If you have figured out the road map to real estate wealth, wouldn’t you feel obligated to share the keys to the kingdom with others?
Welcome back to the “Inspired To Invest” real estate podcast. This week, Tiffany Dawson, a real estate investor and mortgage broker from California is joining us. She has made it her personal mission to encourage and inspire others to take the first step and start investing in real estate.
Tiffany Dawson started investing in real estate several years ago, and has seen the incredible potential real estate investing has to offer. When she first started out however, she had no money, so she found ways to leverage seller financing, finding off market opportunities and underperforming properties with potential to scale her portfolio.
Although she has been able to replace her income as a mortgage broker with her real estate investing income, she is so passionate about educating others to invest in real estate, that she has no plans of leaving her career (yet!).
Tiffany shares an incredible amount of wisdom and financial acumen throughout the episode. This is an absolute treasure trove of insights for investors, especially those who still haven’t decided if they should invest – or not.
Don’t miss it!
To connect with Tiffany directly, go to @tiffanythelender on social.
Thank you to the Canadian Real Estate Women Association for bringing us this month’s episodes of “Inspired To Invest”. To learn more about them, go to @canadian.re.women.association on social or online.
“Inspired to Invest” is proud to support the Beyond Success Program, a not-for-profit financial literacy program for students, launched by More To Give & MAK Investments. Find out more at https://more2give.ca/beyond.
Tune back in on Wed., Jan. 31 for Ep33 to hear from the owner of a real estate business with multifamily properties in 8 markets across Canada and plans to expand into the U.S.
Thanks again for tuning in & remember, “when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit”
To connect with our host, Serena Holmes, click here and buy a copy of The Accidental Entrepreneur.
And, for everything related to real estate and real estate investing, please make sure you’ve subscribed to @serenaholmesrealtor on Instagram, YouTube & other platforms. We also have a page dedicated to this podcast on Instagram and Facebook @inspiredtoinvestpodcast where we preview guests each week, highlight their episodes, top takeaways, tips, quotes and more.
Are you a full-time real estate investor with an inspiring story to share? Apply now!
Real Estate Investing Transcript
Speaker 100:01
Welcome to the “Inspired to Invest podcast, where we’re sharing stories from real estate investors and how investing has changed their lives. This episode of Inspire to Invest has been brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Women Association, also known as CREWA. Hey everybody, welcome to the Inspire to Invest podcast. I have Tiffany Dawson here with me today. She also goes by Tiffany the Lender and she began walking in her purpose as a senior loan officer with New Leaf funding in Irvine, california. She loves sharing her personal experience as a real estate investor, as well as her professional experience as a mortgage agent to help families achieve generational wealth through home ownership. Her purpose in life is sharing the importance of financial literacy and wealth building with anyone that she encounters, as she wants us all to enjoy financial freedom. So that inspires me.
00:52
So thank you so much for being part of the show today. Tiffany, how are you Good? Good, thank you so much for having me Awesome. So I guess, just to get started, obviously in your bio you do allude to being a real estate investor. Can you shed some light on the kinds of real estate investments that you’ve been part of?
Speaker 201:08
Definitely. I started out by purchasing my primary residence. That then became our first rental property and from then we continued to buy. So we’re buy and hold investors. So we bought properties and put long term tenants in there. We did have one property that was a short term rental up in a vacation area, which has since been taken down from the short term rental site and just used for our family’s vacations. But yeah, that’s pretty much the realm that we’re in. I do want to look into fixed inflates and things like that, but we aren’t quite there yet.
Speaker 101:44
So what was your catalyst then? To start investing in real estate outside of your primary residence?
Speaker 201:50
Definitely knew it was something that I wanted to get into, since 90% most folks wealth comes from real estate, so I knew it was something that I wanted to explore and also build upon so that way, in our older days or whenever I decide to call a click on lending or whatever role I’m in at the time, I wanted to be able to have that income coming in and knowing that it will continue to appreciate and give me the flexibility to be with my daughter. That was the biggest thing.
Speaker 102:19
No, that makes perfect sense. Now, obviously, you’re kind of walking the line, working as a mortgage agent, but also as an investor. Do you have plans to ideally work towards being a full time investor?
Speaker 202:30
Of course, Of course, when I started this journey as a loan officer back in January of last year, that was the first step into making real estate something that I do full time, both as a business and also for our investing side, something that I hope to do. This maybe three to five years was my initial thought. I actually like what I do and the ability to educate others on the products available and ways to work around certain things so that they’re able to purchase the home or build a portfolio.
03:00
So as long as I continue to enjoy it, I’ll stay as a loan officer. But eventually, yeah, I really feel strongly about building a portfolio and continuing the ad doors and that passive income that comes in every month will be our retirement essentially, yeah.
Speaker 103:16
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense, and I think for a lot of people out there there’s a lot of jobs nowadays that don’t necessarily come with a retirement plan or even just a combat inflation. I think the average job is cutting it, so I think it’s both of those things that really make real estate investing so important and just something for anyone to consider outside of just your traditional mutual plans and stocks and things that may be considered a little bit warming and straightened.
Speaker 203:43
Yeah, definitely good to diversify. I’ve looked at a couple articles lately on large corporations that have folded or filed bankruptcy and that impacted their workforce. That may have committed, you know, 20, 30 years to them thinking that they had money coming in their retirement days and unfortunately that was taken away. So for me I wanted to be able to control it, no matter what happens in the market. Rent typically doesn’t go on so, yes, maybe you’ll knock a couple hundred dollars off, or something like that.
04:13
Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things, if your property is paid for and that tenants paying you a thousand, two thousand, three, four thousand a month, that’s your money. Yeah, you control.
Speaker 104:23
So yeah, no, that’s significant. Now, is your portfolio primarily centered in California or, if you’ve entered it as well, so right now I have a hundred percent of my properties in California.
Speaker 204:35
I’m with the way that the market has shifted. Obviously cash for the little tough to get in this market because we have really high price points and our Interest rates are also high. So that’s eating away at the potential cash flow. So now midwest is usually where most folks are talking about investing. I personally have not taken the leap to go out of state as of now. Yeah, I’ve just kind of changed my strategies and looked more for seller finance type opportunities that would have lower interest rates and still allow me to purchase locally and hand on.
Speaker 105:06
So yeah, no, that makes sense. Are you managing all of your rental properties yourself at the same time? Yeah, yeah, I know that Can go. That makes it hard challenges.
Speaker 205:16
Yeah, but that makes it hard to try to venture out into the Midwest, like right now I can drive to any of my properties. You know I do everything from selecting them, controlling the rehab or additions that we do, listing the properties of adding the tenant, putting them in, and usually it’s not that big of a deal. I’m a lot of people are like, oh wow, you actually self-manage. And I’m like, well, yeah, because they’re mine, they’re my babies, right, it’s not the same as hiring someone else to do it for you.
Speaker 105:43
Yeah, I think there’s pros and cons depending on what your your plan is like. For a lot of the people that move over to multi-family, they want to do that because if someone moves out it’s a non-event. They can hire a property manager. But at the same time you’ve got to be, you know, at the point where you’re ready to give up that element of control, and just you know. There’s pros and cons to everything.
06:02
I want to talk to someone that invests a lot in the Midwest and they’re primarily focused on midterm rentals and that’s a pretty lucrative strategy just in terms of the cash flow, because a lot of times it could be people working in construction or in the medical field.
06:16
So they go into areas that are, say, at center point of five major hospitals or something like that, and they can get anywhere from you know, two to three thousand dollars a month in rent for someone that’s going to stay from anywhere for a couple months up to maybe six months. So it’s cash flowing better than maybe your average rent. But then they’re picking up these properties for like a hundred grand. So it was a really interesting strategy. I mean for me being in Canada buying in the States. You know, baby comes with a little bit of added complexity, but it’s something that they’ve done really well and you know, just building up their property management to take care of it and stuff like that, and then you’re not necessarily dealing with landlord tenant rules that you would in a long term, but you can also benefit from a little bit higher rent. That’s not quite a short-term rental but you know, just kind of playing in that midfield.
Speaker 207:02
No, totally You’re right. I feel like it definitely depends on one your team, right? Yeah, anyone can have a great experience if they have a great team. The moment your team have a hole in it, or all tears, like that’s where the stress comes in, and that’s not something that I’ve had built up, and I know from the folks I’ve talked to who have invested out of state, they always, you know, focus heavy on. You have to build a team, but obviously in building that you’re gonna go through some bad apples, right? So I’m not at that point yet, but it’s high on my list. If California continues to be, you know, in the situation that we’re in now, where it’s difficult to find a cash flow, yeah, no, I can understand that. It’s the same way where I live.
Speaker 107:43
So I’ve stayed out of everything I bought has actually been out of province for me Just because it’s hard to find good cash loan opportunities in the landlord. Tenant roles are really favorable for the tenant, so that can create some really significant challenges here. But going back to your portfolio, when you look at you know your journey now as a real estate investor so far. What would you say? You would look at it something you’re most proud of or you feel like is your biggest success so far.
Speaker 208:09
I would just literally go back to the fact that I took the initial step to purchase to begin with, because a lot of people they straddle the fence, especially in this market.
08:20
They straddle the fence and don’t even take the steps to become a first-time home buyer. My very first property I bought at 22. So, like you don’t see that very often, but it was high on my priority list. Like go to college, graduate, buy a house, and if I hadn’t have done that, I wouldn’t have built the amount of equity that we gained in that property to be able to leverage and parlay into our other purchases. So that would be the thing that I’m the most proud of and it’s definitely something that I talk to a lot of younger folks or college folks, just anyone that I can talk to like just buy whatever you can afford. Trust me, it will continue to go up and you’ll be able to do far better things, like the house we have now I absolutely love and I don’t know that I would have had this house had I not started with all the other ones.
Speaker 109:09
Yeah, no, I think that makes perfect sense. That was really high on my priority list once I started working as well, so I completely relate to that. Now you talked about seller financing. So for anyone that’s looking to get in the market that maybe can’t qualify for their own financing or doesn’t have a big down payment, can you talk a little bit more about how that works and how you’ve actually found people that are willing to do that for you?
Speaker 209:31
It’s so funny because I had a couple opportunities come up last week. I worked with a number of wholesalers and of course you have to find the wholesalers that are planning to work well with your style. But I’ve been fortunate to run into a few. So those opportunities presented themselves where the properties were paid off and the seller wasn’t looking to necessarily get all of their profit at one time or realize that whole game and pay taxes on the entire game.
Speaker 109:58
Yeah.
Speaker 209:58
Instead, he would be in a position to act as the mortgage servicer. I would pay him a monthly payment and we had agreed on 5% interest, which right now is hard to find. So, yeah, I would pay him interest only with our agreement, for about 15 years, unless I decided to refinance sooner and completely pay the loan off to him and then have someone else take over. As far as like my clients getting those opportunities, most of the ones that I’ve had come to me for financing are to refi out of seller finance. It was from relationships that they had, whether you know a neighbor who you know may just want to get cash flow every month and not have the headache of doing the maintenance and all those things. Yeah, I had a call coming yesterday. The young lady went door knocking, she’s an investor and she did a lot of work. Yeah, she just happened to fall in love with one of the properties and, you know, decided that maybe she would keep it and use traditional financing or maybe she would do seller financing. Whichever one made more sense for her.
Speaker 111:03
Yeah, I think in this day and age, just with you know just high costs of real estate, I’m not sure what is. I’m sure California is expensive. I mean for us hard to even find a townhouse below a million dollars, right. But I think the point is you just have to get creative and think outside of the box, right, and find people that are maybe taking advantage of these strategies so that you can take advantage of them as well. Now you look back at some of the challenges that you’ve had. What do you think is one of the biggest obstacles that you’ve had to face and overcome? Biggest?
Speaker 211:35
obstacles, I would probably say in between having the condo and moving on to our next property. We were self-employed and if Canada is anything like the US with self-employed both, obviously you’re getting the income and then you need to report it and then have a tax bill, and no one wants the tax bill as an entrepreneur.
12:00
They’re trying to figure out what all they can deduct, so that way they’re minimizing their liability, and that doesn’t put you in the best position to purchase, because now it looks like your income is below what you need to qualify. So I think that was a really huge obstacle for us and it held us back from being able to actually purchase more properties sooner. Obviously, once the market corrected itself from the 09 crash or 08 crash and some of those more non-traditional loan products came around, we actually used the bank statement loan recently to purchase our house that we have now and had I known about? You know some of the alternative options, but again I wasn’t in the right circles or wasn’t connected with the correct people to be able to present all those opportunities for me. So every time I hear something that may be an obstacle for someone, I’m always trying to figure out how can I like get a solution to fix that problem?
Speaker 112:57
Yeah, I know. I mean, I completely understand that. I had my own business for 18 years. So when I bought my very first home in 2007, I guess it was I had a blended income for one year and they would only look at one source of income. So, even though the income was stable for a few years, they looked at it like the income went from here to here from one year to the next, and you know they perceived me as higher risk. So that was some challenges. And then, even four years later, when we moved, they wanted 30 percent down instead of 20 percent down, just because I was self employed and I was like, well, that doesn’t make any sense and I needed the money liquid for renovation. So I ended up going the route of a traditional bank and I had a friend there that was able to, you know, work her magic and make it happen, because the other broker was, you know, trying to get me to put up a lot more. So it’s hard enough being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 213:45
I don’t know why they make it so much harder so, but that’s where you definitely have to tap into your network and just continue to push your agenda right. If you’re looking for something and maybe one person is unable to offer those products because, like you said, your friend at the bank had something that this other broker did and that’s common you just have to continue to push forward. There may be a solution, or at least a plan that you can tweak a little bit to get when you’re trying to go.
Speaker 114:12
Yeah, no, absolutely. Now would you say. What would you say is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned so far?
Speaker 214:19
The best lesson that I’ve learned, I would definitely say, in being a real estate investor is to properly vet your tenant. They say the best lesson is a paid lesson. So I moved a little fast one time and let someone move in. She gave me a sob story on being a single mom and needing somewhere for her kids and of course that hit my heart. So I’m like, okay, moving. That was the worst decision I could ever make. So, moving forward, I’ve continued to vet folks the same way I would for someone I’m pre-accruing for a long. I ask for all of that documentation and follow up to make sure it’s all accurate. So do your best.
Speaker 114:59
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. So, on that note, we’re just going to take a really brief break for a word from our sponsors and we’ll be right back. The Canadian Real Estate Women Association, also known as CREWA, is a national not-for-profit association of female professionals working and investing in Canadian real estate. They believe that women have no limits in the real estate world. They’re looking to connect with leaders in the industry who will share the strategies that they use in real estate, along with exclusive details of their life experience, which are important for consistent personal and professional growth and happiness. To learn more, go to CREWAca.
15:42
Thanks again for following along with this episode of Inspired to Invest. In addition to real estate investing and running my own brand experience agency for 18 years, I also published a book called the Accidental Entrepreneur in October of 2021. This is my story and it chronicles how I turned tragedy into triumph to embrace my destiny in entrepreneurship. If you’re interested in picking up a copy, you can find the link at serenahomesrealtorcom and you can also find my link tree with all of the retailers in the details below. Thanks again for your support.
16:17
Inspired to Invest is proud to support the Beyond Success program. In today’s complex world, it’s absolutely crucial for our youth to learn how to take charge of their financial future. We believe that every young person deserves access to accurate, practical financial information. To find a bridge to the gap, the Beyond Success program leverages a comprehensive educational bootcamp to equip young minds with essential financial literacy skills. At Beyond Success, it’s not just about teaching financial literacy. It’s also about fostering a foundation for a prosperous and empowered future. Join us Together, we can build a brighter financial future for the next generations. Join us Together, we can build a brighter financial future for the next generations.
17:05
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Inspired to Invest podcast. I have Tiffany Dawson here. She’s talking about her experience as a real estate investor and also as a mortgage agent, helping people understand the value of real estate so that they can create that long-term generational wealth. And we’ve been talking about successes and challenges and lessons, and I guess one thing that I want to know is what would be the craziest thing that’s happened to you so far as a real estate investor?
Speaker 217:30
Ooh. So one of the properties we purchased is in a snowy air. It’s all four seasons, but it was around the holiday season, so we were due for some snow and my water bill came. It was like $900. Wow, the house is this big. So I was like what is going on here? We had just closed, maybe a couple months prior, but we had a main water leak and I tried my hardest to get that repaired sooner than later. But unfortunately everyone on the mountain was like absolutely not, it’s snowing. Call us in the spring. Oh no. So I had to like beg the water company not to cut it off because they were concerned about water waste and wait it for about four months until the spring arrived for them to replace it. But that was just crazy. Like you hear of things happening as soon as you buy, but I had never had that experience before and I was just like okay that’s the new one.
Speaker 118:24
Yeah, I mean I have a friend that bought a property not too long ago and it wasn’t a rental but the main sewage line actually backed up into their basement Like not too long down there, because they had clay piping so it burst and backed everything up. So you can imagine like they just were moving in and stuff everywhere and they were dealing with that. So that was not pleasant. And then I also had a property out of province and, like you were talking about, like it was a really big bill that came in before electricity and at this point I’d had the property for a few years and it went from you know, to the average electricity bill, like $150. And it went from 150 to like 700, 1100, 1500. And month over month it kept going electricity.
19:06
And I said to the property manager like you have to go in, like there’s, this makes no sense. Like this isn’t an incremental increase, this is like Huge increases. Like do that are they? Do they have a roll-up? Like what is happening? Yeah, but definitely what it sounded like. Yeah, that was a good thing.
19:22
So they actually ended up going in and it turned out that they Put a big space heater in the garage because the temperatures get so cold, and Edmonton they were worried about their cars not starting in the morning because of the batteries dying. So you know, space heaters obviously use a tremendous amount of electricity so it just kept on Significantly impacting the bill. So they got it resolved. They ended up paying the difference and stuff like that, because that was, you know, at the time that was only cash flow, maybe three or four hundred dollars a month, so an electricity bill of that size was not happening. So For the property manager to go in and check it out. So, going back to your point about teams, I think that’s obviously so important. And now I guess to this point, have you had any experience with like coaching or mentors to guide you through your experiences as a real estate investor?
Speaker 220:13
Yeah, so one of my really good friends from high school actually was an investor prior to me becoming one and she kind of showed me everything that she did and just how she had built her portfolio and encouraged me to Just be coachable and follow along on the journey and just trust her guidance. Obviously, you know researching on my own and making sure it made sense, but just as the point where I was really scared and like ready to go but still wanting to like hold back just a little, she gave me that message and I followed the plan and like literally, my income is six times more From the rentals that I have now, compared to what I had when I started.
Speaker 120:54
Yeah, no, that’s smart. What would you say is the best advice that you’ve received so far?
Speaker 221:01
Best advice is just to continue to buy in any market, because we know that the appreciation will continue to occur. Interest rates are going to do what they do, right, they’re gonna go up and down. But one thing that’s not gonna change, like I said before, is the rent right, like the rent is not really going to go on itself anything. I’m very consistent in doing, you know, incremental increases as the lease of expire or when I put it back on market. I do list at the market price. So that’s never gonna change. So I know that. I just have to continue to move forward with it.
21:32
Yeah knowing that I’ll refly at some point when rates pull back. Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Speaker 121:37
Now, what would you say is next for you in terms of growing your portfolio?
Speaker 221:41
I would probably say just exploring other options. Like I’ve stated about the seller financing with one that I’ve never thought about before, but now I’m looking more into it and I’ve been in contact with a number of folks who are looking into it and have questions about it as well. Yeah, just because it’s the solution for now. Of course they’re going to be frozen. Comp with anything for that one. The other thing I would say is just definitely looking at exploring other markets that are a little bit further.
22:10
Yeah, but, I don’t quite want to do that alone. I’d like to do that Like my friend. For example. I was telling you help build my portfolio. Yeah, had looked into buying in the Midwest and had she done that, then okay, I’ll go buy where she buys. We build our team together.
22:26
Yeah so that way I have someone that I can work with and bounce ideas off of to make sure that we’re getting the best possible. Or if I needed to fly out Check on her properties or vice versa, she would go check on mine and just have somebody, so I wasn’t completely alone and uncharted.
Speaker 122:41
Why is that? Yeah, I know I think that makes sense because I think when you are, you know whether an entrepreneur or an investor sometimes it can be really isolating. So I can see why in some situations you’ve wanted to partner with someone. Depending on exactly what you’re trying to do Now, do you have a particular financial freedom number in mind, and that could be like number of doors, cash flow, income?
Speaker 223:03
So initially I was just really focused on number of doors because, especially when you listen to other folks, they’re like okay, you need this many doors at $300 cash flow. California is not just $300 cash flow In a traditional interest rate market. So I had a dollar amount in mind, but with inflation and everything else, that’s totally out the window. Yeah, so now I would say it’s closer to about 30,000 a month is what I would like to have. Yeah, if my main property was paid for and if I pay my car off, ideally it would be 30,000.
Speaker 123:34
Okay, nice. And then, I guess, in terms of motivational quotes, what would you say is something that inspires you?
Speaker 223:44
That’s a tough one, because I had it in my mind and then I did it. One of the biggest things that I just always quote when I talk to folks, and even when I’m talking to myself, is like buy now, don’t wait to buy. You know it’s just buy and wait, wait until the rates come down, but don’t wait to buy. The prices are going to continue to increase, especially when rates drop, and that’s my fear is for anyone who is in a position to purchase now and not doing it simply out of concerns of the number that the interest rate is at. I want them to be more concerned with the purchase price that will come once that interest rate gets to the number that they want.
Speaker 124:31
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Now, for anyone that wants to connect with you, what’s the easiest way for them to get a hold of you?
Speaker 224:39
Definitely Instagram would be the first. Pretty simple Tiffany the lender, just like you see here, and also my website is wwwtiffanianlendercom.
Speaker 124:51
Okay, perfect, awesome. Well, thank you again for being here today and for anyone that’s watched and they’d like to see more episodes of Inspire to Invest, please make sure that you like, comment and subscribe so you don’t miss anything. You can also follow along on Instagram at Inspire to Invest podcast. Thank you so much for being here today, tiffany, and, of course, for anyone that’s tuning in, either on YouTube or on your favorite audio streaming platform. And remember, when you invest in yourself, the sky is a limit.
Speaker 225:18
Thank you, serena, thank you.
Speaker 125:21
I’m just going to hit stop. Thank you again to the Canadian Real Estate Women Association for bringing you this episode of Inspired to Invest. The views represented on this podcast are for general information only and does not constitute investment or other professional advice or an offering of securities. The hosting guests featured on Inspire to Invest make no representations as to the performance of any particular investment. Should you decide to make an investment, you are responsible for conducting your own review and analysis. It is recommended that you obtain independent legal accounting and tax advice from licensed professionals.