Introduction  

Welcome to the Gold Collar Investor podcast with your host Pancham Gupta. This podcast is dedicated to helping the high paid professionals to break out of the Wall Street investments and create multiple income streams.  

Here’s your host, Pancham Gupta.

Pancham: Hindsight is 2020. When I look back into my investing career, if there is one thing that I regret the most – that is my first investment. You see, I was paying rent for living in an apartment, and I bought a rental property as my first investment. There was nothing wrong with that rental property, but instead, I should have done a house hack. What is a house hack? It’s like living in one unit of multifamily property and renting out other units. It could also mean living in a condo or a single family house and renting out the bedrooms to your friends. If somebody asked me today, what is the best first active investment? I tell them to do house hack. Today in the show, we are going to discuss just that. My guest today Mrs. And Mr. Casmon did a house hack as their first investment. John and Geetika Casmon are the founders of Casmon Capital Group. A multifamily syndication firm helping busy professionals to take advantage of the financial perks of apartment investing, without the hassles of being a landlord. The passion for real estate started with an owner-occupied duplex, and now with the partners, they control over $58 million in real estate. John has a background in marketing and is the host of the Target Market Insights podcast. In addition, he is the co-founder of the Midwest Real Estate Networking summit. Geetika is a finance expert, auditor, and a CPA. She helps lead monthly multifamily to meet up and serves as a senior manager for a large consulting firm focusing on innovation. John and Geetika welcome to the show.

John: Thanks for having us on. 

Geetika: Thank you for having us.

Pancham: Are you ready to fire up my listeners break out of Wall Street investments?

John: Let’s do it. 

Geetika: Woohoo, yeah.

Pancham: Alright, so let’s get into the show. Let’s discuss your very first investment. So you guys did a house hack. Can you explain what is a house hack in bit more detail? And how did it all come about?

Geetika: Sure. So when we were looking into getting into investing, we were really looking to find an opportunity where we could live in one of the units and like you said, be able to rent the other units out, make some gradual improvements to the property over time, it allowed us to obviously get better financing terms in terms of what we could afford at that time when we started. We had money saved up. So we knew that by putting less down at the time, we would have the ability to use the money saved up to actually put into the property and create some equity, which is really what we were going for. So the way we got started was for really those reasons these we are looking for opportunities where we’ve rented like you as well, for a long, long time in college and we had moved to Chicago. We said this is a great opportunity for us to be in a position to rent, we had been attending conferences, real estate events, you know, reading, but now wanting to really get in on the action. So being able to get the two units in the house that we lived in one unit, we had tenants below us. So being able to also be a landlord, right, and get that experience slowly and gradually build up our skill set to now do bigger deals. 

Pancham: Okay, so like how did that happen though? Like you know when I personally give this advice to many people I mean let alone couples, the single guys or single girls, they don’t want to share. They don’t like the idea of sharing the separate unit with you know someone you know, when they’re living themselves in a house of their own and when it comes to couples they’re like, “Oh no, no, this is a big no”. So how did that happen for you guys? Were you guys like, what do you guys get on like set on to do this from get go? Or you had to come over some mindset hurdles to do this.

John: I mean, I think it starts with having an alignment of goals, right. So I mean, we always sat down and talked about what our dreams were, what our vision was to live, what we want to accomplish, how to get there, and we realize like early on, real estate was going to be a big role in it. For us, we were in Chicago, we were renting. So it made sense to instead of paying rent that we’re paying 1500 dollars in rent every month. So when you start looking at that, I think that’s what 18 thousand a year. So you think about paying $18,000 a year to a landlord. That adds up very quickly. So instead of doing that, we wanted to take that money put in our pocket, if somebody else was paying the mortgage that was a way for us to very easily start to accumulate some wealth. So we were aligned on what we want to do, because we put in those terms. We put into terms of all this create all this free stuff to do and will this work I mean for that person who’s sitting there wondering about why don’t want to have to deal with someone else, or I don’t want to do that. I mean, if you’re renting, you are doing that anyway, I mean, you have neighbors one way or the other. 

Pancham: Exactly.

John: So you own the entire building, and select those neighbors for yourself. Or you can pay somebody else rent and let them select who your crazy neighbors are. So control the neighbor. And the law is actually a little bit more favorable if you’re an owner-occupant, where you can be a little bit more discerning on the tenants. It is not saying that you can discriminate or do things like that, but you can be more discerning on who you put into the unit. So for us, it made great sense and it was a good situation, there are some great loan products out there like the FHA loan that can allow you as little as three and a half percent down. We didn’t know about that when we started. So for us, when you just start adding everything up, it made a lot of sense as a great way, economically, as well as lifestyle wise. Because we were living like college students, we never really stopped even into our early 30s. So we were always used to just living in kind of an apartment. So it wasn’t a big transition for us.

Geetika: And one other thing is that if you’re starting out, we knew with the house hack for us, we had been used to living you know, and rentals. However, if you’re not, you have to also, coming to John’s point really look at your long term goals and if you’re applying to house hack with some of the financings. You know, the minimum you have to live in the property is a year. So if you look at your long term goals, and you sacrifice a year of that, you have to put that in perspective of what that can really build for you as well.

Pancham: Yeah, absolutely. You know, that’s already my biggest regret. Alright, so I want to talk about two things. You mentioned something about the amazing loan programs and mentioned something called FHA. I want to get into that, and also talk about before we go into the loan program, at a very high level, do you mind sharing the numbers on like you know how roughly at a high level the numbers would look like for someone if they were thinking of doing a house hack? Sure. I mean, I can share obviously. Our numbers, but depending on the area, and all that it would differ for us, one of the important things, because for us, we were not looking to just necessarily live in it for a year. It would have been for a few years and we happen to still be here after this long. But for us, you know we were looking for…

Pancham: Are you still living there?

Geetika:  We are, we are still living there.

John: It’s a great neighborhood, great property.

Geetika: It is an amazing neighborhood. That and that’s what I was going to say. For us the challenge and what we kind of were really hesitant at the beginning is because we wanted to really pick a neighborhood that’ll fit our lifestyle. It wasn’t something just for a year. It was potentially at the time, we were thinking 2-3 years. So we wanted to pick a neighborhood that worked for us. So we found a really great neighborhood with really great schools, great entertainment around us and for that reason, we started looking at multifamily properties and one caught our eye that it was priced, you know, relatively you know, good it was at three hundred and…

John: 3625.

Geetika: 3625 is what we purchased it for. But I think it was you know, I don’t remember the price it was listed up. But for this neighborhood at the time, that was pretty great, because there’s probably well $1.7 million houses nearby. So we knew that you know, a great property to begin with and we overlooked it. When we looked at it, you know, a lot of the initial things you want to look for is what changes can you make, right? What rehab are you going to be able to do? And we want it since it was our first time to really look at some cosmetic changes. So you know, based on what we had saved, we looked at a budget of spending. You know, at the highest point $50,000 on the rehab and as low as $20,000. So for us, what brought us to this property was the fact that it was a great neighborhood, the price of the property was amazing. And we thought that with the budget and the rehab, we would be able to add a lot of value and create a lot of equity. 

John: I think the other thing too is because we were going to live in this and we plan on living in it for the foreseeable future. I don’t know if I would be here seven years later. But we did invest fairly heavily. Right? I don’t think most people go into a rental and put $40,000-$50,000 into a two-unit rental with most of that going into the owners unit, right. But this is our home. So we did invest pretty heavily. So we made it comfortable. We made it a place where we felt really good staying and so that’s something else to use. I mean, if you’re looking at it, the great thing about house hacking is you can still treat it like your home. It doesn’t have to be a place that is just a rental you don’t care about and you’re not going to do anything to it. You can treat it like your home. You can go ahead and invest in it. You can make put some granite countertops and put in a Curio cabinets, put in a stainless steel appliances, make it what you want it to be and get comfortable with it. So you feel more comfortable staying there. I mean, if you got somebody else paying that mortgage, you can get really comfortable for us. It was a great launching pad because we started with this, and then kind of grew into a much larger portfolio. So this was a great, easy way to get going.

Geetika: And I would say the neighborhood is most important. The reason we were able to put that larger sum of money into the rehab is we knew this neighborhood demands it. A lot of people want to move into this neighborhood. They don’t care where they live like they just want to be in the school district in particular. So we knew that we would basically get our money and to kind of, you know, lay out the numbers that you asked, we bought it for 3625 we put about 45-50K into it, and we recently got it praise, it was little over $600,000. So close to almost $200,000 in equity, we were able to create in the property that we are still living. Yeah.  

Pancham: Wow. So those numbers are pretty awesome. So if for any, you know, the person listening, 3625, the 20% down would be around $72,000 – $73,000. But that’s for the conventional, you know, regular financing. But if you were to talk about or look into FHA financing which John was talking about, it could be much, much lower. John, you want to talk about that? Like, how much down did you guys do with FHA? Or did you guys take that? 

John: We do. We did FHA financing when they’re putting around 10,000 down. And part of that was because we got some credits that we negotiate with the seller as well. So we got credits for things they need to be repaired, and things of that nature. So we ended up only having to come out of pocket about $10,000. So we bought a $362,000 property for $10,000.

Pancham: Wow. 

John: So we had, you know $70,000 or $80,000 saved up, ready to put all that down for the down payment. So when we realized, Oh, we didn’t have to do that, that really freed us up to be more strategic with the rest of our investments, our money and savings, and really think of a better plan to really capitalize and be efficient with those dollars.

 Pancham: Right? So you are 10,000 down and then you put in $50,000 in it. So that’s 60,000 total. And how much rent were you getting? And how much was your mortgage payment? Like overall?

John: Yeah, so our first floor was getting at that time, I was getting 1250. It’s up towards 1650 now. So it’s good 1650 now. The mortgage is what 1900? 

Geetika: Yeah.

John: So we cover about 300 bucks of that.

Geetika: I would mention at the time that we got the FHA because we put less down the mortgage was about

John: 24…

Geetika: About 2400, but what we did as I mentioned, given we knew we created a lot of equity in the property within that first year, we refinanced out of the FHA into a conventional loan, because we had created 20% equity. So from that, all PMI went away. Our mortgage rate mortgage went down significantly to 1900 than 2400 we were paying before.

Pancham: Okay, that sounds good. So living in an amazing neighborhood, where you have $1.7 million houses around you for $300 a month in a place which you designed yourself, I would take that deal anyway. So, you know, like. I personally have given this advice to – if I were to count, I don’t know the exact count, but about eight to 10 people who have come to me and asked for advice on how to get into real estate. And out of those eight to 10 people only 2 have taken me up for it. And they could not thank me enough for that. One person is actually getting paid to live. And it’s just crazy. So you know, and he’s living in an area, which is pretty awesome as well.  

John: It’s a great strategy, right it’s phenomenal. I tell everyone too. G actually helps new investors with the strategy. Matter of fact, one of our best friends that they were so inspired by our story and seeing how our portfolio has grown, they have decided they have a single family home, and they have a three-year-old son, and they decided that they were going to move out of their property at least for a year and buy a house hack. She just helped them get a property under contract yesterday.   

Pancham: Wow. Good for you guys. So how many people have you inspired so far to go in as a house hack as a personal investment, they have actually done it?  

Geetika: I mean, in terms of a house hack, like the like you said, it is a decision that you know, couples, if there may have to take into consideration. So it does take a bit of convincing. But I think now we host a monthly Meet-up group here in Chicago, and we are meeting so many investors every day that are looking for ways to get started. You know, the prices in Chicago, you know just like you have any issue early for trying to find the best properties. Well, one of the best ways to get into the game, if you don’t have you know, a lot of the down payment everything is house hacking. So I think we’ve given that advice, probably at every event we’ve been at, I’m not sure who’s taking us up on that advice. But you know, that is something we preach. That’s how we got started. That’s how we got the experience, you know. Now we are doing larger real estate transactions, but if we didn’t get our foot in the door and get that experience, you know, I think you know, we wouldn’t be where we are now with our careers.

John: Yes. When you run into people and they always ask you, hey, you know, flipping wholesaling, multifamily syndication, like what’s the best strategy I should be doing? I’m like, well, do you rent? Or do you own it? Anyone who says rent, I’m like, house hack. Don’t wholesale. Don’t try to syndicate. Just house hack. It’s the simplest thing. The loans are ridiculous. You’re not going to be able to find loans like this. And if you’re going to occupy the property is just a phenomenal strategy and don’t get me wrong. I love syndication. I love large multifamily too. But if you can house hack start there. That is just an easy way. Yeah? 

Pancham: Yeah, that sounds so cool. You want to talk about the details of FHA loan just for the listeners so that they can who are getting inspired by just listening to this?

John: Yeah, absolutely. So FHA I mean check the website, because some of the terms change frequently. But then you can qualify for as little as three and a half percent. So that’s going to be based on the purchase price of the property. For FHA, for easy numbers, let’s just assume your property, you’re buying a property for $100,000. So with as little as three and a half percent down, that’s $3500 that you need to come out of pocket. Now with FHA financing, there are a few more hurdles that are necessary to qualify. Part of that is they are inspecting the house. You also let me start the house and I’ll go to the borrower. So for the house, they’re looking for a couple of things. They want to make sure it’s a safe house, safe environment, in particular. They are looking at things that like chipped paint, they’re looking for in any house to have those things won’t qualify things like handrails, moles…

Geetika: Missing Handrails.

John: Yeah, so anything like that, that could be repaired, it won’t qualify. You would need the seller to actually fix it, and then have it come out. You actually have to go through a separate FHA inspection. So if you get your own inspector to come out, that’s great. But there needs to be an FHA inspection as well. And if the property is marked for having any of those things, they will fail it and you will need to go out and get their remedy for qualifies. So the downside is, it only qualifies or works on certain properties, or you need to be willing to work with the seller to fix anything that happens. A lot of times, especially in a hot market like today, a lot of sellers are saying, well I don’t want to even deal with that. So I’d rather go with someone who’s not going to have that contingency in place. So just one thing you need to watch out for. But if you can get it and you can find a property where it works, it’s a phenomenal deal.

Geetika: You can always also choose to pay if there are some FHA inspection issues that arise, but you think this is worth the investment, then you as the buyer can opt to say, “I will pay for those things to be remediated prior to close as well”.

Pancham: Cool, and how much is the closing costs on top of this, like, 3.5% down? It’s, I guess that depends on the county, and then all of that.

Geetika: I want to say it, like typical maybe 2%. But I don’t know. It really depends on your situation financially, you know, different aspects. Now I will say one thing I’m outside of the house there, I don’t know when this was implemented. But there is an additional FHA self-sufficiency test that has to be met. So a certain amount of the market rent value has to be able to cover the mortgage, for example, and I think that number is 75%. So that is an additional test. So that as you’re looking now with an agent for properties, making sure that you are looking at the price, the property you would purchase for what the monthly payments would be, and comparing that to what the market rent you would get for that property is pretty important. Because if you don’t meet that test, you won’t be able to get the financing.  

Pancham: Cool. Thanks for sharing that anything that you would like to add for people who are thinking about house hacking or getting into real estate as their first, you know, what should their first investment be?

John: I mean, I would just say, you know, if you are interested in saving money, I mean, I think you have to be willing to sacrifice to house hack. And if you’re interested in learning how to manage a property, being a landlord, a house hacks an easy way. There are pros and cons. I think another con, I’ll just throw out there is if you live in the same building as your tenants. So it’s not like you can really hide or duck them if you’re going to be a landlord. But you can set some pretty easy parameters and let them know how to communicate with you. And I think also because of that, you want to be an area where you feel comfortable, where you’re going to feel comfortable with the other people in that area. So it’s going to be a much friendly environment versus if you were just buying in an area, because you could get a 12 cap return, I think is a strong bet there. So if you’re looking for I think it’s something that can be done, you know. The commitment is only a year if you go with FHA financing. So it’s pretty flexible, you don’t have to live in it forever. It’s a sacrifice that you can make. And I think this is a great bet, a great way to get started. And you can use it as a launch pad whether you want to build a huge portfolio or if you want to rent to repeat this strategy. I do know investors who buy one, live in for a year, move out, refinance out of that property, and buy another one. FHA financing, owner-occupied that one. They keep buying these properties where they only have to put down three and a half percent. And they create their own equity that way. So there are a lot of different strategies you can use if you really want to, you know, be diligent and have some patience and building your portfolio.

Geetika: And I think to that point, one point that I’ll mention is you can only have one FHA loan at a time. So there’s nothing wrong with kind of doing the rinse and repeat as long as you’re staying within, you know, their guidelines.

John: You got to rinse though. Change is repeat.

Pancham: Yeah, true. Alright, so I guess we can move on to the next section of our show, which we call taking the leap round. 

Taking the Leap Round

I asked these four questions to every guest on my show. So my first question is, when was the first time you invested outside of the Wall Street? I guess, the duplex or …

Geetika: So to give some context, I worked for a public accounting firm, a large public accounting firm. And I had a lot of restriction in terms of my investments. I pretty much can’t own stocks or do any kind of investment because we audit most companies. Really estate was really one of the outlets, we, you know, we felt we could take. And yeah, the house hacking was our first investment. We owned a sort of a property beforehand or a business with our family. But for us together, the house hacking was our first and so you know, a great way to get started.  

Pancham: Great. Alright, so my next question is, what fears did you have to overcome when you first invested outside of the Wall Street?

John: Yes, I mean, I guess for me, it was less about Wall Street, because I didn’t understand Wall Street. And at that time, I was working for General Motors, right. 

Pancham: Oh man.

John: So just before we bought this, I was working for General Motors. So for me, my love with Wall Street never really started. I was in there where people were sitting there looking at it. I was living it. You know, luckily, obviously things turned around and I am in a much better place. Now, for us, the biggest fear was that at first of the month, and whether or not people are going to actually pay me rent. I think that psychologically I had this thing in my head to say, “Well, what happens if they just look at me and say no”. Because I was pretty young. You know, it wasn’t in my head when my vision of a landlord was I thought I was young and not kind of what people may expect. And I guess, one fear was, would they pay us rent. If they didn’t, do I have to start eviction? Because we inherited tenant’s right there on the further their first property, we had a tenant there. And I just didn’t know what that response was going to be. So luckily, that rent check came that first month. And after that, it was easy going. And we kind of put, you know, plans and stuff in motion. So we knew how to handle every situation. But I think just that first step that the fear of what if this happens, what if that happens, but you recognize that if it happens, it’s happened to a bunch of other people before you. And they’ve come up with solutions. It’s important to have those resources like BiggerPockets, like podcasts like this, where you can reach out, hear other people figure out what they’ve done, and then implement that into your own strategies going forward. 

Pancham: You know after you got that first rent check, I guess you caught the bug and never stopped. All right, can you share with us one investment that did not go as expected?  

John: Yeah. So you know, part of our business was, you know, we had a lot of success with this first property. We bought a three-unit building after that we bought a unit building after that. And at that point, we said, “Hey, our portfolio is growing”. But we are we’ve invested all of our money into these deals, how do we continue to grow? One idea we had was to start flipping houses. Now we’re both full time…we’re full-time corporate executives or corporate executives in the business and what we realized was that flipping houses is not exactly a corporate job. You know, it’s a little bit more, you know, boots to the ground, blue collar. Understanding the way things work, and we had a flip, and it just did not work out very well at all. So ended up taking a loss on that flip and losing money. Because, you know, contractors would tell us one thing we would go check up. It just wasn’t what they said it was going to be and we just realized that you know, we came from were, you said something you were going to do it and it wasn’t happening. So we learned a pretty brutal lesson on that first deal. But, you know, ultimately, you know, I’d rather learn the lesson and have that knowledge now in the head going forward, then, you know, have that just not knowing what to expect. So we certainly know what it takes now, anytime we’re doing any kind of construction.

Pancham: Absolutely, absolutely. Alright, so my last question is, what is one piece of advice would you give to people who are thinking of investing in the Main street that is outside of the Wall Street?

Geetika: I think the most important thing is that people who are looking to get started do get started. And you can do that the various means it doesn’t have to mean you go out and purchase a property. With the internet with social media. There’s so much information out there. There are so many, you know, meetup groups. We host there are, you know, Bigger Pockets, there’s a podcast. There’s so much content out there that I think just stepping into it to learn and get your feet wet. And really immerse yourself into it is the best way. And then ultimately, when you’re ready to purchase a property, but don’t what is it – analysis, paralysis, either where you’re just stuck in a zone where you analyze the property, and go a year without buying. I mean, I think it’s important to find a good balance. So if you have the knowledge, or you’re getting the knowledge, and you find a property, I think you just have to be willing to take that leap and start.

John: Yeah, and I think that there are a lot of strategies that don’t require you going out buying a property and being the landlord. You can invest in passive investment opportunities like multifamily syndications. You can buy REIT’s, you can invest in self-storage facilities and have property managers you can invest in turnkey properties. I mean, there’s just so many other strategies where start, you can start with something that’s a little easier, where you can still stay packed, you invest in notes, you can start with something passive and just, you know, ease into it. If you like it, love it, then sure you can move more on the active side. But you don’t necessarily have to leave your corporate job, or your high paying job to now become a full-time real estate investor. You can actually just take some of the earnings you have put them to work for you let that generate some income for you, and then determine if that’s something you love, you can start to move more in that direction.  

Pancham: Exactly, you know, some of the shows that we are going to have on the show, we’re going to talk about exactly the things that you just mentioned, like notes and syndications. You know, some of my listeners are so new to this that they probably do not even understand what a note is. So we’ll discuss that in our future shows. So thank you for answering all those questions. How can listeners reach you?

John: So they can go to our website, casmoncapital.com. Another great way is I also host a podcast you can check me out at Target Market insights that’s available on Apple iTunes, wherever podcast is, you can email us I’m at john@casmoncapital.com.

Geetika: gscasmon@gmail.com.

John: Yeah, a lot of those.

Pancham: Great, so I will leave you guys with this. If you desire to become an active investor. House hacking is the best first investment. Thank you, John, and thank you Geetika for taking time today and sharing with us your story. I’m sure it’s going to inspire a lot of people out there. Thanks. Thanks for having us. 

Have you ever wondered why the rich keep getting richer? What is the secret that they know? But you do not? What if I told you that wealthy people make their money work for them in two different places? Yes, the same dollars invested in different places and working hard for them while they sleep. They utilize these special accounts that have been in existence for more than a hundred years. Do you want to learn more about these accounts? Then you are in the right place? Listen to episode number five by going to the goldcollarinvestorbanking.com/bankingshow. I repeat thegoldcollarinvestorbanking.com/bankingshow or visit thegoldcollarinvestorbanking.com. If you got value from the show, then please leave me a five-star review on iTunes. It will help me bring quality guests on the show. You can do that by going to thegoldcollarinvestor.com/review. I repeat thegoldcollarinvestor.com/review. It will take you to the iTunes page directly or you can go to the iTunes directly and find the show and leave a review. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. If you have questions email me at p@thegoldcollarinvestor.com that’s P as in Paul@thegoldcollarinvestor.com this is Pancham I’m signing off until next time.

Thank you for listening to the gold collar investor podcast. If you love what you’ve heard and you want more of Pancham Gupta, visit us at www,thegoldcollarinvestor.com and follow us on Facebook at thegoldcollarinvestor. The information on this podcast or opinions as always, please consult your own financial team before investing.