Movoto Mic Episode 4: Jerimiah Taylor on building a successful multi-discipline real estate career

On this edition of the MovotoMic we talk to Jerimiah Taylor about his experience building a multi-discipline real estate career. We dive into everything from mortgage companies, to selling homes, house flipping, and investing. You don’t want to miss this one. For more updates follow Movoto on Instagram @movotorealestate or download the Movoto app. 

Full Episode:

Full Transcript:

Patrick: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to Movoto Mike, a new real estate podcast brought to you by Movoto. com. My name is Patrick Kearns. I’m an ex journalist and 10 year vet of the real estate industry, who’s currently working as Movoto’s head of communications. Here with me today, as always, is my associate, Sophie Brandeis.

Sophie, how are you doing today? I’m 

Sophie: doing really good, Patrick. It is sunny and 75 in Austin, so I’m having a little bit of spring fever, ready for summer. 

Patrick: It is pouring and like 36 in upstate New York right now. Uh, so that’s kind of spring for us too. So I could say I also have spring fever. 

Sophie: It’s a little unfortunate for you.

Sophie, 

Patrick: who have you brought as our guest today? 

Sophie: So today on the Movoto Mic, we have Jeremiah Taylor. We call him JT. With a career spanning over two decades, JT is an expert in all things residential real estate. [00:01:00] JT has been around the block when it comes to real estate, from participating in over 1, 000 real estate transactions, owning and operating brokerages of various sizes, serving as an executive vice president for Mellow Home, real estate investing, and even co founding a real estate software startup.

Currently, JT is working as Movoto’s chief real estate officer and runs the Taylor team out of Tucson, Arizona. Welcome to the Movoto Mic, JT. 

JT: Thanks, Sophie. Thanks, Patrick. Excited to be here. Thanks 

Patrick: We are super excited to have you. Sophie just sort of went over a pretty big span of things that you’ve done.

Walk us through your career from the beginning. But also, you’ve done a lot. You’re a jack of all trades. Tell us, is there anything that you haven’t done in real estate? Man, what 

JT: a, that’s an interesting question. I haven’t actually thought about that. Uh, I’m sure there’s plenty of things that I haven’t done, but I’ve touched a lot of it.

And I think my, my experience is unique in that I have been an individual practitioner. Call [00:02:00] it 2000 home sales. I’ve done a couple hundred fix and flips myself, uh, with my wife as my partner. Um, and then I’ve also worked at this like nationally scaled direct to consumer level, you know, where I, I know how to own an operator or to Operate and serve like a, you know, a 50 state multimillion a year consumer kind of business.

And so it’s, it’s interesting to be able to see things from both ends of the spectrum. There is no shortage of nuance. I love this industry. 24 years into this, uh, I still learn something new at least every single day. So that’s, I think that’s what keeps me around the industry is that there’s a lot to still learn.

And we’re in a time of where there’s a lot of stuff changing. 

Sophie: So 24 years into the industry. Can we backtrack 24 years ago? Where were you? What were you like? And how did you first get interested into real estate? 

JT: Uh, that’s, that’s a fun question. And the answer is, uh, I grew up in a real estate family. So my mom was a mortgage broker.

Her mom was a real [00:03:00] estate agent. Her mom was a real estate agent and did like hotel stuff. Aunt was a real estate agent. So like as a kid growing up, I would literally hold the like survey post thing. Well, they would survey lots because my, my aunt did development and I would spend summers with her. Uh, so naturally growing up, the one thing I said I would never do is real estate because like most good kids, I like didn’t want to do anything that had to do with my parents.

And so I was a car guy. And by the way, I still identify as a car guy. I worked at an auto shop and I had this like moment with my mom where, you know, she was writing loans. This was like 2001. She was getting a little busy. We’re like, Kind of heading for a recession, but didn’t know. And she’s like, look, do you want to be the guy that always works on the cars?

Or do you want to be the guy that owns the cars? Cause if so, you should like join me and learn how to do loans and get into real estate. So that’s how it started. I literally started making copies for my mom. So back in the day in 2001. We had this really cool thing called trans box. And so when you went to get a loan, you’d have this stack of paperwork that was like three [00:04:00] and a half to six inches high, depending on how complicated the loan was.

We would make three copies of the entire file. And we would put two of them in a thing called a trans box. That was this like, Special overnight delivery system just from the mortgage industry. You drop it in there, we’d get to the underwriter the next day. They would read it and then they’d be like, Hey, you’ve missed a copy on this page.

So they, like, the interesting thing is like the most disruptive thing to this industry in the last 24 years was digitization. 

Patrick: I was going to say, it sounds environmentally not very efficient. 

JT: No, yeah, it was terrible. 

Patrick: Like here is six inches of papers that were overnighting on a plane to somebody. Talk about climate footprint.

JT: Yeah. Oh man. It was, it was terrible. I’m pretty sure I have some like form of black lung from all the like printer toner that I dealt with. I mean, and it was wild, but I honestly, that is the biggest point of change in the industry in 24 years is digitization, which, you know, kind of reflecting on that, that’s unfortunate.

Like you would hope the industry, the American housing market would [00:05:00] change more than simply being able to sign something electronically in 24 years. But. That’s kind of been the most significant change. 

Patrick: It’s sort of an interesting idea, right? As you think about maybe the cycles of real estate that we’ve gone through, why do you think it’s been resistant to change?

Has it been just like economic trends are holding it back because we cycle through so many different markets? Is it a lack of will? Is it honestly that buying and selling a home is just really complicated and needs to be a bit of a slowed down process? Or is it just that consumers don’t really want a different experience?

JT: I definitely think it’s not the last. I think a lot of consumers would strongly prefer a different experience. What’s interesting about the U. S. housing market is that the American dream, right, has always been to own a house. I actually think the American dream is to have readily available mortgage debt with a low down payment.

And that is the core thing that differentiates us from other housing markets across the world. And so when you think of that, right, we have [00:06:00] two. Primary government sponsored entities in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that securitize mortgage debt so that we can keep this machine called the US housing market running right in any given year, we’re printing somewhere between, you know, one and a quarter to 2 trillion a year in new mortgage debt.

So at the end of the day, without those securitization markets in the secondary markets, our housing industry would come to a screeching halt. And so anything that operates at that kind of scale is going to take some level of government intervention. So when you, when you start to like track the dotted line back to why hasn’t this thing changed a whole lot, it’s well, it’s, you know, federal in nature, it’s gigantic, um, and there’s a lot of regulation.

And then on top of that, you know, state by state, every state has its own regulation that sits on top of it. So the, the interesting thing is the process of. Uh, writing a mortgage is a lot like manufacturing, right? It’s how do you assemble the components [00:07:00] of this person’s financial picture such that it is readily saleable into the secondary market so that you can securitize the debt through Fannie and Freddie and that’s what creates the liquidity in the capital market.

For these mortgage banks and mortgage brokers to be able to keep lending money over and over, right? Otherwise you’d run out really fast. And so when you look at that lack of change or lack of innovation, it’s really just that these are giant. Like these are literally some of the biggest companies in the world that are securitizing this mortgage debt.

And so the pace of innovation is just going to be really slow. Uh, the process to manufacture a mortgage, it’s changed quite a bit, mostly through digitization, but the underlying like schema of what a borrower needs to qualify being. A down payment, halfway decent credit, and, uh, in a job that they can document the income really hasn’t changed a whole lot.

Patrick: It’s funny because I’ve been in the real estate industry for a decade now, and that was the most succinct explanation of what Fannie and Freddie do that I’ve ever heard, where I feel like every three months I have to Google, like, what do these two GSEs [00:08:00] do? 

Sophie: I was just going to say that. Okay, so the industry itself hasn’t changed that much.

It’s just. What you’re saying. What about the market? 

JT: Uh, I mean, look, markets are markets, right? They’re cyclical in nature. And history tends to repeat itself time and time and time. And I think the housing market really is no different except for 2008. 2008 was the one time in the Forty five ish years that we’ve really been heavily tracking organized real estate where we have had a housing led recession, right?

Meaning housing is what wrecked us. Housing is what wrecked the world economy, and so that was the only time we’ve had a significant pullback in real estate prices. Outside of that, you know, home prices, the amount of debt that people carry, all that stuff is generally just kind of tracked inflation. And it’s one of those things that, you know, as time goes on, you make more money, things get more expensive.

This is life. And I think in perpetuity, that might be what people can expect from housing is that it’s, you know, the cost of living as a whole goes up because wages go up. And that’s just the way the [00:09:00] inflationary nature of, you know, Of the world that we live in. 

Sophie: Got it. This is more of a micro question for listeners.

You are the person we go to whenever reporters have questions about the market and we need a statement from our company about the market. What are some resources that you use to keep yourself educated and in, in the know about what’s going on that our listeners could also take home and use? 

JT: Yeah, that’s a great question.

So I think the National Association of Realtors and the Mortgage Bankers Association, they publish a ton of data that data is really nothing without synthesis though, right? And so you could look at the stuff that we put out, you could look at the stuff that other companies like us put out. But at the end of the day, if you’re looking to do like raw analytics research, there’s a There’s three key places.

One is the national association of realtors research and statistics page. Second is the mortgage bankers association. And then the third is Fred or the St. Louis federal reserve. They put out a ton of data as well. They’re all available online. MBA charges some money for their stuff, but they, they kind of published the highlights.

And so if you’re looking to track the market and just generally understand directionally, like what’s [00:10:00] happening, it’s there. Now, I want to throw a huge asterisk on that because I’m going to tell you something that might be a little controversial. 

Patrick: I love it. Tell us. I don’t 

JT: think the average consumer should pay a whole lot of attention to what’s happening in the housing market.

Because at the end of the day, look, there’s, I’ve done a lot of real estate investing. I have lost money on houses. The fact is that the houses that I lost money on, if I still own them, I’m I would have made money. The only reason that I lost is because I tried to time the market and in much like the stock market timing, the market is a fool’s errand time in the market is how you make money over the long haul.

So if the average person that is trying to find a place to live their life, they’re trying to find shelter. They just simply need to ask themselves, is this a place I want to live? Can I afford the monthly payment? And if things go haywire, am I okay sticking it out here? And if that’s not the case, then don’t buy the house.

And if that is the case, then who cares what the rest of the market is doing. Eventually, if you stay there long enough, you’ll be right side up. 

Patrick: I love that. It’s great [00:11:00] advice. Yeah. Incredible advice. We’ve talked a little bit about real estate investing. You’ve lost money. You’ve made money. You bought more houses than I have, which is one.

So, uh, in a company meeting a couple of years ago, you shared a PowerPoint slide called, uh, Real estate investing, the slow, unsexy way to become reasonably wealthy. Talk us through what the elevator pitch of the slow, unsexy way to become reasonably wealthy is. 

JT: Yeah. And so I love that. I still chuckle when I, when I hear that one, um, you know, look, there’s, there’s real estate investments, and then there’s jobs in real estate.

And I want to like, for purposes of the conversation, kind of draw a line between the two jobs and real estate fixing and flipping houses. That is a job wholesaling real estate. That is a job trading subject to notes. That is a job. These things all take active day to day management work. You got to go find deals.

You got to hustle. You got to disposition your deals. Those are jobs. Can they be high paying jobs? Sure. But [00:12:00] don’t, you know, delude yourself to think that buying a house below market and reselling it is free. Real estate investing. That’s not real estate investing. That is, you could be doing the same thing with cards.

You could be doing the same thing with Pokemon cards. Just go follow Gary V. Buying things or reselling at another, that’s a business. That’s a job. That is not investing. Investing is buying an asset and then letting that asset go to work for you over time in a passive manner. So there’s several different ways you can do that, right?

There’s short term real estate investing, long term real estate investing. You invest in real estate investment trusts. There’s a bunch of cool hedge funds out there and companies that are coming to market making like fractional investing a thing. But at the end of the day, the reason I say it’s the slow, unsexy way to become reasonably wealthy is this, this kind of function of you have generally like available Low cost mortgage debt and when you take that debt, you get a compounded, very interesting return on your money over a long period of time.

And so what I mean by that is this, let’s say I’m buying a house and the house is 500, 000. I’m picking 500 because it’s math I [00:13:00] can do in my head and you put 20 percent down, you’re going to put 100%, you’re going to put 100%, you’re going to put 100, 000 down. Okay, but all of your returns are gonna be based on that $500,000 house.

So if the house appreciates by 4% on a $500,000 house, 4% is $20,000 a year. Well, keep in mind you only put a hundred thousand dollars, it’s down. So your cash on cash return in appreciation is 20,000. On a hundred, that’s a 20% return. That’s unbelievable. And those highly leveraged returns are what make real estate such a great investment vehicle.

Because now if you also have a cash return on top of the appreciation return, where somebody else is paying your rent, they’re paying your mortgage down and you’re doing it in a highly tax leveraged way because you’re depreciating the real estate over time. You aren’t going to be buying Ferraris in six months or a year, but in 10 years.

You can likely pay cash for a couple of them. And that’s why I say it’s like the slow kind of unsexy way because you [00:14:00] know, we live in like the Tik Tok world, right? Everybody’s on Tik Tok, they want to show you their Bentley or their rolls or whatever it is. The reality is like you’re sitting next to the average real estate millionaire.

Look pretty boring, but it is a very tried and true way to get fantastic returns on your money. 

Patrick: So if somebody is listening to this right now and they start following your advice a decade from now, whatever the social media platform is, that’s when they’ll be showing off their Rolls Royce. 

JT: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That’s right. 

Sophie: So you mentioned earlier that your wife and you are partners with House Flipping and Investing, right? Yeah. I have seen a lot of house flippers and investors who are couples who do this together. What advice do you have for people who are wanting to do this with their partners? 

JT: Uh, fight nice.

That’s the number one thing because you will not ever agree on everything. Um. Yeah. And I think it’s, it really comes down to like figure out what you’re good at and what the other person’s good at and communicate a lot, you know, so in our world, I’m pretty analytical. So like, I like to [00:15:00] look at the deal.

I like structured finance. I figure out like, how are we going to do the deal? How’s it going to make sense? And then my wife is, is like much more colors, fabrics, finishes, decorations. And so generally what happens is like, we’ll walk the house together. I’ll be like, cool. I want to move that wall here, move this wall there, put this over there.

And like, I can see a floor plan in my head. And then once. The floor plan is done and it’s framed out. She can put the color palette together, decorate it, stage it, and all that. And so it makes for a really good team. Not everybody has those things. So it’s like, you just gotta be real about what you’re good at, what you’re not, what you know, and what you don’t.

And persevere together. There is risk. In real estate investing, like even how about a house in November? Uh, at some point later today, I’ve got to go over there and meet, meet a dude because the pool has a leak. It’s life. Like you’re, you’re buying a house below market because you’re absorbing somebody else’s risk to repair that house.

It doesn’t always go right. And so just, you know, have a clear conversation on the front end for what your appetite for risk is. Uh, the [00:16:00] biggest mistake I see people make in real estate investing is they just get started, which is actually a very good thing. Just getting started is a really good, but they don’t have, like, they don’t understand the financial staying power it’s going to take to finish.

And so where it gets really painful in a real estate investment transaction is when you start, but you run out of cash to finish. And that, that is not a situation you want to be in. It’s one thing to like, Hey, yeah, I got in and out of the deal and I lost five grand. It’s like, whatever, I’m going to live to fight another day.

But if I get into the deal and I can’t get out because I can’t finish the house and I’m so buried in it that like I can’t sell it, that can like ruin your financial future. And so you just want to make sure that. You’re in a spot to where you can get all the way through the deal. 

Sophie: Right. That’s good advice.

So right now at age 24, I should not be investing in a home. 

JT: I’m glad you said that because that’s not what I meant at age 24. What you should do is you should either a make sure you have a partner that can give you the financial staying power to get through [00:17:00] Invest in something that is safe enough that you’re confident you can get to the other side.

Like, I’ll give you an example. If you went out, um, and let’s say you’re 24, you’ve saved up a little bit. You have a good job, right? And you bought a duplex and you lived in one side and you rented out the other side. That’s called a house hack. That’s a, that is absolutely a great way for you to invest in real estate at any age.

Now at 24, do you want to go take on a six, seven, eight hundred thousand dollar, full gut rehab? Probably not. So it’s just, it’s understanding, doing research and getting familiar with a place to where you can do things. I mean, that is like when I was single, like I always had a roommate living with me and paying a little bit of rent, whether it was a bedroom, another place, whatever.

And that’s, that’s great. It just really helps you get ahead. 

Sophie: Right. That’s all really good advice. 

Patrick: Um, something we had talked about earlier was like, you don’t want to try to time the market. You want to spend time in the market, but there is a big regionality to real estate that I feel like maybe we haven’t discussed yet or touched [00:18:00] on.

And I feel like that probably impacts so much of real estate investing, right? Look at the way home prices are appreciating in the Northeast versus what home price appreciation looks like in Austin, where Moboto is headquartered. So are there like local resources that people should also be paying attention to in addition to sort of the macro trends and the macro health of the environment?

JT: Yeah. I mean, Patrick, if only there was a profession of people that made their living by being experts on their local. Real estate market. 

Patrick: Who might those people be? Tell us, 

JT: uh, your local real estate agents or realtors. They, they’re going to have access to data. Most of a lot of the local MLS is actually publicly published their data and you can just go download it.

Actually, I was just looking at San Diego’s this morning, but not all of them, but for the ones that don’t, you’re, you know, good, a competent, good local real estate agent can. Look that stuff up for you and help you. The, the thing to understand, right, is when I say don’t try to time the market, what I mean, what I don’t mean is don’t pay attention to the market because there [00:19:00] are bad decisions that can be made based on whatever’s happening in the market.

I’ll give you an example. There’s a community here in Southern Arizona where there is a proposal to expand a strip mining operation right next to a fairly large residential subdivision. If that proposal goes through and is approved. It’s going to like forex the traffic of dump trucks on this road. It’s going to cause noise pollution and other things.

And I don’t know that I want to buy a piece of real estate for investment right next to that. Right. So being aware, being informed on what’s happening, doing research on the public works page, anywhere that you are. that you’re going to be investing. Those are all really good ideas. 

Sophie: So this is a bit of a change of topic, but you’re someone who has a rare experience in both the mortgage side of things and the agent brokerage side of things.

What are some common misconceptions people have about mortgages? 

JT: Oh, geez. Uh, that’s a really long list. Probably the, the number one is like, I can’t get a mortgage. The reality [00:20:00] is there’s three ingredients to get a mortgage. There’s your loan to value, which is your down payment versus the home price, right?

There is your ability to document, improve your income, and then there’s your credit. Those are really the three ingredients to getting a mortgage. So if your credit score is higher than a 580 and you have a good job and you have a down payment of at least three and a half or 4%, you could probably get an FHA loan.

today. And I think it’s easier to qualify for a mortgage than the majority of people think it might be. Now, what I’ll tell you is this is in mortgage, the keyword is called compensating factors. Not everybody has a big down payment, a great job and impeccable credit, right? If you’ve got two of three, you’re still going to get pretty normal, reasonable mortgage pricing.

If you’ve got one of three, it better be really strong, right? So like if my credit score is a two, like I’m currently in bankruptcy. I can still get a mortgage if I have enough money down. Right. And so that’s the key to understand is like there are a wide range of [00:21:00] mortgages that can be had. But at the end of the day, the interest rate that you get really is an indicator of the risk level that the investor is taking on.

So the people that get the lowest interest rates are typically the people with the big down payment, the best income, the best, most documentable income, uh, and the best credit. Right. And so one of the key things to. To think about too here is like any home under four units, that’s all game on for traditional mortgage financing, FHA, VA, conventional USDA, etc.

And there’s readily available mortgage debt for just about anything under a five unit property. 

Patrick: It’s fascinating. Sophie mentioned sort of rare in the world of real estate to be experienced on both sides of the things. I feel like so often you sort of find the agent and brokerage side, the tech side on one side, mortgages.

Is completely separate except on the local level, right? So like, if we think about the local level, you’ve got a lot of agents and loan officers working together, maybe not as much on the national level. If you can think about the future, is that changing anytime soon? Do you think we’re going to see [00:22:00] sort of more intermingled, uh, better attached services when we talk about mortgage and title and real estate all in one?

JT: Look, since I’ve been doing this in 2001, that was like the thing. That everybody wanted to figure out. It’s like, how can you make it a one stop shop? There’s kind of two camps of people on this. I’ve been duly licensed since 2004, meaning like I’ve been set up to do mortgages and real estates and so forth.

There’s, there’s a camp of people that are like, that’s really bad. You have a conflict of interest. You shouldn’t be doing both sides of this deal. I have a different opinion. My opinion is, well, look, if I’m doing both sides of the deal, I don’t need to make as much money on either side. So I can actually give the borrower a better deal as their agent.

I can give the borrower a better deal as their loan officer. And frankly, I have more control over the deal to make sure that the borrower has a good experience. Believe it or not, most challenges in real estate transactions. Don’t come from the real estate. They come from the people. [00:23:00] And so people cause the problems with the real estate.

And then it takes other people to unwind them. And a lot of times you’ll see, you’ll get into a transaction where it’s like, you know, the agents don’t get along or the mortgage lender doesn’t communicate in those things. Unfortunately, a really common, not just in the real estate industry, like in any industry, right?

Like that’s. service in 2024, we wish it would be better. I actually think there’s a world where you can make a case that it benefits the consumer to have fewer smarter people touching these transactions. And I think that is a way to also bring the cost down for consumers. The challenge is it’s a lot of work.

I mean, I’ve got 20 some mortgage licenses, three real estate broker licenses. I mean, just annual continuing education. It’s like two to three full time work weeks of continuing education just to keep that stuff live. But it gives you a different appreciation for just how things work. And when you actually understand how a mortgage is manufactured, how a real estate transaction goes, And then you have the insights of like, Hey, this is on a construction [00:24:00] basis.

Like this is how you pull a permit. This is how you fix and flip a house. This is generally what a load bearing wall looks like. You know, we still always encourage consumers to hire experts, but just having that little bit of extra knowledge so that you can help people kind of get started in the right direction.

A lot of times we’ll uncover things they wouldn’t have found otherwise. 

Sophie: Right, so real estate’s a people business and it requires tons of education. Let’s talk about barriers to entry if someone who’s listening is looking to get their foot in the door in the world of real estate. How qualified were you when you first began and how did that compound and grow over time?

JT: Uh, I knew nothing when I first started, but I, I have, I mean, look, I took all my life. I’ve taken this approach that learning is more important than earning when I’m starting something new. And so, you know, it’s like right now I’m kind of going through learning this YouTube stuff. And so. Yeah. Cool. Uh, I don’t need to make a bunch of money.

I’m happy to pay somebody to teach me because at the end of the day, that knowledge is going to go with me forever. You can always make more money. [00:25:00] And so when I started in the industry, like I said, I literally copied files. And so I started copying files. Then I learned how to process a loan. Then I learned how to originate a loan.

Then I learned how to run a mortgage company. Then I learned how to sell a piece of real estate. And it’s like, when you learn it, bottom stuff like that, you just have such a different appreciation. I mean, the number of agents. Look, in my career, I’ve employed over 3, 000 real estate agents directly in brokerages that I’ve run.

There is a significant knowledge gap between the most knowledgeable and the least knowledgeable. And unfortunately, I think that’s a real challenge in our industry. A lot of agents, they know how to calculate their commission and they know how to Show up to pick up the check and they don’t know a lot more than the necessity that they need to know to get the deal done.

And so that’s why it’s so important as a consumer to understand what makes a great agent great and what makes an average agent average and how to make sure that you hire a great agent. So for somebody looking to get started, I think the best advice that I could give them is find a team, find a brokerage, find somebody where you can show up and you can [00:26:00] work, even if it’s taking out the trash, making phone calls, doing the unsexy stuff in the beginning.

That is what is going to help you learn and build context in a way that you would never get. Otherwise, 

Sophie: reflecting on your start and your growth, were there any key moments that shaped your career or any fork in the road moments like to call it? 

JT: Oh, gosh. Yeah, I’m sure there’s a ton of them. Uh, I mean, look, the whole reason I got a real estate license was I had a customer that, uh, we did a lot of manufactured houses when I got started, which is, that’s a whole other subject about real estate for another day.

But I did a lot of manufacturing. I had a customer that was like, Doing subdivisions and things like that. And so I got a phone call and they’re like, Hey, you guys do a great job. You always communicate about financing on these manufactured homes. We just bought a subdivision that is all set up for manufactured homes.

We’re going to replant it to make it site built and we need somebody to help us. Sell off the manufacturing homes that are there, move them, finance them and all that. Do you guys know a good real estate agent? I’m like, well, how far out is this? Like, when do you need to do it? And they’re like, that’s probably like four or five months out.

We’ve got to get [00:27:00] our public report. I’m like, great. I’ll just go get licensed. I’ll figure it out. I’ll do it. And they’re like, great. We would way prefer to work with you than somebody else. So you know how to do that. And I’m like, yeah. No, I don’t know how to do that, but I’ll go get licensed and I’ll partner with somebody.

And so I found an agent that 17 years later, we still work together. She runs our sales team that was super knowledgeable. And I said, Hey, look, this is a big deal. I’ll give you half of it to teach me how to do it. I’m going to go get my license so that I can participate. I really just want to learn. And we did.

And that was my first transaction. That’s how I got into real estate is where we did a 350 unit subdivision and I learned a ton. But at the end of the day, the reason I got the opportunity was because we did a great job on the mortgage side and we nailed what. Like our core business was that led to the next thing.

I think the second biggest thing when I got my license, I made a mistake actually. And I went to the, I like talked to different brokerages and I literally went to the least expensive brokerage in town. Cause I was like, Oh, this is great. I can pay you like 200 bucks every time I saw a house. I have no idea how many millions of dollars that decision cost me because I didn’t learn anything.

I [00:28:00] was rookie of the year. I sold 29 homes my first year. And I was like big fish, little pond. And that was like 2004 in 2010, I joined a company called Keller Williams Realty, and I went to this event called family reunion, and I saw an agent on stage that made more money in a month than I’d made in my life lifetime.

And my universe was forever. Expanded in a way that I’ll never forget. And so just like that proximity to people that are doing so much more than you is so important. And, uh, you know, look, now our teams with Moboto, I think we do a lot of great stuff at Moboto, but joining Keller Williams and participating in that ecosystem was a significant trajectory changer in my life.

And having that proximity to people doing so much more than me playbook, uh, that was invaluable. I wish I would have started there. 

Patrick: Amazing. I love it. JT, let’s get real. We’re going to ask you a few rapid fire questions, answer them as quickly as you can without thinking, quick answers. First of which is one thing you wish you knew when you started in the real estate [00:29:00] industry.

JT: I think the one thing I wish I knew is that the, the, the path to real wealth in the investing and owning real estate, not selling it. 

Sophie: Most underrated skill for success in real estate. 

JT: Oh, wow. EQ, like emotional intelligence and just understanding the, your impact on people and working with people. 

Patrick: I love it.

I know similar to me, uh, you love a nice bottle of wine. Final day on earth. What is the bottle of wine you’re drinking? 

JT: I’m going to go with, uh, uh, an estate Farnante cab, just because that was my mom’s favorite and it has like a personal meaning to me. 

Sophie: Well, that’s full circle because she’s the one who got you into real estate in the first place.

JT: That’s right. 

Sophie: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the Moboto Mike. 

Patrick: It’s been wonderful. Thanks for having [00:30:00] me.