Exploring Build-to-Rent Industry with Jim Sheils

Hello, Freedom Nation. It's Jeff here once again with the freedom nation podcast. And today's show, I have Jim shields on. Jim is the CEO of a company based in Florida, that builds rent to own properties. So not just the property that you're buying and turning into a rental house, but actually properties that are built specifically to be used as rental homes. This was a new concept for me, I'd heard about it, but I never really knew anybody that was in this business. So you will love learning a little bit more about this, especially if you're interested in investing in rental real estate. This is a very intriguing concept, so make sure you stay tuned.

Welcome to the Freedom Nation podcast with Jeff Kikel. On this show, Jeff shares his expertise in financial and retirement planning from a different prospective, planning for your Freedom Day, which is the first day that you wake up and have enough income or assets and do not have to go to work that day. Learn how to calculate what you need, how to generate income sources, and listen to interviews from others who've done it themselves, get ready to experience your own Freedom Day.

Hello, Freedom Nation. It's Jeff here once again, and we have another episode of The Freedom nation podcast for you. And on today's show, we're going to have Jim Sheils and Jim started off as an investor in real estate. But after a corporate career, very short period of time, as he puts it, and move through kind of a bunch of different types of real estate investment and is on to his most recent career. And he'll tell us a little bit about what the build to rent industry is. Jim, welcome to the show, my friend.

Thanks for having me, Jeff. Good to be here.

Glad to have you on really excited to learn more about what it is you do and learn a little bit more about the builder rent world. But let's first start off with your story. How did you get to where you are today?

Yeah, well, I lasted in corporate America for about two years. And 24 years ago, I went into real estate investing, I was tech mogul, I could starve myself. And and I started small. I remember the first property that I bought was a three family house for 152,000 and Lancome California. And when the agent called me and said Your offer has been accepted, I almost started hyperventilating. And oh my gosh, how am I committing to this, but that was the start. And then I began to just buy and fix foreclosures up and rescan them and I started to buy and fix them and hold them as rentals, left California and came to Florida 2004. So almost 20 years ago now, because I liked the fundamentals and the landlord laws better starting to do the same thing here. 2008 hit and that was an extremely painful time that learn lessons from but protected all of my partner investors. And very quickly as that year moved through some of the best deals that I've ever seen came across. So I started to buy for foreclosures in bulk, did really well with that for my own portfolio and then helping other investors build portfolios with rabid, renovated foreclosures. But then about nine years ago, me and my now building partner took a leap, we had always fixed up old homes and we said what if we could build new construction properties in better areas and attract better tenants have less maintenance repairs? And that was an experiments, Jeff first, but that has definitely been the gateway that really opened up my wealth, my passive income for my family and then help the most amount of families build their wealth. You know, we started with doing about $3 million worth of building projects the first year and last year, we did 185 million in sales. Wow. So you're able to niche up a mentor of mine always said, Jeff, you, whatever you're working on in real estate, you should be able to say it in one sentence, and that sentence can change. But if you're saying like seven different sentences, you're you're working in too many things. You're not hyper focusing. So I always try to hope to focus in my hyper focus at this time, and I see for a long time to come as built around.

Nice. Well, let's talk a little bit about that. So explain what build to rent is and the concept behind it.

Yeah, we build new construction homes, single family, duplexes, and quads. So those would be considered residential real estate, meaning you get a residential loan on four units or less. And we build in high growth markets in Florida. And what constitutes a high growth market? Well, there's got to be population growth, economic growth, good affordability, which is something we should probably discuss which blows a lot of markets out of the water czar, really something drawn him there. And then healthy supply and demand. There's a builder you don't want to go where there's too many houses. You want to know where there's not enough houses. Yeah, so we started in one market in Florida. We've grown into 12 different markets at this time.

That's phenomenal. So let's talk a little bit about that. So you you know Are you building just one project? Are you typically finding investors that want to build multiple projects with you? Well, we work with individual

Investors, and we have some institutional buyers that we can build bigger projects for in step input. You know, we have over 850 individual investors, and that grows every week. And we help them build small portfolios of hands off properties. You know, most of our people are, you know, they've done it on their own in their own backyard, or they've maybe looked at some outlets for older renovated homes. But they're, they're wanting more certainty. And the new construction model brings certainty in better areas, less involvement. You know, most of our people don't want to spend more than an hour a month on their portfolio. And that's what we are trying to set up. So we're always trying to work with the smaller individual investors on a larger scale, you know, and once you get 357 properties with us, it starts to become a second income without a second job. And that's kind of a passive goal for a lot of people.

That's awesome. Now, let's talk about that. You were you were talking about affordability. Tell us a little bit about the the Florida real estate market.

Yeah, so the affordability index, Jeff is so important. And all that means is what is the average family household income for that area? And what is the average median price of a home? And that's called an affordability index. You know, you go to San Francisco, California, horrible affordability index, terrible, absolutely terrible, New York City terrible, but then it varies. Another is Florida's always had a really good affordability index. So the average so for example, have a lot of California investors, they leave California and they were going to invest in Salt Lake City in Boise, Idaho, great markets, three areas. But the average family household income in those areas is about 60,000. The average family income, let's say in Jacksonville, Florida are one of our main hub markets is 60,000. Big difference here, Jeff, though,

Because the real estate,

Well, yeah, it's a quarter million dollars more for a medium good home, and even Salt Lake in Boise, which is outside of California, compared to Florida. So Florida, still, even with the growth we've had was way undervalued by everybody's, you know, statistical agreement. And now we still have that affordability and what affordability allows Jeff, even on new construction homes and better area is cashflow. And we do want to start to get some cash flow for that seed capital will really start to grow in nurture. And that's how my rental portfolio did it myself. And if I've learned anything, I don't like headaches. I don't like turnover. I don't like maintenance and repair. And that's why I only do new construction now. Yeah.

Well, and it makes complete sense. And I'm assuming you're building to now current standards. So with you know, hurricanes and everything else, you know, you're getting a house that isn't 40 or 50 years old. It wasn't built to be pounded on by hurricanes every year.

Yeah. Well, and that's you know, and I talked about this in a lot of my presentations and investor talks. So really interesting thing. You know, we just went through a major hurricane hurricane down in southwest Florida where we were building the Eye of the Storm went over both Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, and you saw on the news, you know, beautiful area that downtown Fort Myers, Nick got decimated, is gone. Yeah. Now, but if you looked at the videos of the next day of Punta Gorda, it looked like there was some wind that went through, but in some trees and limbs down but not bad. The houses were still intact. And I'll tell you why. In 2004, Hurricane Charley the eye of the storm hit right on to Punta Gorda, it decimated. It was terrible. My father had a cousin living down there. And the government stepped in and made new rules. They said okay, we're going to try to stop this from happening and best we can. Now on anything 2004 or newer, you have to build a much higher ground 1314 feet above sea level. You also have to use stronger structural integrity fasteners, they upgraded what it took to build a new property in Florida. So Fort Myers, the old downtown area, those were a lot of properties from the 50s and 60s, they were built at two or three feet above sea level opposed to 13 or 14 above sea level. So even though we had we had hundreds of projects down there in Fort Myers and in Punta Gorda, and through that hurricane Jeff, we only had four properties that needed insurance claims. And those four didn't have flooding, which flooding gives you the worst damage of hurricanes. Most people when you see flooding, we had no flooding and the for profit properties that we had to file insurance claims on. Well, we had just started construction. So it was freestanding walls. So the the freestanding walls. Sure. But it was a good test of we thought new construction can make a difference, Jeff, against hurricane. Now we've really test you that

You had to go and do you had a hell of a doozy to test it.

Let me tell you see that. It gives me a lot of confidence. Yeah, for for not only us, but for our investors where there's always risk, but we can mitigate risk with today's structural standards and new construction. And in fact, the level that they make the sea level they make you build that new property completely as a game changer.

So I mean, you're you have an a hole in just tons of money material to build this up. Because I mean, Florida has been as flat as a pancake.

Is brown gold down here? Yeah. You know, and this is where it's like, you got to be open and honest. Like now you're my building partner. We grumbled and complained, kinda like, probably when you and I are parents back in high school said, Are you gonna drive and wear your seatbelt? Wear your seatbelt? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you got in that first accident or someone T boned you. And you're going wow, I'm glad I had my seatbelt on. That's kind of how we feel. Now. We're rumbling at dirt. And now we're not grumbling as much.

Yeah, well, you also have it? Yeah, you have a really good example for people to say, Hey, this is you know, we went through a real doozy of a storm. And, you know, we came out of it really well, as a result of that. So you can feel you can feel good that your investment is, you know, been built as good as we can build it at that point. So, now how, you know, I know the Florida area. I know from my own personal investment strategy, I've been looking in the in the Florida area. I know one of the big concerns is certainly insurance because you've had so many storms down there. I mean, is it affordable on the insurance side? Are you able to get rid, you know underwritten for for policies and everything else?

Yeah. So let me let me break that down. Yeah, it kind of goes back to when people say insurance in Florida has gotten so expensive. Yeah. I always follow up with the question of which properties Yeah, because you know, insurance companies are all about risk because they assess their risk. There is a huge difference between how they assess a 1950 property and built at two feet above sea level near the coast compared to a new construction built at 14 feet with today's standards now it just makes sense. Also, you know, in each area will be different you know, Southwest Florida Fort Myers, fastest growing area in the country right now. Okay. Insurance is going to be a little bit higher even our new construction much better than the old ones. It's still higher, but Jacksonville, Ocala, other markets where it's very low hurricane risk by the analytics, you know, insurances stayed pretty fair and even more fair when you get a new construction project. Yeah. The one thing that we do to Jeff to help that even though we're building in coastal cities, the risk analysis goes down when you're at least five miles inland. So a lot of our projects, even when we're in a coastal community are at least five miles inland. Which rates as well,

That's awesome. So question on this. I mean, it's basically a turnkey type of situation. So so somebody doesn't even have to be in Jacksonville, to make this happen, right?

No, you can be for most of our clients, we probably have less than 20% clients in Florida. Okay. But people want to come to Florida because of those growth factors I talked about there. Because of landlord laws. And, Jeff, if I've learned anything in the last few years, you have to no matter where you go, if you're trying to, you know, get out of your day job and have rental properties make it happen. I think you can do it. I've seen lots of people do it. I've done it. I've helped lots of people do it. Whether you come down to us or not. The thing you have to look for is are you in a state where you can collect your rent? Yeah, that's a very simple question. But it's a very important question. And I saw some scary things in the pandemic happen investor, friends of mine in certain states, they couldn't collect their rent, 10 1214 months. That's brutal. So I love Florida for that reason. So we get a lot of people that like that affordability index, the cash flow, the new construction, and the landlord laws. So the majority of our people, we get lots of people out of California, Utah, Washington State, the northeast, some out of Texas, although I think you guys have great fundamentals where you are as well, you know, but depends on the area here. Yeah. Yeah, it'll vary. But But overall, and we don't invest in in Orlando, Tampa, Miami, we're in second tier markets, where the fundamentals are really strong, the pricing is good, the cash flows there, and the growth patterns are present. And that's where we want to be and our whole business was set up. So you don't have to be here. You know, you don't have to recreate the wheel. You don't have to get into the trenches. You know, we do the research for the people. We line it up, we show the case studies, we show the fundamentals, we provide the system, and then they're able to just plug into a build a small portfolio. And then, you know, our goal is to hey, we want you to keep at least an hour a month open to overseeing but that cuts down a lot of hours if you're going to try to just do it on your own.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, the other part is, if you can if you can pack a few of these things together in one area, you know, if you're doing an annual property visit or something like that you can pack it into one shot and be done with it at that point. Yeah,

A lot of our Northeast investors they seem to

it's amazing they do those property. Yeah, those that were it's gonna take about a month for us to get through all these properties here, right around February or so sometime in February. Now are you able to do, I'm assuming you have some connections with property managers, we actually

We have our own in house management, nice. We do not, we not go and start building the market until management is already in place. That's how this started is, you know, my now building partners father at a successful management company that managed my personal portfolio. So we didn't have it before we did building. Okay, building actually, one second. So management something key now, people really want to get their hands dirty and self manage. That's what I'd say, all the people choose to manage with us to take that author, wow,

They want to do that on their first couple of investments until they have had to show up and clean toilets at two o'clock in the morning. And then yeah, it's that extra 10 percents not so bad after all. And we actually do it for 8%. So that's okay. But that's fantastic. So you all find the tenants and everything else in the process.

And even with new construction, some people get a little confused. They're saying, Okay, I'm getting a new construction home Do I need to get? Does that mean, I need to get a construction loan? And those are pretty tedious, pretty bank intensive, way more expensive? The answer's no, I take the building risk phase, you just put up a deposit, we build it all the way through, you step in with a permanent financing loan at the end of the project. And to help with these interest rate craziness that started you know, last year, June, we have our own in house financing. We found that a past year our own in house financing, you know rates is low today at 4.75, which is really I know lots of people are looking at 7%. Now that gives them the start to get the cash flow started off on the right foot. And then it was a big deal for us to bring that in. We're excited to be able to offer it.

It's fantastic. Well, I mean, so your your packaging all the deal. You're doing it on a on a grand scale. So you know that that allows that, you know that freedom to get those kinds of deals, because I mean, every little bit counts in today's world. What's the rental market look like? I mean, as far as is it tight? You know, I know here in Austin, it's just crazy. So a landlord can effectively ask whatever the heck they want for rent, and pretty much people have to deal with it. But what's what's the rental market look like in like, let's say Jacksonville. Yeah, Jacksonville

Is definitely a fast moving market, I think your average days on market is like 32 days, okay, the pandemic, it was probably down to about 12 days. And now it's back to normal, just below what normal is, we're not having a big problem moving properties down here. There's always be a market, you know, being in so many markets, maybe one market might slow down for a few months. But it's a pretty quick attrition to get the the inventory rented still. And what we always aim to do is stick in our niche of new construction. And what I what I see is, you know, when you're renting a new construction area and a solid area that's affordable, and that those are some key words, you know, there's just not many people doing it. Because the national home builders don't want to build our type of properties. They don't want to build the little starter homes, they don't want to build duplexes, they don't want to have a quad. And on the flip side, a lot of tenants would rather live in a nice duplex in a good neighborhood than an apartment building. Absolutely. That is a really good thing for us. So our, you know, our attrition rate, meaning once we put a property on the market, you know, and we're always building new ones and releasing new ones has been has been healthy.

That's fantastic. Is there kind of a waiting list? You know, as far as when you're building when somebody signs up with you to go, is there a waiting list are you always,

We're always building on demand. And the good thing is we're always expanding our building function. So we actually don't normally release properties until they're within about 90 days of completion. Because people will close quick, so we're always getting new properties out. So we kind of go on demand. But we're you know, we'll probably build, you know, about 1000 units this year. So, you know, that keeps us pretty busy. How's

How's the labor and materials market been down in your area?

Well, that's a great question to ask today. It was a terrible question those two years.

That's good to say.

Again, Southwest Florida, for example, fastest growing area in the nation. That's a plus and a minus when you're getting trades when you're getting materials. But just like anything, we had to make our way through it. We were at a level of scale that, you know, we were still able to get materials it did slow things down. But now we're seeing the leveling out. There's more availability, and it's become more of a steady flow for materials and labor.

Nice, very cool. Well, just I could talk to you all day about this. Anything new and you're The world down in that area. Man, I know you're building like crazy. Are you expanding outside of Florida? Are you going to just stick with what you know?

We know we were our company was acquired a piece of our company, we acquired actually a large group out of Texas called Breitling homes and they're owned by Sumitomo. You probably see Sumitomo all over the news, 331 year old Japanese company, they are a conglomerate. I know that Warren Buffett invested in another one of their conglomerate sections of the company that it's got a great name. And they wanted to partner with a company that was well versed in Florida and BuildDirect. Know, we were lucky to have them join us. They fund all of our building projects now instead of having to go to banks, which is a very powerful, very good for us in our clients. Because that gets helps go to the bottom line and the best pricing we can get our clients in for as well. And they've already had us looking at joining forces with them and some of their other companies to bring Bill to rent to Texas into Tennessee. Those are very markets we like and and I think that's something that we're highly considering at least dipping our toe into over the next 12 months.

Love it. Absolutely love it. Well, cool. Well, let's talk about the past five questions now. Sounds good. All right. So first question, you wake up in the morning, you your business is gone. You have 500 bucks in your pocket, laptop computer, place to live, what are you going to do first?

I'm gonna start calling some of my closer contacts.

Very cool. All right. Second question. What's the biggest business mistake you've ever made?

Biggest business mistake ever made in real estate especially, was getting wrapped in how many properties back 20 years ago, there's this big thing called the 100 House club. Once I get 100 houses, it's your goal and why I surpassed that club and was

Still not making money.

Yeah, because it's not how many it's it's how effective are they? What are the results. So my biggest lesson was just getting into too many properties with too much leverage with too much maintenance repairs and not in the right areas. So my my lesson of that Jeff says I own less of better quality with less leverage now. And today, I'm more relaxed, I have more cash flow more equity than I ever have.

That's awesome. Love it. What's a good book that you might recommend for our audience?

You know, there's lots of good books and I'm always trying to read them with my teens. A popular book with us is the alchemist if you just want to pansy storybook. That's a great one. So okay. And then if you're also looking to really start to exercise your financial intelligence, I like the richest man in Babylon. That's a good guess. Well,

That's I just did a thing for my YouTube channel review of that it was one of my, one of the 10 books that I attribute to my financial freedom. So I love that book. It's one I go back and read a ton of times. What's a good tool that you use in your business everyday that you might recommend?

You know, it's something that's actually really old school. Okay. But, you know, because we all will is it? Is it HubSpot? Is it builder trend? You think it was bigger things for a big company? I said some pretty lofty goals each year of of sales benchmarks. Yeah, I keep on my desk. They just for the year, a whole list of that total amount of properties I want to sell. And Jeff, I love making an X. In me focused, I look at it, I see where I am in. And I encourage that to my sales staff and that what's your goals for the year for the quarter? Keep this running tally. Love every time we make an exit feels good. So that is one of my best tools where I've hit some pretty lofty benchmarks.

I love it well, and it's every minute of every day if you've got it in front of you, which is fantastic. Yep. Final question. What is your definition of freedom?

I think freedom is the how on your terms. Okay, so freedom is is people say I want to retire want to retire? Well, okay, but how do you show up at work? What? How are you able to show up at work? So right now, I'm a partner in the biggest company I've ever been involved with, you know, doing the best work we've ever done. But I live in Costa Rica, three, four months out of the year. Can I come work and play from there? Yeah, I'm going to Ireland, next in two weeks to see family relatives down there that, you know, we came over two generations ago, but I still have family there. I'm going to get them to do volunteer work with my family, I'm able to be very involved with them. And so the freedom for me is the how Yeah, if you if you don't ever get to see your family, your health is suffering you have had to give up your hobbies. That's that's the opposite of of enjoying the how and so I'm about freedom for me is enjoying the how we're doing it. I love it and so that That's been a big difference for me not in the forcing the retirement saying, Well, I'm gonna keep doing this, if I'm able to do these and this and that. That's kind of how I look at Freedom.

I love it. That is a such a great answer to it. Thank you for being on here. And this was really informative. First time, I've heard this in a while, you know, I've heard of the builder rent, but it like I was telling you before, and it was just this kind of hodgepodge II thing that I've heard here and there, but I just think the world of what you guys are doing, it's, it solves a lot of problems for new investors, and experienced investors that don't want to be fighting with all the the other challenges. So thank you for doing what you do. And thank you for sharing that today.

You're welcome. Good seeing you. Wonderful. Well,

Jim, what's the best way if somebody wants to get a hold of you? Or learn more? Where's the best place to go?

So a great starting point is JJ playbook.com. That stands for Jim and Jamie, that's me and my wife. And we talk about our journey into passive income. How did we build up you know, are our real estate investments over $40,000 A month passive and then start to do the same for other investors like yourselves? That's a great starting point talks about our principles of how we invest, why we invest the way that we do and how Bill Durant was instrumental in making this all happen.

Yeah, absolutely. Great. We'll put it on our show notes page. And we'll start from there. So thank you guys for listening in. We do these shows every week. Tuesdays and Thursdays, make sure that you subscribe to the channel wherever you are listening or watching to this. We are on all major podcast channels and YouTube. So make sure that you connect with us and especially on the YouTube channel. We're putting up literally a video a day on a lot of different subjects, especially things like real estate investing, stock barn investing, we're really getting into a series of things about how to get going as an investor how to build a you know, wealth, and freedom. So make sure you connect with us on those channels. And we will see you back here the very next time.