Understanding Renovations and Rehabs | Van Sturgeon

Justin Stoddart  
So the big question is this: How do those of us in the real estate industry, with crazy amounts of ambition, how do we Think Bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously see success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddart, and this is the Think Bigger Real Estate Show.

Justin Stoddart  
Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart and I'm excited about today's episode. We're going to do a couple of things that are going to be really valuable for you. Number one, we're going to help you understand how to differentiate by understanding how to renovate and rehabilitate a home. Your clients are going to be better advised and better taken care of than they will with another Realtor by learning what you learn today. 

Justin Stoddart  
Secondly, we're going to talk about how this knowledge can help you see properties that you may have looked past, and be able to see them as an investment opportunity, taking you off the sideline of being an investor into the game of being an investor. 

Justin Stoddart  
I'm excited to introduce today's guest. Before I do that, let me remind you that inside of the Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, is where we go deeper on these topics, we introduce the guest of the show, and we allow you to ask additional questions, get to know them and get to know what they can do to help you go deeper on these topics. 

Justin Stoddart  
Today's guest is somebody that you want to know his name: Van Sturgeon, currently coming to us out of Canada. And he has let me give you a quick kind of background on his situation. He owns over 1000 units across North America. He's has rehabilitated over 1000 units as well, and is someone who now coaches and helps other people to understand that process. Van, It's a total pleasure to have you on the show today. 

Van Sturgeon  
I really do appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you. Thank you, I've been admirer of yours. I've listened a number of your podcast. So you got a lot of great content. And hopefully I can help folks out there with you know, giving us some secrets, tips, insights about the whole renovation rehab process. 

Justin Stoddart  
I love it. If it's time of day, we'll probably have a few people that you know that will tune in live if you are watching live. And you have a question on your mind that you've always wanted to ask about renovations rehabilitations of homes, please do put it in the comments. We'll get to those as we go through the episode. If you're listening to this afterwards, be sure and again, check into the group as well as vansturgeon.com. You'll see the name here at the bottom you'll be able to get some additional resources this man is mentally done at visa. He's also written three books that teach people how to do exactly that. So Van, talk to us about how you got your start as a real estate investor, seeing the opportunity really of rehabilitating renovating homes. 

Van Sturgeon  
Just quickly, like I'm a product of the late 60s and I grew up in, in Chicago, my parents and I along with my little brother lived in a one bedroom apartment and in Chicago, and my parents wanted to live the American dream, save up their money to buy their first their first house. And in the midst of doing that, they discovered that the building that we were living in, had gone up for sale. And instead of buying that actual house, they decided to put a down payment and purchase the apartment building a real living. So we instead of being property owners, my parents became landlords. And that was that happened during the late 70s. Where it was a it was a really tumultuous time, Justin, the year two, I think you're too young to remember the gas lines and having to wait in line to get gas for your car and interest rates at 18-20 some odd percent, it was just a really miserable time in America. And it during the midst of that, that's our building that was fully occupied, it's all of a sudden started to suffer a lot of vacancies, a lot of the good neighborhood turned into a bad neighborhood. So as good folks leaving, you know, the gangs and drug dealers and all that kind of stuff started to come into our neighborhood. And as a result of that, we started to see vacancies rates skyrocket. And as a family, we had to do everything ourselves in order to be able to make ends meet. So part of the whole thing was as a, you know, part of that was learning how to paint and plaster and do roof work and replace windows and carpeting and all that kind of stuff. So we walked through that period of time and then eventually graduated from university, I could have gone and become a lawyer but decided I wanted to get into this real estate construction renovation thing. And that's when I opened up my jaw contracting firm in Chicago, and started to grow and develop that. And as years went by in the early 90s are they're pretty good terms of real estate, or in terms of construction renovation. And I kept running into the same people over and over again that I would quote work on these real estate investors who would buy properties and and then would flip them and and there were other guys who would buy their properties would do some work to them and mentally hold on to them as rentals and to add to their portfolio. And it was through those individuals and seeing what they're doing got me involved and I slowly over a period of time progressed to where I own over 1000 units right now. They're spread over four areas in Michigan, Ohio, New Brunswick and Florida. And I still have a number of successful businesses that are in real estate, whether it's a property management, renovation. I also build homes, subdivision builders as well. And I got really a lot of great people involved, whether they're employees or partners that look after my businesses and, and some sort of like, in that semi retirement stage in my life where I've kind of downshifted, they, you know, this whole, this whole trek has taken a lot out of me, including, especially my family. So I'm sort of in that stage where I just enjoying life, and I just want to contribute and help people out because I know that there's a lot of, there's a lot of fear out there with regards to rehabilitation renovation of properties. And I know that there's a real need out there for folks that want to really grab complete control over the renovations who want to avoid dealing with or having to deal with bad contractors and tradespeople and really just be able to increase the value of their properties and, and and all those three things I'm an expert on because I literally have anything you can think of that walks and crawls in real estate I've done in terms of renovating from apartments all the way to house single family homes, commercial properties, things that sort. 

Justin Stoddart  
It's interesting how many people will kind of hang their hat on I want to get you know, it's kind of small handful of rental properties, create some mailbox money, write some passive income. for retirement, I can't imagine sitting on 1000 units like good for you. That's impressive. Kudos to you for all the sacrifices that you've made to make that happen. Let's Let's start with kind of the first topic. And I appreciate that background, it creates such context for all of us to really appreciate and value who we're talking to. When we get into this concept of right now we're in a very low inventory situation, right? Not enough homes for sale, compared to the amount of buyer demand. And it's very competitive as a real estate agent, you're working very hard to try and differentiate and separate yourself from the competition. Obviously, we live in not the industrial era anymore. We live in the knowledge economy w...