From $5 an Hour to 300 Homes: The Unshakable Power of Persistence with Anne Curry

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. I’m here with Anne Curry. Anne, thanks so much for joining us today.

[Anne Curry]
Oh, thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to talking today.

[Mattias]
Yeah, give us a bird’s eye view of who you are in real estate and what you do in real estate.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah, I’m a real estate agent. I came into real estate, however, through the investing door about 30 years ago. So back in the 1990s.

But before that, I was a preschool teacher making $5 an hour. And when my son was born, I looked at this little eight week old, I remember where I was sitting, where I was, what was happening around me. It was eight weeks old.

And I looked down, I thought, I am never going to get this kid through college on five bucks an hour. My husband was in social work making a whopping $14,000 a year. And so I realized I had to do something different, Mattias.

And that was the moment. And it was interesting, you have maybe a couple times in your life where you feel like you have an idea and it just comes to you so fast, you don’t even know where it came. But as I’m holding Drew, it was like real estate.

And that was it. And about six months later, I met a man who ended up being my mentor for about seven years. I was at a women’s group and I sat next to a lady that I’ve never met before.

And like I normally do, I just turned to her and I said, Hi, I’m Anne, what’s your name? She introduced herself and I said, Tell me about you and your family. She said, Well, we just moved here from California.

And I said, Oh, what do you guys do? She said, My husband owns 50 single family rentals. And that’s what he does full time.

Now, like Mattias, this was before the internet. It was before awesome podcasts like this, where you heard other people’s stories, like all you had was people you knew, and books you could get from the library. That’s it.

That’s all we had. And so when she said that, something inside me just like came alive. And I just said to her, Hey, would you introduce me to him?

And he can tell me how he did this. And that started a seven year mentor mentee relationship. And the cool part about my story, we’ll get into that later.

But 16 years later, I bought 50 single family houses in one transaction. Wow, it was all inspired by my mentor and what he had early on. So he became just this huge influence on my life.

And I would have nothing if it hadn’t been for that relationship. And mentors have been the key ingredient to everything that I’ve done in the last 60 years.

[Mattias]
I love it. And I just wanted to tease out a couple things. In my sales career, there’s been investing platforms as well.

But when I was kind of building up my sales career, there was different elements or different stages that I was getting really excited about hitting. And so you mentioned $14,000 a year. Mattias, at first job right out of college, was salaried, I think, at $21,000 a year.

And I remember the first time… Well, first of all, I made that in a year. That was nice in sales.

And I was doing it part-time with something else. And then I made that in a month once. And I was just like, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I did that.

And then fast forward, making that in a check, there’s just kind of all these little stages along the way where you can get really hyped up about this space. But yeah, that’s amazing. Mentorship is such a game changer.

You are who you surround yourself with, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah. And back to your story, those little incremental wins. When I tell my story sometimes, and I tell it in a very condensed version, and I tell it fast, it sounds like, oh, she just got to walk into these cool opportunities.

No, this is 30 years of building and taking the small steps and being afraid to leave and doing all the small things that just kept building on itself. But there’s no magic behind my story. I went from the $5 an hour to owning up to 300 units at my high.

We’ve sold off some of that because we were reallocating some assets. But that was not a get-rich-quick story by any means. I mean, it definitely was by starting small, being faithful in the small stuff.

When I met my mentor, you know, I said, how did you get there? And how did you build basically a 50-unit portfolio of single-family homes? Again, to me, we hear stories all the time when people have hundreds of houses and they own 10,000 doors.

But to me, that was huge. I never imagined myself making $5 an hour and my husband making $14,000 a year, me getting there. But I had another key moment that came soon after meeting my mentor, and that was I met a friend who challenged me to write down big goals, like goals that you could never imagine yourself ever accomplishing, like being nervous to write it, you know, the sweats and, you know, you’re nervously writing stuff down.

And I wrote down after meeting my mentor, I will own 50 single-family houses. I had a couple other goals that I since, you know, have been able to accomplish. But that was a big one.

And it was so scary to even write it down. But I kept it with me. I kept a version of it in my purse.

And I kept a version of it on my nightstand. And I would look at it every single day. And it took 16 years of, you know, doing all the small stuff and starting small and building on that, building on that, to be able to get there.

But it is the power of writing something down, especially when you aren’t in a position to even be close to that, because it happens. You know, you can achieve a lot more than you think you’re going to.

[Mattias]
Absolutely. Did you also tell other people that goal, or did you keep it kind of private?

[Anne Curry]
I kept it super private. I didn’t share, and I’m kind of more of a private person in general. And I was scared to mention, I’m glad you asked that question.

I was scared to mention, I didn’t even mention it to my husband for like the first five years. I just kept it very close to my chest. But I’m also a determined person when I say I’m going to do something.

I’m slow to commit. So let’s just start there. And I know some people can really resonate that because you have to think about it.

And you got to, you know, you got to really make sure that you want to do it. And then once you commit to it, it’s like, okay, now, you know, nothing can stop me if it’s within my power, right? But it was, you know, years and years to be able to accomplish that goal.

But on that same piece of paper, I had written, I will own a 20-unit apartment building. And that seemed completely out of the realm, too. I didn’t even own a house at that time.

So I wrote down, I will own a 20, and to me, 20-unit apartment building was huge. I couldn’t even imagine owning a 20-unit apartment building. But again, I met a mentor, and this was long after I had met my first mentor, and I got started on single family houses.

And he helped me buy the first one. And I, you know, bought it for $60,000 in Tacoma, Washington. And he showed me how to fix it up.

I didn’t know how to fix up a house. I was a teacher. And I was a woman in my 20s.

And there was no YouTube videos. I didn’t have a cell phone. But you know what I did have?

I had the Home Depot down the street from the rental that I bought. And so I would drive my little car, and I would walk around Home Depot until I saw somebody that I thought, hmm, they kind of look like they know what they’re doing. It was usually a man, not to stereotype, but it was usually a man.

And he’s probably wearing overalls or a construction coat or a construction hat or something. And I would just tap him on the shoulder and say, excuse me, sir, I have this problem with my toilet. Here’s what’s going on.

Do you know what I should do? Because I was so broke, I couldn’t afford a contractor to do the work. So I was the girl that was doing the work.

And between my mentor and me asking him questions and asking people at Home Depot, I figured out a way over eight months to fix up this little house. We put a renter in it. We refinanced.

The value came back at $120,000. So I was able to pay back my hard money loan and the down payment on the hard money loan that I borrowed from my aunt. So I literally went in with no money and it was called a BRRRR.

Well, there was no acronym for BRRRR back then. It was just how my mentor taught me how to do it. And I did that over and over and over again.

And every once in a while, you might have to sell one because I’d run out of cash because you had to leave a little bit of money in these properties. And then so I basically flipped. And so I just kept doing that, doing that, doing that until I went to, you know, I had this goal of a 20 unit and I went to a fundraiser dinner that I was invited to.

I sat down next to somebody I didn’t know and I introduced myself like I normally do. Hi, I’m Annee. What’s your name?

Somebody was John. So what do you do, John? He said, well, I build multifamily apartment buildings.

And then it was John and I basically talking throughout this whole donor dinner. I think we like ignored everybody else. But I said the magic words.

I want to do that. I have a goal, John, of owning a 20 unit apartment building. I have no idea how I’m going to do it.

Can I? Would you teach me? He’s come to my office tomorrow.

I’ll walk you through it. So we met for an hour and a half the next day at his office and he graciously took me on as this newbie with no money. I mean, I had a background because now I had developed a little single family portfolio, but I never bought a multifamily property.

But, you know, the good news was after the downturn after 08. So I bought this building in 2013 and there weren’t as many investors. Do you remember that day when, you know, apartment buildings like you could you couldn’t sell them?

That was an awesome day for me to break in because I wasn’t competing against a bunch of other people. So he showed me how to do it. He brought me a building maybe a year later.

So, again, this isn’t a quick story. Everything takes time. But a year later, he brought me a and you have to buy this.

And he said, John, I’m all in, but I don’t have the cash. So I said, that’s OK. You’re going to find a partner.

So he walked me through all the numbers and he showed me what I need to do and how I need to have the conversation with a partner to be able to get the money, the down payment to buy this building. So we worked for two hours. He showed me everything about the spreadsheets.

And I’m just go tell whoever you’re going to meet with. Tell him. So I went home.

I said to my husband, I’m like, I got to buy this building. Who do we know that has some money? So, well, my buddy, you know, so-and-so, you mentioned somebody.

And I said, well, would you call him for me and set up a meeting? And I was driving to this meeting. Again, I was shaking.

I was hot. I was sweaty. I was so nervous.

I was like, what am I doing? But I just brought out my spreadsheet. I told him everything that John told me what to say.

And he sat back and I was quiet and he was quiet for a second. And I’m just dying. My stomach’s turning over.

And he said, I’d love to do it. And that became this beautiful partnership. We bought that building together.

It was a building that needed some work. So we bought it for $1.5 million. It needed a million dollars worth of remodel.

I got it done for 700,000. We went and refinanced. I got all of my partner’s money back on the down payment because it was like a perfect burr.

And we owned that together for a long time. We refinanced out of it twice, pulling cash back out. He became an infinite partner because he didn’t have any money in the deal.

And that was just a beautiful, I mean, it was a whole run for sure. But I had to have a partner. And so anybody who’s listening that’s like, man, I don’t know how to do this on my own.

I don’t have the money. I don’t have the experience. Well, you can get a great partner.

So that’s how I broke into multifamily.

[Mattias]
That’s how you got into multifamily. You partnered up. And one of the questions I have, there seems to be this reoccurring theme in your story so far where you have had a lot of help.

And I think that maybe people are too prideful and maybe there is like an approach to take to asking for help. Like maybe if some people might see it as weakness, like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And for a mentor, for whatever, they might feel intimidated.

They might feel, yeah, like this weakness. But what’s your secret? I mean, you’ve just mentioned at least like four people, I think, that have been instrumental in this growth for you.

And do you have any suggestions for people? Like what can you offer the person that you’re asking for help?

[Anne Curry]
Yeah, there’s no secret. It’s just put your pride in, put your pride away. And just ask.

I think what people probably don’t understand is that you get to a certain place, and I’m here now, so I’m 30 years into this. And I’m in my 50s. And I don’t think that people really understand that folks like me get to a certain part, point of their career, where they’ve had some success, and they want to really want to give back.

I mean, when I hear the words, Annee, would you help me? It’s like music to my ears. I love when I get asked for help, because we have this expertise and this background, and we have something to give back, and we really want to give back.

So when I asked my first mentor for some help, I didn’t understand the dynamic going on for this older person that really has this need to be able to bring people along with them. It would be a tragedy for me to end my career and only have done all this real estate stuff just for me and my family. Now, it’s beautiful to do it for you and your family.

And I think we start out, and I started out, I just wanted to get my kids through college, which I did, by the way. I got two kids through college.

[Mattias]
That was huge.

[Anne Curry]
That was on my piece of paper, by the way. But I got two kids through college, and I thought that was my, I was all about my kids when I was younger. And so my goals were all about my kids.

I wanted to own real estate, because I wanted my kids to have stuff. I wanted to own real estate. I wanted to, you know, get my kids through college and be able to have a life that we could afford to do experiences, and it was all about them.

But I didn’t realize that that would, that isn’t just, that’s not enough. It’s like, now you feel like, oh, now I have all of this to give back. And I would feel completely empty if I wasn’t able to then give back.

So like I said earlier, because I had mentors, I have a passion to inspire and educate people around real estate. So what that looks like now is we’ll have four free events a year, and we do them in person. I don’t charge for it, because I don’t want anything to be a barrier to entry to inspire people to even just dip their toe in the water.

So we’ll get people that come that have never done any real estate, we get people who are maybe intermediary, in an intermediate state, what am I saying, flubbing up the words, in the middle, and then we get some people who have done it for forever. And they always walk away. So we’ll do events on building your first ADU, how to break in a new construction, how to find money, first time homebuyer, of course, but how to break into multifamily, we did one just a week and a half ago, all on how to do small lot development.

And so people walk away. And then I offer everyone that comes a free 15 minute call with me, because you can give people information all day long. And we have information, we have awesome podcasts like yours, we have other podcasts, we have so much information, we have books.

But unless somebody really has a strategy, they stay stuck. Yeah, they have all this information coming through. And they’re like, Oh, I should do this.

Or I should flip. Oh, maybe I should do single family. Oh, maybe we should do multifamily.

Oh, and then they get in stuck mode, because they don’t have a path that takes into consideration their income, their assets, what they want to do, I had a mentorship call today with a gentleman who’s 68. And he doesn’t have a retirement. And he’s still working.

And he doesn’t know how to stop. So in 60 minutes, we devised a whole plan about how he could quit working in the next seven years. And it was all geared around real estate.

He had all the information he had, he was paying $10,000 a year for a mentorship program. But it was all this information, and he didn’t know what to do with it. So we just put it in a sequence plan in a strategy.

And he walked away completely, like a new guy, it’s just like, and I feel like I have hope again, because now I have now I know what I need to do. So, you know, I think, getting people to the point, so we give them a 15 minute call in 15 minutes, we can do a lot together. And then we offer them time kind of like an attorney or a therapist would offer time so they can pay for my time per hour.

That’s not a plug in any way. But so we do the free events. But we also offer this because I realized that people just need somebody to bounce their ideas off of and help them get to the next steps.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think, you know, one, one way to describe it, I think there’s there’s phases in life. And I think that that, you know, often people when they when you know, when you’re building up your portfolio, all that stuff, you’re kind of building your kingdom, you’re kind of, you know, establishing yourself.

But then there is this natural shift to like, kind of thinking more about your legacy. And I think that, you know, that can come in a lot of different ways. But I think, you know, passing on what you have learned to the next generation to other people is probably a big way of, you know, kind of seeing your legacy carried on.

And so I think it’s a it’s a beautiful thing. And I’ve definitely experienced that as well with people in my life. And it’s it is it is great.

So yeah, back just back to that mentorship thing. It is a wonderful thing. So it’s awesome that you’re doing that for other people.

And, and definitely, if you’re listening to this, look, look to people like that, as you know, that they are a well of wisdom that you can learn from, don’t look at them, look at them as like a threat. That’s that always drives me crazy when I when I feel like somebody is kind of talking down to me or whatever. And it just is probably because they feel threatened or whatever.

But like, you know, look at it as an opportunity to learn. If there if you feel like somebody else’s where you want to be.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah, two things on that. This is what you’re doing every single week with your podcast.

[Mattias]
Thank you.

[Anne Curry]
You are showing people the way and it’s so powerful. And I’m a huge fan. So keep doing that because you’re touching lives.

And as people are making decisions, either to jump into real estate, or to continue in real estate, or they just need a pump in the arm to keep going. That’s what you’re doing for people every day and sharing stories, because people are going to resonate with different people. Not everybody’s going to resonate with me.

Not everybody’s going to resonate with the guy next door. But somebody you’re going to find people that resonate with you. And they’re going to become like you said, your little tribe.

Secondly, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You know, I think I fell into that just because that’s what it’s what I did. I just said, Can you introduce me to him?

It was very simple. Would you introduce me to him? And then when I was would you help me?

It was very simple. And but I didn’t just ask for help. I also gave back.

So with my first mentor, I said, Hey, you know, I will help you with your stuff. I just want to learn from you. But I will come and I will mop floors.

I will clip hedges. I will scrub toilets, I will do whatever you would like me to do to help you. So I’m not just asking for help, but I am willing to volunteer and he did.

He took me up on it. And I was happy to do it. Happy to do it.

So I learned from him. I helped him. It was kind of cool too, because we were able to collaborate.

This is way before the apartment building. So this is when I’m still new. But I was able to bring a deal to our, you know, friendship, partnership, and we partnered on a couple things.

And we bought a house, we split two lots off. You know, I didn’t know how to do that. But he did.

So I brought the deal we partnered on, I learned so much. So it became a very, like a collaborative kind of relationship, not a give, give, give and take, take, take. But yeah, yeah, it is key.

I think it’s important to remember that, you know, your mentors also have needs, you know, they’re not an infinite well of energy and resource.

[Mattias]
I think it also, it also shows that you are going to take action on what they teach you. So like, you’re, you’re not just wanting to them to like, give you like, give me the magic pill, like give me the magic pill that’s going to make me rich, like you like it’s not that you’re willing to go and get dirty, do the hard work. And I think more than anything, more than him needing like you to mop the floors or whatever.

He probably wanted you to see that you would actually take what he’s teaching you and put it to use. And I think that’s probably the rewarding part overall for him. And then yeah, like there’s great opportunities to work with your, you know, to work with your mentor, bring deals.

You know, I, I’ve, I’ve had somebody do a seller financing for me that ended up being a great win-win for all of us, which is another example of how something like that could play out. But yeah, without having established the relationship, without having established like trust that I would, you know, manage the property well, et cetera, that would never have happened.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah. In fact, one of my values and I, you know, I, I say this quite a bit, sometimes only to myself, I don’t always say it out loud, but I have a mantra that says, what you do for others, God will do for you. So when I help somebody’s kid, or when I make, you know, when I help somebody accomplish something, or when I go out of my way to make that visit or whatever, I have this thought that it all comes back and not that our motivation is purely selfish, but I do think that the seeds that you sow, and this is, I mean, you could just look at the planet and know that if you, if you plant an apple seed, most likely you’re going to get an apple tree, right? So planting and sowing, planting good seed, reaping a good harvest.

But yeah, I think I wouldn’t be afraid to ask for help. I think, and, and the secret juice or what’s so magnetic for us mentors is absolutely exactly what you said, seeing people do what you tell them to do. So there was a young man that came to me about 12 years ago, he and his wife were actually on food stamps.

And she, they have one car, one of them would ride their bike to work, one of them would drive the car to work. And they came to me and said, and you know, we need to, we want to break out of this. Like you weren’t always, you know, rich.

How did you, like, how did you break out of it? And I said, gang, you’re going to buy a house. And they looked at me like I was absolutely crazy.

Like buy a house, you know, and don’t you understand like where we’re at? We’re both working. We can’t make ends meet.

We’re still using some food stamps. I said, you’re going to buy a house. And they became mentees really.

And I would lay out steps and they would do exactly what I say. And I’d lay out the next steps and they’d do exactly what I say. And we got to the point where they got down payment assistance.

They bought their first house, a little starter home. And I handed them the keys. We walked through the house and they’re like, this is amazing.

We never thought we’d own a home. This is going to be our forever house. And I turned to both of them.

I said, this is your starter home. You’re going to own multiple houses. And 12 years later, they own 12 doors.

They have over $5 million worth of equity in real estate. But they were amazing, teachable students. And we talk about that still.

He is now, he has enough real estate income that he gets to volunteer at high schools. And so we put together this whole cool thing last year. It was really fun.

But he got a whole group of kids that were entrepreneurial. And we got a bus. It was my idea because he had become speaker of the high school and I had kids coming up like, can we have coffee?

Can we meet? And I was like, you know what we should do? Let’s get a bus and let’s fill the bus with a bunch of kids.

And I’ll take half a day and I’ll take you guys all around these different real estate projects and I’ll teach you real estate. They’re like, yeah, let’s do it. So we got a whole bus.

So this gentleman who volunteers at the school got this whole bus of kids and I set up six different locations, a new construction, a flip, a new rental, a house hack. So we went from place to place to place. And then we went to my house and we had pizza.

So now he’s giving it back in a big, big way to all these kids who are in high school and are at the point in their life where they’re making big decisions. Am I going to go to college? Am I not?

Am I going to be a dentist or am I going to be a truck driver? I mean, they’re making big decisions. And I remember that’s a key time to kind of have some ideas, right?

More ideas than what you just know about what your mom did and what your dad did and what your uncle does and what your grandpa did. Widen their breadth of their understanding about different ways to make money. And I have two or three out of that group that continue to follow up with me and they’re going to they’re going to go for it.

So, you know, it’s it’s fun when you decide that you’re going to give back because you just come up with these things and then one thing leads to another. But back to his story, because he was such a great student, we talk about that today. It’s like because you are such a good student and you actually did everything I told you to do.

That’s why you ended up. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my coaching.

It wasn’t my mentor being a mentor. It was you doing all the hard work to get to where you’re at. So that’s the magnetic thing when you get a student that’s willing to do it all and they just take what you say and there’s nothing better.

That’s like for a mentor. That is just that’s like juice.

[Mattias]
I love it.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah, it’s awesome.

[Mattias]
That’s so cool. You mentioned that the person that partnered with you on that first multifamily was a developer as well. And did you all get into development opportunities together then as well?

[Anne Curry]
Not with him. He showed me how to buy that first apartment building. I’m very much, I mean, I know my lane.

I have built new construction. I did a little nine single family plot, you know, new construction a few years ago. I built five luxury townhomes just recently.

We just sold our last one. Yay. Done with that.

But I really, I know myself and I love the remodel aspect more than I like new construction. And so I just need to stay in my lane. We talked about doing some projects together, but I was working on that multifamily and then after I bought that apartment building was when I bought those 50 single family homes.

And so my plate was full and I just kept going with what I love. But he did open up my world to multifamily and forever grateful. He’s much older and really slowed down.

So I mean, we’re still buddies, but he’s just not as active.

[Mattias]
Sure.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah.

[Mattias]
That’s really cool. And I agree. I really feel the power of a burr and you know, it’s, it’s just feels like magic really.

And, and, you know, I think another thing that was key to your story here is that you, you just took action like fast. I mean, you went after it and maybe it didn’t feel fast at the time, but like, you know, like you said, a lot of people just kind of think about the next strategy, this strategy, this strategy, and you weren’t necessarily playing advanced chess. You, you kind of went for the opportunity that was there and you built up properties, you know, as you could.

And that, you know, that equity that you get over time really, really starts making a difference. And it’s really starts opening up what doors to what you can do for bigger projects.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah, I would say I did take action, but I’m a natural scaredy cat. I’m, I am not your bold, like risk taker type person. I’m very, I mean, I mentioned earlier, like I think about stuff before I can, once I commit, like, like I will not not commit, like I’m going like I have decided, but I am a natural, more conservative person.

And so I think that showed up in that. Once I decided I wasn’t going to quit. And I think the non quitting part of it is what got me through to where I am today.

Not because I was this bold. Yeah, I’ll just take it on. And I’m not scared.

I was so scared to buy my first rental. My husband came home one day, and I was on the stoop of our little porch. And I was bawling my eyes out.

And I’m not a highly emotional person crying for me doesn’t happen. It happens rarely. But I was bawling my eyes.

I was like, what’s wrong? Like, we’re gonna close on that house tomorrow. So scared.

I don’t want to go bankrupt. And I don’t want to make a bad choice. And you know, I was scaredy cat.

And he he changed me that day because he took my little head in his hands. And he said, I would rather go bankrupt and not have you try at all. And that just coming from your husband, you know, we were so young and we didn’t have any money.

And I just remember that changed me because his boldness gave me boldness and gave me the feeling like if I fail, then we’re going to be okay, because you know, we’re going to get through it together. But naturally, I’m not that way. But I think it was just doing it having the mentor having the mentor show me getting some success, feeling like, oh, I did that once I can do that again.

And then doing it again, and then feeling like, oh, I’m getting better. Oh, like, so my confidence just kind of grew over time. But it wasn’t this automatic thing where I felt like, Oh, I’m just gonna run out and go do this stuff.

And I hope that helps people that are kind of like me, you know, I’m a conservative risk taker, I will go for it once I decide but I am not your, you know, just go try stuff willy nilly person, but it’s worked in my favor. It’s worked.

[Mattias]
I was gonna say does does that show up as being really good at analyzing properties and not and not making risks in the purchases or whatever that that you shouldn’t? Do you? Have you had big pitfalls?

Have you have you had deals that gone wrong? I mean, most people have. I mean, what’s, how’s that played out for you?

[Anne Curry]
Yeah. So, so I’ll say two things. Yes, I had a deal go wrong, which is still painful, and I’ll talk about that.

But I am not an over analyzer. So I have an experience now I have experience, I fall back on that I have, it’s half doing the numbers and half going with my gut.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Anne Curry]
Because sometimes you just see a good deal. And you’re like, I’m gonna make this work. I know how to make this work.

I mean, I can walk through any house. And I can come up with my strategy in like, I just know, like, we’re gonna fix the main floor, we’re gonna add square footage to the basement, it’s going to be worth x, I’m going to refinance out at y. I mean, I can do it just that fast now, just based on experience.

So, but I don’t overanalyze because that could be another form of paralysis. Yeah, is folks that so if you took my personality, and I was to overanalyze, I probably never would have gotten started.

[Mattias]
Sure.

[Anne Curry]
So I, I rely a lot on my experience, I rely a lot now on my gut. But obviously, you have to look at the numbers. I mean, I go home and I work on it.

But I stopped there. I don’t think about it any more than that. And I take action.

So, you know, it’s important in this game, especially with a lot of competition, that you can’t wait too long. But again, rely on your mentor. If you’re not sure if it’s a good deal, you’re just getting started, you need to have somebody that you’re going to bounce that stuff off of.

And they say green light, red light. And when they say green light, you got to go like there’s no time to wait and think you just got to take action and go. But yes, I made not everything that’s been a home run.

The apartment buildings that I bought have been a home run the 50 single family houses that I bought have been a home run absolute amazing home runs. But about three or four years ago, when interest rates were still at 4% for investors, I bought 168 unit portfolio over 44 parcels. Three months, three months, my timing was amazing.

I’m just kidding. Three months before the interest rates doubled. So I bought this 168 units, 44 parcels.

So it was like a 20 unit, a 12, a 14, another 14, some little small duplexes, a triplex, an eight unit, a seven unit. It was a conglomeration of 44 properties from one seller. He was 88 years old, retiring and sold everything to me.

And my whole business plan, I spent a year on the business plan because we had talked about it for over a year. I had numbers for everything. I had an analysis for every single property.

I had it all dialed in. And I was going to fix up some and, you know, burn some, and then I was going to sell some off and just wholesale them off. And I mean, I did end up selling a wholesaling off 20 properties just because I knew I didn’t want to take them all on.

And that was a great choice at that time, because literally I closed and three months later is when they just kept interest rates kept going up and up and up and up. And now I can’t burr. Now I can’t fix these things up and refinance out of them.

So I got stuck with properties that I had to completely trash my business plan and just sell out of it because nothing else was going to work. So that was a little painful. It crushed a lot of the savings that I had.

I mean, and every once in a while, you know, you’re gonna have one that just doesn’t go to plan. Not that you weren’t plAnneing, not that you didn’t have a thought through everything that you’re going to do because something out of your control went haywire and you have to fix it. You know, you have to solve it.

So it took me about two and a half years to sell out of everything. And it was a big, it was kind of a big bummer. But, you know, it’s, it’s okay.

We recover from that stuff and we pick ourselves back up and we keep going.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Cause if you never tried to start, it definitely, yeah, you wouldn’t be here. And the, I know a lot of people in the multifamily space were burned.

A lot of them were burned by the, you know, like having bridge debt to make that stuff happen. So that, that probably could have been worse, right?

[Anne Curry]
Yeah, it could have been a lot worse, but, but nobody could ever take your experience away from you. So even though I watched my bank account dwindle because it took so much money just to carry all this stuff, I was selling it out of it, out of it. But, but we survived.

And I think the tendency would be, poor me, you get into this, like that didn’t work. That was painful. That was two and a half years of pain.

That wasn’t like a month of pain. That was a long pain period. And you could easily say, you know what?

I’ve got enough. I’m just going to, you know, I’m just going to be happy with what I have, my apartment buildings and my single family houses. And, but I’m too young to quit and you don’t want to quit on a downer, right?

I never, I never considered quitting, but, so that was never on the table, but you do have to pick yourself back up again and say, what am I going to focus on now? What are the steps, you know, to kind of rebuild? And what am I going to do now?

And we, and I think what’s working in this market is just going back to the fundamentals, you know, things have softened up a little bit. I think you go back to the fundamentals, make sure that your numbers are really good. If, whether you’re doing a flip or a burr, and you could be a little bit more patient right now because this interest rates, you know, went up a little bit.

Some people are still sitting on the sidelines. So be more thoughtful about what you’re buying and you don’t have to rush into anything necessarily, but go back to what works for you and what your strategy is. And if you don’t have a strategy, then you need a mentor.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that.

I mean, I know that’s, I don’t mean to open old wounds.

[Anne Curry]
No, no, it’s worth it. You can’t just talk about your wins because your losses teach you as much as your wins do.

[Mattias]
Absolutely. And I think, you know, people often feel like if they buy like a $200,000 property that they’re, they have the chance of losing $200,000. And, you know, usually it’s not a zero-sum game like that.

I know that can be, there can be big painful losses. But if you are on the, on the sideline, not wanting to get in from that fear, realize that, you know, it could, it could be like an, in a flip or in a burr, it may be that you have a little bit of skin in the game or that you don’t quite sell for a profit. But you could also look at it as an education opportunity.

I mean, it’s probably pretty cheap to learn how to flip a house. If, if, if it, if you’re breakeven, which, you know, I think a lot of investors find to be very painful is if they just break even on a flip to get out. It’s, that’s, that’s a really good education for no money.

[Anne Curry]
Absolutely. Yes. And if you meet an investor that says they’ve never lost a dollar, you have to ask yourself, what are they really doing then?

You know, are they, are they, are they doing enough? Because if you’re in this game long enough, not everything is going to be a home run. Not everything’s even going to be a third base hit or a second base hit or even a first base hit.

You might break even, or you might lose a little, but stay in the game because you can recover all of that with your next project. Just don’t, I mean, I would just say just no matter what, just don’t quit. There’s always a way to come back, but there’s always another deal.

And that, like that education of what did I do wrong? Why didn’t I make any money? Fix it, move on and go make lots of money.

Just don’t ever quit.

[Mattias]
Love it.

[Anne Curry]
Yeah.

[Mattias]
I mean, there’s been a number of golden nuggets that you’ve shared so far, but I have to ask if you have one prepared for our audience.

[Anne Curry]
A golden nugget. Yes. So we’re talking to agents who are investors and also investors.

My golden nugget would be when I had these big goals, excuse me, when I had these big goals, I thought, you know, I had to go big, big, big to win and to build wealth for my family. I didn’t understand that you can actually get, you know, you can build wealth with doing less. So now what I teach my clients, what I talk to people who aren’t full-time real estate investors, maybe they’re a teacher like I was, but they want to build up some wealth.

I tell them just start with five. If you can just get to five properties, which if you’re brand new and you’ve never done one, five might sound like a lot, but have a goal that’s bigger than what you thought you could do. And maybe five is it.

And so like, even with my own daughter who doesn’t want to be in real estate full-time, she’s 31. She’s in marketing. She’s actually my marketing director, but she doesn’t want to do full real estate full-time.

She wants to write a book and she wants to speak and she has all these other goals, but I’m instilling into her, Lauren, own five in an appreciating market and then sit on those five. Because in Washington state, you know, if you look at history and of course, real estate is up and down. So don’t take this as I’m saying it, but if you look at history, Washington state where I live has doubled in value basically every seven to 10 years.

Okay. So the house I bought when I first started for $60,000, now you could sell it for 450. If I had just kept that property and I had done five of those, do you really need to have 200 units or a hundred units or 1500 units to be wealthy?

I could have started with my five 30 years ago and, you know, could I have a nice retirement with $3 million? Probably. And so my encouragement or my golden nugget to our listeners is have a goal of having five and then just don’t sell them.

Hang on, especially if you’re in your 20s, 30s, 40s, hang on to those for 10, 15, 20 years. Just let them be. Let your tenants pay your mortgage and buy that house for you and just sit on it.

And then when you need the money to retire, then you sell.

[Mattias]
I love it. And, and if he, if you, you don’t have to do this as complicated, but if you do the burr method and I get a pure a hundred percent burr, you get all your money out or use a hard money loan like you did at the beginning to, to get it going. And then you get all that paid off and you own this property for zero of your own dollars.

The return on that’s pretty good.

[Anne Curry]
Really good. It’s a really, it’s, I mean, and then you have tax benefit. You have all these other benefits that we haven’t even gotten into, but that’s my golden nugget is no matter what you do as your W2 or how you make a living, have a goal to own five.

Now, if you get excited after five and you want to keep going awesome, but you don’t have to do the hundred units, 200 units, a thousand units to live a really great life and have an, a retirement or money set aside for your family.

[Mattias]
Yeah. And, and with your goal of, you know, having your kids go through college, um, you know, doing cash out refinance once the, uh, you know, the tenants have paid that down, that’s tax free money that you could use towards your college funds. But, um, anyway, that, yeah, that’s a great tip.

I hope, uh, people are fired up about it cause I’m getting fired up even just talking to you. Um, do you have any books that you think are fundamental for everybody to read or just ones that you currently really enjoy?

[Anne Curry]
I have loved, um, the book called the power of one more by Ed Mylett. And the whole premise is you can do one more. And I think about that.

I mean, it comes in my mind almost daily. Like if I’m in the gym and I’m tired of doing the squats, I say to myself, okay, one more. If you’re exhausted from working your whole week, but you want to go look at real estate on a, on six workday, it’s like one more, just one more day or one more time for giving that person that, you know, wronged you or whatever the power in that one more.

Yeah. So it’s the power of that one more is the, is the difference between average and excellent. If you just say to yourself one more time, one more rep, one more day, look at one more property, go to one more tour, do one more analysis that can get you so far.

That’s my favorite book.

[Mattias]
I love it. And, and, you know, I heard, uh, Dr. Andrew Huberman, uh, talking to David Goggins, um, and he was naming the part of the brain, which I’m not smart enough to remember off the top of my head, what it is that literally is, uh, strengthened or weakened every time you do something or don’t do something that you don’t want to do. It’s like the willpower muscle basically.

And what you’re talking about is directly strengthening that. So I’m sure that can compound because it’s going to be easier to do the one more. And so maybe the one more later is going to be actually two more from where your baseline was before.

Um, so that’s, yeah, I love that.

[Anne Curry]
Absolutely. And they say that, you know, the definition of confidence is just making a commitment to yourself or promise to yourself and keeping it a hundred percent. And so, you know, I mean, when I was scared and getting into real estate, I was just like, I’m doing this, but it was almost like I kept the promise to myself to get started or to have the conversation with somebody.

And, you know, I don’t want to go, I’m, I’m, I’m a shy person. I don’t want to go to home Depot and walk up to somebody. I don’t know.

That’s like the worst thing you could ask me to do, but it was just like, but I have to, right. And so it’s just making that promise to yourself, even if it’s small, like I will even write down my goals tonight. Just keep that promise to yourself.

Keep, keep making promises to yourself, keep fulfilling them. And that confidence will grow in whatever you want to accomplish.

[Mattias]
I love it. Where, if people want to follow along on your story anymore, do you have social media where, where can people find you?

[Anne Curry]
Yeah. AnneCurryHomes.com is our website. You’ll see everything on there.

We will, you know, talk about our live events coming up, and there’s access to our mentorship program, and we can find everything there, and then social media @AnneCurryHomes.

[Mattias]
Awesome. And it’s been a lot of fun talking with you. I’m sure we could fill up a couple more hours.

But yeah, we’ll have to do it again sometime.

[Anne Curry]
Let’s do it. I loved it.

[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.