Episode 172 Transcript: Trevor Methena
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we have Trevor Methena!
To watch the full episode, check it out on YouTube below. In the meantime, here’s a transcript of the conversation…
Here’s what you missed from Trevor Methena…
00:00:00:23 –> 00:00:04:03
Taylor: Welcome to The Brad and Taylor Show. Today, we have Trevor Methena.
00:00:04:17 –> 00:00:14:20
Brad: You’re listening to The Brad and Taylor Show, a podcast that inspires entrepreneurs to pursue their passions. We’re sitting down with some of the best to learn how they got started and some lessons they learned along the way.
00:00:15:04 –> 00:00:15:22
Taylor: Hey Trevor.
00:00:16:23 –> 00:00:18:00
Trevor: Hey guys, how are we going?
00:00:18:00 –> 00:00:18:26
Taylor: We’re good. How are you doing?
00:00:19:12 –> 00:00:20:02
Trevor: Very good.
00:00:20:17 –> 00:00:23:08
Brad: Awesome. Well, let’s get this show started. Tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
00:00:24:10 –> 00:00:45:25
Trevor: I kind of have a typical story. You often hear about a W2 job in technology, decided to move into real estate investing. I currently invest out of state in Ohio and I live in Texas and have about six long-term rental properties.
00:00:47:25 –> 00:00:54:00
Taylor: What brought you to investing in Ohio rather than Texas? You said you’re in Texas currently, right?
00:00:54:18 –> 00:01:35:22
Trevor: I’m in the Austin market in central Texas and it is extremely hot. Lots of money flying around for single-family properties and things of that nature. There is just no meat on the bone for cash flow, which is a big part of my phase one plan to get things off the ground. Additionally, my dad grew up in the Toledo area and he lives up there now. He’s kind of my ringer. He helps out with a lot of things. He does a lot of walkthroughs, does a lot of help with lanes or with tenant calls and maintenance, and things of that nature.
00:01:36:27 –> 00:01:42:10
Taylor: Yeah, it’s definitely good to have someone there. When you were growing up, did you know that you wanted to get into investing when you’re older?
00:01:43:08 –> 00:02:37:02
Trevor: No way. Not even a little bit. I had no one in my family that did real estate investing. It wasn’t until I met my wife. When I met my wife, I was stationed in San Diego, California and her dad had purchased a few condos. I didn’t even ask a lot of questions, but all my assumption was you had to have the cash to do so you could only have one mortgage. I had no clue. So I was like, no way that’s ever happening. Eventually, I understood that I don’t always want to have a W2 job. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and go, shouldn’t today be the day I resigned from having that option? I realized that I needed to figure something out, started talking to some friends, and threw ideas around Austin, Texas.
00:02:37:02 –> 00:03:05:09
We had this huge startup tech firm industry, you know, all that good stuff but I had no clue. I had no idea what app to develop or anything like that or the skills to do so. So a friend of mine said, well, what about real estate investing? I go, I don’t have that money because he goes, but she goes, you have a job, you have credit and you can get mortgages. I said, no, you can’t. And he’s like, oh yes, you can. Down the rabbit hole. I went with my research from that point on.
00:03:06:01 –> 00:03:11:24
Taylor: What was the turning point for you? When you were like, Yep, I’m going to jump all into this. We’re going to start this and we’re going to go for it.
00:03:12:16 –> 00:04:07:23
Trevor: So I did buy one turnkey, like a new building in the Austin area. 20% down like regular conventional everything. I said I’ll run through the steps. If everything starts to go smoothly, then I’m going all in. Then I started hearing a lot as I researched a lot of it. I had to hear about your competitive advantage or your unfair advantage is what they like to call it. I thought about, well, there are a lot of Midwest markets. My dad lives in one. Let’s do the research. As soon as all those pieces kind of came together, my wife had also seen that things were going well. We were all in. We’re all still charging trying to get to that magic number of covering all our expenses with cash.
00:04:08:13 –> 00:04:17:29
Taylor: I know you mentioned that the Ohio market area was your phase one, right? So when you get to phase two, do you plan on branching out elsewhere, or do you want to stay in that Midwest area?
00:04:18:18 –> 00:04:44:07
Trevor: No, definitely looking to branch from that point on. A lot of things I’ve been looking at on YouTube university, research-wise, I’m sold on short-term rentals. Looking into vacation markets and things of that nature, I may even be able to break into the Texas coast at that point or some of the areas out here in the hill country of Texas.
00:04:44:11 –> 00:04:49:05
Taylor: Yeah. That’ll be exciting once you get to that point. I know you’re already on your way so it won’t be long.
00:04:50:25 –> 00:04:52:00
Trevor: I hope so, I appreciate it.
00:04:52:18 –> 00:04:59:15
Taylor: Yeah. Did you get any advice when you first started out investing that just stuck with you or maybe a piece of advice that you didn’t take?
00:05:00:25 –> 00:05:44:22
Trevor: Well, my own advice was, you had to have all the cash to buy real estate. And so I quickly got that turned around. I kept latching on, I kept hearing the pattern of there’s only so much research you can do, you can get the best thing to do is get started. That’s exactly why we went low-risk. We hit a new build in a market we knew we’d get filled quickly. We just got moving. As soon as we realized we still have a roof over our heads, we can still feed ourselves, and all that good stuff, I said, okay, now it’s time to turn it up and continually try and incrementally, get a little faster, get a little more efficient.
00:05:45:02 –> 00:05:56:24
Taylor: I know we talked a little bit about your phase two plan of action. What are your goals for finishing out this year and then going into next year? When do you plan on or hope to get to that phase two?
00:05:57:29 –> 00:07:04:20
Trevor: Sure. Most of the properties I’ve purchased in Ohio are, they need a little work, of course. Now that we’re getting into the cold months. For the rest of this year, I will try and get maybe one or two completely, especially on the exterior turnkey investments. If I can get two more, I know the demand is there to get renters in quickly. But for the rest of this year, I’m looking to get maybe two more that don’t need any work on the outside so that I’m not freezing out my GCs and making them make it mad. In 2022, we have some work to do. I want that magic number of our expenses covered by the end of 2022. With all current projections, if the market stays at the same prices, the demand stays the same. We would be looking at that magic number, being 15 total properties in total single families in Northwest Ohio.
00:07:07:14 –> 00:07:07:22
Brad: Nice, that’s awesome!
00:07:08:12 –> 00:07:15:13
Trevor: So six, including one in Texas. We’re looking at the 75 in Toledo right now.
Brad: Nice, that’s awesome. Good for you!
Trever: Thank you.
00:07:16:01 –> 00:07:27:17
Taylor: Yeah, that’s so exciting. I know when you talked about going into the rental area for vacation spots, what’s one spot that you really, really, really want to get into?
00:07:29:13 –> 00:07:30:13
Trevor: That’s a good question.
00:07:30:23 –> 00:07:36:21
Taylor: Number one, vacation spot, maybe somewhere that you would even want to go, and you’re like, I’m going to get this because I’m going to vacation there.
00:07:37:25 –> 00:07:53:23
Trevor: Definitely. So if we’re talking full dreams, I drove past Lake Tahoe once in my life, and it’s probably one of the most beautiful areas in the entire country. That would be the pipe dream right there. A short-term rental in Lake Tahoe. That’d be great.
00:07:54:02 –> 00:08:05:27
Taylor: That would be awesome. That way you can just be like, oh, that weekend’s booked, we’re going for the weekend. Do you have any business books that you have read that you could recommend to anybody who may be starting to get into investing?
00:08:06:17 –> 00:09:05:26
Trevor: The big one that helped me do all the self-management, that journey. I guess to back up just real quick, I do self-manage the property. I use software and I do have a kind of remote maintenance service but I also am able to set my first-tier contractors in handymen. My dad is the first call but that does put a little bit of a gap between myself and the tenant. So they called the maintenance line. Their first call is my dad. If he can’t do it, then they’ll call their network of handymen and handywomen, to take care of whatever the issue. I had that far under control. The other part is also just myself handling all the leasing and any questions related to renting payments and things of that nature.
00:09:06:10 –> 00:09:51:08
So the book, Managing Rental Properties by Brandon Turner. One of the bigger pocketbooks. That book, reading it made me feel extremely comfortable in doing that and having that be my plan, instead of putting everything under property management. I’ll tell you that reading it cover to cover, it lays out the exact steps that happened, and the way they did it made so much sense and easily made it into a process. The first time I actually ran into an issue, I felt no kind of twinge of anxiety, because I knew exactly what to do because of that book.
00:09:51:19 –> 00:10:00:29
Taylor: Yeah. And did you start that right away or did you have a property management team or company first and then kind of switch over to you doing it? Or did you immediately just go in and start?
00:10:01:27 –> 00:10:04:18
Trevor: I immediately started day one.
00:10:05:07 –> 00:10:08:26
Taylor: Awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. I’ve got more questions for you off air.
00:10:11:06 –> 00:10:13:12
Brad: I like it. I like it. How can people get a hold of you?
00:10:14:17 –> 00:10:42:21
Trevor: I guess most of the investment stuff I talk about or anything like that would be under Instagram. It’s @trevormethena_rei or @trevormethena_elliny on Instagram as well. Otherwise, you can just reach out by email, [email protected].
Brad: Awesome. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.
Trevor: Absolutely! Thank you, Brad.
00:10:48:02 –> 00:11:04:00
Hello. Hello. Are you there? Hey guys, we just wanted to thank you for listening on either a podcast or on the YouTube video here. If you guys wanted to subscribe, that would be awesome. That would mean a lot to us. If you guys could give us a five-star review as well, that would be amazing. And we’ll see you on the next one.
Check out Trevor Methena:
https://www.myaustinhouse.com/myteam/agent/8402352
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