Join us as Billy Daniel, a seasoned real estate investor and co-owner of a real estate company, breaks down the four key ways investment properties can significantly boost your personal wealth. From cash flow and appreciation to principal pay down and tax benefits, Billy explains each method in detail and shares practical advice on how to leverage these strategies for maximum financial growth.
He also discusses his personal investment philosophy, the importance of taking action, and the role of REIA (Real Estate Investors Association) in fostering a supportive community for investors.
Key Takeaways:
02:54 – Billy Daniel got into real estate investing full-time to gain control over his own life and decisions.
03:11 – Billy and his wife focus on long-term rentals in Russellville, Arkansas, targeting the student population.
09:23 – Billy’s long-term goals are to stay in single-family and small multi-family properties, and eventually trade up through 1031 exchanges.
11:23 – Billy aims for a portfolio of 20-30 properties that will cash flow and provide a legacy for his children.
13:31 – Billy started a local Real Estate Investors Association to provide education from experts on strategies relevant to the local market.
18:51 – Connect with Billy on Instagram @anotherflippingcouple or biggerpockets.com for mentorship on investing.
20:31 – Billy says the biggest change would be to take action faster when getting started in real estate investing.
Listen now to gain the confidence and knowledge needed to take control of your financial future through real estate. And remember, as Corwyn always says, “We’re legacy building. That is what we do.”
Connect with Billy@:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anotherflippingcouple
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billyddaniel/
- Website: https://www.nexthomepremierrealty.com/blog.php
Connect with Corwyn@:
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Email: corwyn@corwynmelette.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
- FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/exitstrategiessc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
- Website: https://www.exitstrategiesradioshow.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
Shoutout to our Sponsor: ROBYN COLLINS
Do you want something more? More Meaningful Moments opportunities, deeper relationships and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you say YES, a career and real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for guiding people to one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative.
Exit Realty has a revolutionary compensation model training and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call me today ROBYN COLLINS with REDROBYN HOMES at 843-557-5003. Again that’s 843-557-5003 or visit RedRobynhomes.com/join.exit and make your Exit today.
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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/corwyn-j-melette/support
ROBYN:
Do you want something more? More meaningful moments, opportunities, deeper relationships, and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you said yes, a career in real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for. Guiding people through one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative. Exit Realty’s revolutionary compensation model, training, and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call me today, Robyn Collins, R – O – B – Y – N Collins with Red Robin Homes at 843-557-5003. Again, that’s 843-557-5003 or visit us at redrobinhomes.com/joinexit and make your exit today
CORWYN:
Good morning, g ood morning. And great morning to you guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I am your host, Corwyn J Melette, broker and owner of Exit Realty Low Country group and beautiful, North Charleston, South Carolina, guys, this your first time listening to this show who you are in for a treat. Because our mission is very simple for our loyal listeners. Y’all know what I need y’all to say it with me, to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education guys, we’re legacy building, that is what we do. So I want to say thank you to all you who tune in locally in the Charleston arena, I want to thank all of you who are now listening to us worldwide, it is extremely humbling to me that you guys take time out of your schedules to tune in to listen while you’re on the go. Maybe you’re at work, and you’re listening to what we’re talking about, and taking notes and taking heed, and most importantly, applying this information to you where it is relevant. So guys, I’m extremely humbled by that. And I thank you for continuing to support us here at the show today. We have a guest for you. We’re going to go back, are we going to talk about the beginning. We’re going to come through and talk about the now. And we’re going to talk about where it’s going. We have none other today with us. The Billy Daniel, now Billy, Hey, he is a real estate guy. He is not only an investor, but he’s also a co-owner in a real estate company. And I’m gonna let him tell you about it. But he is going to share his insights and expertise on how you can leverage and build a real estate portfolio. Billy, how are you doing today?
BILLY:
I’m doing great. Corwyn, How are you doing today?
CORWYN:
I am incredible, man. Thank you so much for being all with it’s not barely really, if you could introduce yourself, give our listeners a 50,000 foot view of who you are, and what it is that you do.
BILLY:
Yeah, like I said, I’m Billy Daniel. I live in Russellville, Arkansas, and nobody knows where that is. And that’s okay. We’re just in the western half of the state. That’s probably about as good as it’s gonna get. I’m originally from North Texas, moved here for some employment opportunities. And a couple of years ago, my wife decided she wanted to open her own real estate brokerage, she had been an agent for several years, a few months into that adventure, and we decided it was time to just burn the ships. And we went all in on real estate. So ever since about this time in 2022. Actually, I’ve been full time in real estate, both investing and as an agent and hopefully, being on the next month goes a broker. But we’ll see.
CORWYN:
So Billy, what gave you the bulk? What was it that said, hey, I want to do this. What was it?
BILLY:
I think it is a big part of it is having control over my own decisions. My own life. A lot of people my age, early 40s, live through 2008 financial crisis, when I think a lot of people saw that the too big to fail, institutions get made some risky decisions. And then they got bailed out. And a lot of people we know, paid the price for it. And that kind of stuck with me through the years and I didn’t like the idea of some executives in a boardroom 1000 miles away can make a decision on hitting their earnings projections then that would have drastic influence on my life if they decided that I just cost too much. So having that control over my own destiny was really a huge draw for why I got into real estate plus I just think it’s fun and interesting. There’s always that
CORWYN:
well, it’ll give you heart palpitations every now and again. So if you call that excitement, it’s like having your own personal roller coaster, so to speak. It definitely is. So Billy, you guys do investing right?
BILLY:
We do. We have a few single family homes and a few small multifamily homes. And we’re working on getting my first commercial property actually.
CORWYN:
Good deal. Good deal. So with that, tell us what’s your strategy? What is it that you do? What is it you start with, etc,
BILLY:
we’re mostly long term rentals, we live in Russellville is a little college town, there is a university here with a sizable student population. So we just cater towards the students with our long term rentals, my goals for investing are really long term, I’m not looking to get rich real quick, I think that’s very hard to do and pretty unlikely. So when it comes to us acquiring a new property, I’m okay to take a little less cash flow on a rental unit on day one, because I know in five years, I’m gonna get a lot more cash flow plus all the appreciation, I know where we are, is that we’re lucky in that we can buy investment properties and not have to rely on them to put food on the table, we can afford to operate a very small cash flow, not negative, but small positive cash flow to get us through the early years. So in the long run, it can really start to come back to us.
CORWYN:
Good in our conversation. You’ve been around, you’ve seen this, you’ve been through the crash. Did that deter you at all?
BILLY:
Ah, no, I think it was a lot of motivation. I go back to that having control over my own destiny, you know, if I’m going to win, or if I’m going to fail, whatever it’s going to be because of me. And because of my support system can’t emphasize enough the support system, I have a spot my say me, it’s a support system I got around me. But having that control and power over your own destiny, like you said, it’s an awesome feeling. At the same time, it’s pretty scary.
CORWYN:
Well, this business and we’ll give you it has plenty of excitement has enough excitement to go around to be frank about it. So tremendous amount of excitement, because there’s so many things that are uncertain. I mean, we do believe there’s some fundamentals within our business that if you will certainty about them, meaning that okay, we know certainly that this is going to happen, meaning people have to have shelter. So people will pay for shelter, right? Because they have to have shelter. That is a necessity. But that is probably where it kind of that’s where the certainty then gets muddy or gets blurry. And then everything else after that is completely uncertain. And bless people such as yourself, Bill who set out and take these risks. They say, Okay, well, look, we know this certainty. And because we believe that we know this certainty, we believe these things. So we’re going to invest here, in order to trust we have a return based upon this one certainty, which is people need a place to stay. So you say you invest in and primarily have a portfolio of single family. Why is that? Why do you focus on single family versus other types of properties?
BILLY:
Really, it was just a matter of timing. Now, whenever we bought our first property, it was in 2018. And didn’t really know what we were doing. We knew we had a steep learning curve, but we also knew that you can read all the books, you can listen to all the podcasts, you can do all the educational things, but until you get your hands dirty, you can’t really know what to do or what not to do. So we just lucked out and that this little house hit the market. I can’t remember what it was listed at. I know we paid $15,000 for it. It was 1400 square feet. And it looked exactly like a house that you would pay $15,000 for the supposed to look. Talking Vons going through the windows, the dirtiest Kitchen and Bathrooms I’ve ever seen in my life, even to this day, and we bought some other terrible ones. But it was $15,000. And we’re like, you know what, we’re just gonna take action on this thing and figure it out as we go. And we still have that property. It’s actually I think, until this year, it had been our best performing property. I think it just got passed by another one. But that was the one that started it was a complete down to the studs, all new mechanical systems, everything but I learned a lot. And I tell people that asked me about investing. Now I was like, You got to start with some basic education, you got to listen to podcasts, you got to read some books, you got to get that basic information. But you’re never gonna have all the information. Eventually you just got to go for it and figure it out as you go. So you got to have that faith and you got to have that drive. And I think that’s what we had. And I’m thankful we did.
CORWYN:
So what do you foresee your portfolio developing? Will you continue to add single families? Will you pursue other types of interest or other niches if you will, as it relates to properties?
BILLY:
Yeah, for now, I’m fairly content Stan in single family or small multifamily genre. I foresee in the future starting to trade up with some 1031 exchanges in the some of the larger multifamily. Getting into some 15 – 20 unit. I don’t have any aspirations to be one of those guys who can say I own 5000 units. I don’t have that kind of aspiration. I’m just going to be happy with 20 to 30 units give me some nice solid cashflow to retire on and and have some kind of legacy to pass down to my kids. So that’s kind of what we as long run.
CORWYN:
That’s interesting. So Billy, we have a tremendous amount of guests on the show, we just recently had an author on who his niche is 1031 exchanges, we’ve interviewed him before he talks about it has built a whole company around it, he helps people around the country do this. And he’s written a couple books who just recently with the latest, and we just talked about this, but what you’re talking about speaks to really forgive this, but it speaks to the beginner, because some people are, okay, we’re gonna go and we’re down the road. And we want 100 properties, because we’ve had people on the show that own hundreds, maybe 1000s of properties scattered around the country. And they’ve developed these systems and processes and doing this and doing that. But then there’s the person who I just want to build a great legacy for my family, for my children, I want to get to a portfolio that cash flows, that as the market ebbs and flows, we gain equity, when in turn, I can live off of this for a portion, but then leave this all to my children, you’re speaking to people. So your goal is you said roughly 20 some odd properties you’d like to be able to leave to your children accumulate that mean,
BILLY:
For me, it’s more of just a manageable number, then I can keep that fairly local. Again, I want to keep it simple. I don’t want to go and find markets, three states away. I know there’s good investments there. I know there are guys who will go nationwide. And that’s great. But for my particular style and my tastes and my risk tolerance, I don’t want to do that. I’m just trying to stay around the area and keep it simple. And just for the future, just pay those debts down and have those debt free properties that are just massive cashflow beasts, and be content with that as opposed to you know, 5000. But I have only 20% equity and something. So that’s the philosophy I have on it personally.
CORWYN:
And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you look at it from the bigger picture, the bigger take, the reality is that everybody has to find their niche, what is it they want to accomplish? And so forth and so on. So I know, Billy, you also you started a REIA, correct?
BILLY:
That’s right, I started a local REIA.
CORWYN:
So for our listeners, let’s talk about this. So for our listeners locally, who may have no idea what a REIA is… what is a REIA,
BILLY:
That’s a Real Estate Investors Association. And they are all over the place, I’m sure Charleston has a one, at least, maybe multiple. But I started ours here. And we just get together on the second Tuesday of every month at a local restaurant, and for about two hours. And we just talk about real estate. And I try my best to bring in local experts that can come in and give some insights that are very specific to our area and the real estate market in our area to help provide some value to our members. So that everybody has some strong knowledge. Because if you know that rising tide lifts all ships, so if I’ve got an investor in this area, and I know he’s doing great things, I want to be a part of that I’m going to help him out and know we help each other out. And that also avoids him from getting that bad landlord rep. You want to be associated with the people who are slumlords for lack of a better word. So having some education and some resources out there for people to get to a great way to help avoid that and help everybody out the whole community.
CORWYN::
So for our listeners that are local to Charleston, there is at least one I think, usually a REIA, is because it is national organization membership, all these other things. And usually they are geographical, maybe limited one or whatever. In a certain year. I know there’s one that meets up in North Charleston, I think it covers like most of the Charleston region. So for our listeners, guys, there is definitely one and it may be some other groups or whatever locally. This is a wealth of information that’s shared in these places. So Billy, what kind of strategies you guys normally talk about? And how has that been impacting the membership of the members positively?
BILLY:
Yeah, so our last few speakers, I can just say our last few topics, as we talked about estate planning, which is pretty applicable to anybody talk about wills and trusts and what you should and shouldn’t have. I had a local attorney come in and speak on that topic. I had a local commercial lender come in and talk about how to calculate after repair values and appraised values and things that you would use and if you’re going to purchase a property. I had a local CPA last year at the end of the year come in and get some tax training on for some investors like I knew what to do, and getting into the new year and the tax season. So those are just the speakers. That’s only a small part of it. of our meeting. A lot of it is open forum, kind of hey, what’s your problem? Well, here’s how I solved that problem and just an open discussion, as well as market updates. And as a realtor. I have great access to the local MLS and the trends and the data so I may to share that with the group, so they know what to look for out in the market as well. So it’s just there’s so much to gain out of it, that really no matter what type of investing, you’re into real estate wise, there’s going to be somebody there, who has either done it or knows how to do what you’re working on.
CORWYN:
It’s always helpful, our shoppers aren’t we work together, and we all are better better forward from it. Billy, you guys on a real estate company? So do you work with a lot of investors through your company with your company?
BILLY:
Yeah, I tend to handle the investors. So my wife and I are the CO owners. She’s the boss, I gotta make sure that it gets in there. But I tend to stay more on the investing commercial side of things. And she handles more of the typical residential real estate things. She’s very good at working with families and other people who are looking to buy a home to live in. Because she is, she can make that connection a lot easier. To me, I’m very analytical. So whenever I see a house, I just think numbers and you know, profits and whatever. So I have a hard time helping people figure out where they’re going to put their Christmas tree when it comes Christmas time that just not for me. So I’ll send those people to her. And she doesn’t like working on numbers with investors. So she’ll send them to me, and it makes for a great team.
CORWYN:
That’s balanced, right there. That is awesome. So Billy, what does that you may have just covered it because you spoke about the difference in understanding or being able to help somebody figure out how to leave the house out what you can put here, so forth and so on. But versus on the other side, just merely being about the numbers. And it takes two different perspectives to carry all that stuff out. Correct.
BILLY:
That’s right, and you got to sometimes with an investor, especially new investors, you really have to help them understand that they’re not going to live there. So they don’t need to make it personalized for them. But they really like to have purple paint in the bedrooms, that’s great. But you’re gonna scare away a lot of potential tenants or potential buyers if you’re flipping it. So you got to keep in mind that you’re not going to live there, and you have to make your property appealing to whoever you think will live there. So I think that is a very important distinction. And investors need to understand that when it comes to buying or selling their properties.
CORWYN:
It makes perfect sense. So I’m gonna ask you this question, as we lead into what always call Is my mic drop. And one of my final questions, Billy, but I’m asking this question, why should someone look at starting a real estate portfolio? Why should they look at investing? Why should they consider that?
BILLY:
Yeah, so I give some training every now and then. And I’ll tell people, there’s four ways in investment property will increase your personal wealth. First is the obvious that your cash flow, second is obvious, that’s your appreciation. But the other two are your principal pay down if you have long term tenants, or even short term rental on your loan, and then your tax benefits. So just from a numbers standpoint, there’s a lot more out there to help you grow your personal wealth, then you would get in most other forms of investing. And the second one goes back to what I talked to, in the beginning was you get control over it, if you buy a house, a half a mile away from where you live, you can control a lot of what goes on in that house. And of course, you’re subject to some whims of the market. But for the most part, you can determine how nice that property is you can determine who gets to live there, what they pay, market dependent, and how much money you make. So there’s a lot of control there. And I’ll hear people say, Well, I don’t want to lose all my money. Well, once you get in there and you buy it, you still own that property. So you’re not going to lose all your money, you can always resell it and get at least most of it back probably if you were smart. So there’s a little risk. Obviously, there always is gonna be for an investment. But I think it can be a manageable risk, especially with some education and some mentorship.
CORWYN:
Okay, that makes perfect sense. So Billy Matt, fact before we get to that, how can people reach you? How can people get in contact with you?
BILLY:
On Instagram, I am @anotherflippingcouple. It’s a great photo of me and my wife on our profile, I gotta admit, but then I’m also very active on Bigger Pockets. I don’t know if we’ll talk about bigger pockets much. But you can search for me, Billy Daniel in Russellville, Arkansas, connect with me on bigger pockets. And I’m on there now multiple times a week trying to learn and help others learn.
CORWYN:
Good deal. Appreciate that. So Billy, I call this is really usually a last question is a hindsight question, mic drop question all that kind of stuff, which is, if you’re able to look back, if you had the view when you started that you have now meaning you’re able to look back, all the experiences, all that stuff that you have now, what if anything, would you have done differently, that would have catapulted you much further down the road than where you currently are?
BILLY:
Oh, that’s a good one. I think I will be faster to take the action that I took, talked about, did all of all the reading, all the podcasts and eventually I just got to the point where I was like, I gotta buy it. I probably To shorten that time by about half is just taking the action is the hardest step. And that first step is the hardest one, to go and actually make that purchase. And I think I would have been faster to get to that. And then I would have been faster to, I don’t know the right way to say it, learn from my own mistakes through that first property. Instead of thinking I was doing everything right. And then realizing no, six months later, I was wrong, I think I would have paid more attention to that. So really, just I guess, just the speed of my action is what I would change.
CORWYN:
I’ve had that from a few guests, Billy that they’ve said, I would have done what I did faster, we get analysis paralysis at times, where we pick everything apart, put it back together, and we pick it apart again. And we keep doing that. And unfortunately, don’t act as quickly as we could have. Eventually, we’d say, You know what, screw it, I gotta jump. And when we jump, then we’re fully committed. So I referred to it as being whole hog committed, because when you jump, no going back, just like that got that whole bacon on the table. They had to give up something serious in order to be there. But the chicken just had to contribute. So I tell people all the time, when you take the step, take the leap, your whole hog committed, you’re all in. So Billy, I want to thank you for being on the show with us today. Thanks for taking your time. I know it’s a commitment to be here. And for the information that you share to our listeners today.
BILLY:
Thanks Corwyn, I appreciate it a lot. It’s been great.
CORWYN:
Awesome. It’s awesome. For our listeners, guys, look, hey, I know how I feel. You I know what I say. I know I always put the two of those things together to you and I deliver it to you this way, which is very simple. I love you. I love you. I love you. And we gon’ see you guys out there in those streets.
