Episode 47: Growing Real Estate with David Olds


Episode 47: Growing Real Estate with David Olds


Real estate is a very risky business to undertake. You need to be very determined and have ample knowledge if you want to survive in such a career. In this episode of Grab the Map, David Olds tells us about what got him started in the real estate business in the first place, what he did to learn most of the knowledge he knows and how he does his business nowadays.

[0:53] David mentions that in the lifecycle of being an investor, everybody's just hopefully looking up and trying to grow.

[1:38] David grew up in Boston. He went to the University of Massachusetts and got a degree in criminal justice. He talks about doing various jobs like being a retail manager and working in a hardware store. He got interested in the real estate business when him and his wife got married and bought their first house in 2002 when the realtor told them about foreclosure. He also went to a RIA meeting when he read about it in the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

[5:57] He got anxious a few days before the conference because he's very introverted, but David says it was one of the best decisions he ever made because he learned a lot about real estate because of it. During the great recession, he sold everything and decided to move to Chattanooga, Tennessee with his wife and brother because of real estate prices dropping heavily everywhere else.

[8:07] David wasn't exactly a full-time real estate investor once he moved. He still had a regular job and just did the real estate business every chance he could.

[8:37] He says that they were successful because they were willing to do what nobody else would do, work very hard for it and because they were “too stupid to quit”. He talks about putting up a hundred bandit signs every Friday night and how much hard work it requires to do just that.

[12:41] David explains how he runs his business nowadays. He says that he spends the most time in wholesaling bid because that's where the active investing is. His company is split into different departments who handle different types of work. They do their business on a big scale, which attracts joint venture businesses with investors all over the country who they help with their unsellable properties.

[14:32] His business is mostly marketed in the 37 disclosure states, but they still do deals with the other non-disclosure states. He says its because its easier to do business in the states where public information on the sale can be readily available.

[16:01] David talks about the problems he had with not being able to loan because he didn't have enough credit to his name. As expected, the recession did nothing to help and just made it worse for him because banks didn't lend as much money as they used to because of it. David took a course of someone called Chris Kirschner where he learned about owner financing. He says that great credit is unnecessary when the owner can finance it to you. There is always a way, you just have to think about it hard enough.

[20:55] David's team was small when they just started. It was just him, his wife, and his brother. He says that they didn't have a lot of money but instead, a lot of time. They all spent it in renovating the properties they bought. They decided to build an office when they realized they didn't want to pick up rent from people. He mentions that they went all the way to around 70 properties with that small team they had.

[25:39] David gives a very interesting analogy about a big hill and a wagon to explain what they went through to get to where they are now. He says it took 4-5 years to sort everything out in the business like tax management and various other things.

[30:19] David says that its nice having freedom and flexibility as an entrepreneur even though they work harder for themselves than anybody else. Him and his wife were able to travel to places they wanted to go and create the life they wanted to because of it.

[33:26] Doing the dirty work yourself gives you an idea how much things would cost and prevent you from overspending on quoting somebody else, which saves you so much money on the long run.

Connect with David Olds at https://www.instagram.com/davidoldsrei

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