Aileen: [00:00:00] Thank you, everyone for joining today’s episode of the, How Did They Do It? Real Estate podcast. We are your hosts, Seyla and Aileen and today’s guest, we have Jeremy Roll. Jeremy started investing in real estate and businesses in 2002 and left the corporate role in 2007 to become a full time passive cashflow investor.

He’s currently an investor in more than 60 opportunities across more than $1 billion worth of real estate and business assets as founder and president of roll investment group. Jeremy manages a group of over 1500 investors who seek passive managed cash flowing investments in real estate and businesses.

Jeremy is also the cofounder of, for investors by investors, also known as FIBI, which is now the largest group of public real estate investor meetings in California with over 30,000 members. Jeremy also has an MBA from the Wharton school is a licensed California real estate broker. And is an advisor for Realty mogul, the largest real estate or crowdfunding website in the U.S. We’re really excited to have you on the show today, Jeremy, welcome.

Jeremy: [00:00:54] Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Aileen: [00:00:56] we know we have a lot to talk about with you today. Could you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got started in real estate?

Jeremy: [00:01:01] Sure. So, um, well actually I’m from Montreal, Canada originally, and I’ve lived at this point about half of my life in Canada, half of my life in the U S  when I was growing up, I didn’t get very much exposure to it, but my grandfather was a real estate investor.

He’d been a real estate investor for many decades dot point in Montreal. And, at that point he was more advanced. Like he’d done a lot of single-family flips and stuff early on. At that point, I didn’t really understand any of it, but he owned a few buildings that were cashflow and growing very well, but it certainly was definitely, you know, running rent of the family.

Yeah. And my father was actually a commercial real estate broker at one point when I was much younger, but again, I didn’t really get much exposure to, but it was interesting to see from the outside. and with regards to real estate, you know, fast forward to 2002, I’m now living in Los Angeles and the.com crashed had just happened in a, in the stock market.

And it I was sick of the stock market for two reasons. One is that, it was just too volatile for me. I’m just a really low risk, slow and steady guy. And to watch the market go up and down 30% a year, this was not for me. It wasn’t the right fit. More importantly, though, the biggest challenge for me was the lack of predictability from our retirement account.

You know, where am I in retirement account being 10, 20, 30 years with the volatility of the stock market. It just didn’t seem like a good fit for me.   So, I went to look for different ways to invest came across the concept of. Cashflow being probably the best fit for me for more predictable returns.

If I go through more low risk cash flow and then real estate was the obvious one for me to look at right up front. I love the fact that you get tasks load, but you’re investing an asset. you know, when you invest in a business, that would be great too.

Real estate, you know, there’s a little bit easier. Sometimes you can run a comps, understand the market better, et cetera. So I ended up starting to invest in real estate in 2002 in passively. And then, that’s basically when it started. almost 20 years now,

Seyla: [00:02:41] could you provide more insights of what are the benefits as a passive investing, especially in real estate?

Jeremy: [00:02:47] Yeah. Sure. I’ve actually had multiple conversations just this week alone about passive versus active.

So I started being passive because I was working at Disney headquarters at the time when I wanted to make that switch from the stock market. I know it just too busy with my job. And so I started passing. It was a natural fit for me and I was very uncomfortable with it. Now, the way that I like to define passive is control.

I give up control. I say, when someone’s active, they have control. If someone’s passive, they give up control. Now not everybody’s comfortable giving up control. Some people are, you know, they’re used to having control. Maybe they own a business and they just don’t want to give up control on the investing side.

and to me, like some people will say buy own a pool of 20 single family homes that are rentals that’s passive because I hire a property manager and I get the Tesla, but in my mind, it’s active because they have full control. They can, it can hire and fire the property manager. They may have to make decisions on, you know, what happens with total breaks or they buy a new one.

And most importantly, they can choose to refinance, sell whatever they want to do. They have full control over it, right? As soon they own a hundred percent of them, of those properties. When I invest passively, I’m a tiny piece of a bigger deal. And so I give up control. And what I tell people is that I feel like I’m going to give up control for diversification.

And so I get to put smaller pieces across a lot of deals. Which I love from a risk perspective. And I also specifically purposely diversify against asset classes, geographies and operators. So one of the benefits of being passive is that you can say, look, I want to get exposure to apartments, self-storage, mobile home parks, retail, strip centers, office, industrial hotels.

I’m just, you know, and I’m actually in all of those except for hotels and more. And, And so I feel like that asset class diversification that’s fantastic. Geography is very important too, you know, just to take a step back. There’s no way I can learn all those asset classes, myself and invested in all myself to get the diversified portfolio within each.

I can do it passively though.  geography, very important consideration. Some areas are growing. Some are shrinking, you can cherry pick as opposed to necessarily just being stuck to investing in your own backyard, which a lot of active investors do by definition. and I get to decide, okay, well, if there’s a hurricane area, I can choose the right asset classes that maybe won’t be hit as hurricanes as bad.

So there’s a lot of factors that go into the geography, let alone. As you, as it were, we’re seeing right now, there’s a mass Exodus out of some cities. And frankly, there’s been a migration into, let’s say Florida and Texas, and number one and two States projected for the next 10 years already for population growth.

You could target those, If that’s what you want to do. So you definitely got to get a lot of geographical diversification. I’m I’ve been, I at one point another invested across 43 different States so far, whether it’s in funds or individual assets. and then. operators. So I get to make a bet on a bunch of different people.

And one of the risks that I take on as a passive investor is that when I make a bet on somebody, I have fraud risk it’s management, risk, Ponzi, scheme risk. You can never get rid of those. And so you’ve got to be diversified across operators to make sure all your eggs aren’t one basket, like a Madoff situation, for example.

So it’s very important that once you’re going passive, you specifically become diversified to reduce some of the risks that comes up by being passive. So there’s a lot of benefits to pass and you get to. leverage someone else’s credit expertise, time, effort, team that built. there’s so many positives, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right food for everybody, for sure.

Seyla: [00:05:57] So Jeremy, when you receive an opportunity for you to invest in, with an operator, how do you vet a sponsor before you investing?

 Jeremy: [00:06:05] Yeah, that’s a good question. we could spend like hours talking about that. That’s true. but I will say this high level, first of all, I, my opinion, the most important consideration when you’re passive is who you’re making the bet on.

The second, most important thing is the property. And I like it. I just tell people, look, you can invest in the best property location and with the best tenant base, but if the person who’s running, it runs it into the ground. They’re going to have a vacant building and the keys are going to go back to the bank and you’re going to be foreclosed.

So who’s running it is really, really critical. High level personally, I look for someone who’s conservative, which matches my personality. Was looking to under promise in the projections, be conservative and over deliver for their investors. So they can build long-term relationships with investors.

I’m trying to avoid someone who has really amazing marketing, very big number and just being very aggressive. And you know, is looking to just attract as many investors as possible. Well, may underperformed because they’re having very high projections and they don’t really care because they have such a big marketing machine.

They’ll just go on to the next person and you know, that’s that. So I’m looking for that conservative person has a good personality fit with me. And, you know, naturally when you start to take a look gonna perform or how someone is modeled out that opportunity., if you have the right personality fit, you’ll often be on the same page because when you’re looking for a higher vacancy, the fact that they’ve already put it in there, Or if you’re looking for lower rent growth assumption, just to like really set the right they’ve already put it in there. So it’s really a lot about personality match for sure. there’s a lot of reading between the lines to really understand who you’re making a bet on. I do background checks every time I invest with somebody on all the managing members of the opportunity, which I find, unfortunately, a lot of passive investors don’t do it very important.

and we can get into much more detail. Obviously the numbers have to fit. You have to agree with the business plan. You have to assess the business plan. Make sure they’ve been really thorough, I call it all like trust, but verify, you want to make sure that, you know, if they ran comps for rents or sales, That you really read them carefully and don’t just take them for granted.

Do your own secondary research. If they’re claiming a population is growing, do your own research on the side. So it’s like trust, but verify and get to know who you’re making a bet on. So that’s a really quick high level. Some of what you have to consider.

Aileen: [00:08:04] One of the things you mentioned was, you do some background checks on, on your sponsors.

Could you touch a little bit on, what types of things you’re looking for when you do a background check?

Jeremy: [00:08:13] Yeah. yeah. Great question. So first thing I do, when I’m gonna run a background, check on somebody is I always give them a chance to explain something in advance. And this is part of the reading between the lines of testing somebody.

I’ll say, look, I need to run background checks on all the managing members. I need their name, phone number, and date of birth. And the truth is yeah. And home address. Okay. And so the truth, because I don’t really need all that necessarily. If it’s usual name, you’re going to find the person. I like to have it to make sure it matches.

But part of the reason is because I want to see, okay, test number one, they’re going to give me their home address or are they not going to give me the home address? And if they’re not, what else do they hiding? So that’s test number one. And then I always say, is there anything I should know before I run these background checks?

and if they don’t, I had a case recently, it was a few months ago. Somebody called me an investor. Cause I didn’t work a lot. So someone called me and they said, I did a background check on an operator. They told me there was an, I did it just like you said, I asked if in advance, they said, there’s nothing wrong.

They found a bankruptcy from you know, 14 years ago. Say now the question is, you know, on a credit report, the bankruptcy goes away after seven years, but it doesn’t go away in a background check. It’s still is there forever. maybe the operator said, Oh, I’m not okay. I tell them. And they’re not going to know because it was more than seven years.

So the person was saying to me, look, I don’t know what to do because they didn’t tell you about this. And clearly it was a material event. You know, they, they didn’t forget about it. It’s probably. So the question was, do you take the risk at that point? Do you, they move forward and just assume that okay.

It was a long time ago, whatever. And I said to the person, look, it’s not worth investing as many people, you can make a bet on. They didn’t, they weren’t honest with the, or they admitted it for whatever reason. Yeah. So just move on to the next, you know, so you look for bankruptcies, liens, judgments, I will look for repeated, history, even if they’ve won.

If you have, I once saw somebody who got sued by about 40 investors. Okay. In one state. Okay. And I don’t even know the outcome. It didn’t even matter of, I didn’t go look at the court cases in depth. Then I saw two years later, they got sued by 15 investors, presumably in another state. And so my only conclusion is they’re going from one state fraud and then they’re going to another state fraud, and then I’m moving somewhere else.

And whether or not they won the court cases, if someone’s being sued by 40 people, it’s not even worth like maybe there was nothing wrong, but it’s not even worth taking the risk. Because there’s a lot of people out there. So I look for all those types of things. You actually get a lot more information in that, but those are the major ones for sure.

Aileen: [00:10:27] So then is this conversation with them where you ask them about, their, About their address and everything like that. And anything that they want to tell you up front. Is that in the very first conversation that you have with an operator or is it after a couple of them?

Jeremy: [00:10:39] Yeah. Great question.

I don’t think I really get to the background check until I decided that it’s really worth doing enough for the background check costs money. I don’t really get into that discussion. I dig into numbers and make sure it’s the right fit. And then I’ll get to it. It’s extremely rare that I run into somebody that says, no, you can’t have any of my information or no, I don’t want you to run a background check.

Not that they have a choice, cause not like a credit check. You don’t need their permission. so I don’t think I’ve ever done it across an 18 years. Somebody I, and I may be wrong, but it’s been a while, but I don’t think anyone’s ever said don’t run a background. Check on me. I have, I have had a person say like my partners don’t want to give his home address.

Here’s the business address? Okay, which I think is actually reasonable. I can see why somebody would be a little bit concerned because what I don’t do is I don’t ask for like social security numbers or anything. Because I could use them to match them up, but I think that’s a little bit over the line. I probably get some people pushing back on me.

I could still use the business address, match it up. And the irony is that I’ll actually have the person’s address. I’ll have their social security number when I run it. They don’t know this, obviously. so it’s really rare to run into problems. I think it’s more common that somebody might not want to tell you about something or that you find something they should have told you about.

And then you got to wonder, okay, if, something came up again, what do I, how do I handle this?

Seyla: [00:11:41] And I agree, honesty and transparency. It’s really, really important in this business.  So just want to talk a little bit about the numbers you mentioned about the actual opportunity itself. So what key metrics are you looking for when you decide to invest in a deal?

Jeremy: [00:11:55] Great question. everyone’s gonna have their own metrics because depends on the type of investor you are. So keep in mind, I invest in stuff that’s 8200% occupied, stabilized. This may or may not have any value at upside.

I look for predictability of cash flows. I’m looking at a really stabilized property, highly occupied property. Now in that scenario, How we buy the property, the purchase price you’re paying is a multiple, the income is critical because this isn’t a strategy where we’re coming in and adding all kinds of value.

You can add some padding in case of property value goes down, et cetera. You know, for the most part, maybe that’s the value add a little bit sometimes depending on where we are in the cycle, but generally. I’m most concerned about the multiple, but I’m paying for the property. And how does that compare to market rate and where are we in the cycle?

And I am I at risk of buying at the wrong time yet when we get a good price in my risk of buying it the wrong time, where the properties will be worth less than two years from now. So I look at the cap rate, which is basically the inverse of the multiple that we’re paying for the property. I look at the projection cash flows.

Now, one of the first things I do. one of the first things I do you want to get a deal, look at the cap rate, compared to what I’ve seen in those asset classes. Yeah. In those areas and even understand if it looks like a good deal or not. And then look at the projected cash flows. If they don’t meet my personal cashflow targets, then again, it’s not something I’m going to invest in because everybody else had limited amount of capital.

You’ve got to stick to your guns with the targets you have, because you know, you’ll find a deal that fits the criteria for being reasonable. we’re recording us right now in, September, 2020. And it’s a tricky question. You’re asking me right this second, because I feel like we’re in the middle of a cycle beginning to reset, right?

So we’re in the middle of COVID we’re in a recession. And the cycle typically resets in a recession and what’s going to happen is that specific cash flow targets and cap rate targets from the past cycle that I held through the whole time, depending on each asset class with different. And they want to do is now I’m going to have to assess okay, for the next cycle, what cashflow targets and what cap rate targets do I have to have at the beginning?

But it’s hard to assess that until we see whether how much and whether prices adjust, which I’m expecting, they will. And then we have to see how much they adjust and then I’ll have to figure out okay, on where things are starting today in this cycle, I’m going to target a certain amount and stick to that.

And what I do throughout a cycle is that I’ll have a target And as the cycle matures and prices go up, eventually let’s say it’s asset class a okay, it’s too expensive. I can’t get my cash flow anymore. Typical deals. I’ll just drop that, that asset class, but I’ll continue with the other ones. And eventually I get to the point where there’s no asset classes left and that’s when I go onto the sidelines in the last cycle I got, I went onto the sidelines at the end of 2016, and then I started to really push my sponsors to sell because it was, everything was too expensive to me at that point, except for the odd, unique situation that comes up here and there.

So that’s how I handle the pricing, but it’s, I know it’s a long answer and didn’t really answer your question, but I can’t really answer that question for the next cycle yet. It’s too early.

Aileen: [00:14:35] how do you determine at which point the market is in the cycle?.

Jeremy: [00:14:39] Yeah.  a lot of it has to do with why watching what happens high level.

So just let’s take a step back to 2009 per second. So in 2009, we had a lot of single family foreclosures, unfortunately. And what that happened there from that is that the result was that there was a lot of apartment demand. People had to go rent. They had a bad credit. They, you know, if they got foreclosed, they couldn’t necessarily buy easily.

So rental of apartments really withdrawn and investors knew it. So high level you can know, okay. Apartments are going to be really, really hot. And they were from 2009 to 2013 after which that’s when to me, they got too expensive and I dropped that piece right now. The cool thing about the beginning of a cycle is that most asset classes are reasonable because there’s a reset.

I’d say you’re probably going to be in the clear on pretty much everything. And then what you have to do is decide for yourself. Okay. At what point, do I want to invest in the same asset class with a similar risk or even more risk because there’s less runaway left in this cycle where the cashflow is lower and lower and lower.

And I just have my own level of comfort where I just draw the line and say, you know, apartments started at. I’m just making this up, you know, eight cap and below a seven or six and a half cap, maybe 150 basis points. I’m just going to get to the point where I’m not comfortable with this anymore.

and then somewhat simplifying it, but I’m really not because I do actually set targets for each asset class. And that’s how I keep out of trouble in my opinion. That’s why I didn’t invest in an average apartment in 2018 or 19. It wasn’t just because I thought we were at the end of cycle was because I thought they were overpriced as well for that reason. So that’s how I handle that. It’s not, it’s not perfect science. Everyone’s going to have their own opinion, but I strongly recommend that people guide themselves from a high level cycle perspective. So think of it, you know, the deals you can get 2013 versus 2019 are different, both because interest rates went down, but also because. The multiples were going up and the prices are going up and you have to recognize its cycles and that at some point you’ve gotta be very careful and cut, cut that cycle off. Another thing you can do by the way is, um, we they’re long recovery this past recovery in terms of the economy, you can look at an average historical of recoveries and you can start to put on some numbers and say, okay, if the average recovery, so the last until 2015, once we got to 2016 or 17, You’re really in the late innings.

You’ve gotta be careful, even though we kept going for three, four more years, you have to be pretty careful because they’re in an illiquid asset and you can’t just celebrate it quickly, takes time. And you know, I’d rather sell in 2018 than 2022. I think that that’s a guess at this point.

Seyla: [00:17:00] So you also mentioned about right now is a unique time to invest in real estate in your opinion, is it a good time still to invest?

Jeremy: [00:17:07] I think it’s going to be a great time. Once we actually see the effects of this recession. Now, what I think is happening is recession. It’s a very unique cause if the government stepped in with stimulus very quickly, Unlike the last recession, where there was a lot of stimulus, but there was a delay for a year and we actually felt the effects of the recession this time.

I, what I like to say is I think the recession has been delayed by stimulus. And so what I’m waiting for personally is to see when the stimulus is going to wear off and if it’s going to fully wear off or not. So I, my personal guess at the moment is that’s going to wear off after the elections. So universal basic income is a concept that, the government’s hand, a check to every household, let’s say each month, to help the economy going. And some of it has to do with income inequality. There’s a lot of different reasons, and so the $600 check we’ve been getting in the U S every month up to a certain household income is actually just a check given to everybody.

It meets that criteria. That’s, that’s the universal, basic, basic income, although it’s not universal, it’s, it’s cut off to certain income level, normally Universal’s for everybody. And so what I’m a little bit wondering about is it let’s say if, depending on who gets elected, there may be interest in having universal basic income to be a permanent feature of the U S because of this income inequality, because of the fact that we have really bad recession right now.

And if that happens, I think that the general effect, so the recession will be lower. There’ll be more money for people to spend than there would have been otherwise. If it doesn’t happen, then I feel like there are sessions basically just been delayed by stimulus for a year. So I’m waiting to see what happens after the election who gets elected, how that affects taxes and investor sentiment.

What happens the stimulus? Is it going fully wear off or partially wear off in the long-term? Okay. Once it wears off, what’s going to happen because. At some point, we’re in a recession and it’s horrible recession. And eventually people won’t have free money from the government fully, and they’re not going to be able to afford their apartments.

Some people, they won’t have jobs, some people they’re going to have to, you know, apartments. They’re just easy to understand. So some people have to move double up with other people or move back home. Vacancy will go up, rents, come down. When supply goes up from vacancy. And then eventually, you know, net operating incomes come down, property values come down and then even investor sentiment can go down when that happens.

And so people are willing to pay less of a multiple. So we had, those are typical domino Domino’s that fallen recession, but we haven’t seen any yet because there’s been all this artificial stimulus. And so the recession has been delayed. So the long answer to your question is that. I don’t think it’s a good time to invest the right to segment, especially right before an election, even if everything was perfect would be a tough time.

But I think that that’s something to look at very closely as of next year. And we could go from a very challenging time to invest in probably the best time to invest, which is the beginning of a cycle. So it’s going to come up soon. 

Seyla: [00:19:37] will you be able to share with us where some of the resources that you use or utilize when you are doing a research on the economy itself?

Jeremy: [00:19:45] Sure. you know, it’s interesting, there’s a lot of different ways you can look at it. I would say one of the most important things is to not trust the mainstream media, just for everything you’re reading.

I think it’s important to get some of that. It’s important to also just look at pure data and trying to interpret it for yourself. I’ll give you a great example. The I’m going to give you some rough numbers. Cause I can’t remember from what I’d read this morning, but the economic recovery as far as is not been bad, right?

COVID in that maybe I think 54% of jobs have been recovered so far I’m getting it’s a rough week, but it’s a rough, it’s either 54, 58, one or two. It’s coming to mind. But if you slice it into part time jobs, recuperate it or full-time jobs, recuperated that’s different full time jobs are cooperator and in the low forties, Part time jobs recuperated in the sixties.

So it’s averaging out to the fifties. When now you start now, so you can see a headline. Oh, you know, Americans have recovered over half the jobs. You’re like, that’s pretty good. But now when you say, Oh, no, only four to 10 people that recuperated full time jobs, six out of 10 have recuperated part time jobs.

And by the way, those part time jobs, maybe they’re only averaging half hours. That’s not good.  So the mainstream media can have a headline of whatever it chooses and you’ve got to dig into the numbers and understand it for yourself and really understand what’s going on. So it’s very, very important.

So I read a combination of the mainstream, the media, like CNBC. I like a Drudge report only because it’s easy to click on the links. And a few other sources that I read every day. Just whatever your favorite sites are for mainstream media. Yahoo finance is very good as well. I read some other stuff that isn’t more mainstream.

So one that I really like is calculated risk blog.com, which is, all it does is really publish the data and then you can, and they put it in charts and you can look at the visual and decide for yourself what it looks like. And you get some of this kind of data that I’m talking about. From them. they do a little bit of a commentary too, and I find sometimes a little optimistic, but either way, there’s very little commentary and there’s no slant to the headline.

They don’t even have a headline. They just publish the numbers, right? Another one that I like, which is a little bit actually very negative. And I would recommend that if you’re going to watch or read this one, that you just ignore half of what they post. It’s a little conspiracy theories a little bit sometimes, but these are ex wall street guys.

When they published the numbers, they’re very good at slicing into them and really making you understand what’s really going on below the surface, which is zero hedge.com. I really liked that one. and then.  another one, if you’re curious to know what’s going on with inflation and some other numbers where like government published is one step, but they changed the way that they used to measure it, just to make it look more even, you know, for their community.

But you can look  at theshadowstats.com that helps you to understand what’s really going on with real inflation, which is about six to 8% right now, if it was measured the way it used to be versus the inflation they’re claiming, which is 2% or whatever it is, which is. Real inflation. Doesn’t really 2% when you have, you know, the cost of school, the cost of medical bills and everything.

It’s not like everyone’s imagining it. They’re just changing the way they measure it.  so those are some ones that very quickly that are coming to mind, but I definitely recommend doing a combination of mainstream and then non-mainstream or data to really understand what’s going on. I will tell you, I personally read about one, probably one and a half to three hours a day.

yeah, maybe two to three hours a day, actually. And, what happens when you read that much is that you, you just take, you get all these articles and you wake up one day and you’re like, Oh, I understand. It’s like a painter or a puzzle. You get one piece one day, you don’t know where it goes. And then another one, and then you wake up and you’re like, Oh, these ones we’ll go together here.

You know, it’s hard to explain, but then you get a really good high level sense of what’s happening overall. If you continue reading all the time,

Seyla: [00:23:02] Thank you so much, Jeremy, for sharing all the resources about the economies. We will definitely check them out and wanting to learn more about our current cycle and what’s going on with the economies out there.

 So how has real estate investing impacted your life?

Jeremy: [00:23:15] Yeah, look. I don’t want to sound like an infomercial. I’m not here to sell anything, but real estate investing it’s completely changed my life. And it’s really about the passive cashflow.

Okay. It just, the real estate has been a great vehicle for me for passive cashflow, but it got me out of the corporate world in 2007. So I’ve been a full time passive cashflow investor since 2007, which has given me a, just an enormous amount of flexibility and the cashflow has really changed my life and it was really mostly thanks to real estate investments and stuff outside of real estate.

but you know, it enables me to work from home and I’ve just focused on building my snowball over time just to continue the cash flow going and so I can’t understate how much the champion. I basically I worked in the corporate world for over 10 years. I have an MBA from the Wharton school.

My last corporate job was Toyota headquarters before then it was Disney headquarters. So I was a middle level manager and these big companies and it just, everything changed. And it went from okay, I’m working per hour for somebody to now I’m home focused on building my family and I happen to love investing out.

I always have even before real estate, even with the stock market. And so it’s a really, really good fit for me. I get to do what I love and now I get to do it, you know, and actually organize my own schedule, that type of thing. So it’s been fantastic truly.

Seyla: [00:24:21] So if someone wanted to invest in real estate passively, to be successful in that, what Is the one thing that make them successful?

Jeremy: [00:24:29] I’ll give you a couple of things. Cause a couple of things are coming to mind.  number one, I understand timing cycle timing is critical. I think a lot people don’t understand that. don’t consider that so well, there’s a reason why Warren Buffett is sitting on the sidelines for years.

He understands timing. You understand that the really importance of timing in real estate, it’s just absolutely critical. You can invest in the best property with the best operator with the best location in 2007, right? Been foreclosed in 2010. You can imagine with the worst property, with the worst operator in a worse location in 2010, and it made it a lot of money in 2017, when it sold.

That’s just timing. So timing is critical, and you have to be very patient. That’s another thing as a result, it’s really not worth jumping into the wrong thing because it’s illiquid asset. You can’t just press sell on your computer screen and get your money. So you have to think this in advance. You’ve got to think far ahead as well.

And when you’re investing passively, you don’t have control. So you’re getting locked into a deal where you can’t choose when to sell. You may have a vote, but your vote is a very small piece. So you have to very long-term mindset where you say. You know, if I’m investing in this asset today, what’s going to happen in the next 10 years.

And that’s a very hard question to answer, right? Because there, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about. You know, there’s a flying drone, right? That are eventually, I think Uber is going to have, self-driving cars and how’s that going to affect the demand for certain types of real estate and where people live, telecommuting is going to get more and more common.

How is that going to affect where people are gonna demand certain types of real estate? and then just demographic trends. So for example, senior living assisted living. If you look at the G the pockets in relation trends, it’s almost obvious it’s going to have more and more demand for the next decade.

That seems like a pretty good bet. If you’re trying to look for something predictable, Whereas retail, large, you know, I like using extreme example in close large retail mall. Very little predictability for the next 10 years. That’s easy to see one year out. But what about when you’re looking at like industrial properties?

Okay. A lot of people love them right now, but Amazon’s in the middle of talking to one of the biggest, mall owners in the U S to possibly buy the entire company, take all of their malls that are vacant and make warehouses. And now all of a sudden. The warehouses that had a certain value in certain locations are not worth as much necessarily because other people may go and actually repurpose malls.

And so the predictability of industrial properties, the next five, 10 years, it’s hard to say, right? If you’re thinking that far out, if you think just today, you’re like, Oh my God. e- commerce, you know, but you’ve got to think further out. I think a lot of investors don’t think far enough out. So avoid the landmines when they’re investing is somebody today.

They’re maybe looking at the next couple of years, but they’re not thinking five, 10 years out into this e-liquid investment. So those are, they’re all very important pieces for sure. When you’re passive.

Seyla: [00:27:03] Wonderful. Jeremy, I’m pretty sure that you possibly have some tools or techniques that you use in order to improve the efficiencies of your business or personal life, will, you’ll be able to share with us as well.

Jeremy: [00:27:14] Sure. Yeah, I laughed because my, like right now, if you click on my scheduling link, you can schedule a call with me in early October. So it’s about a month out. and so I have to be very, very efficient cause I’ve built such a big network. I’m just busy all the time. So first thing I I’ve used, which I’ve used.

For many, many years now, before it was really common was a scheduling link. You know, you’re gonna want to have either schedule once Calendly. there’s a few other good ones that people use to schedule their time and they sync up real time with your calendar. That’s invaluable. Another tip that I highly recommend, which a lot of people don’t think about.

And I, you know, maybe a lot of mail clients, email clients, maybe can’t do it, but I have outlook desktop. And in there I can time delay an email. And I timed delay emails all the time for two main purposes. The first one is. If I want a high probability of someone three, my email, instead of it getting lost, I think you’re better off sending an email on Tuesday morning and 9:00 AM instead of Friday night at 9:00 PM.

Because it’s going to get lost over the weekend. What would I do with, so as I ask people, if I want to reach you, let’s say an operator. I’m just getting to know what’s the best way for me to reach. You too, as a text, as an email, and if I’m going to send an email, what time do I get to you? Because I’ll give you two examples, two different operators.

I know one of them is on the East coast. He gets into the office at five 30 in the morning. That’s 2:30 AM my time. Pacific. If I send them an email and I time to late for the next day at two 30, am I get a response within an hour or two? If I send it in the middle of day, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Another one here in LA. If I sent him an email at 7:00 AM, I’ll get a response within an hour or two. If he’s in the office at seven, by send it to him. But half the time I send it to him at 2:00 PM, I don’t hear back. So optimizing who you’re dealing with and when you’re sending your emails is important.

Another trick that I do to avoid too many emails is. When somebody sends me an email at 7:00 PM. Okay. And I want to finish my emails and not have more email tonight. What I’ll do is instead of replying to it right away, and you get other replied at 8:00 PM, when they reply back to you, I time to lay for 9:00 AM the next morning.

This way, you know, I want, I want to hear back from them tomorrow. I won’t have more work on my plate tonight. That’s another important tool, you know, to use from a time that I use it all the time, time to all the time. and, um, what else do I use for efficiency? I set structure my day so that I have calls in the middle of the day, but I do emails in the morning emails in the afternoon and the calls in the middle of the day.

So it’s through my scheduling link. It’s structured or very specific time slots.  just to be strategic about that. And then I also have calls that are not scheduled mid morning and then calls it or not schedule later in the afternoon. And that’s in between before I do emails or after whatever.

So it’s a very structured day that I have. That’s very hard for me to change from because I can’t get so much done if I make any changes to it. No. if you’re, if you’re really, really busy, you have to be very, very structured or it’s just not gonna work very well. I also try to limit most of my calls to half an hour.

And really even if they have to schedule another time, it doesn’t matter because. I hate to put an hour in, and then you’ve only spoken to somewhere for 40 minutes and I could have used that time slot for somebody else. You know, I’d rather, you know, try and fit everything into half an hour and then move on to the next person.

So anyway, those are some of the, some of the tips that I use.

Aileen: [00:30:10] Oh, that’s really great. I think we’re going to implement some of those too, so thank you for sharing. And then, so if our listeners wanted to find a little bit more about you, Jeremy I’m, where can they go? 

Jeremy: [00:30:18] actually, there’s not much about me.

I don’t have a website I’m just really under the radar, but you’re welcome to email me, you know, if you’re an investor, and you’re just having more questions about this. If you’re an experienced investor, you want a network. If you’re an operator who has deals, I have my own investor group. You’ve another investor group and you want to network, you can contact me for any reasons.

I’m happy to network. the easiest way to reach me is my email. It’s a J roll, J R O L L at roll investments, R O L L investments with an s.com. So JRoll@rollinvestments.com is the best way to reach me. I should have said at the beginning, but I’m not an investment advisor or anything, but I’m happy to brainstorm or network with people.

Aileen: [00:30:53] awesome. Thank you so much. We really learned a lot from you today, Jeremy. We really enjoyed having our conversation.

Jeremy: [00:30:58] Oh yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me on. I hope it’s helpful for your, for your listeners.

Aileen:  absolutely. Thank you so much.