Unlock Real Estate Investing Success |Jeff Bowler | Indy's Real Estate Gurus

Rick Ripma (00:00.206)
Have you ever wanted to invest in real estate, but maybe you didn't want to manage the properties, maybe you didn't want the risk of being the person in charge? Well, the real estate agent today named Jeff Bowler. Jeff has a company, it's called Reeliti which is R -E -E -L -I -T - I, R -E -E -L -I -T -I. And it is a very interesting concept. It's an exceptional.

idea if you ask me, if you're somebody who wants to invest in real estate, take advantage of real estate and that investment quality. Along with that, he talks about being a real estate agent. He's been a real estate agent for a long time. He talks about how when you get into real estate, how to get going. And the fact that real estate is a lot about being out there just living your life, but connecting with people. So please.

I think you'll find it interesting. I hope you watch the show today or listen to the show. And I really do appreciate you being here. Thanks so much. Welcome to Indy's Real Estate Gurus, your ultimate guide to the dynamic world of real estate in Indiana. And I'm Rick Ripma, your hardworking mortgage guy. And I've been in real estate and mortgages for over 24 years. And I'm Ian Arnold, a loan officer on Rick's hardworking mortgage team. And we are both with the Pfizer Mortgage Group.

together, we'll empower you with expert advice, market trends, and successful stories from guru realtors and local experts. Whether you're a homeowner, investor, or pro, join us as we navigate the thriving indie real estate market. Now get ready to unlock the doors of success, one episode at a time. Jeff Bowler, did I pronounce it right? Yes. All right. You know, I don't pronounce most of these things right, so I always have to double check. And you're with Vision One Real Estate. That's correct.

You know, I wanted to say Reality because we talked about that. Right. And you're with Reality, which is R -E -E -L -I -T -I. Correct. Which is a really interesting company that you have, which I want to talk about, but not yet. OK. OK. Hold on. All right. Hold on. All right. I got it. Perfect. So what we want to do is we want to hear about your life before real estate. Where did you grow up? You know, those kind of things. So we can get an idea.

Rick Ripma (02:20.046)
of who you are, what you do, why you are who you are. Sure. So I grew up in Maryland and our last name was actually pronounced Baller before we came over to the United States. It's German. And then it got changed. And so grew up in Maryland, went to school first couple of years down in Florida. And then last couple of years,

at the University of South Carolina. So I'm proud to be a South Carolina Gamecock and that's one of my big allegiances in life. And so I take pride in that. And then actually I was in the software world forever. So I did an internship while I was at South Carolina with IBM. And I thought I was gonna work for IBM for the rest of my life. When I went to graduate,

They had their first round of layoffs ever in the history of the company, so I had to pivot, which was good. I mean, it kind of set me up for pivoting in life, which we often have to do. And so I did a little bit in insurance, got all my insurance certifications, found out I didn't like that. And at that time, some of the dust had worn off of the

IBM announcement and they had pivoted and started pushing more towards their business partners. And so I actually went to work for an IBM business partner and that propelled my career in software and I did that really until I started in real estate and did both. I had two full -time jobs for several years. So you did.

Real estate and insurance? Software. And software? Yeah. Okay, you didn't like insurance. I didn't like insurance. Insurance was, it was a whole situation, but they put me in a bad situation that didn't work out really well. So no, I was in software forever, really, until about 2016 when I started Vision One. Okay, so were you...

Rick Ripma (04:45.678)
And software, did you develop software, sell? What did you do? I was in marketing, sales and marketing. The sales and marketing part of it. So, worked for some very large software companies. Ones that you would probably know like SAP and Oracle. And most of it was on the road sales. And that's actually why I decided to get into

real estate, I was on the road about two or three weeks a month and I had small children and I was like, this is not going to work. I can't continue to do this if I want to be a dad. And so I called my mom and you know, we were talking about it and I said, I'm really frustrated because I'm never home and you know, I feel like I'm, you know, missing out on my kids' childhood. And she said,

Why don't you get into real estate?" And I'm like, I don't know, why don't I? Right? And she was like, you know, because growing up in Maryland, she had her own brokerage, which is about the same size as my brokerage today. She had about 10, 12 agents. I have 10. And so she said, you know, I can help you. And I was like, okay. And so I did that, did that part -time, and then it kind of ...

graduated into a full time and yeah, so that's kind of how things evolved. I gotta think though that who you worked for, the companies you worked for, the training that you received really helps you in real estate coming from software. Absolutely. Most, and I will tell you the biggest thing that helped me was the negotiation. So obviously you're in sales, you learn to negotiate that and I dealt with

cfos c e o's uh... you know the c level uh... people with in organizations and so i learned how to negotiate with them uh... which helped me to you know negotiate on uh... you know real estate transactions to any of not too much different uh... because obviously most uh... real estate

Rick Ripma (07:09.902)
Purchases for most people it's the single largest financial transaction. They'll ever do yeah in their lifetime. So yeah, it's never emotional or any of that is it no Never emotion So you so you started vision one 2016 yes, and then you were full -time real estate. Yes at that point Yeah, then part -time correct, so then you then you go from From that to you you start Reeliti correct which again?

If anybody's watching, you can see it on his hat. And that is a company that I find extremely interesting. So tell us what you do, what that company does. We started that in August of 22, and it is a business to help business owners invest in real estate through fractional methods. And so...

Fractional investing in real estate has been going on forever. Most people think of when they think of fractional, they think of timeshares. But this is different. You actually own a portion of the real estate. And what we have found is there's a lot of people out there, a lot of business owners that would like to diversify and get out of just being in the stock market. And...

actually participating in the real estate market, but one, they don't know anybody. Two, they don't know how to even get started. Three, they don't want to deal with the three T's as we call them, the tenants, the toilets, and the trash. And four, they don't have a ton of money, right? They may have 20, 50, whatever. But they...

You know in real estate investing you have to have at least 20 to 25 percent down. Right. Right. So. Yeah. It's very expensive to get in as an individual investor isn't it? Yes it is. And so with Reeliti we solve that. We find the properties, most of the properties that we find, 90 percent of them are off market. So we either find them through wholesalers or we wholesale them ourselves. So we find an individual that wants to get rid of their

Rick Ripma (09:33.294)
property and they don't want to do the typical real estate transaction. And then we take the property and look at it and make sure that it's a good property. We determine if there's any rehab costs. And then once the property, and then we bring the people together to purchase the property. And it could be...

You know, we could sell 10 shares or 8 shares or 6 shares. We sold one last year that was 3 shares, right? And so we bring the people together and then we close on the transaction, then we find the renter, we put the renter in the house, and then we manage that real estate for them. So really, the investor doesn't have to do anything. They don't...

All they have to do is sign some papers and contribute some money. And then cash in the dividend checks. Well, that's the hard part. Yeah, right. Cash in the dividend checks. That's the tough one is they have to do that. So if they're, when they're looking at doing that, because I think it's a brilliant idea. I know people who do it on apartment buildings, on big buildings, of course, but you're doing on small investment properties, you know, which makes it... Single family, multi -family, yes. Yeah.

So one to four units or is it do you go bigger than four? We typically like I think our largest one we have done so far is five. But certainly we would look at that. But when you get into apartments, as you know, it's their syndication rules and and regulations and it gets a lot more complicated. So yeah, we try to stay like.

We do college towns, we'll do destination properties, so like if four families want to get together and purchase a property, we'll do that. And what's great about that is, you know, a lot of families don't want to, they have some trepidation about doing that because they don't, what if something happens with the relationship? Well, we manage all that. So we're the bad guy. So we say you can't use that.

Rick Ripma (11:54.766)
uh... week if you want to use that we've already got it rented so we're the bad guys who don't worry about that so uh... it makes it a lot easier for that to happen yeah i i have a i have a friend who uh... he wants to buy his first home and to get more value to buy a more expensive home i've tried to show him where you can buy two three or four unit property absolutely so i

To me, I think that's a really good thing to do. So I've tried to show him that because it really increases your buying power. It makes you can get a nicer, a more expensive place. And his plan all along is to buy a house, live there a year or two, and then move out and rent it out. So it makes total sense. Total sense. But what you're saying is exactly what his biggest concern is. He doesn't want to manage it.

Yeah, he doesn't want to deal with the three T's. Exactly. And he said, he's like, well, I don't know what to do. I said, well, it's really easy. Don't tell anybody you own it and get a management company. Exactly. They don't have to know you own the property. No, absolutely not. Yes. And that's perfect. And that's what a lot of people do. And those property managers, we're really good at it. This is what we do all the time. And so we know what tenants to...

look for and what tenants to stay away from, right? And we are like one of the things that we do when we buy all our properties is we get a home warranty, right? So that that takes care of any of the larger ticket items, like if a hot water heater goes out or the HVAC goes out, we just call the home warranty company. Now, obviously you have to deal with a home warranty company that's worth something, but there's a...

The one that we deal with is Armadillo, and they're really good. Yeah. And that's important because – and that has to help you when you're selling real estate, too, because you know what's important, or at least if you're not actually out there selling anymore, your agents, they know, okay, you want to get a home warranty, you want this home warranty, because we know they take care of it because we use them, right? Correct. Yes, exactly. Makes a big difference. So if somebody wants to get ahold of you and talk to you, I guess, about –

Rick Ripma (14:12.526)
I don't know any of this. They want to know about buying real estate. They want to know about investing. I want to hear about that. And then after that, I want to know more about how you decide on how many shares to sell for a year. Investors? Yes. Okay. All right. So best way to get in touch with me is jeffboehler at realty .com. And Boehler is, how do you spell Boehler? B -O -L -L -E -R. Okay. So J -E -F -F B -O -L -L -E -R. And it is R -E -E -L -I -T -I.

Or they can call 317 -804 -5333 which also spells Jeff. So 804 -JEFF, that was my number that I came up with when I first got into... 804 -JEFF, see I can remember that. 804 -JEFF. I don't know why though, it's really hard for me when I'm dialing it to... Okay, where's the J? Right, I know, nowadays nobody knows how to do that, you know? That's the hard part, yeah, it's terrible. And to get ahold of...

To get a hold of me or Ian, you can give us a call. Best number is, I gotta remember this new number. I put a new number on. 463 -223 -9592. It's 463 -223 -9592. I don't know if you have this, but numbers change all the time for me. Well, I've had that number, that 804. I've gone out of my way to make sure that I've been able to save that 804, Jeff.

because it was with AT &T and now I've ported it over to Google Voice and so hopefully I'll be able to keep that forever. Those are the ones I find troublesome. It's really with my CRMs. You do a CRM and then you need a number for the CRM. And the CRM says, well you can't use that number, you've got to get a new number. You've got to get a new number and now you've got to get everybody used to that.

And so it's like, I'm done changing CRM. Right. Yeah. Yes. I don't know how, you know, I now have two of them because I'm afraid to get rid of my other one because I need, still need that number. Sure. Sure. So for a $3 number, I'm stuck. Yes. You're spending $50, right? Or whatever. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So, so let's get into how you decide. How do we determine shares? Okay. So well, we typically, first of all,

Rick Ripma (16:35.662)
All of the real estate that we purchase we have some criteria that we like to use one We like to get at least 10 % return on our investment for our investors on an annual basis, right? So they're gonna You know put in $20 ,000. We want to make sure they're gonna get $2 ,000 a year, right and then we want to make sure that there's significant upside on the appreciation

We just bought a house in Hortonville, which is right north of Graham Park, and it's got some huge upside because of what, you know, Westfield's doing, and that area is going to explain. No, it wasn't Hortonville on Greenacres. Probably. Yeah. Probably a lot of people never heard of Greenacres. Well, it is north of Graham Park, so you could say it's Greenacres, right?

But in that one, typically what we try to do is we try to make our shares feasible. And so we try to like to try to keep them in the 20 to 30 ,000 range. Those shares were 28 ,000 a share. And you can buy multiple shares. We had one person buy four shares. And then we had four other individuals purchase just

one share. So really just depends, but we like to try to keep our share cost in that 20 ,000 to 30 ,000 range because we feel like that's a feasible amount for people. And then the last criteria we use is we really want the rehab to be less than 20 % of the overall purchase price. So,

because our goal is to buy and hold. And we typically just buy and hold for three to five years, and then we'll sell it, and then we'll rinse and repeat, right? So we want to get people significant upside, but during that time, we want to get them at least a 10 % return on their investment, and then get them to the point where they're obsessed with this, right? They want to do it more and more, right? So, yeah.

Rick Ripma (19:00.398)
For me, I do the same thing with cars. So there's a company that you can buy pieces of cars. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, but it's really inexpensive. So, but you can buy as many as you want. But most of them, not all of them, but most of them are at $100 a share. Okay. But they may be selling, you know, 150, 200, 300, 400. Well, there's obviously net jets, right? There's a lot of people, there's a lot of fractional.

uh... things out there uh... so yeah i think it's a great idea and i i mean i've done what i found is for me i've done extremely well if i stay to the cars i know right the only car i haven't done well on is a car it's called the haze and i always wanted to do haze it's an italian car i believe ok it was a thirty something i don't remember because i don't like to remember things i lose money on it

I thought every other one I'd seen is $3 -4 million. Now, they were really custom, beautiful art pieces of art. This one was nice, but it wasn't at that level. I knew it wasn't. I'd lost money on it. But everything else, I buy the cars I know. I know they're inexpensive. You know what the value is. Yep. And I've done well. But I don't have to worry about the management that you don't do that. You guys, that's the beauty of what you're doing to me. Right.

you take care of everything, and then I still get a great return, and I own real estate, which is very, very safe. Right, exactly. And you obviously have to trust that we have the expertise, but I've been in real estate almost 20 years now, and I have a good bit of experience with buying real estate on my own for investment purposes. And that's really, that was the impetus for me to get

Started with this is that you know I always had lots of people approaching me to invest and I wanted it to be I wanted there to be a mechanism that Would be easier for them to do that so you know yeah, and you've you've definitely found one yes me I think it's again. I think it's a phenomenal. Thank you idea. I just think I have any money I you know it's been slow no I I have

Rick Ripma (21:24.878)
You know, you're always diversifying, right? Sure. And so real estate is a real important piece to diversify in. And so anybody who's listening, they really should at least talk to you about it if they have, I mean, you gotta have about $30 ,000. Yes, $20 ,000, $30 ,000, correct. Yes. Yeah. And then you, and it's, in real estate, I think real estate is a phenomenal investment right now because we are way under.

the volume of homes that we need. I saw a statistic yesterday, and I don't remember the exact numbers, but we have like 40 million more people in the United States and we have three million less homes. That's why you see all these apartment buildings and homes going up like crazy because they can't fill the demand. Now our builders, they used to supply about 20 % of the inventory and now they supply about 40.

Just because there's not enough people selling their homes and they're not producing enough homes and that's why all these apartments are going up because they got to have some housing for them, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the builders are still under building. Yes. You know, it's not like they're building enough homes. When you look at the numbers, they aren't building enough. No, and you can only build so many homes and they're having shortages of supplies and shortages of labor. And so,

It is a, it's a conundrum, right? I mean, it's a, it's really unfortunate, but yeah, there's way, there needs to be a lot more building than there, than there currently is. So what is your perfect investor? Somebody, I mean, if somebody's listening and they're like, I wonder if I should do this. I, and they're probably not one perfect, but what kind of the basics of somebody to make that decision to at least talk to you and see if it makes sense. Right.

And there's a lot of different ways to get money. I mean, obviously, if you have cash lying around, that's the best way. But you can do a HELOC, you can do a self -directed IRA. There's a number of different ways to be able to do a loan on your 401k if you wanted to do it. But the best person for us is somebody that's either not invested in real estate,

Rick Ripma (23:49.774)
They own their own home. They know enough about real estate to be dangerous. But they want to diversify. They want to put some money other than just in the stock market to insulate them from anything that would happen there. And somebody that either has not done any real estate investing,

before or somebody like you talked about who has done real estate investing in the past but maybe got burned by a bad tenant or you know they got they found themselves you know just working on the house on the weekends instead of taking time with their family right so somebody like that a business owner that really wants you don't have to be an accredited investor for

uh... for you to work with realty but you know somebody that obviously understands uh... what investing is all about that's uh... that's the person that we're looking for yeah and you know on that i uh... i years ago i owned rental property and and what i learned is i should never own rental property and be the manager i can't do it

Yeah, it's it's it's a terrible but being able to step back and let somebody else do it who knows what they're doing I I was actually the only time even though I owned the properties It was the only time I made money and everybody goes well you paid 10 % to the I not only did I pay 10 % They would did such a good job I gave him bonuses off and on because I wanted him to keep you know, right and motivated sure and it it just makes total sense and then the and then the investment quality that we talked about so I

If there's somebody out there listening and they want to contact you and find out more about investing in real estate, how would they do that? Yeah, they just call 317 -804 -JEFF or they can email me or, you know, we have a Reeliti page on Facebook. We have a Reeliti page on LinkedIn. We also have every third Thursday,

Rick Ripma (26:10.158)
of every month from 5 to 6 .30 we have a meeting, a member meeting, and you can come to that meeting and learn more about what it is to be a member. We highlight deals that we're working on. You get to talk with other members that have participated in transactions with us. And so...

you get a really good feel for what's involved in being an investor with Reeliti, and so that's a great way. We have them, they're in Broad Ripple, same place, Developer Town, which is at 54th and something, 54th and...

close to Carrollton or something. Okay. Yeah. It's in Broad Ripple. Yes, it's in Broad Ripple. Right? It's right there in Broad Ripple. Everybody knows where Broad Ripple is. Yeah. Yeah. So I know, I used to work at the Vogue and you know, we go to, we love Broad Ripple because of all the different restaurants and things, even though we live up north, right? But, but I don't know anybody who doesn't know where Broad Ripple is. Yeah. Yeah. And to get a hold of myself, Rick Ripmah, your hard work and mortgage guy.

go to hardworkingmortgageguy .com, that's hardworkingmortgageguy .com, or you can give me a call at this new number, and again, I'm gonna have to look it up, because otherwise I'll forget it. 463 -223 -9592, that's 463 -223 -9592. It is not as easy as your number. 409 -JEFF. Yeah, oh no, 804 -JEFF.

804. Yeah, 804. That's right. I didn't I didn't I didn't put that one on here. Yeah. 804. Jeff, 804. Jeff. Either way, Jeff is easy. Yes, that's right. Even I can spell that. But now, now, reality. I think that one people need to really is tough. And the reason we came this is how we came up with reality. So, you know, it was like reeling, like, you know, fishing, right? We're always fishing for really good properties, right? And

Rick Ripma (28:16.11)
and then there was an IT component to it. So if you go out to reeliti .com, R -E - E- L -I -T -I dot com, you'll see where we're trying to go with, we're trying to produce a backend application that people can have on their phones so that they can see all the different opportunities, they can see their portfolio at a glance, and they can also have some

networking with other investors where they can reach out and say, hey, I've got a kid that's going to Purdue. Is anybody else interested in buying some property in West Lafayette? Right? So, yeah. Wow, you do a lot with that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of things you do. I think anybody who's interested should definitely get a hold of you and go to that meeting. You know, when you said once a month? Third Thursday of every month, yes.

what a great way to find out about it and be able to talk to other people who have done it. Yes. So you get a much better feel comfortable. Right. Cause it is a trust factor. I get it. And I, um, and I totally understand if you're going to plop $20 ,000 down, you better trust the person that you're going to be plopping $20 ,000. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so bad. Even with the cars. Okay. I only put a hundred dollars in the first car. Right. I wanted to see if it was real. Right. And then the second one, I only did another hundred dollars.

right? Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Rick Ripma (30:14.126)
that is where the rubber meets the road is correct. Yeah, and that's important. So is there anything else on on reality that we should talk about? I don't think so. I mean, I think that, like you said, the best way is for, you know, somebody's interested to come to one of those meetings. We post those meetings on our Facebook and our LinkedIn sites. So it's really easy and even on our website. So we use Eventbrite. So if you want to.

come to the meeting, you just go and click on the meeting that you want to attend and boom, there you go. And we, and we put our videos and our audio because in a lot of different places, Buzzsprout and you know, all the different podcast sites, but we use a website called Indy's Real Estate Gurus. Of course, that's the name of the show. And if they go there,

they can find all your information. Yeah, that's also so. So you're, you know, they can go directly to you if they can remember that. If not, they can come to us and they still going to be able to get all that information. Cause we want to, we want to make sure that they get there. So let's, let's, let's talk about, um, real estate. Okay. So you've been a real estate agent for quite some time and you have a good size team. You have, you said about 10, correct. 10 agents on it. So are you, do you,

Are most of your agents, like, do you bring on new people? Tell me about your team. So, um, nowadays, uh, the team pretty much runs like clockwork. Uh, my number one agent has been with me since, uh, the latter part of 2016. And so she's done great work and, uh, and most of my agents have come through friends that I know.

Some of them are clients that liked what I did with them that they felt like, hey, I would like to be involved in real estate and I would like for you to teach me. So I've done that several times. And then like my number one agent, she is now developing a team. And so she has four...

Rick Ripma (32:31.086)
people underneath her. And so a lot of times people will approach me, clients, friends, and they'll say, you know, I'd like to get started in real estate. Would you be willing to help me? Absolutely. And so I'm always, I'm a giver. So I like to give back. You know, I'm involved in the Lions Club and, you know, I've been involved in the Rotary and do a lot of fill and thought.

you know, philanthropic things. There you go. I couldn't have pronounced that either. I wasn't even going to help you out. And so I like to give. I feel like that's what we're here to do. And so, so yeah, anybody that's, you know, if they're interested in talking about real estate, I love to talk about real estate. So the reason I was asking that is, is I think it's important, you know,

Real estate is hard to get going in for a lot of people. Oh, yeah. Right? So it's starting out as a struggle. And sometimes I think we forget about the basics. So how would you recommend somebody who's just getting into real estate, how do they introduce themselves as a real estate agent? Sure. So the biggest thing I think for people, and I think this is their biggest fear to overcome, is you have to have a sphere.

And so you have to have a network of people and it can be your family, it could be, should be family, friends, business cohorts. When I first got started, I did it part time. So I told my boss that I was gonna get my real estate license and that I was gonna do it part time and that it wouldn't affect my job at work, that if I had to do something during the day, I would do it at lunch.

But I would make up any time and he trusted that I would do that. And most of the time was spent after five. Or on the weekends, which that's typically when real estate is transacted. There's not a whole lot of people that can do stuff in that eight to five time frame, because they're working. So that's why most of the stuff gets done after hours and on the weekends. So I'd say one,

Rick Ripma (34:58.03)
You gotta be open to that, right? So if you're not willing to work nights and weekends to get started, then this is probably not the right opportunity for you. Because I have people reach out to me, you know, I have a hard stop now of 10 o 'clock, but I'll still text people. I just won't take any calls anymore. Just because there's gotta be, you gotta set some boundaries, right? You have a life.

Oh, we have a life. That is correct. So, but my wife, oh my gosh, she's a saint because she knows there's been plenty of times when, you know, dinner has been interrupted. One time I left dinner, we were out to dinner and I told her I had to go and she still won't forgive me for that. But it was, I had to write up a contract and it had to be done then because in real estate, it's timely.

things have to be done very quickly. So that's the other thing I would tell people is if you're not willing to do things when your clients want you to do them, then this is not the job for you. Because things, when somebody wants a house, there are probably two other or three other, or who knows nowadays, other people that want that same house. You've got to be quick. You've got to be,

ready to do whatever it takes in order to make sure they get the house. So you have to have that customer that service, right? A mentality of how can I serve you? Right? So that, and then I would say, really, it's all about hustle. You know, you got to network, you've got to be talking about real estate with as many people as you possibly can.

I remember my first client worked for Tuckman's Cleaners. She was a crook. I would bring in my shirts and suits and stuff. Back in 2005, we were still doing that. Just like you're dressed today. Yeah, just like I'm dressed today. I would bring those in and we got to have a relationship.

Rick Ripma (37:23.47)
One day we were just talking and she mentioned the fact that she was in the Providence, which is right off of Old Meridian. She said, I've got to get out of this apartment. I need to get a house. And I'm like, well, hey, I'm a realtor. I'd love to help you. And so she was my first client. But you have to constantly be talking. And one of the things that I started out with Coldwell Banker,

And Craig Kaiser, and I will never forget, told me whenever you're out and you pay for something, leave a card, right? Or talk to those people because they're providing something to you, right? And you're paying for it. So you have the right to ask them for something. Yeah, you definitely do. But I want to, I want to comment on a couple of things. Number one,

I think one of the beauties of real estate is you can do real estate living your life, which is what you did. Yes, you have to work all the time. There is no question. It's a lot of work and it takes a lot. But you can do it living your life. When you go pick up your laundry, there could be a customer right there. Right. Exactly. Go to your kids' games. There's customers there. Yes. You go anywhere you go. Go to the Indianapolis 500. There's

200 ,000, 500 ,000 people there you can talk to. That's one of the big things. And then the other one, this is more, I call it a pet peeve, but it's not really a pet peeve. It's just one of those things I really am getting to the point where I really, really want people to understand this. And that is the time to get pre -approved is not an hour before you need to get a

the pre -approval letter. The way to get a pre -approved is to do it ahead of time. Be prepared. Because here's what happens, you know better than I probably, but you find a house, you think, we're just looking, we're not going to find anything. You walk in, you find the house, now you want to make an offer. Right. Okay. If everything's perfect, a basic pre -approval letter can be done very quickly. Yes. But if there's anything out of the ordinary, anything, it can create a problem.

Rick Ripma (39:49.614)
could be child support, could be how, you know, where you get your income from. It could be a number of different things, right? It could be a debt that you didn't know about that got erroneously put on your report. Yeah. Which is 50 % of credit reports have erroneous information. Absolutely. But it could be they're self -employed. Yeah. Self -employed, you're self -employed, we can finance you, okay? It's just more difficult. That's all it is.

But even if you're, you know, you work at Lilly and you're, you know, it's, and you have all this money in the bank and you know you can be pre -qualified, okay, that's all great. But if you give me time, I can have a fully underwritten pre -approval going out. Which is gold. Which is gold. It's, I have been able to beat cash buyers because - By having that, yeah. Yes. Which, because it's basically the same.

I mean, sellers don't care where the money's coming from. They don't care that you have cash. At the end of the day, they're going to get the same amount of money, whether it's cash or it's mortgaged. That's right. They get the same money. Now, if you can close in two to three weeks, which you can if you have a pre -approval that has already been underwritten, you can close in two to three weeks, which is the same way as cash. Right?

Exactly. That's how you compete with it. That's how you compete. And usually, when somebody's making an offer that's not cash, they're financing it, the person paying cash thinks they can get it for a little better price because they're paying cash. Right. No. It doesn't work that way. And if you have a pre -approved, underwritten pre -approval. And it just amazes me how hard it is to get, and I realize it takes a little bit more effort from the buyer, right? Sure.

They have to get every, it doesn't really take any more effort. It just takes more effort now instead of later. Because as soon as you have a purchase agreement, I need all that information. Right, right. Well, and the other thing too that you failed to mention is that a lot of cash buyers feel like they should, that because of their cash, they don't have to make as big of an offer, right? Yeah. And so what they,

Rick Ripma (42:14.318)
typically will want to do is they'll want to either get it for less or they'll want not want to compete as much and so that puts them at a disadvantage in my opinion. Yeah, right because like you said the seller doesn't care right and that's and that's basically how we've won, you know, we it's there's a little bit more to my whole process and sure them but that's how you win is you get them you get them a pre -approved underwritten pre -approval make sure the listing agent knows it's an underwritten pre -approval, right and

and the only thing we have to have back is we have to have a purchase agreement we can accept, an appraisal, and title. Right? And we close. So yeah, you can close in two weeks. Right now, appraisers are fast. Right, and if you're looking at a neighborhood where there's plenty of comps, the appraisals doesn't matter. And sometimes, I know you can get...

the appraisal waived in certain conditions, right? In certain situations. Let me explain that, too, because people totally misunderstand that. The appraisal waiver comes from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, okay, the conventional lenders. Right. It doesn't come from advisors' mortgage group or Chase. They can't make that decision. If one lender gets it, they're all going to get it, right? Right. And it tends to be, you know, first of all, you have to have a property address. So you can't

Do a pre, you can't know if you got an appraisal waiver until you actually have a property. You have an estimated purchase price, because if that changes, you can lose your waiver. You have to have credit, right? You have to have everything. Now you don't have to have a purchase agreement, but you have to have enough that you can run it through and it can give you that appraisal waiver. Now I will tell you, if you're 5 % down, 10 % down,

15 % down, the chances of getting an appraisal waiver are slim. It happens, but it's slim. If you're buying an investment property, the chances of getting an appraisal waiver are slim. It happens, but it's not very likely. Believe me, we love it, because we don't have to deal with an appraisal. The real estate agents love it. The consumer loves it. The seller loves it. Everybody loves it when we get it, and we all want it.

Rick Ripma (44:35.118)
But unfortunately, it's not like I can say, well, let's just wave this appraisal. Right, right, right. It's a little more involved. But I shouldn't get so into it. No, I think that's good for people to know, I mean, obviously. Because I think there's a lot of people out there that are touting it. And certainly, it's good to know the background, the details of it. I think it's critical.

And I think that it's one of those things, the more we can educate people. I'm like you, I like to give, I like to make sure people know. I don't tell people what to do. I educate them, and then I let them make a decision based on, here's your options, this is what each option means. I know, and I do the same thing. There's some clients that want me to tell them what to do, and I will not do that. I will tell them, this is what I would do if it were me.

but you're not me. Well, without Ian, I have been remiss because I missed the two biggest questions we ask. So I've got to at least ask the question of the week. The question that we send question every week and it's, what was your first car? Okay. First car. So I had a 67 Chevy Malibu and

I love that car. Got it. Had an Impala 450 engine that I was gonna put in it. It had a 428, or no, 328. And so I was gonna put, or 318.

maybe a 318. What is a Chevy? What is a Chevy? 302. They had that a 305. Yeah, they did a lot of 305s at 350s and 350. Yeah. And now I think it was the Impala that had the 350. So maybe I can't remember. It was a six cylinder that was a six. Yes. I know the sixes. Yeah. And I was going to replace it with a three. Anyway, a guy. Oh my God. Well, and so I had this Impala and it had,

Rick Ripma (47:01.07)
A 350 and we had bought it junk and my Pops was helping me to You know to get it. We broke it down. It was a really good learning lesson for me stripped it all completely down and And then did all the you know put it back together. I had that car for 10 days and Wound up

going through an intersection, had the green light, and one of my friends ran the red light coming the opposite way, and I slammed right into him and totaled that car. I was so sad. He's still a friend. He wouldn't have been with me after that. He was done as a friend. Oh my gosh. Doug Mallory, I remember him to this day. I was young, yanked him out of the car.

was like wanted to just beat the crap out of him, but you know, it was just such a sad thing. Yeah, but you can't do that. You want to, but you can't. Yeah. So 67 Malibu, what a great, what a great car. It was a great car. Yeah, that's a great car. So tell us again, one last time, not only how to get ahold of you, but who should contact you on, cause you have two different companies, who should contact you and what's the best way? Well, agents,

uh... always can contact me uh... you know a vision one real estate and so same number three one seven eight oh four jeff uh... but uh... we actually need those agents for realty so what one of the things that we do at realty is we have uh... property acquisition and disposition managers

And those are the people that actually go out to the house and look at it and make sure, hey, this is going to look at the area, do all the research to make sure this is a valuable, you know, this is a property that we'll appreciate, right? Because ultimately, there's got to be some upside, right? We don't want to buy, don't get me wrong, you know, a property in Brookside, right? Where...

Rick Ripma (49:24.75)
the appreciation is going to be fairly low or non -existent. We want to buy something where there's a good bit of upside. So we need property acquisition disposition managers. We call them advisors, portfolio advisors. We need them on both the realty side and then we need agents on the Vision 1 real estate side. And you can actually, as an agent, do both. So it makes sense.

And then on Reeliti, you can go out to our website, R -E -E -L -I -T -I, R -E -E -L -I -T -I dot com on the hat. And contact us that way, or same thing, 317 -804 -JEFF. You know, it took me entirely, this entire show, looking at your hat to realize the easiest way for me to remember it is, it's real, R -E -E -L, it.

Yeah, right. Yeah, it's really actually very simple, but it didn't dawn on me until you were doing is like well Yeah, it's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is I right. Yeah, yeah exactly So it's really really pretty simple. Yeah, and you get a hold of me You're a hard -working mortgage guy go to hard working mortgage guy comm that's hard working mortgage guy comm or you can give me a call I guess I should put the camera on me. You can give me a call and again I'm gonna have to look at I should have left the camera on you four six three

223 -9592 -463 -223 -9592. That is a Carmel number. It's a new exchange. It needs a new exchange. 463? It's a new Carmel exchange now. Oh, wow. I had no idea. I know. And I hated it, but it's the only number I could get. It's a Carmel exchange. Wow. That's pretty cool, though. I mean, I didn't know that they were branching out like that. Just in Carmel? They're running out of 317s. Yes. Well, that's what it said when I got it. It said it was a Carmel exchange. Interesting. I have another number, and it's...

It's actually a 317, but whenever anybody calls it, it's a Franklin. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, so it is what it is. Jeff, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate it very much. Yeah, thank you, Rick. I appreciate the opportunity. It's been awesome. And I know my video's not been that great because this is the first time I've run it without Ian in a long time, so I'm not doing very well. But you have really interesting, I love your two businesses.

Rick Ripma (51:46.414)
and uh... i love really the investment pieces really kind of cool that would be not kind of a school where you do that so again thanks so much for joining us we appreciate it thank you