Designing Unbelievable Dreams and Living Holistically Bold with Mackenzie Brogdon

Mentioned References

• Wealth Without Cash by Pace Morb
• BiggerPockets Podcast
• Harrisonburg Homeowner

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.

[Erica]
And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.

[Mattias]
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.

[Erica]
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.

[Mattias]
Ready to level up?

[Erica]
Let’s do it.

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. Mattias here. It is a, it’s Good Friday, the time of recording this.

My lovely wife and co-host Erica is with our kids. They’re getting ready to do some Easter eggs with my parents. I’ll be joining them here shortly.

The Swiss have an interesting tradition for dyeing their Easter eggs. If you’re not familiar with it, it looks like you do take a ton of onion skins and you boil that in water. It’s gonna sound really strange, but trust me, just walk with me here.

And then you take eggs and you get different flowers and different like grass, greenery stuff from the outside to decorate the eggs with. And then you put them into a pantyhose and you basically position the different greenery, the flowers, et cetera, around the egg. And then you kind of use a pantyhose to hold it to the egg with a tie or zip tie or rubber bands or whatever to kind of keep it all together.

You then drop that pantyhose filled with eggs and weeds into the boiling pot of onions. Because I wasn’t expecting to talk about this right now, but it’s really funny coming out. You drop that into the onion skin water that’s boiling, hard-boiled eggs essentially.

When you pull them out and you get the eggs out of the pantyhose and weeds, they’re brown and then they’re a really cool color of brown and the parts that were covered with the flowers, et cetera, are white. And so it’s a really cool, natural, more natural looking kind of Easter egg that I grew up with. And if you have, look them up.

I don’t know what you Google, Swiss Easter eggs maybe. Maybe Google pantyhose weed and onion skin. Yeah, I don’t know what you Google, but they’re cool.

We’ll have to, I don’t know if we can share one on, maybe we’ll share them on the Instagram feed about what we did. But anyway, that’s what we’re doing here today. We had a really, I had a really great guest on here, Mackenzie, and she is, she just is speed running life I feel like, crazy.

The amount of things that she’s accomplished in a short amount of time and everything that she talked about was just like boom, boom, boom, boom. Like did it, did it, did it, did it. Like I think like wanted to become an agent, got my license in two months or something crazy.

And then we all quit our jobs full time. And that’s her agent right away. And I just, it’s, you don’t usually hear that amount of speed.

One of the things that she recommended at the end was working hard. She got into much more detail than that, but kind of is what I wanted to talk a little bit about with real estate in general. I think often it’s glamorized on HGTV, et cetera, that it’s this easy, glamorous thing when it is really hard work.

And I think that’s something that people have a hard time understanding in a transaction. They might sometimes feel like agents are overpaid. But when you, the average agent makes, I think she said 30 some thousand.

And I think I read something like 45, I believe, in a year. It’s not that much. And that could come, $45,000 could come in a month, in theory, and then not have anything else for the rest of the year.

That’s, it’s just a kind of a, it’s a tough environment. It’s a really tough environment to be in and to succeed in. And I think that it’s just really important for people to understand that it takes hustle and grind.

You know, I’ve talked to a lot of people about investing and being an agent. And a lot of people say, you know, it’s not for everybody. And I’ve just had a hard time with that, believing that.

But when you think about how much of the upfront hustle you have to do to kind of get things off the ground, I can see why it’s not for everybody. And I think that’s just something that people need to understand. It’s usually a grind with starting something new.

And you have to be committed to seeing it through and to pushing through and having kind of the end in mind that you’re gonna get to this point. And it’s gonna be worth it to usually see the fruits of all that effort. I think when I started, it was also 2014, so it was a lot slower of a market then.

It just took a good three years to really get traction. I did have another full-time job, so maybe it would have been a little bit different if I was working on it. That was the only thing I did.

But I was very dedicated to building the business, and even though I had another job, but it just took some time. And I think that’s just something that people have to understand if they’re wanting to get into it, if they romanticize about it. I think it’s worth it.

And I think that the grind and the hustle of investing as well is 100% worth it. There are headaches with it, for sure. But if you can just keep that end in mind and just look at examples of maybe your parents had a house that they lived in for 30 years and what they bought it for versus what they sold it for.

Multiply that by a portfolio of 10 properties, and will you be regretting that later on? And maybe if you don’t want all the headaches, there’s different opportunities. We talked about syndications in this podcast as well.

That could be a possibility. Or property management could also be a possibility. But I think it’s helpful on all these things.

There’s a grind phase, and if you can keep in mind the end result, look at metrics. Look at how much appreciation, how much debt payoff you’ve already done, how much of the tax benefits you’ve gotten from the real estate you’re acquiring. And that can help you persevere through the harder times.

But I’ll have to say, it is hard. It’s not for everybody, I guess. But I think if you can find it in yourself to push through the hard times, it does pay off in the end.

And you can wake up with a successful business, maybe more business than you want, and maybe you wanna move out of that field and start referring to other people. Or maybe you’ll wake up to having a big investment portfolio, and you are able to live without working, be able to retire early. All those kind of opportunities can present themselves if you play your cards right.

So it usually just takes hustle and grind at the beginning. But if you can persevere, it’s worth it. So if you wanna see how to, if you wanna learn how to fast track your life, let’s listen to Mackenzie.

Because Mackenzie just, I don’t think I’ve heard anybody’s timeline that I’ve interviewed yet be so many consistent things, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like so fast. From house hacking, I think she said she moved four times since 2021, and has three kids with a fourth on the way. She’s setting up a midterm rental, has 10 days to furnish it.

There’s just, the list goes on with her. So enjoy this episode. Hopefully she can be an inspiration to you that it’s possible that you can move quickly if you need to, but just know that it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and there’s usually a grind phase for things to take off.

But without further ado, here’s Mackenzie. Welcome back to the REI Agent. I’m here with Mackenzie Brogdon.

Mackenzie, thanks so much for joining us.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Thanks for having me, I’m excited to be here.

[Mattias]
Mackenzie, you are coming out of, tell me again, it’s just, is it a suburb of Boise, or?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, I’m in Meridian, Idaho, so it’s just right outside of Boise, right next to it.

[Mattias]
Okay, okay, and is it a commuter town to Boise, or how’s, what’s the demographics look like there?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yes and no, there’s a lot of development here, so also a lot of, yeah, stay at home, suburban life. I just live in suburbia, basically, so.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, I hear awesome things. I remember distinctly in college thinking Boise was one of the areas that I would most like to maybe move to, it seemed like a very outdoorsy, mountainous community, so that area seems beautiful. I haven’t actually been, but I need to go.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
You should, and the blue turf of BSU does draw a lot of students, so we like it here.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, well, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into real estate.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
It’s kind of a wild journey, you wouldn’t have necessarily expected it. Previously, I guess for most of my career, I was a dance coach full-time, did that, dabbled in admin, and then when we moved to Idaho right after my husband and I got married, I started doing kind of all the things, and I did end up doing a bunch of social media marketing, kind of direct sales sort of business, and that kind of took off, and that is actually what led into the conversation. In 2020, my husband and I were like, we should get an investment property, and so we sat down with a friend of ours who was in real estate, and he’s like, yes, you should get an investment property, but McKenna should get her real estate license, and I was like, oh, I don’t know why I haven’t thought of that before, and so that was seriously what happened, and I got my license in the span of a couple months.

I was licensed by October of 2020, so in the heart of all the craziness, and we ended up stepping out of our other income streams, and now real estate is, actually, by the time I got licensed in real estate, we were just going for it as our full income stream, so now it’s the, yeah, well, yeah, my husband’s been in kind of an unlicensed role. He helps with managing a lot of our rentals, and then being the unpaid assistant, and then he did actually get licensed in the last year, so now we kind of do it a little bit together, but we have young kids at home, too, so that fills up a lot of our days.

[Mattias]
I’m trying to wrap my head around that timeline. That’s super aggressive, I’m impressed, wow. So did you jump right into what kind of investment in real estate?

So is that your primary thing to start? Like, was your focusing on building a portfolio?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
No, investing wasn’t even something, I never grew up with it, I never even really necessarily understood it, so even when we were kind of thinking of the concept of, oh, investing, was just because we had been watching my friend Shelby do this, and how he was kind of house hacking his way through. So we said, okay, let’s give that a shot, and at that point, it was like, well, let’s just get into real estate, and my husband ended up stepping out of his W-2 job so I could have the time to go into real estate. So then we became kind of unfinanceable from a paper standpoint, and so we had to kind of get creative, but we had a lot of equity in our house, so we ended up selling that house to get the equity, and then I started bringing some partners in, and just trying to get creative with how we could slowly scale.

So we started in a partnership role, I was like a 10% investor, but I managed the project, and then we moved into, we were 55, 45, somewhere around there, an investor, and then now we mostly do our things on our own, but we kind of stepped into it, and real estate, as an agent, just became the vessel to have those opportunities, know those opportunities, be able to discern good opportunities and not, and so I’d say it’s both very hand-in-hand, investing in real estate, as an agent perspective, so both kind of taken off.

[Mattias]
It’s funny how it’s not as common as I feel like it should be. Yes. Having both of those worlds, it’s almost like, it’s not a good example, but a drug dealer not using their own supply.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
It boggles my mind all the time. I can sit down with some of the top producers, and I’ll be like, oh yeah, I bought this property for taxes and blah, blah, blah, and he’s like, wait, what? I’m like, how do you not know this?

Like, this is so huge. I don’t, in a good way, like not in a bad way, but we work really creatively to lower our taxable, and so people don’t know it, they don’t understand it, and it’s wild to me. How can you sell real estate if you don’t understand investing, because really, all real estate purchase is an investment of some sort.

Even your primary purchase is an investment, it’s an asset.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and I think, I don’t know when I learned about what it meant to be a real estate professional, and for tax purposes, and it was laid into my career, and I don’t think many people know what the benefits are of that. So, I mean, I guess we can maybe just dive into that a little bit. What are some of the strategies you’re using?

Are you getting accelerated appreciation on buy? So, are you doing the cost segregation studies, and if you are, explain that a little bit.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
We do all of it, to be honest. So, we have mostly house hacked our way into portfolio, so we have six properties right now, six single family houses. I do wanna move into multi-family, but essentially, we bought those with, most of them with the lease amount to start, we moved the lease amount down, and that’s how we bought it as our primary.

Then we flipped it into our investment. Then we do a cost segregation analysis, so we’re writing up all, writing off all that depreciation up front. So, I think on the last property I bought was like a 500, it was like 475-ish, and it ended up saving me like $35,000 on my taxes that year.

So, we’ve got a great CPA, which is also my huge advice. If you don’t have a good CPA who understands real estate and understands creative taxes, you need to get one, because it’s huge, it’s huge.

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. Okay, so, wait, do you have kids? Are you married?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yes, we have three kids and one on the way, so it’s a full house over here.

[Mattias]
Congratulations.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Thanks.

[Mattias]
Okay, because most people don’t, they stop house hacking when they have kids. They are, yeah, like married. It’s often, you know, you kind of have that stereotype of a house hacker being like somebody who is, you know, single and young.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Young, single, has like a backpack, yeah.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s all they have to their name is a backpack with a laptop in it. So, how’s that been? That like moving from house to house every time you want to buy a new rental property has been a huge pain.

Obviously, the long-term benefits are there.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
It’s been wild when I look back at it. I’m like, should I recommend this to people? And it’s not even like who I am as a person, but it’s worked out for us.

I mean, it definitely was some sacrifice, but also it was kind of our, hey, we’ve got to hustle. Like, we want to have long-term goals. I don’t, real estate is amazing as an agent, but also it’s like the butt kind of ends with your transaction.

So, if you’re not continuing to do transactions, what is your retirement going to look like? What is your 10 years from now going to look like, 20 years from now going to look like? And so, for us, it was like, well, we need to make some decisions and be a little bit more aggressive to help us reach those goals sooner.

So, that did look like moving four times. Let’s see, we first sold our first house in 2021, summer of 2021, and then we went to a second house, and then a third house, and then we just moved one year ago to our fourth house. But now we’re going to settle here for a little bit.

We’ve done our time.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing, though, is like, once you kind of get the momentum, once you build up some equity, there’s just a lot more opportunity to not need to do that. But you do kind of have to hustle a little bit at the beginning. And I mean, think about it.

Like, you now have, you said, six single-family houses. You said 20 years. Like, look at what real estate has done over the past 20 years, and now you have six properties that are multiplying by however much that will be.

So, it’s going to be obviously something you’ll never regret now that you’re past it.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, I know. During it, I was a little like, are we crazy? And my cadet kept asking me every five seconds when we’re going to move again.

And I said, no, we’re done, we’re not moving again.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, it’s a sacrifice, it really is. But yeah, we didn’t quite do that, but we definitely had to kind of sacrifice a little bit at the beginning. But now that we have multiple properties, we have equity lines on like almost all of them, I think all of them.

And that has just opened so many doors to be able to do, you know, BRRRR method investing or to do, yeah, just flips, fix and flips. You can buy property in cash. Those opportunities just probably wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t, you know, sacrificed and gotten these properties that have built up equity.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yep, absolutely, yeah.

[Mattias]
So what’s your business look like with real estate sales? Are you also pursuing clients to sell residential or is it investors? I mean, what’s that look like for you?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
It’s a good mix of both. I’m pretty active on social media. So I do get a good amount of lead flow from social media.

Also just fear of influence and then connections. I do feel like real estate, once you get the ball rolling, it keeps rolling. And so that’s been definitely a part of my success.

So I actually run a team. So I have five agents that work for me. I’m very involved in the day to day.

I last year closed over 21 million and over 35 transactions just last year. But since I started overall, I’ve closed over 55 million and over, I think I’m at like 110 over there, transactions since 2021. So, and then that’s on top of the moving four times and investing and all that.

That stuff doesn’t count in there. So I do love the agent transaction side of it as well.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s a fast track to get all that done. I mean, to build the business up to that level and then also to build a team. When did you start building the team?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I was mentoring some agents. I’m kind of passionate about it because I wouldn’t be where I was if my mentor hadn’t mentored me. So it’s something where I’m like, I feel like it’s my duty.

I don’t know, to give back to people too. And so I, some gals that I was friends with before kind of been watching me said, hey, Mackenzie, we want to give this a try. So I’ve been kind of unofficially mentoring for maybe about a year.

And then in summer of 2022, I officially launched my team, Dream Idaho Realty. And so I don’t really push it as far as a growth perspective on owning and running a team is a lot of work. People think, oh, I’m just going to run a team and make money off my agents.

And it’s not at all that simple. But I genuinely love the people I have on my team and working with people who are hard workers as well. And so that’s been something I really enjoy.

It’s nice to do your business alongside people as well.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Have you made intentional hires along the way as well? Or has it just been kind of the people that have shown interest that you wanted to mentor?

It’s kind of like naturally evolved and so it’s kind of working together.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, I honestly haven’t. I mean, in the last span of being licensed for five years, I’ve also had three children. So my life was a little bit different.

My oldest was five. I was a three-year-old and a one-year-old. So it’s like doing it all at the same time and obviously managing my own business.

So I did kind of originally pursue agents for hiring like team agents. I haven’t done that probably since I launched. I’m happy with where we’re at.

I do make intentional hires. Personally, I’m a big believer in leverage that we can accomplish more and have a more balanced life if we leverage ourselves. And so I do hire in that perspective.

So actually in April, I started a new assistant and I brought on a social media manager as well. So, and then I’ve hired a few other roles here and there.

[Mattias]
Yeah, cool. Yeah, it’s true. I mean, it’s hard to do everything.

And I think a lot of times people take on the real estate role thing. They’re gonna just sell houses and then they find themselves, okay, now I have to be like a bookkeeper. Now I have to be a marketing, a social media person.

And it doesn’t come naturally. All those things don’t come naturally for most people. And there’s usually something that you can do the best at and you make the most money for doing those things.

And learning to let go of the others and let somebody else do it, that might be better at it anyway. It’s a tough one for a lot of people.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, exactly. And then it’s hard balancing too, like outside of being a successful real estate agent, a successful investor, I also wanna be a successful wife, I wanna be a successful mom. And so figuring out how to balance all those.

And I can’t be all things to all people all the time because then everyone’s gonna get half of me, basically all the time.

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. I mean, how do you do that? How do you try to be there for the family, for your kids while having, I mean, even speed running life.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
A lot, something like that, yeah. I mean, I’m super grateful. I have an awesome husband who literally just dropped everything.

I was like, well, let me get my license. So that way, like I can pop a lockbox for you or do this, do that. So that’s a huge part.

We don’t have childcare or family for our kids. So it’s just us that takes care of them. So we swapped that role.

So I wouldn’t have been able to achieve all this without a supportive family behind me. So that’s a huge part of it. And then leveraging assistance and roles and things like that.

I’ve pretty much had someone working for me in some sort of administrative role for the past two to three years. And so that’s been huge. Kind of like you said, I know there’s certain places where I know I can be replaced and not missed.

And I can’t be replaced and not missed at home always. And so sometimes that is, okay, yeah, you go pop the lockbox for the inspector. So I don’t have to drive 45 minutes around town to do that.

Like I can be replaced and have that handled. So leveraging those roles and those positions where I know that this is a make a break or deal moment. They don’t need McKenzie Brogdon at this moment.

Let’s let someone else take it has been huge.

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. And what about just for yourself? What do you do to keep yourself going?

Because I don’t know about you, but the spring market here has been running me ragged. And sometimes it’s a little bit overwhelming. I get a little burnout.

And so for me, I have to go to the gym. That’s just how I get my brain right. But what do you do?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah. Pray.

[Mattias]
Hold on tight.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Definitely that is a big thing. But I do really try to have moments where I can unplug. So even if that is leaving my phone and the dang Apple Watch inside or knowing that nothing is gonna fall apart, no one’s gonna die, no one’s gonna blow up.

Like I can just take a minute and be with my family. That’s huge. I do work as well, but that’s just more out of obligation than desire.

But yeah, I think trying to turn off and have that time with my family is big. Also, I just try to remember like real estate is so up and down. And I feel like you hit these ups where it’s like everything is happening all at once, which for me has been this entire month of April.

But then I think back and I’m like, March was much more chill. So you just have to kind of like remember for all of the absolute insane weeks where everything’s happening all at once and everyone needs you all at once. There’s also slow times where like, oh, I actually have like a lot of time.

So trying to savor those times and remember those times and now I’ll get back to it again.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Yeah, it’s almost like farming. You got like seasons where you gotta work really hard and then maybe winter can be a little bit more of a chill planning and restorative time.

But I would imagine that’s true in that area as well where the winter might not be as busy. I’m guessing like Florida and California might be just all the time.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, yeah. It does slow down a little bit as far as like transaction wise and things like that. But then my mental is like, I don’t know, I run my business I feel like in my mind on a year cycle.

So for me, I’m like by the time November, December is hitting, I’m like, shoot, I’m gonna be at $0 sold in January. Like I gotta hustle. So then I do try to take that extra time or maybe I’m not with clients and then I’m taking that extra time that I now have to be regenerating or setting up better systems or fixing those things in my business that have been bothering me or I’ve wanted to adjust.

So then I probably drive myself crazy and don’t let myself have as much downtime as I should either, but.

[Mattias]
No, it’s definitely true. I feel like I always pick up new projects and get into different things, different systems or whatever when it’s slowed down a little bit. Just because I mean, if you’re used to running 100 miles an hour and then all of a sudden you’re not, it’s, yeah, you kind of want to fill your time.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yep, yep, exactly.

[Mattias]
Yeah, so going forward, do you all do any flips as well or has it been just to hold the property? What’s your investment strategy been aside from house hacking?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
We’ve paused on flipping. The market to me is a little bit scary, a little bit like volatile to do that. Our flips have worked out really well, but also just even, so part of one of my jobs I work for real estate, I did some interior design and stuff like that, so I handle everything with our flips.

I can’t deal with the general contractor, so we just do it all. So the actual work going into the flip is so much that doing a whole gut it flip, which to me is the only way to feel comfort with enough margin, it’s just so consuming. So we haven’t gone back into flips, so right now we actually like purchasing newer construction because I like the longevity of it.

It also can rent for higher rate here, so that kind of works out. Obviously our house hacking, so right now one of my houses that was a long-term rental, I’m actually converting it into a furnished rental, and I just found out yesterday, I have 10 days to furnish it, so that’s so fun. So I’m gonna furnish that, and then that’s gonna be like a mid-term rental, which I’m actually really excited about because up to this point we’ve only done long-term rentals and kind of some arbitrage sort of situation, but I think this will be a good foot in the door.

We have a good opportunity to furnish a house and then try some mid-term or maybe even like one-month Airbnb sort of situation. So that’s kind of been our goal. It’s a different, sometimes my goals are a little bit different because I have a good track record of being able to, a lot of people are moving to the area, they get in my rentals, and then they buy a house from me.

So then they paid my mortgage for a year, and then I got a commission check when they worked with me. So that’s been part of our strategy too, is buying houses or creating rental opportunities that could also convert to clients. Not that this always happens, but it has happened a few times.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and I mean that can be an intentional strategy as to what type of house you buy. If you bought like a class C apartment complex, that may not lead to that kind of business as much as opposed to like a single family like you’re talking about. So that makes no sense.

We’re converting, we’re doing a BRRRR right now, we’re getting it furnished for a mid-term rental as well. We’re not allowed to have short-term in our town unless it’s a primary residency. So that’s what we are in the process of as well.

It’s not happening in 10 days. You don’t do anything slow, do you?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Well, they signed a lease, and they’re like, it’s this connection we have. So anyway, the lease is literally already signed, and they’re moving in on April, I think it’s actually the 27th. So they’re literally moving in on April 27th.

And I have to furnish it before April 27th, so I’m literally going to Target after this call.

[Mattias]
That’s amazing. Have you looked into syndications much, investing in them?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Not a ton. Well, yes, sort of. I’m aware of them.

For me, I get a little bit stuck. I was a, I guess it’s kind of like a syndication, but we were kind of like a private investor in a land development deal, some connections of mine were doing here. And maybe it’s my control issues, but I hated not knowing everything that was going on.

So I kind of prefer being the one that knows the market, knows where we’re going to do the house, like kind of being the one in charge of it. I didn’t like being the silent, don’t know where my money’s being spent, or if they’re spending it well, or what’s going on. And I even really trusted the people that we worked with.

I just found out personally, I didn’t enjoy that. I much more enjoy when I feel like I’m in charge of it, and I can flip my exit strategy, or I can do this or that, or sell it if I want to, or catch it out, or finance it, whatever.

[Mattias]
So personally for me- Did it perform well, or was it- No, it was terrible.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I mean, you don’t lose money, but the time frame of it, I don’t even know at the end of it what my cash on cash return ended up being, but for the time frame, it was like, we just got kind of screwed when the market shifted, and it was land development, so it took forever. But even before then, when things were going well, it still was like, oh, I just want to know what’s happening. I don’t know where my money’s going, what’s being spent, I don’t know.

[Mattias]
So- Yeah, that’s a good, I mean, so there are definitely, there’s probably differences in operators and differences in the type of investment as well. I definitely think that’s another strategy that a lot of agents don’t understand, and could be a really good, if they don’t want to be like you, they don’t want to be like you, because I think a lot of people, they hear the nightmares about being a landlord, they don’t want that extra headache, and so it’s something that kind of puts them off from actually doing this, but then you still get the same benefits of being a real estate professional.

I have a really good success story with mine that I’ve done, and we’re actually investing in another one coming up here shortly, but we did a mobile home park syndication. Luckily, I know the person, one of the operators, very well, and he’s more, he’s a lot more particular about stuff than I am, so I’d rather have him be the operator.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, yeah.

[Mattias]
Than me, and just have trust there for sure, but first year, our K-1 came back, we invested $50,000, and we got $66,000 off of our taxes. Oh, wow. And then the second year, our K-1 just came back, this is the second year just now, or just the K-1 for the second year just came in now, and we got another 23, so we are, I mean, we’re gonna almost get the tax write-offs, and year three, we should have, you know, double the investment in tax write-offs.

It’s performed about 11% return so far, and the way this one works is whenever they do a cash-out refinance, they’re planning on holding it for a long time, whenever they do a cash-out refinance, they will actually, we will still have ownership in it, we’ll have a very small stake at that point, we won’t get as much return, but we’ll still own it, we’ll get all our money back in theory, it could be less, but we would eventually get our money back from the cash-out refinance, and then we’d still have ownership, and then whenever it sells, if they ever sell it, we would still get a part of that cut, the cut of that deal as well, so it’s been a super good one for us, but yeah, you’re right, I mean, I don’t, you know, I hear, I’m friends with the operators, so I hear what’s happening sometimes, but it’s not like I have any input or I’m seeking much.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, yeah, well that one sounds way better than mine worked out, so maybe I would have a better, and mine wasn’t necessarily like a syndication, it was more, I was essentially just like a private investor for it, but.

[Mattias]
An adventure kind of thing.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, something like that, yeah.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, so I mean, I think that’s, if we’re talking about just strategies for an agent in general, that’s definitely something that somebody can look into, it feels really complicated, there is something really nice and tangible about having just like, you know, that house down the street that you own. Like, you know the market. You know, you know, like, you get a great sense of everything, you can decide if you wanna sell it, you can do so many different things with it, it’s, and it’s just so much better than investing in like, you know, a 401k, like a self-employed one, like it’s like, I could do whatever I want to with this money, now.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Totally, totally, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Mattias]
It’s just gonna keep getting better, and, you know, and there’s tax benefits too, so.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yep, yep.

[Mattias]
I get it, I think it’s, it’s probably, I, you know, I think there’s probably some people that do really well with investing and being more hands-on, and they can grow their portfolio to a point where maybe they are getting tired of doing all the headache stuff, and you’re probably, you could, in theory, do better with, you know, being hands-on, depending on how you invest, and then, you know, maybe there’s a transition period where you start investing in syndications with people that you really trust, and you’re kind of wanting to step back and be more, there’s a million ways of doing it.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Mattias]
But, yeah, no, it’s fun, I, that’s, the whole rep status, syndications, I feel like those are just like not, not very well understood, and so that’s part of the goal here, is to try to get the word out about those, because I think, yeah, so many agents could do so well, so much better if they invested a little bit, either actively or passively.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Oh, tell me about it, yeah, absolutely, all the time. And some of it is, I guess, so we do long-term rentals on most of our rentals, but two of them are just kind of connections, like I think if you keep your ears open in real estate, like who you know, a lot of times, one, they obviously end up being your clients, but two, we ended up getting connected with someone we knew, and so she runs a sober living facility out of two of our houses, and so it’s kind of like arbitrage, essentially, in that it’s not me actually running it, she’s got the contract with the state or county or however that works, and I just get paid above market rent because there’s a lot of people living in my house, so that’s been a great deal, because she signs like two years leases, she’s super easy to work with, and she pays me like on a house that I probably would get maybe 22 or 24 hundred, she’s paying me like 3,000 to 3,200 a month on it.

So, and it’s like a two-year locked-in lease. So I’m just, there’s so many ways to be creative, it doesn’t have to be by house, it could be house hack, it could be, you know, hey, see what your buddy wants to run out of it, you know, so I just think there’s a lot of ways to be creative, but most people don’t look into it.

[Mattias]
That’s the thing, too, is I think a lot of people are hitting walls maybe right now where they try to do analysis on a deal and like the interest rates are too high, so it just kills them right away.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
It is a no-deal, yeah.

[Mattias]
You have to kind of get to that point where you can think creative like that, and so sober living is great, I know assisted living is another.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah.

[Mattias]
I think it’s, I don’t know if it’s the same thing, but it’s, yeah, maybe a broader category.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, yeah, but you’re so right. I think one thing I learned, which was part of my early in real estate, starting in 2021, when everything, well, 2020, when everything was going crazy and there was multiple offers and everyone’s like, you can’t be, there’s no deals on the MLS. I’m like, I’m gonna find a deal.

And there are literally deals on the MLS all the time. You don’t have to be off-market, driving for deals, do those work, yes, but like there are opportunities right in front of you. You just have to look above that.

Like, okay, yes, you might be talking to a client or even for yourself. Like, okay, my mortgage is gonna be X amount and my lease is maybe this amount. Okay, but how much is it gonna save me in taxes?

Okay, where does that come from? Now let’s talk about appreciation. Okay, so let’s average maybe 5% appreciation year over year.

Then the deal starts to make more sense. Okay, I’m gonna write off my property taxes and my interest. I’m gonna write all this out.

Now it’s more than just, oh man, my payment’s this and my mortgage is this. And so that helps a lot, I think, with finding and making deals is when you look at it at the bigger picture versus just what you’re seeing in front of you.

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. I mean, that’s the beauty of real estate. I think, as opposed to stocks.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Oh, I hate stocks. Get out of there.

[Mattias]
I still have some. I’m not trying to completely, but we don’t see market swings based on the tweet. Dropping 10% in a couple days or a day.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I don’t have the stomach for that. I can’t do it. At least real estate, I know it’s gonna happen.

I know it’ll come back up and I can still have my tenant in there in the meantime. I can’t do stocks.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I know that some other things people have been doing to get creative is certainly the subject to or wrap around mortgages, I think, are maybe the better way of doing it. I don’t know if that’s state specific, but yeah, I don’t know exactly how to find those kind of opportunities. I know I’ve heard a couple of different strategies for doing it, but that’s something that else that people could do to try to get creative and take advantage of the low interest rates that we’ve seen.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I did a sub two.

[Mattias]
Nice.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
My advice for it is it might not be as simple and straightforward as you think it is, so make sure before you get into it, you and the seller fully know what’s happening and use a creative consultant or, not even an attorney, because honestly, mostly they don’t totally understand it either, like what they’re actually doing. So use a creative finance consultant or something like that. I have a great connection to make sure the deal is structured and so it’s protected.

And the due on sale clause can still be called even if you do everything right, because mine got called and it was a whole mess. So anyway. Oh no.

Yeah. Yeah, I did my one due on sale. I mean, I did my one subject too, and I would not personally do it again, unless it’s like the perfect situation, maybe where you knew someone, because it’s a shame to see this rate go away, but I think things are gonna start wisening up and they’re gonna start calling these more and I don’t know, we’ll see, but it wasn’t my favorite.

[Mattias]
Did you put it in a trust when you bought it?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
So we did, let’s see, what did we do? We moved over to my LLC and then we created a new LLC for it first. All of that was fine.

The transfer happened fine. We went through a title company, everything. The issue happened with the homeowner’s insurance when they switched.

I can’t remember exactly, now it’s a couple years ago at this point, but even though I did everything right, it like alerted the bank and then we tried to work with the bank. We put the seller on the LLC and they said no, it has to be under their name. So we thought about doing the land trust that I’ve heard from what I’ve heard, and this is from who, my consultant that I talked to.

There’s a lot of gray area in the land trust as far as like what’s legal, what’s not, and I personally didn’t wanna mess with that, but I have heard that it can be super like ironclad to avoid that. So we ended up just deeding it back to the seller and then we did like a lease buy option. But honestly, after like a year, we ended up just buying out of it because then I couldn’t do my cost seg on it because it wasn’t in my name.

Less, it just gets sticky when it comes to the escrow, like the mortgage, the insurance, if the house burns down, who gets paid? Like there’s a lot of risk there.

[Mattias]
So. Yeah, so I definitely, I’ve interviewed a attorney that specializes in creative deals in general and subject to is one of the ones that they specialize in. They are out of Connecticut or Massachusetts, maybe they work in both, but they said they’d be willing to advise anybody.

So if anybody’s interested, and wants that contact, just reach out. I definitely can connect. But it, cause it’s, my understanding is it’s not, I don’t think necessarily a land trust, but it’s basically like the St. Germain’s Act has a protection that would allow the mortgage to stay if somebody wanted to switch into a trust instead of owning it personally. Like, so that’s not a sale. And so I think if both parties are in a trust together, and again, talk to the- I think you’re right.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I think you’re right, yeah.

[Mattias]
Talk to the attorney about this, but I think if both parties are in the trust, that’s kind of one of the ways. And then the wraparound mortgage, if I understand that part correctly, is basically you write a deed of trust or, yeah, deed of trust back to the seller that basically protects them more, that if like you make, if you default essentially on their mortgage, that there would be some kind of ramifications on it. So, but again, it is more complicated.

And honestly, I haven’t done it personally. I’ve connected somebody that, the situation was like the seller had no options other than to do this. And I knew somebody who really wanted to get into this space.

So like we connect the dots and it worked out well for everybody. But it just always, it feels a little bit like, why are we hiding? This just seems like it’s this weird kind of- Yes, that’s what I hated.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I’m like calling the mortgage company on this house I own and I’m like feeling like I’m doing something wrong, which I’m not. And I just didn’t enjoy that. It felt like it had, yeah, it just felt.

But I do think there are situations, especially a couple of years ago, it really worked out for a lot of sellers. Like for instance, ours, like we kept them out of foreclosure. They were going into foreclosure.

They had no other options. But I just think it’s made out to be like, oh, it’s so easy to sign this contract, go through a title company, it’s all good. And I think you just need to make sure you have everything done.

So talk to an attorney and talk to a consultant and talk to someone who knows what they’re doing and get all your ducks in a row and then do it. Then have fun.

[Mattias]
Yeah. And then the other point about it is, the other critique I’ve heard about it is that, usually if, good deals in real estate usually come on the buy. Like you buy for a good price.

And so that typically if you’re doing a subject two, it’s not that. It’s usually, they can’t get what they need out of the house on a fair market value. Or like if they put it on the market, they probably couldn’t sell it because they’re kind of water.

And so it only works sense with the lower interest rates for the investor to take on. So you’re not necessarily buying at a good deal from a purchase price standpoint. So there’s a lot of factors to consider.

And it’s an interesting tactic and I think it’s good to have all the tools in your tool belt, but it maybe isn’t the best for a lot of situations.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, yeah. I would agree with that statement for sure.

[Mattias]
But yeah, we went all over the place. Agassi, do you have any golden nuggets you’d like to share with the listeners about real estate sales, investing, trying to be holistic in your life while living, while being, going at 100 miles an hour like you tend to do?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I would say, oh man, okay. Probably main one is, I feel like the three tips I tell my agents this is one, you just have to work hard. It doesn’t matter whatever you’re gonna do.

Whether you wanna be an agent, you wanna be an investor, you wanna sell luxury houses, you wanna crush it on social media, selling houses, whatever. You just have to work hard. Everything works if you work.

But most people miss that point of, oh, I actually have to work. So be willing to work hard. Nothing good comes easy.

I also think you need to lead with honesty and integrity. I think that’s really missed in our business. I talk to a lot of people who are like, oh my gosh, this person told me this, but that wasn’t the truth.

And it’s like, you need to be honest and integrity. Never just say something to sell a house or get the listing or get the client because it’s always gonna backfire. So be honest.

And then my big thing, especially when it comes to investing is don’t invite someone to do something you aren’t willing to do or wouldn’t do yourself. Because I went all in, what was it, 2023 when market price slowed down a little bit and everyone’s like, oh my gosh, should I buy and sell right now? And I’m like, yes, you should.

I’m literally buying and selling right now. Let me tell you what I’m doing. And so obviously not everyone has that luxury to do something, but again, how are we gonna help our clients invest if we don’t even understand or feel the need to invest ourselves?

So I think we need to be willing to do it or be doing it or at least know what the heck we’re doing ourselves before we tell someone else to do it or not do it.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it makes sense. You’re really talking about, you’re in it for their next five transactions. You want their kids, you want them to recommend to their neighbors and it’s not just about the one deal on the at hand.

And yeah, and turn off HDTV and it’s not easy. You gotta work hard and all this.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Literally.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it’s not a reality show. It is hard work and yes, we can get paid well, but it comes with a cost. I mean, it is hard.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Real estate is not easy. People think, oh, I’m just gonna get in and sell houses and make $30,000 when I sell the house and it’s not it. You have to hustle.

You really have to hustle and talk to people and it works if you’re willing to do that, but most people aren’t willing to do that and that’s why they fail. That’s why, what was the crazy statistic? Like 78, I think, percent of realtors didn’t sell a single home last year.

Something close to that or like up to three homes. I can’t remember. It’s a crazy amount of people didn’t even sell.

I think the average income that a real estate agent makes is like $30,000.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I saw something about that recently. I was like.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
You can’t live on that.

[Mattias]
No, yeah.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
No, you can not live on that, which is just sad because then you think of the top producers that are selling how much, but what are they doing? They’re just doing, they’re just working hard and they’ve been working hard, so.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and I think another thing as people get, at the beginning, it’s probably easy to just be grinding and understand you have to do, you do whatever it takes to get a lead. You do whatever it takes. You’re working, working, working, working, working hard, but then when you get burned out, when you have things coming and you’re almost drinking from a firehose and you’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can do this, keep this pace up, knowing that if you’re not growing, if you’re not actively building, if you’re not actively moving the needle towards more, you’re actually kind of dying, so it’s like either you’re growing or you’re dying and that’s another thing that’s hard to know. If you’re not working your sphere, if you’re not keeping that momentum going for when these deals are done, you might not have deals to work with, so.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yep, I hate closings. I never used to celebrate closings because to me, I’m like, dang it, now that deal’s done, I’ve got to go get the next one. Like, now it’s not in the price line anymore.

Yeah, like it feels like it’s over. Like, I hate closings. So, because it’s so true, you’ve got to work for the next one because it’s not guaranteed.

It’s really not.

[Mattias]
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an agent say, I hate closings.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I love closings, but it’s just like my mindset isn’t like, it’s so funny, my husband will be like, oh, like, you know, he’ll look at deposits and stuff and he’s like, oh, I didn’t know you had three closings today. I’m like, yeah, yeah, you know. He’s like, I don’t even know.

I’m like, it’s fine. I’m just working on the next one.

[Mattias]
I know what you mean, though, because there’s nothing worse than like, oh, wait, do I have a closing next month?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Like, that’s cute. Yeah, that’s fun.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Seriously, totally.

[Mattias]
But, yeah, okay, so now what about a book? Do you have a book that you think is fundamental for agents or investors to read, for mindset, for business building, or just one that you’re currently enjoying?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I think a book that I read when I was kind of flipping over into taking investing even more seriously that was really helpful. I feel like I would just claim with it. It’s Wealth Without Cash by Pace Morby, which, if you guys know, Pace Morby’s like the sub-two guy.

And I think he’s great. I’ve met him in person. I’ve gone to his conferences.

His people are like a cult, but they’re amazing. Like, they’re huge believers, because he’s made them so much money. I think it’s awesome.

I do think sometimes, like, you have to take it with a grain of salt. It might not be as easy as his, like, high-enthusiastic person makes it sound. And so that’s where I think, like, you’ve got to make sure you line up your attorneys and get stuff in line, and it’s not as goal-proof.

But I really like that book, because it’s just like a fast but simple, eye-opening experience to show you all the opportunities available to every single person, whether that’s talking to your neighbor, whether that’s, you know, looking for seller finance. It gives you a quick overview of all different types, really, of investing and financing opportunities, how to get them, the benefits to them, pros and cons. And so I just think that it’s a good, like, initial overview, and it’ll get you, like, pumped to, like, go invest.

So I really enjoyed that book. I thought it was a good book for an investor.

[Mattias]
Yeah, he’s definitely good at motivating. I haven’t read that, but he is good at motivating. And I think, I’ve also, there’s some social media stuff I’ve seen of his or a YouTube video or something that he just does open your mind to, like, how when you’re doing creative financing, the world’s your oyster.

You don’t have to do, like, you know, a 30-year mortgage. Like, you don’t have to do things like that. And you can just, you can reinvent the wheel to make it fit the situation perfectly.

And that is so much fun. That is, like.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
So much fun, yes.

[Mattias]
That’s, like, yeah, the sweet spot is when you can get into those spaces where you have an owner that wants to own or finance or is open to it. You can figure out how they are open to it by giving them the terms that they want. Maybe it’s paying too much for the house, but then you get, you know, 3% interest rate or something.

So it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s cool. And yeah, you’re right, he’s very motivating.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Very motivating, which is great. Most people need that motivation. That’s all I’m saying.

If you’re gonna implement it, just make sure you implement it safely.

[Mattias]
Yes, absolutely. Check with your attorneys and CPAs. That should be the disclaimer.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Absolutely, and get a good CPA who knows what he’s doing.

[Mattias]
Yes, yeah. Mackenzie, where could people find you if they want to follow you? You said you’re big on social media.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Oh, big sounds scary, but yeah, I am pretty much everywhere. @MackenzieBrogdonRealtor, TikTok, Instagram. I’m just moving over to YouTube, so we’ll see how that goes.

So give me a subscribe, help me get up there. I think I have like nine subscribers right now. I just started in April, so we’ll see how that goes, trying new things.

But yeah, @MackenzieBrogdonRealtor, on social media handles is the best way to find me.

[Mattias]
Did you find more growth with TikTok or Instagram? I always like to ask that question.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
So Instagram is huge for us because I’m the most consistent on it. TikTok, I had a video go viral, gosh, a couple years ago. So ironically on TikTok, I have way more followers, but I’m not a TikToker personally, I’m like an Instagrammer.

So Instagram makes more sense for me. So TikTok kind of got pushed to the back burner. But because I have that huge network, I’m really trying to capitalize it.

But Instagram is huge for us. Last year, 25% of my business came through Instagram. So we put a lot of resources and effort into that.

If you look on Instagram, you’ll see it’s very targeted and we take it very seriously because it makes us money.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s really cool. I know a lot of people had aggressive growth, it seemed like on TikTok, especially earlier compared to Instagram.

So I think that there was definitely an opportunity there, but then it got banned for a minute.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I know, but I didn’t delete it. And so I just left it there. So now it’s back.

But I think some people are still locked out of it. So I don’t even know, but I genuinely don’t really know how it works. I hired my social media manager, so she’s working on TikTok for me.

[Mattias]
I need to do that.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Yeah, I needed to do YouTube. What’s funny is this is new, but we just started tracking metrics and my YouTube gets, even though I have much like a higher engagement rate and much more followers on Instagram, but my YouTube, like in comparison, gets like quadruple the views on my tiny little YouTube shorts I’m putting up there, which is kind of crazy.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah. And I know it’s a totally different, I mean, YouTube is such a big search platform that you can really, really capitalize on. It’s a great platform to be on.

I’ve heard a lot of agents that have done well with that. So it’s, yeah.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Well, it’s pretty easy. I’m not even doing the, yeah, I’m not even doing like long form videos at this point. I do my listing videos.

I pop those up there. I’ll probably do some community highlights, but I’m just reposting this real content and putting it on YouTube shorts. And that’s what’s getting all of the traction because YouTube’s trying to compete with Instagram.

So we’ll see how it goes.

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. Cool. Well, Mackenzie, it’s been awesome.

This has been a great conversation. I hope you can get your house furnished now.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Oh my God, you reminded me now I’m stressed again.

[Mattias]
10 days seems like too much time for you. Can you do that? Can you cut that down to 12 hours?

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
I’ll let you know how it goes. Check in with me tomorrow.

[Mattias]
It’s been awesome. Thanks Mackenzie.

[Mackenzie Brogdon]
Thank you so much.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.