truly vacant right now. That's it. That's right at, if I do my math right, that's right at 2%. 126 of 6,000, is that even 2%? I'm doing ...
Marq: No.
Chris: I'm getting confused on my math.
Marq: It's much closer to one.
Chris: So it's crazy right now. To your point, those investors that are purchasing right now, we got asked this yesterday on a live video that we did. Those investors that are purchasing right now, what they're finding, one of the reasons why it may be a really, really good time is the reality is, there's less volatility in the market.
If COVID-19 has done anything, it has gotten residents, our residents, to say, "Look, I really want to stay. I don't want to be transient. I'm not looking to move. I'm not looking to cause any waves. I want to be in my property, safe and secure." We've seen, contrary to what was being reported, and we're not going to go political period, but there was a lot of media out there that were saying that people weren't going to pay rent. There was a lot of fear, some of that was coming from Wall Street. What was going to happen? Nobody was going to pay their rents. We were going to see massive delinquencies.
For us, we found the exact opposite. Part of that is the way we manage property. You and I know that. I mean, it's a big selling point for our company is the way we manage, they way we treat, the word itself, residents. But we've seen a little over 98% collection rate, pay rate, every month of billed rent, which is where we were before COVID-19.
But the real change to it has been, we've seen this upsurge in applications from people that want to get into a really high-quality single-family home. And they want that two or three year term, lease term. They want to get me safe and secure. So it's been crazy. We're actually at the lowest point of vacancy that we've ever been. So, to your point, those that are buying now, they're getting it to a period of stability. We'll use that as a great word. Where it seems like it should be more volatile, it hasn't been.
Marq: No. And to your point, I think I would circle back to two things. A lot of it has to do with the acquisition strategy that we had as a company and the due diligence and choosing which markets we went into. And I mean, I think we can talk about that for an hour, but specifically staying on the property management, I think it's a testament to the strength of the... Our typical renters, our avatar, if you will, is a dual income family with kids, right.
Chris: Right.
Marq: As a company, we stick to properties on the acquisition side. Because we only want to manage properties that have a minimum rent of X amount in each market, whether that's $850, $900 in Memphis, and $1200 in Dallas or whatever it is, we want to stay above a certain threshold. And we don't do two bedroom houses for a reason, right?
Chris: Right.
Marq: Typically a dual income family with children needs that third bedroom, that kind of thing. So you think about the mindset of that family that's going to rent and they want the same thing that a prospective homeowner wants.
Chris: Right.
Marq: Talking about stability. They want the nicest available rental properties and they want to be there for a long time. A family that rents from us, they're bringing their own appliances, for example, except for the dishwasher. It tells us when someone is applying to rent a property, if they're willing to go spend $1,000, $2,000 on appliances, that's a pretty solid indicator to us that not only are they living above means of paycheck to paycheck, that they have some discretionary income, but specific to this conversation, it's a really good indication that they want to be there a long time.
Chris: Absolutely. And so for listeners on here, somebody that might be interested in buying in Indianapolis or Cleveland or Philadelphia or Phoenix, wherever it is you're interested in buying single family homes, you just gave people a really clear indication of what they should be looking for, for us.
This is what we believe in. Now, somebody could go buy two bedrooms all they want, but you said that again, that dual income already household, right?
Marq: Right.
Chris: Looking for family homes with kids, right?
Marq: Same thing a prospective home buyer would want. Nice neighborhood, fenced-in backyards, those kinds of things.
Chris: And what does that lead to, long-term?
Marq: Stability.
Chris: Yeah. And that's what-
Marq: Lack of volatility on the cashflow side, on all of it.
Chris: Yeah. If you think about investors that are doing what you and I do, because you and I are long term buy and hold investors, our company works with long-term buy and hold investors. I don't know if there's a better definition of what you should look for. I mean, a stable investment that is going to be in high demand and occupied for the long-term. Is there anything better you can look for?
Marq: I'll tell you, over the last month, especially, I've had probably five conversations that were virtually identical in nature with clients of mine talking about they have existing portfolio with us, so they have multiple properties with us across markets, but they also actively manage properties that they own in their own local market.
Chris: Yeah.
Marq: We're going to see a huge uptake in 1031 exchanges over the next two to three months from clients who are ready to throw their hands up and say, "It was easy in good times to keep my own properties rented and actively managed. But when with uncertainty and my local residents facing furlough or being late, it's causing me to spend..." There's a lot of sleepless nights involved, a lot more stress and it's a lot more time intensive for them to chase their rent money and whatnot.
So, there's a lot of clients that have told me almost verbatim, the same thing is, "I'm getting out of the active management, I'm going to shift to entirely passive."
Chris: Well, we've certainly seen an uptick in 1031 exchange properties, both from existing clients and just from investors in general that are reaching out and just chatting up to see what's going on out there in the market places, because they are looking to get out of both active investments, but also higher priced markets that are more volatile, to your point.
Marq: Oh yeah.
Chris: I think a lot of people are forecasting a downward price direction in some more expensive markets. And they're moving to the Midwest markets, Southeast markets like us where they just see a more... Let's just say what we've always said, "It's not sexy." It's not the sexy shoot up of appreciation, but it is consistent. Are you seeing anything in terms of self-directed IRAs?
I talked to Greg Herlean recently on the podcast with Horizon Trust and great, great interview. Love talking with Greg and sharing some of this stuff. What are you seeing? Are you seeing anything on that front? You just mentioned 1031 exchanges, are you seeing anything on self-directed IRA front? We know a lot of money was sitting.
Marq: Well, anytime you see any kind of big shift on Wall Street, especially, and there's going to be winners and there's going to be people who are hurting and there was no one saw this coming 2020. So you have a lot of people who are pulling money out of the stock market and looking to get their retirement income back on track or getting their nest egg back in play. Of course that's naturally going lead to that. So we're starting to see that, it takes a couple of weeks to get those kind of accounts set up, with a self-directed IRA or a Solo 401k, but that money is now flooding the market in terms of my clients who maybe they own property with Fannie Mae loans and that kind of thing. And now they're coming back and saying, "All right, now we need to get our retirement funds involved too."
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. If you watch forum boards, if you are familiar with what's going on with the movement of money inside the self-directed IRAs, there's a lot of money that's sitting on the side that's not being lost. That's the big thing. Whether it's called taking profits off to the side or limiting losses, whatever you want to call it, there's money that's been moved to the side.
And I was just wondering, because I've been guessing that there would be more of that, but I'm not in the day to day like you are, just seeing what the conversations are.
Marq: To a certain degree, you had the same thing that was going on with just the mentality of keeping your money under the mattress for a while. And just the nature of getting retirement funds involves the cycle of getting it set up and getting it actually involved, getting the money into property takes a little bit longer, but we're starting to see that.
Whereas, that cash was really starting to come out from under the mattress a month ago, now we're starting to see those retirement accounts really come out.
Chris: Right. You know that we share the same philosophy. Of course, you have to if you're going to be working here with us at REI, but we share that philosophy of the five, seven, 10 year return that the first year of returns, we always throw out the window that's... Anybody can...
Marq: Stabilization.
Chris: What?
Marq: Stabilization.
Chris: Yeah. So, somebody that is watching today that says, "Look, I'm interested in the buy and hold strategy." Now, short term buy and hold and strategy means I'm going to hold for five, maybe seven years. That's short term when you're talking buying whole.
Marq: Yeah.
Chris: The long-term is 10-plus years. So, an investor that comes in and says, "I'm interested short term five to seven, maybe long-term 10 plus", what's the best advice you can give those investors in today's market on what they should be looking for, what they should be looking to do, and what they can expect for protection in that timeframe, what's the best thing they can do?
Marq: I can answer this question in terms of what would I be looking for in a property and in a market and I'll come back to that. But I think more importantly, it's putting your money with the team that's been through the good and the bad... Putting your funds and putting your faith in a company that knows how to rent property... Really before that, knows how to acquire property and rehab property, and then rent property, and manage on an ongoing basis in both good economies and bad. That's probably the part of this that might be most important, probably is most important.
Marq: And then getting into markets and properties that you don't see big cycle. You don't see big swings. With the seven markets where we invest, for example, you're never going to wake up and 40% of your portfolio value has disappeared overnight. That happened to investors in some markets like Vegas or Phoenix 10, 12 years ago.
Chris: Right?
Marq: By nature, we love those boring markets. What I talked to investors a lot about recently, and I have several clients who have done 1031s where they've sold a commercial building, say in California, and they've parlayed that into a high number for a single family properties specifically in markets like we've talked about, Little Rock and Oklahoma City.
One of the things that I can really illustrate to them on a phone call that whether you're an experienced investor or not, either way, you're going to grasp this concept. 30, 35% of the employees or the jobs in capital cities like those two cities are, are government jobs or civilian jobs that support the military or military. So when you think about the average wage of a government worker, and then we talked earlier about our renters are typically dual income families and it lines up. Seamless, it's a perfect fit for the types of properties and the rents that our properties command. Those wage earners earning between 25 and 50,000 multiplied by two for two parents for properties that rent for 12, $1,500 a month, that higher end blue collar neighborhood. That is exactly where that person or that family is looking to rent. So it lines up really well. And Oh yeah. In terms of stability, when do you ever hear about government workers firing themselves?
You might hear about a hiring freeze, but it's very unlikely that you ever hear of government workers losing a paycheck. So what more could you ask for in terms of stability? And that's just an example of those two cities.
Chris: And let's be clear with everybody that's watching. I'm going to bring you on here with me, because we're going to start wrapping this thing up, so we're going to... So look, we like where we're at. This is a show where we share a lot of what we've learned through the years as a company, we talk a lot about what we know best, which are our markets, but the reality is that there are other teams out there that are good. We're not shy about believing that we are the best company that we can be, which often some people may say is the best in the industry.
I'm trying to be super diplomatic here because I don't want to, I don't want to insult anybody. There's some really good people out there that provide really good services. They got good teams. You would agree with that, right? This isn't just only invest with our company. And those are the great markets other than the seven that we're in. But we happen to really like the seven and we chose them on purpose, and to do it again, we would choose those same seven. I wouldn't go to some of these other markets. It doesn't mean that they're bad. I think these are the ones that fit perfectly for what we're trying to provide for our client, would you agree?
Marq: I would, and I would go a step further. I wish that more people had a front row seat to the internal conversations when we're talking about due diligence when we go into these markets. I wish they could specifically hear some of the conversations. I remember back in 2013, do you remember this? I took a month off of basically my day job and did the due diligence packages on Houston. And at the same time you did Nashville. And I wish that they could hear the thoughts, just the thoughtfulness and how much work goes into making these decisions. And a lot of people would have been surprised to hear that the markets that we have chosen not to go into, and Nashville is a good example of that.
Chris: Nashville it's a great market. What a great city, but it's not good for us.
Marq: Thank God we didn't go. That would have been a huge mistake for us. Very quickly, that market got so hot that we would have never been able to continue to get properties that cashflow over there without spreading out into a two hour radius, which would have been a logistical nightmare on the property management side, specifically in that market, because they don't have the infrastructure to support it.
Chris: Right. That's a great point. So for everybody that's listened to us today and watching on the video, I really do appreciate you coming on. You'll come back on again, right?
Marq: Yeah, man. Any time you ask.
Chris: Yeah, I know. I think it's great for anybody that's listening to our show to be able to hear from actual investors, of course, in your particular scenario, you're somebody that's not only an investor, but again, I'm not sure what the number is, but it might be over a thousand longterm past investment clients have bought properties with you. You assist them in building their portfolios. Would you agree with that?
Marq: Yeah. I think that number is probably right.
Chris: It's got to be close, right? I know that you haven't kept tabs through the years, but it's got to be close to that. So, you're a guy that just through the conversation can tell people that the investors that have done well and how they've done it. And there's been investors that we've missed the mark with because we felt like we did a good job of preparing them, but ultimately in the end, this was the wrong investment for them. And you and I both know that's true too. So you would be a great, just a great resource for people to hear from and understand that, "Hey, there's a right mentality. There's a person that's going to do really, really well in this investment. And there's an investor that's not."
And probably the biggest advantage that you have over anybody else in this industry is that you've worked with so many that you can tell an investor, this is not the way to go.
Marq: Yeah, I feel like I have the ability to say that. I feel like I've earned that.
Chris: Of course.
Marq: 13 years this month. I remember you and I sitting at your house when you moved back to Memphis and you and I wrote the script for the original Memphis Invest Website. So I guess if anybody does, I feel like I have that credibility.
Chris: Are you trying to say that if we've messed anything up, it goes back to me 13 years ago?
Marq: Definitely.
Chris: All right. So, hey man, again, I appreciate you coming on here. I know that this has probably been a little respite. Tell your wife thanks for letting you jump on here and not have kids bouncing across your lap as you're trying to do your thing.
Marq: I'm shocked that you haven't heard anything.
Chris: No, it's been great. And I know that anybody that's listening on this is going to appreciate the insights that we've shared. I will let you get back to what you're doing today. I will definitely have you on here again, because I'm quite sure anybody that's listening, they're going to want to hear some updates on the markets and updates on what's going on. Look forward to having you back in the office soon, as soon as it's good for everybody. And until then, man, take care or yourself.
Marq: All right. You too. Thanks.
Chris: Thank you, man.
Hey guys, that wraps up our Experience Matters Podcast today. Thank you very much for everybody for joining us. Thank you everybody for spending some time listening to us.
I know that that Marq joining me here today has been very, very beneficial to everybody. Don't forget guys. We're trying to bring you a new episode of the Experience Matters podcast every single week. We will do our best to try and hit topics that are good to everybody out there. Give you some good advice, give you some good input, give you some good feedback on what we're seeing out there.
Feel free to send us any questions that you may have. Throw topics out at me that you want me to cover as I do this week to week. And until then everybody be safe. Take care of yourself. We'll see you next time. Thanks a lot.
