STRATEGIES TO GET YOUR FIRST PROPERTY IN REAL ESTATE || ERIC CHEN || EPISODE 053

I'm just a regular person, I graduated from UCI, so University of California Irvine. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was actually working at a restaurant called Ding Tai Fung, so it's actually a really well-known franchise dumpling restaurant. So I was a server there, you know, make good money, but I didn't know what I wanted to do in life. And then one of my agent friend told me that, hey, Eric, you should actually get into real estate. This is actually the best way to make money. Did you always have a great credit score? Because I think it's very important. I don't know what we're gonna talk about, but did you always have a great credit score? Yeah, so especially Asian cultures, we can't, you can slap in your ass if you had debt, you know, like people are so afraid of debt, and then I do it all, you know, consultation with Asian clients. They don't have no debt at all. This score is always 780 a buck. So I literally just flip a property in West Covenum. I bought it for a 790, so obviously I need to put 10% down, right? So that I can 790K, $790,000, which I could liquidate from my credit card. I put 100K into renovation. I convinced my contractor I would pay everything with credit card. Obviously I'm not gonna dispute that, right? So Owing cost for me is around like 200K on my credit card, and I was able to make 100K on that after I flipped the property, and he took me around four months. And then what was the first amount that was given to you that you qualified for in terms of that 0% for his credit card? So that is the topic that is there. You gotta really dive deep. F***. The code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. If you are curious and interested in learning a lot about real estate, Airbnb, house flipping, being a real estate investor, also scaling your portfolio with 0% business credit card. This is the episode for you. I have a guest in today who is an expert in all those fields that I just mentioned right now, and we're gonna just dive in deep and learning a bit about Airbnb, the arbitrage method. We're gonna be learning about, I think it's BRRRRRRR. But we'll talk a bit more about all these strategies, the things that have made him very successful, how he built a portfolio in his seven figure as well. So without further ado, our amazing guest in the studio, Raichi in the Golden State and the City of Angels, welcome Eric Chen. How are you doing brother? Hey, thanks for having me today. Awesome stuff, man. I'm grateful to that. Cause I think you in the field right now where people are very curious in all those things that I kind of mentioned, Airbnb, upscaling, 0% business credit card, all these different hacks that are very, very important. But before we start, can you just tell us a bit about you and what actually pursued this journey for you to start in real estate? Yeah, absolutely. So honestly, I'm just a regular person, no I graduated from UCI, so University of California Irvine. I didn't know what I wanted to do. You know, most of it, I was actually working at a restaurant called Dingtaifeng. So it's actually a really well known franchise dumpling restaurant. So I was a server there, you know, make good money. But I didn't know what I wanted to do in life. And then one of my agent friend told me that, hey, Eric, you should actually get into real estate. This is actually the best way to make money. And obviously that was before COVID time where money was constantly coming in from overseas. You know, that was when there was a lot of strict tightening tension between China and the USA. People will bring so much money to the state and that's where we make the most money. People will start buying the whole entire street and then you make a commission with that. That's kind of like how I started doing real estate, building relationship with my Dingtaifeng clients because, you know, we have a lot of client coming all the time and they always ask me what I want to do for my life. And when I got out of that job, I'm like, hey, hey John, this is Eric, you know, I'm actually in real estate now. Are you looking to buy real estate? And that's kind of how I got this oldie's client based on all the data that I had from all these clients I served at the restaurant industry. Wow, awesome stuff. And that was pre-COVID, right? Yes, pre-COVID. When the real estate market was a bit more reasonable than what it is right now. Correct. And so, did you always have a great credit score? Because I think it's very important. I don't know what we're going to talk about, but did you always have a great credit score? Yeah, so especially Asian cultures. Ha ha ha ha. We can't, you get slapped in your ass if you had debt, you know, like people are so afraid of debt. And then I do it all, you know, consultation with Asian clients. They don't have no debt at all. The score is always 780 above, which is good, but they got to understand how to leverage that, right? So that's something we're going to be talking about later. By having a good credit score, you could tap into so much opportunity and so much more money, you know, in this industry. And I want to just go straight into it. I want to try and figure out, like, obviously you've scaled the seven figure real estate portfolio. How did you end up using 0% business credit cards? Can you talk a bit about that whole journey as well? I'm curious. Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny enough, this is a fun fact. This USA and also, this is not a country, or the only country that actually provides 0% APR credit card. And that is 12 month, 0% interest, right? Obviously the banks are going to make money by every transaction that you swipe, like 3%. Obviously go to the merchant. And then they also make money from people that default on the credit cards, right? With a lot of interest. But if you know what you're doing, any advantage that the bank is trying to take from you, you could make that into a cash cow making machine and then using that money to make more money, right? So basically 0% interest, we could stack multiple credit card, different banks, because when you apply for a credit card, the other bank doesn't know you have applied for a credit card. So we could basically stack it correctly. So experience, trans-union, and echo facts. If we layered it correctly, we could get up to 150K, up to maybe like 250K or 0% working capital for you. And a lot of people, they think, okay, I have 200K, I'm gonna stop buying nice car, watch, just spend that money. But imagine if you have 200K worth of money, and they had the right knowledge, which is real estate, which is what we're gonna talk about later, that can turn into a very, very good cash flow business. So I literally just flip a property in West Covenum. I bought it for a 790. So obviously I need to put 10% down, right? So let's take a 790K, $790,000, which I could liquidate for my credit card. I put 100K into the renovation. I convinced my contractor I would pay everything with a credit card, obviously I'm not gonna dispute that. So Owing cost for me is around like 200K on my credit card, and I was able to make it 100K from that after I flipped the property. And he took me around four months, right? So that's only four months. So now I have all that money back, I could pay by that credit card, and then rinse and repeat and do another flip project. So you see how powerful this is? I'm not really getting more lending on the bank side, that will charge a lot of interest, especially if you're holding money along 9%, right? Maybe up to like 12%. I'm using straight out the banks money, and then able to make money from that. And so the first home that you flipped, you made $100,000 profit from that? That was the most recent one I flipped. I started health flipping back in 2019. Okay, yeah. Awesome. And what's the quick turnover in house flipping regarding that? Because I know you mentioned that right now, did you use it all the time when you used the 0% credit? Because it's 0% for 12 months, so that's what people don't understand. Like it's after then, there's obviously a fee that gets in, but you can utilize and start leveraging as much as possible throughout the process, right? Yeah, so obviously I usually max it out because there's no interest on this, so it didn't really matter. And I know for a fact, within that 12 months, I'm not really gonna apply for new credit cards, so it wouldn't really matter to me. And on top of the bonus for that is, for example, like I'm working on this first project, and I only have two months left on the 0% APR, right? Because I had real estate, I have equity from all these property that I bought from back in the days. Every single property that I have is a bank of its own. I could do a HELOC on it, I could do a cash-share refining, take that money out, pay down the credit card, and once my DTI is zero again on the banks, when I apply for a new credit card, they're gonna say, oh, Eric, I'll approve you again. So I'll get a new 0% APR credit cards, and whatever balance or limit that I have at 100K, did you know that you could actually transfer the whole entire limit to the new credit card? Which is 0% APR again? So what did I just do? I just transferred the whole entire 150K with 0% interest credit card to a new credit card, it's 12 months, zero, 0% APR again. I could use that money to invest and then buy more houses. So I'm technically not really using like the traditional route of investing right now. And then what was the first amount that was given to you that you qualified for in terms of that 0% based on the credit card? So that is the topic that is where you gotta really dive deep, right? So like just for example, somebody opened up a brand new LLC and they had no cash or no nothing on it. How is the bank's gonna qualify you to determine how much money they could approve before? They go check your personal profile. So that's why it's so crucially important. If you wanna invest into anything right now, invest into your credit score and actually building it up to the right optimized profile. So when the banks see it, when you apply for a credit card, they give you instant approval. So personal credit optimize will equal to a lot of business funding. Yes. Okay, all right. Cause I feel like it is true, but in your situation, like was it more than six figures that you got approved for the first time around? Yeah, so for Chase, we have a relationship with Chase with a lot of the relationship managers. So one credit card could get approved for 75K. Okay. And how many credit cards do you have right now? Oh, I don't even know. I like 40, 50 credit cards. Oh, leverage, bro. I have a whole booklet of credit cards. And then every time I finish using the 0% APR, I don't close it, I just leave it there and I'll open a new one and just transfer that limit over. So it's every year I get to, if you really think about it, every year I get to use 200K worth of credit card that is 0% interest. With the knowledge that we have right now, investing in real estate, it's basically free money. And then you get the travel point, that you know, Chase, AMX, if you learn how to do a travel hack, you transfer the points around, five business class, it's just so much fun. These are hecks, man. Everything through credit cards. Why are people doing this though? People don't really understand it, you know? And then I heard, I would do a lot of consulting for a lot of like investors, or like just people that want to get some money for, to start investing in Airbnb, you know, e-commerce or that stuff. They think 0% APR is good and then they didn't know that, they will put every single credit card on the personal side. So there's 0% APR credit card on the personal side as well. Right, so people will start maxing those out, but they don't know that. If you max out your personal credit card, it's gonna affect your whole entire credit score. But if you max out your credit card on the business side, it doesn't show up on your personal credit. So what I do is I'm hiding all my debt on the business side. So my credit on my personal is always clean, always 820, 830. And when I need more money, I use my HeLa paid by the credit card and then reapply and use the same money. And my personal profile is always gonna be 820. I'm not gonna touch it. I'm never gonna touch my credit profile again after I optimize it, right? So a lot of people don't understand that. So they started running a business, they apply for a credit card on the personal side, and they max it out. Now their income to debt ratio is too high, the credit go down, you can't do anything. You can't get approved for any credit cards after that because it's too high. You consider a high risk for the bank. And I also heard this, that a business credit does not affect your personal credit unless you default. Is that accurate? Correct, so technically you're still a personal guarantee on the business. So when you apply, there's an inquiry, right? That's gonna be showing on your personal profile. If you don't pay it for like two months straight consecutively, then it will show up on your personal profile. Only after two months. So obviously you're gonna make sure you use that money wisely, right? So that's kind of like what we do. I mean, I know you did mention earlier on, I understand the discipline that's implemented in Asian communities. However, what if you're getting a client, an American guy that's here, and maybe they were in college, they didn't really take care of their credit card. Do you have systems on helping them to try and at least get their credit card or their credit score cleaned out and better and fixed as well? Yeah, so my company, we actually also do credit repair as well. So we could actually help them fix their credit, kind of get them back on track. And while they're fixing their credit, they could actually go ahead and get on secure, I mean, secure credit card, right? So we like to discover secure credit card, or like Chase, they have like a flex, I believe. So you put money into it, and that's your credit limit. And that's how you start building your credit age. So your credit, like the oldest credit card you have, please never close it, because that's like your strongest point. That is something where as a credit guru, I mean, a credit specialist, that's something we can't change, the credit age. So please don't close on any credit card that you have, that you have like a Macy or Victoria secret credit card you opened out years ago. Don't close it, make sure you use it, and don't close it out, because that's how you borrow your credit. And how so, is it called credit age? Yes, so what it is, it's like that last, like it's almost like a LinkedIn for credit cards, it's like the blueprint, try and say, listen, this is where it started, and it has like the historical data for the timeframe of how long you've had the credit card, right? Yeah, so the bank want to see you have a very big history on when you started your credit journey, basically. So if they see you have this credit card for 10 years ago, you've been paying on time for the whole time, they trust you more, and they'll give you a higher limit. Fascinating, fascinating. Oh man, now let's get straight into Airbnb, you know what I'm saying, I can't believe that, because I like the credit card thing, and I think that's when you were in the Airbnb, isn't that also a place that your credit cards helped fund that as well? But one last thing, so you can max it out, but there's also a certain amount that you have to at least pay for that. So let's say you max out 50,000, maybe they might say you just need to pay 2,000 for that month, that's what you still do, right? But you don't have to pay out the whole thing. Yes, so it's called minimum payment. So if you spend 50K, you max it out, every single month you have to pay 1% of that, so which is $500. Really? And the next month, obviously, you pay 500, you're now at 49,500, then the next month you pay 49,000, $495, because every month is 1%, until the very last month you pay everything off. Obviously you make that money back. One percent for everything, for all the, oh, is it just the one you have? Every single credit card, that's usually 1%, that's the minimum payment. And then you still get that privilege of a zero percent APR credit card. Interest. Man, that's a bargain because the beauty about this whole thing is the fact that you don't need an outside investor, you can pursue your own dreams, you can be a solo, a tropinier, you can be an entrepreneur, you can do what you gotta do, and you also, depending on how the structure of the business has been set out, you know that the funds are gonna still be coming in and you can end up paying the thing out, it's about the 12th month is when they want that $50,000 back. Exactly. And then this new cycle begins again. Correct. Unbelievable, man, this is on, like people should teach this more, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I know it's out there, you've got your students and all that, but this is such valuable information, you know? So, and that's what you sort of funding for your Airbnb when you did arbitrage, you did arbitrage here in California? Yeah, so I started doing arbitrage back in 2021. That was right after the COVID kind of lifted, everybody's like, you know, formal on traveling. And so I got in on a good time, and obviously I was, you know, I'm actually a real estate agent. So the first thing I did without, you know, paying for a mentorship on how to do Airbnb, I figured it out myself, like, I asked all my client, like, hey, can I just rent out one of your property, let's try it out as Airbnb. So I did that, I put really, really bad furniture inside, and we're still making good money. Now right now you can't do that anymore, right? The competition is being very, it's a lot more competitive right now, but back in the day, it was so much, so easy to make money. You literally just had to put a mattress and then you make money. That's how it is before, but you always have to adapt. And then, you know, a lot of people are, actually 2022 is the time when Airbnb arbitrage started becoming so popular, like everybody's doing it. All right, so like we kind of have to understand what does the client want, what does the guest want? And if you could provide those amenities, that's actually where you're gonna make the money. Because everybody's doing it, what makes you stand out? Do you still do it right now? Yes, I still do it. I still have a few arbitrage. How many properties do you have? Last year at 55, yes, and then we have 35 management deals. So I sold most of my arbitrage deal to my students because my main focus right now is actually buying, acquiring real estate, because I see the longer kind of future for that. Like just for example, if I do an arbitrage, I need to find a specific house that had the right amenities and they had to be renovated really, really well, right? And then where can you find that kind of house? This is really hard. And if you could go out and find it, there's other students out there that's also trying to find that property as well. Everybody is pitching a landlord, hey, I'm a corporate housing company. Everybody's doing the same thing, like how do you stand out? Obviously, if you get to talk to a landlord or you build that wrapper, you know, obviously it might rent it out to you, but it's so competitive and you have no control over anything, right? So I'm like, I'm just gonna buy a distressed property. I'm gonna buy from a wholesaler or like off market deals, which if it costs me $1 million to buy the property, I'll get it at $750. So when I buy that property, I'm already in the greens. And then because I'm already in the greens, and I use a business credit card to renovate that property, I could make this wall really, really nice. And that's the selling point for a property. I could renovate the backyard, put a Jacuzzi in there, and that's gonna add another $120 a month daily on my rental property. I get to control what I want to do on the property, you know, that design everything I do on myself. But if I do arbitrage, I need to rent out a house and whatever that property feature has, I'm stuck with that. I can't really do anything to it. I'm not gonna renovate the property for a landlord and later on I'll have to send the money, you know, return the house back to them, right? Doesn't make sense. So that's the difference between an arbitrage and also a buying. This one I have more control and I own the property. And because I buy a distressed, I'm always in the green, right, and I could do a cash out refund and then take all that money out, go buy another property and just rinse and repeat. Can you explain for our viewers, if those are not honest, what do you mean in distress? So property that is off market, that's completely like, you need to gut everything out, the property is full of shit, you know, it's just really, really bad property that, like, you know, the seller can't handle it anymore and they're just in distress. And obviously, you talk to Rudy, right? So wholesaling, so they have cold colors, they actually cold, these bunch of sellers, they gain the contract and us as investors, we buy those contracts and we buy it for like 20K, 30K extra on top. And then we also, obviously we could either flip the house or I could convert it into an Airbnb myself and then do a cash out refund on it. Okay, and you currently have like investment properties that you own that are Airbnb? Correct, yes. Okay, and all in California? Yes. All in South, SoCal, nothing in Northern California, or anything? No, everything in SoCal. And then I'm very, very bullish on Orange County. I don't really like LA as much. Orange County is beautiful, man. It's beautiful, it's a good area, it's like families as well, it's very like laid back, it isn't as packed and it's such a nice area and like just, I always see the communities down there, I'm like, gosh, dang, like if LA could implement this form of like feel, because you know, so. I'm sure you're right. But they're so expensive though, so I've seen homes growing like a normal three bedroom for like millions of dollars, you know what I'm saying? So when you do the investments and you said you still implement the same strategies that you use for a credit card to buy or like invest in those properties, right? Yes. Is it just for down payment or for the full payments? That's always down payment. So usually, for example, if I want to buy a property at $1 million, that's the stress price. I need to put 100K over the down payment, right? So obviously there's two ways to do it, right? Well, actually there's three ways to do it. First way is you liquidate that money out, you know, there's a lot of ways to liquidate it, but we could talk about that in the future. So liquidate the money out of the credit cards, use that as a down payment, and the remaining, every single month you got to calculate what is your interest with the how money loan, right? How much more extra are you paying every single month? So you had to take into account on that as well. So it's 100K plus maybe 30 or 40K of holding costs. So that's how much you actually need to, you know, to hold onto the property for at least three to four months, right? And also the renovation cost, which you don't have to liquidate. You could just put on a credit card because only the down payment may have to be cash, right? When you put it into escrow. So holding costs like 200 to 250K for me to flip a property using the, you know, the credit card side. The second way is off your own money, right? I have 100K, I put it inside, and then the remaining of the interest and stuff, I also have the money. That's like people that have more, you know, money to invest. And the third way is actually through investors. So right now constantly every single day, I have wholesaler that's sending me a bunch of deals and every single, Eric, I have this, I have this. I'm not, I can't take on all of them. There's no way I could take on all these projects at once. But what I learned is when you're in social media, or if you're really good at what you're doing, you attract a lot of people that's interesting. I couldn't agree more, 100%. So now I have a bunch of investors waiting in line with me to say, Eric, I'm putting all the money for the down payment and the renovation costs, and then we could do a 40, 60 split. So I take 40% out of the profit. After that, we flip the house and they take 60%. And I don't put any money at all. So that's what I'm doing right now for a lot of my project. But obviously the very, very good project, I'll just take it on myself because I don't need investors. Right, so. And how do you get investors? How was it when you first pitched the first investor? Did they come to you? They come to me. Okay. I wasn't really thinking about having investors because every deal I want to take it because it's like such a good, such a good spread, you know? But you don't have that much money, you know? So eventually, like, you know what? I need to start leveraging. And it's also good for me as well because if I'm doing multiple project, I want to think about the social media, right? I don't have to go to the job site every single day, but I go there just to do some video. So all my audience know Eric is still doing these kinds of stuff. Even though I don't have to be there, it built up that, you know, that personal branding. It builds that trust that, oh, Eric is actually into it. He's always at the construction site, you know, talking about all these kind of detailed stuff. That's where you get more people into you, interested in you. So if I post right now, like, you know, I need 150K, I'll give you 10% interest or 15% interest. Somebody will come and then they will put that money down onto me because they know I'm doing this every single day. Wow. And I think that that's so important, like rapport is everything because the fact that you end up building that presence and you experience in the market and people know you, they're actually the ones waiting for you to get that deal. And I've seen it with a lot of like big time investors, angel, I've seen it with like people that are crowdfunding as well. They have already built that, you know, Grand Cardone raised, I think a billion dollars in terms of like all these real estate deals. But I also see local people as well in Utah that I'll end up doing like commercial real estate and all that kind of stuff. And I want to kind of, I know you used to do that a bit. Do you want to, can we talk a bit about commercial real estate? Are you okay with that? I'm not really into the commercial side. Okay. I only do residential right now, but eventually that's something I want to get into. Okay. Okay. No, and so how do you find the best deals though? Cause I know the off the market deals, everyone talks about how amazing off the market is because there's no competition or like, you know, you're approached here, but how do you end up finding those deals? Again, it's building relationship with wholesale and agents. So there's a bunch of wholesale groups or there's like new westerns or all these kind of wholesale company, they send out a bunch of deals every single day, right? But honestly, those deals are so bad, right? You have people, there's different type of people. There are investor that wait for the right opportunity. You have people that have just recently got into flip house flipping and they get formal because they can't find deals. They will get into crappy deals. And these kind of big companies, they send out deal with really, really bad spread. But people got, it's like, how do you pay for this mentorship or whatever it is? They got into a bad deal and lose money. So obviously that's how wholesale they make money, right? They send out a bunch of deal, value wise and they make it spread. But for us, we wait for the right deals and then the only way you can do that is actually building that relationship with that wholesale or agent. So for me, I like to go to all like a real estate events to actually talk to the person, talk to the person in front of, talk to them in person because we build that trust. If it's everything just through phone calls, like if they have a really, really good deal, I want them to think of me right away first, Eric, Eric right away, right? I don't want them to send it to everybody and blast it out. When you blast it out, even they're still on market, you still have a lot of buyer that's trying to buy it. So how do you differentiate yourself by building that relationship, treating that wholesale right correctly. Say, hey, hey Rudy, you know, if you find a good property that is in my buy box, do you mind sending it to me 30 minutes before anybody else? And that 30 minutes, oh, I need to get to locking the good deal, I'll send the EMD right away and we'll close on the deal, right? So, and you also had to let your wholesale agent know that Eric is a performer. So he will close no matter what, because you have people that, you know, gain the contract and they cancel it as well. But for any deals that people they sent to me, they know for a fact that I will close. So they're willing to send it to me over other people, right? So that's kind of like how I've been doing it, just building by building trust, you know, just throwing a bunch of, you know, connection with all these agents. And then that's how it works. You're just playing chess, man. Pretty much. Yeah. And so another thing, because you also have like, you being a real estate agent, it also gives you a bit of a leveraged advantage because when you do listings, have you ever had a listing that you're like, oh my gosh, I actually like the list, let me buy it for myself. Have you ever had that case before? Yes, I don't really buy on market, but if I do want to buy something on market, I just let the agent double in. I'm like, you know what? I don't even want to represent myself. Give me that deal. You know, you don't know what the number is. Give me that deal. I'll pay you extra on the side. I don't care. Give me that house because I see the value in it, right? So like, this is also something I talk about a lot, right? A good deal, a deal, a cycle, somebody sent you a wholesale deal. It might not be good for somebody, but it might be good for somebody else because the way they're investing, right? So this house, if the spread is not that great for some of the flippers, they're not going to buy it. But for some people like me, for example, if we're investing in like a city that actually allow Airbnb, I don't care about the spread as much anymore because I can make sure I could cash for it from this property, right? And yeah, people that actually want to buy property for co-living, people who want to buy a property for senior living or sober living, right? So everybody had different ways of investing into different deals. So there's like a specific buy box that I do when I buy houses and then always have wholesale and send it to me because they know like other people and they're not going to buy it because the spread is a little bit thinner. But for me, I like it because that's the exact property that I want. Solid, man. So somebody out there right now watching this episode and they have not started, like they're making cash for about like 90 to 100,000 Deeks and credits go about like just 700. What advice would you give them right now if they want to jump into real estate investment? So what type of real estate though? Like Airbnb or? Or just like residential, like investing like what you currently doing right now? So if you have a good income, right? If you make over like 100, 120, like you're probably paying the IRS like 30, 40% of that, right? So the best way to do is actually having good income is to buy a property. You could do house hack. So basically buy it with the lowest down payment possible when you're 3.5% down and then sub divide these rooms into more rooms. It would be better if you could buy a near like a school or something and then just rent it out individually. And that should be able to cover your mortgage monthly and you live in there for free. So an FHA loan pretty much. If you can qualify for it. I know right now the interest is kind of on a higher side but you're just gonna grind through it. Buy it now because when the rate is out, the price is gonna go out more, right? So I'd rather have people kind of grind it out, be uncomfortable for a little bit, buy a property, sub lease all the rooms out and in hope when the rate is out, the price went up, they get equity on the property. That's the easiest way and I think the safest way to invest in real estate right now if we have a really, really stable high income. And would you say then duplex and try to fix it up better? Yes, because you could qualify for a lot more higher, right? Because of the rental income, it adds to your DTI basically. And what's crazy about this whole thing, people always complain about the California real estate market but people are constantly buying homes every day in California and people are complaining about California's inflation but people are still moving to California and staying in California. So what's a big myth and misconception with the real estate market in California? I think a lot of people are gonna get out of it, obviously. Those are the people that kind of afford it but you gotta think about it. California and Florida is the most travel visit place in the USA and that's where people get the most attention, so if these places are getting so much attention, California, Sunshine, Pantry, all that stuff, you're gonna have a lot of international people coming over here. And then when you're talking about international people, they're all usually the top 10% of their country. So people are still gonna come in, you're gonna have people that's gonna be eliminated, they're gonna move out to Arizona or these kind of places, they can't afford the price but you're gonna have a lot of international people coming into to buy these properties, right? Because California, everybody know California, there's no country out there that's in California. So you're still gonna have people going out, they're still gonna cycle. So the people that's getting wealthier and wealthier and that are comfortable paying a price of California, they're still gonna come in. And it's just gonna keep going up, right? Because every time you have a transaction, you sell the price of one million, somebody's gonna try to comp that, you sell it for one million, I'm gonna sell it for 1.1. And when you have more transaction, that's how the pricing of California market keep going up. And obviously inflation, every year inflation rates are around 4% right now. So just by having that and having a bunch of international people coming over, the price will eventually keep going up. Because at the end of the day, it's not even how much money you're making, it's also purchasing power is such an underrated thing because I know you've been in Taiwan and I'm from South Africa, even when traveling back to South Africa, because the dollar has been so strong for the last eight years, it's not how much money you make, but it's how much money you can buy with the dollar that you have as well. And what inflation has been doing, it's been taking away that purchasing power by keeping wage at a certain amount, but prices seem to be increasing as well. And you just elaborated it perfectly, which kind of segues to what I'm going to right now. If people are not making enough and wouldn't necessarily qualify for those investment of buying a home, would you then recommend they start with an arbitrage form of method? Yeah, absolutely. So this is something that my mentor was telling me, like if you have money, actually real estate is not the first thing for you to write away. The first thing for you to do is actually invest into yourself with knowledge that can make you generate money for you. So if you have 20K right now, I'll put 10K into somebody that I trust that is gonna teach me to step by step how they make money from past, right? Not going through mistakes. Yeah, you sure you could go into Airbnb yourself and then you don't know the contract, you don't know how to talk to the landlord, you know, you probably went to the city that is now Airbnb. You put all these furnishings, you don't know how to buy the right furniture, you're spending so much, thousands of dollars figuring out yourself when you could actually pay somebody that has done it over and over again for the last three, two, three years. And when you run to a mistake, they tell you exactly how to fix the mistake, right? So anything in life, this is two things, invest into your credit score, understand how credit system work, and then once you're ready with the knowledge that people are teaching you or like you're investing, use that, that's like a very, very big power tool to get 100K to 250K of business funding. And then the other one is just basically invest into yourself on income generated knowledge that can help you out. And then once you have both of that, that's when you can think about buying properties, I think. And then do you have a mentorship or discord or telegram group or like things when you're consulting with people as well, do you have that currently? I used to do that on Airbnb coaching, but it just goes too saturated and I'm an ethical person. I don't want to coach people on something that I don't think makes as much sense as before. Back in the day is good, you make good money, you might still know the real world well. But right now everybody's pitching to corporate housing, corporate housing. There's only one landlord, there's like 20 students from different coaches trying to pitch the same thing. Like how do you stand out? I heard Airbnb was like back then was like you throw something and just stuck like they said, after COVID it was like a honey, like a beehive. It was just so darn good that anyone was making profit like people were losing. And is it a dying industry, would you say? No, I won't say it's a dying industry. Again, just like any industry out there, you have people that is doing the, let's just say it like this, like in Airbnb, let's just say city of Santa Ana, that's right next to Disneyland. Right, so you have 100 properties. I mean, I'm going to break it down simply. Out of those 100 property, you're going to have around 40 to 50% of them is more on the lower side, like you know, okay, it's Airbnb because there's different clientele, right, people that's going to Disneyland, we have the very, very ultra wealthy people that's willing to spend $100,000 a day. You have people that's okay, middle class, they're spending $300, $400 a day. And you have people that just want to go to Disneyland and save some money on the living and spending on the rental, you know, daily, right? So these are the type of people you have. Most of the people are out here on the very lower one, they're spending $100, maybe 50 bucks a day on Airbnb because they can't afford it or they, you know, for some circumstances. You have people middle classes traveling from out of state that want Airbnb, that they're willing to pay $200 to $300. And then you have the ultra luxury people that want to go on Airbnb. Let me just ask, like, if you have these three kind of category people, which one would you want to serve more? The third one. The third one, exactly. The luxury ones. And guess what? A lot of people don't understand how to do luxury Airbnb. People think Airbnb, you just rent the property, you furniture and then you start making money. That's not how it works. I want to get out of this category. I want to do this because if I'm here, 100% of people, 100 property, right? Only 10 property is luxury property. It may be like 30 or like 25 is middle class and the rest is trash, right? So you don't even want to compete with any of these. So if you can stand out and be the top 10%, you know, which is 10 property, you're only competing with 10 competitors. And you can charge $800 to $1000 a day on your property. If you do it the right way, right? The property, probably not going to cost that much different, but just the way you furniture, the amenities that you provide, the rich people, they will always, they're not going to boot these two. So when they come to boot these two, they only have 10 property they can choose from. So you just have to compete with 10 people and you're charging $800 to $1000 per night, right? Especially July or like December time, you could charge 2K, 3K potentially on one day stay. And that's how you differentiate yourself from other people. So that's my theory. Like, you know, if you want to serve somebody like for like real estate as well, why would I want to show houses to somebody that only want to buy $600, $600K house when I can make two-person commission as $12,000? It takes me probably like two to three weeks to convince them to buy a property. And their mindset is not right. They're buying 600K property, right? And how to convince them to up in price, because if you don't up in price, you're not going to be able to be bid on that property. And you have the investor side or the luxury people, like I want to do a $3 million house. Okay, what? Help me get it, no matter what. You decide on the price. So these are the type of clientele, and that's the difference. So I rather serve the $3 million client. That could still make me, I'm putting the same time and effort into helping people buying a property. 1,600K, 1,000,000. This one I make $12,000, 2% commission. But for this one, I make $60,000. So which one would you want to choose? You get to pick your, you know, your battles, right? Like which one would you want to serve more? So I'd rather go with the $3 million people. And then they will generate more cash flow in the future because you build that relationship with them. And they'll refer the client to you, and then, you know, that's kind of like, help, if they see service. We're basing the service industry. And I've noticed though, I feel like the luxury real estate market has, isn't it becoming a bit more saturated as well? Because I've seen a lot of luxury real estate, like agents on my social media, and I've seen it in like five different cities. Salt Lake, Nevada, California, Orange County. You see it more and more. Obviously, you see a lot of like your usual like agents as well. But I've seen people that just focus on luxury and they just seem to be killing it. Like making listings of like $5 million, $3 million, and they're selling. I'm like, who are these people that are buying? But I think they cracked the code. And they have a different form of like lead base. They have a different form of like a way of how they generate in these people as well. And it seems like it's a quick turnover as well. Yeah, so it's hard to gain to like the luxury side because you're gonna know the people, right? So my mentor once told me that, this is actually my secret sauce, my mentor told me back in the days, you know, there's like a shopping center called Southsville Plaza right here, right? That's like one of the biggest luxury shopping malls right here. Every single week, me and my mentor, we actually go there and we'll go shop around, talk to these sales people, asking them what is the newest trend right now? What's coming in? What is Bottega having the new collection? What is LV gonna have for the new collection? What kind of Patek what is coming out? What kind of AP watch is coming out? What is the new series of the Rolex? We go there, we talk to them, you know, they tell us all these details. And guess what, when you actually talk to somebody of that high level, you don't want to be somebody that's driving a Toyota, you know, talking to somebody that's driving a Rolls-Royce. They will talk down on you, they will look down on you. But if you have all these knowledge, and I mean, even if you're not there, if you could somehow stay at the same level with them, talking about the same stuff they like about, golf, horse racing, Patek, AP, when you're at that level with them, they will treat you a lot more better and then they will trust you more, right? Because Rolex's interaction is a very, very big purchase. Why would they trust somebody that's driving a Toyota or somebody that doesn't understand or dress well and not at that level? Or you want somebody that is, it's maybe not at that level, but you guys are talking at the same wavelength. When you can do that, that's how, I think that's how real estate agent, luxury agent, kind of present themselves and then that's how they make money. Yeah, I think that's the secret sauce. That's amazing. And I realize one thing, it's with all these people that seem to be in the luxury real estate, they go above and beyond, they don't just do like your normal Sunday, Saturday listing, they out there in the networking events, they out there with the clients, they building rapport, they getting dinner with them, they going to this event, they meeting with this person, they getting that connection, they jumping on that podcast, they doing, it's all like, it's like a crazy schedule because that one sale is gonna bring about like four or five times more than a normal sale would because it's a luxury one because of the percentage that you're in and that rapport and that one referral just ends up like building because that's one thing I realized as well in solar, what I did, I did it for like a few years, but I was like, hang on, if I'm making between 5,000 to like 15,000, one of my biggest ones is actually a woman from Taiwan, the commission of Taiwan, I think was 24,000, it was a big, I think it was like close to 80 panels in her house in Cappatino, close to the Apple headquarters. But again, with hers was just a report thing, she's somebody referred to me to her, we went for her for dinner, she was chatting, I'm trying to pitch us insurance on what she was doing with this, like, oh yeah, I think I do need solar. I have a big bill right now, let's get this thing done. And then it was one of those easiest sales, but my point in getting in this is the fact that rapport, building that customer service and like going above and beyond is so important in getting the right deals and also building the connections. Can you stress a bit more about that? I know you love that topic a lot. Yeah, it just basically, you just had to build trust, and also like in real estate market as well, a lot of people when they get the commission, they keep that commission, they don't want to spend it, but real estate is, you gotta treat it as a business. The only, the reason why people are not making money as a real estate agent is because they don't treat it as a business, they treat it as a deal, like a- Like a job. A transaction. So when they get their transaction 20K, they keep that. They don't invest into everyday direct mail, they don't invest into social media ads, they don't invest into buying a gift for your clients. So a lot of people they don't understand and they're afraid to spend money because they don't know, they're afraid that if they spend that money, they're not gonna get that money back. So that's the mindset as well, like how to actually run a business. So if I could make 60K for our client, the first thing I would do is I would buy a gift for them. And I have this hack I used before, I always go to LV and buy the cheapest stuff, but that have the biggest box. The reason why I say that is because I could buy a scarf, you know, like an LV scarf, but it looks really, really big when you put it in the box. So when you bring it to your client, they say, oh, this is nice, this is a big present. You know, it's a lot better. And you feel like a little smoke gift. All right, so like a hack and I would kind of figure it out. And we'd buy a bunch of these and every time when it's like Chinese New Year's, we'll just like, each scarf is like 350, $500, I don't mind spending it because every single year I'm reminding them, hey, Eric is still here, he's still in doing business. I love that. Right, and then when they think about you, the next thing they're gonna refer the client over. And I did the same thing, like I'll start giving them between 500 to 1,000, depending on how big the system was. But like if I'm gonna be making like 6,000 and you get me like a referral, I'll give you a thousand bucks, like a 500 when they sign and then 500 when they close and I get paid as well. And I think if you start having that mentality of dollars over pennies, because you end up spending pennies to get the dollars, it's such a good concept because I've used it as well where I'd get like a bunch of sales, but yes, you may think you lose that amount. And I think they end up implementing a new thing where you couldn't end up giving actual physical cash. So by doing stuff like buying a new iPhone or doing different stuff, because now you're giving a customer a referral amount, you're thinking outside the box, knowing that they're gonna bill the report, you just go close the deal. But then because they trust you and it's incentivized like way and transaction for them as well. So there's just so many different stuff people can do rather than just doing the basic thing of like knock, knock, knock. Listen, I'm selling so and so, you know, so I like them. Quickly about flipping though, how quick is the turnover on flipping if you don't mind running through the process? It really depends, you know, depending on the market, depending on the center demographic, who is buying that area and then what kind of renovation to decide I need to acquire for them, right? So typically for a turnaround for me is probably three to four months for one flip. So obviously you probably take around two months for the renovation, obviously depending on how much work needs to be done. So usually around two months, it will take me around two to three weeks to get the house on the contract. And then obviously a month to close that scroll, right? So three to four months around the turnaround, turnaround time for us. That's quick. Yeah, that's pretty quick. Obviously, you know, just in every single business, if you're gonna go through with permanent stuff, obviously that's gonna take a while more. So you're gonna have to play your battles and understand the hacks on like, you know, just applying for permit for certain stuff. So the city knows that you're applying with permit, but the rest of the stuff you do it without permit, but obviously it's still had to be, you know, a licensed contractor. So there's a lot of ways you could get around stuff, but you obviously don't want to overdo it, but you know, that's kind of like how we've been playing it. And then would you say then doing multiple of flipping deals is the best way to make money, or is it good to focus on one and jump on the next and jump on the next as well? I mean, obviously if you were to start out right away, I would start with one, you'll get your feet wet, and actually really understand what kind of, you know, what kind of difficulty is gonna challenge in the face. And once you say, hey, this is actually easy, then you can start replicating that, you know, and getting more deals. Because usually people can only start with one as well, you know, you don't want to over leverage yourself. And have you built a team? Do they do like cold calling and stuff like that, or what does your team do? So I'm more like the end buyer, I'm like the investor, so I understand every single business, they're good at what they're doing, so I'm not gonna like start a wholesale company right away to myself, right? So I'm just gonna let the professional do their job. They make money, I make money. So I'll just have people send me deals, so I don't like do any of the cold calls. So people send me deals, if I think it's good, I give in an assignment fee for the wholesale deals, they make money, and I make money on the flip side, or the buy on the whole side. And I think, dude, that concept is so amazing. People don't, if we're gonna stand like collaboration, it's so important because some people are just experts in certain things, you know, I looked at like, and one of my things when I was in a rush to try and get one of my podcasts edited, and somebody like I watched a YouTube thing and my editor gave me like a thing, and I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I wanted to try and see this thing out, but like, no, it doesn't work that way. Some people are experts in their field. People are very expert, whether you're an audio or sound engineer, whether you're listening, whether you're that thing, but that's the purpose of having people that are experts in their field, is that it makes it convenience for once, and it saves time, and you can actually like progress and focus on what you're doing as well. So that whole concept of like, deal with the wholesale, let you deal with that thing, they are the experts in that thing. We both make money. Win-win scenarios are so underrated. People want to do everything all by themselves, and then it burns them out, and before you know what they nagged out, they're not making enough money, then it's a downward trajectory, and everyone like loses as well. Exactly, yeah. I couldn't agree more, man. I'm grateful for all of these. I know that it's so crazy. Like I had these lists that I wanted to ask you, but the commission was so good, and I got to stop scratching. I told you, I'll keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, no, we're gonna close on time right now, but I know I wanted to ask something right now, but man, there's a great con for that time we flew back. I can't believe we have five minutes left, but yeah. I think it's just when you're evaluating a new deal, how do you decide if it's best suited for a flip, long-term rental, or Airbnb? I like that question. All right. So this is something that I've been, I should be thinking a lot as well. I could buy a property and make a quick flip and make 100K, or I could buy and hold it and make a thousand to $2,000 profit, obviously by running as Airbnb. Which one makes more sense? So that's actually something I'm actually keep asking myself as well. I have a property that I want to hold, but I also want to flip. I'm like complicating between that. So I think it depends on your stage of life. I think for me, I'm 31 right now. I think the long-term holding game is the best way. But for people that are younger, they want to expand their business, I will flip the house. So I think that's kind of where I'm contemplating against, make 100K upfront, or a thousand to $2,000 passively, and then waiting for the whole entire equity to kind of grow. Because really think about it from the long-term span. You really only need $5 million of asset that can invest into any bonds or yield for 10%. You could live pretty well off. You could literally $5 million of asset is what you actually need to retire. If you invest 10%, return every single year. So that's kind of like my goal right now. Maybe just to get to that level and just travel. Because throughout my 20s, I have been just been working my ass off, no travel, no nothing. But I feel like once you actually start making money, we're going to enjoy my life more. So maybe, I don't know yet. You know what, that house, maybe I'll flip the make 100K and just go travel. I don't know yet. Well, you know what, in the next five years, once we do this interview again, that's the first question I'm going to ask you about, what did you do with that home that you were contemplating about? For sure. We'll know by then. And so are your plans to go to commercial right now at the latest stage? What's your future plans? So my future plan is we actually boss on lands in Arkansas. We're actually building a cabin, a 30 unit cabin right now. We'll go for a treat. So that's in development right now. So more getting to motels and then also land development. But something I really want to get into is actually like motel flipping. So basically, motel and Airbnb is the same thing. Kind of like traditional company that's a painting company and then people that's doing more creatively. So I want to buy stuff that's already assisting that the owner is probably on the older side, they don't know how to run the businesses, doing a creative kind of deal, buying part of the equity, renovating it to exactly I know how to make money. They're kind of like people flip houses. We flip motel. We just change the pain, change the bed, put some accent wool onto it. You could potentially sell for $100 extra. And when you can sell $100 extra, you build that entire business, generate, increase by $1 million to $2 million just by doing that. So I think that's something I want to really get into, just doing creative deals with motels, renovating it for them, and then either try to flip it or hold onto it and then still give them some equity on the side so they could just retire. And we keep the operational kind of in house basically. Awesome, man. And then the second last question I wanted to ask, what's the most challenging or difficult part about being an entrepreneur? You always want more. You always, you always, yeah. That's the best answer yet. It's true. It's a blessing and a curse, because it's just never enough. You're like, oh my gosh, I've accomplished that. And you realize your potential. If I can do that, let's try that. If I can do that, let's try that. But then it started as a blessing, but before you know it, you're in the spiral thing. It's funny. When you draw the line. Sorry, you were getting too sick. After this house right now is on the escalator right now, today I need to remove the continuity, but I'm like, do I really want to overstretch myself and invest into that deal? I need to decide that later on today. But yeah, I think it's just more about just, there's so much opportunity out there. And then you just have to make sure you pick the right one and not overshadow yourself. I think that's what it is. Love it, love it, brother. The code to winning is, it's known for insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. I ask all my guests this thing towards the end of the thing, because everyone has a different definition of what winning actually is for them. In your definition, for Eric Chen, what does the term winning mean for you? For me, winning is being able to, I mean, my parents and everybody, my wife, I sacrifice a lot for me. I'm here because of them. So I think right now, for me in my 30s, my winning is actually basically just retiring my family and retiring my wife and just travel. And then having a bunch of passive income in. And also eventually we have kids, having the right education for my kids, basically. Love that, brother, love that, brother. If you could look at the camera and just let our guests know where they could go, hold the view if they want to get a mental call or understand or follow what you've been doing, what are the best social media platforms, website and let us know as well. Yeah, absolutely. So you can actually find me on Instagram. I'm very, very active up there. My Instagram handle is E-R-I-C-C-H-E-N. So Eric Chen. That's a very, very common Chinese name or Asian name. And I happen to have that handle. So you can find me very, very easily, Eric Chen. You know what's crazy? I was going to ask you that because I was like, how did you get Eric Chen in one word? Because I was like, he probably had Instagram when it downloaded back in 2010 because sometimes people go, how many did you get Instagram if you don't want me asking? I bought it from the person that had that handle. That explains what I was going to say. Eric Chen, what are the chances? When I first saw that I'm like, no ways, man. I thought you had to have been among the first 100 people to get Instagram because Eric Chen is, yeah, that's impressive. Yeah, I pay a lot of money for it, but I believe that if people see somebody's name with Eric Chen, that's a very, very believable handle. And then it's incentivized to follow me, right? It's more legitimate. I got a blue tag and everything just, okay, follow. It's all marketing. The code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Eric Chen, thank you so much, brother. Thanks for having me.