Guru Jeremy Tallman with T&H Realty Services

Rick Ripma: 0:00

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Rick Ripma: 0:17

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Ian Arnold: 0:33

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Rick Ripma: 0:40

So today, we're really excited we have Jeremy Hallman, and Jeremy is with T H Realty in

Jeremy Tallman: 0:49

teenage Realty Services is our company

Rick Ripma: 0:52

dnh Realty Services. And you got and you guys mostly do you mostly do investment property, you help people buy investment property, you manage investment property. What else do you what else does the company do? What is that at? Or am I missing anything?

Jeremy Tallman: 1:08

Yeah, I mean, you hit the big ones. You know, we're full service, front end of an investment cycle. So, you know, we help a lot of clients buy investment properties, you know, convert them into to our management system, which we manage more than 1200 homes. Now, around Central Indiana, we focus on single families. We're not a big multifamily operator, there's, you know, there's a lot of industry around that. But we've, we focus mostly on single family condos, we love duplexes quads, we'll do small apartment buildings, we don't like the onsite management, but then the asset will manage them. And then, you know, we've had a lot of, you know, we've been doing this since 2,007/3, party property management. And I've had a lot of great success stories of us helping people buy homes, and then several years later, sell them for multiples of what they paid for them. And just proving that, that long term wealth building is is real in real estate, and it's always fun to say.

Rick Ripma: 2:06

So how did before real estate and you've been doing this a while before real estate, if you can remember. What did you do? What was your life like? Where'd you grow up, go to school, that kind of thing.

Jeremy Tallman: 2:18

So I grew up in the metropolis of Bedford, Indiana. You guys probably have heard of the you know, that huge city and not 20 miles south of Bloomington. Now it's a small town in Bedford, Indiana. I grew up in an actual little community called Fayetteville and grew up on a farm Devon road. So we could see no houses we could just see pastures and cows and barn and ponds and things like that as 124 acres. So yeah, we grew up farming and did that all you know until I till I left home. Went to IU. I got a degree there. You know it's funny in Bedford, people worship two men and Bedford they worship Bobby Knight and they worshipped Jesus sometimes, you know, typically in that order. So it was a huge hit was a huge basketball community and my high school was very competitive on the state level and both girls and boys basketball and but again, I got a degree at IU thought I wanted to teach and stayed on for another semester or two. Probably because I didn't want to leave IU I loved Bloomington still to this day but got a teaching certificate and then that's what brought me to Central Indiana I got assigned to Avon High School, this would have been 95 ish, and did a short student teaching stint there and stayed and you know, in the meantime met my what would become my wife and have made a life here in Indianapolis since since that time. So after I graduated though, I went back and got an MBA started to get interested in finance operational type stuff, had a couple of jobs doing some of that. And then we bought our first home in 1997. And so bro so bro was just recently coined that it's a really, depending on who you talk to so borrows a very loosely defined area. I've heard people going all the way down to 38th Street calling it so Abro but we live off 49th And primrose and bought that house and 97 sold it in 99 I think it was or 2000 and moved out to the suburbs. And when I left my brother in law, Scott Hallberg, he lived a block away from us. And I said, you know, I love this area. We own this house, like two years, I made decent money on it. But we started investing and he was all behind that he'd wanted to do that as well. So we started investing back in 2000. But our first rental property in 2000 on 52nd Street still on it today. The plan was to buy one a month or sorry one a year. We started buying one a month so we built a pretty good portfolio of homes around 2000 isn't too I think it was we started buying and selling very actively. So we were attending every Marion County sheriff sale. And eventually were able to quit our jobs because we were able to buy and sell and quit our jobs. All In the meantime, we were still trying to manage like 50 doors of our own. And that became problematic. So because it's hard when you're trying to attend a sheriff sale and you got rents to collect, or at least to sign or move into happen, or a show a property to show to prospective tenant, you got to look at your time and where you value that. So we started looking to hire a property manager back then, because we just said, Hey, look, our time is more valuable, doing the buying and selling than it is doing the day to day management. And it quickly became evident there weren't First off, there weren't very many property managers back then there were just three or four and started interviewing them. Never forget, a story I could tell is that we talked to one company, I think they're they're in business anymore. But I asked them to send me their manager agreement. About a week later, I got a envelope in the mail with the management agreement. It was clearly Xerox and type use someone use a typewriter to type up that management agreement. And they wrote in the margins, like amendments and updates and hand you know, with a pen. And so I'm like, wow, that you know, this, this industry lacks some professionalism. And so in, in 2007, we formed a third party property management company. We managed our doors only at that time, and then started quickly building and scaling and adding some really good systems, adding a lot of people. And we sit again, today around, we're over 1200 units got like 36 staff, and plan to keep growing. So that's my story started on a farm ended up managing properties. It wasn't necessarily intentional, I didn't go to school to say I want to be a property manager. I don't think anybody does. But just kind of worked into that, and kind of hit it at the right time. And I'd be able to scale up pretty quickly.

Ian Arnold: 7:03

So why would somebody want to hire a property manager? I know you mentioned something about time, but is there anything else to why somebody would want to hire a company like you guys?

Jeremy Tallman: 7:17

Well, I mean, it's the main thing is logistics. Right? Because 75% of our clients don't call Indiana home, I would guess 50% of have never been in Indiana. So if you can imagine managing a home, that is in your same city is difficult at times, it could come a big time suck for people managing 2000 miles away, or 500 miles away, or whatever it is, becomes a big, big challenge. So the boots on the ground, something that we offer expertise and, you know, specific markets and where rents are trending and things like that, there's a lot of value that a property manager can provide. So Logistics is number one reason but you know, our biggest clients, interestingly enough live in the city. So the people, the biggest portfolios that we manage, we don't manage huge portfolios. But our some of our biggest clients do live here. And it comes down to time, it's like I can, I would rather invest my time adding more properties to my portfolio than calling an HVAC company to fix an air conditioner, or to do a showing or to sign a lease or to whatever. And that's the tipping point, when the value of your time becomes more than the cost of the service. That's when people say, I'm gonna hire a property manager, I don't have time, we get a lot of self managers that have converted into our company. Because of that reason, the time and the hassle. had someone come to our system just a couple of days ago saying, I'm terrible at this. My tenants never pay me rent on time. I need help all in caps. And it's like, that's what you know, that's the problems we can solve for people. Because we do this every day, we have systems in place to help, you know, our investors maximize their return. So that's why people hire logistics, number one. And then time number two. Because it's hard to be a landlord. It's, there's a lot of intricacies around it. And it's not just putting an ad out and moving someone in it. Can people do that I get it. And there's a reason why people self manage. But at the end of the day when things go wrong, and they will go wrong. If you do this long enough, it's not going to always, you know, get that perfect tenant who stays 10 years keeps your property in great condition. There's going to be some problems and that's when property managers become very valuable because they have the resources and the skill to react and make the right decisions.

Rick Ripma: 9:41

Yeah, I had real I had rental property years ago, and I was a terrible property manager. Just like that, that email you said you got her text. That's it. That was me. I remember when I listened to it's like that. That's what I where I was at. And the only time I made money When I hired a property manager, because they knew what to put the rents at, they collected the rents. I mean, it was the only time I made money. And so I would, I would never own a rental property without having a property manager. I'm sure there's people who can do well, but I think it's kind of like selling the home on your own. You don't really know what the value is you do. There's so many things. You don't know that that property manager knows that. You're just so much. Yes, it costs a little bit of money, but it may actually make you money. That's what I found. It made me money. It was better for me. Does that suck? Well, obviously see that?

Jeremy Tallman: 10:35

Yeah, I mean, that's the value prop, we hope you that people understand is that, yes, some people can do fine, I think I think 65 to 70% of landlords self manage still across the country. But that's a pretty big statistic. And, and some people have an experience, and they do well and they do it again, they do well. And then sometimes things don't go right in the decide to turn it over. Generally speaking, a property manager should be able to rent your home faster than you can. Because we have inputs into systems that can market your home much more effectively, we have ways to show property that you're not going to be able to utilize. And then we can turn properties usually a lot more quickly, because we have vendors at the ready. A vacancy is an extraordinarily expensive part of being a landlord, it will be the it'll ultimately determine your success or failure as a landlord is that vacancy. So as much as you can minimize that vacancy, the higher your return is going to be because if you have no rent, and you have all these expenses coming in, with a paint, the property utilities, lawn care, whatever. And there's the idea of the property being vacant and exposed. There's exposure there, we know that, particularly in some of the areas of our cities, where break ins can happen, people know and homes are vacant, and they can go in and do it. So you want to you want to really make that window as small as possible to get the revenue started. Again, that's the key. And it's not just putting a body in the property, it is putting someone who has bedded very well, using tools that most people don't have access to, again, to make sure that tenant has the highest chance of success. So you don't cheat, don't cheat. You don't you know, you don't have to a victim and go through all that again. Yeah,

Rick Ripma: 12:16

which was a big thing. Yeah. Can't be fun. Now. I find it interesting because a vacant property, we've had plenty of real estate agents on our show, where they've talked about the fact that they had home that they were getting ready to close on, they go for final inspection, and somebody broke in and took all the copper out of the house, meaning they ripped the walls apart to get to the copper. I mean, just disasters that can happen with with a home that's sitting empty. So it is important that that you get it filled, filled immediately, or as quickly as possible.

Jeremy Tallman: 12:55

Yeah, there's a lot of horror stories out there. And we experienced it with with a number of homes that we manage, as you can imagine, we have we have to deal with that. And you know, people are sophisticated. Now they don't, they don't go in necessarily and take stuff that they can easily carry out they're taking water heaters or taking full sets of appliances, they come prepared, these aren't your, hey, I'm walking down the street to kids break it and, you know, pull up whatever out. It's these are sophisticated people and they run in and they they can take big systems out of properties, very expensive systems out of properties very quickly. And yeah, vacancies, vacancy is not a good thing.

Ian Arnold: 13:33

So I got a question. So your people would normally contact you. If they're like, Hey, I think I might want to rent my house out and then buy another one? Or do they usually contact you once they have already been written and have all the issues?

Jeremy Tallman: 13:50

Both? We are getting, you know, we started our business in 2007. And that's an interesting year, you guys have been doing this a bit, which by the way, you guys are amazing. You just the sheer amount of number of podcasts that you do is is remarkable. I mean, it's like, this is not an easy thing to do and get produced and all that because we do it not not the frequency you do, but you guys do it. You guys do a ton of volume. And I think you need to be applauded for that. But so yeah, we get all kinds of personas that hit us. But anyway, back in 2007 when we started that's the housing collapse. 2007 2008 morphed into that. And we started our business on the slogan can't sell it. Let us read it. That's still on some of our cars today, our company cars. And frankly, those aren't great clients, their clients that are a little desperate in some cases, because it's like I've had my property on the market for six months. I've got one showing in the last three weeks, and I can't afford to pay this mortgage anymore. Those are difficult clients because they're not really going into it with a business mentality and you have to treat this as a small business. It's a business that has a customer being your tenant as a business that has expenses. You're gonna have to spend money on that If it's a business that obviously has revenues through rents, so yeah, we get all kinds of personas coming into our system. It's, we call them, you know, frustrated landlords, it could be that they're with a different management company. We sign those up every week, people that just aren't happy with their management company, and they come to us. And more and more, as you can imagine, we're getting people that say, this is an interesting part of the market we're in, I think, right now is we have two people that I would call that that are that convert primary residences into rentals. But they have very different thoughts about it. There's one person who says, I can't sell my home spot on the market, like him in six months can't sell it, I want to rent it. And we can help with that. The other person is saying, I'm at two and three quarters interest rate on this property, I just bought a home. I'm debating on whether or not I should just read it, because this is really cheap money. I've run some numbers, I know what rents are. And I feel like I can rent this and do well. And that's a very different mindset. It's someone intentionally going into being a landlord, versus someone that's like, helped me. Right, like, like, I'm about ready to hit foreclosure. And I need I need help. So yeah, we're getting both of those personas, I talked to a guy last week that was like that, he's like, you know, I'm just, my interest rate is so good. It just kind of makes sense for me to keep this. You know, I know, I may not be able to sell this thing as quickly as I could have a year ago. So I may just keep it for a year to see what the market does and, you know, be a landlord for a while. But yeah, then we get the people that are, Hey, I've been doing this for two years. I'm, again, like I mentioned earlier, I'm terrible at it. So it's all kinds of people that reach out to us. And for us, it's so important to understand the story, to really be extraordinarily curious. And Charlie really understand their motivation and all this. Because they come into it very intentionally, like, you know, another good persona of ours is, hey, I own 20 homes in four different markets. I love Indianapolis, I want to invest there, that learning curve is a lot different. Right? Because they've been through it all they've, they understand how being a landlord works, how there's a lot of successes, there's some setbacks to those are those clients are, are more primed to come in and being a landlord. So to answer your question, it's all kinds of people that hit us now. And we're very cognizant of what's going on in the market. We understand where people are in certain circumstances and, you know, try to help a number of different people and a number of different challenges.

Rick Ripma: 17:42

And if somebody wanted to get a hold of you, and they want to rent their property or want to talk to you about doing that, or maybe they're they're looking to invest in a rental property, what's the best way to get a hold of you and your team?

Jeremy Tallman: 17:56

Well, our website is really, really active. We get a tremendous amount of volume on our website. A lot of there's people that come to our site for investment knowledge we blog every week, for the most part, we do a podcast now. It's just full of just free landlord resources, ebooks, whatever, but it's, it's just T H Realty inc.com Not the just think of Realty Inc. But take out the e t h Realty inc.com Another way to find is in these best rentals, it's the same it'll take you to the same place that's sometimes easier for people to remember in these best rentals.com And then they can call us as well it's 317-255-7767 We have an option if you if you're looking for our services Praesent option you're gonna get somebody to talk to and see if we can help them.

Rick Ripma: 18:41

And to get a hold of Ian and I go to HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com That's HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com Or even give us a call at 317 I can't remember the number en 31762 1938 300 767 to 1930 Yet I do that about half the time it's terrible. I got like 15 numbers and sometimes it's like okay, which number am I supposed to be giving today?

Jeremy Tallman: 19:05

I like the tag team approach they were the phone number it was good all right Jake

Rick Ripma: 19:10

all the help I can get you knows that.

Ian Arnold: 19:13

He needs quite a bit all the time which is setting in alright, but let's get to know you a bit more. So when you're not working, what are you doing for fun?

Jeremy Tallman: 19:24

Well, my wife and I hire I think you could call us empty nesters. Now raise two kids one is a resident of Knoxville Tennessee. Talking about IU he was born into that environment he smart kid good GPA good SATs. He applied to one school. You can imagine what that school was when he graduated from IU. Last fall and I'm sorry last May and has moved to Knoxville and he's made a live down there so we're getting to know Knoxville loving the Smoky Mountains and spending some time down there with him. My daughter is a sophomore at At Columbia College in Chicago, she fell in love with film. And so that's one of the top film schools in the country and so she's, she's there and so it's my wife and our two dogs and we're learning to live differently than we than we have it's in some sometimes it's awesome and something that you miss your kid right? I mean, they're such a big part of your life and they're gone that we still make them a big part of her life. But you know, my wife and I are very active. We love the peloton. We got a peloton a couple of years ago I've never been a big biker my business partner Scott was still a competitive cyclist he won the little five at IU back in the day. Oh huge. Yeah, I don't you had is a it's a big event but I don't ride my bike out and I live downtown Oh Rama biker in there, but I love the peloton. Like I'm such good friends with those instructors, at least in my mind. And I spent a lot of time on the peloton every morning my wife at 530 I used to take over about 630 But we love peloton we like taking walks with our dogs through downtown. We live in here and Morton. So it's great walkability. And we walk our dogs all the way through there. And I love to read I've always you know, my undergraduate degree was in journalism minor in English. And I've always been a big literary fiction fan. So I read constantly. And I also read a lot of nonfiction stuff. I've gotten into that more and more, really about leadership, team building. I love marketing, marketing, books, things like that. So I spend a lot of time every morning, every evening reading, because I'm just a curious person I love to, to learn and that sort of thing. So between those two things that keeps us pretty busy. And we're pretty active people and yeah, so that's, that's what I enjoy doing in this stage of my life.

Rick Ripma: 21:48

So I'm sure you have it, because I'm kind of the same way I read a lot. So what books are you reading right now?

Jeremy Tallman: 21:56

Gosh, I am reading. And I wish I should have written this down. It's it's the book, it's called The Good Life is what it's called. So that's, that's a book. That's a nonfiction book I'm actually reading now. And it's an it really actually, people should look it up. It's a tremendous book. It's based on the Harvard study that's been going on for over 80 years about what makes people happy. Okay, it's a very interesting book. There's no surprise, I mean, we've known this forever. It's just these guys put it in some really good context, it says relationships are the quality of our relationships make us happy, it's not money, necessarily. It's not. You know what we own. It's typically the value of our relationships. So I'm reading that book. Now. I love it. And also, as a team, we're reading atomic habits is our group here. So our leadership team always has a book that we're trying to read through. But atomic habits is, is some of you guys know about it, but it's super good. It's super helpful. Just about developing really solid habits. And the combination of those habits, you know, can really make a profound change in your life. But yeah, those are the two I'm actually reading two nonfiction books, which is kind of unusual for me. Because I love me a good fiction book, I just love the literary fiction genre, and spend a lot of time on that.

Rick Ripma: 23:13

I'm the same way. I have to force myself sometimes to read the business books, because I liked the fiction so much, you know, it's so much more fun sometimes to read.

Jeremy Tallman: 23:24

Yeah, I don't know if you've read. Yeah, I totally agree. Because at night, typically, I love fiction, because it puts my mind at ease. You've got 1000 miles an hour and end of the day. And so at night, my wife and I have a routine, we lay in bed and we read a fiction, it's just kind of puts our mind we can, you know, fall asleep to it. But in the mornings, I'm not perfect at this by try to block out like 20 to 25 minutes to read a nonfiction book to get myself better, or get our company better, or whatever it is. But it's a discipline. For me, it's I've not always read nonfiction. Like I have fiction. So it's just different. It's a different mindset to get into.

Rick Ripma: 24:02

So have you read or have heard of the 5am club?

Jeremy Tallman: 24:07

Yeah, I'm not if I'm not a part of the 5am. I'm a 530 club. So my wife and I get up at 530 Every morning, I like to get up and do hard things in the morning. Like I sit down and do like, I'll think about what I want to do the next morning at night, and try to get that hard work done early. It makes the rest of your day a lot easier. So I spend time when she's on the peloton, like I mentioned, kind of sitting down and doing some of the harder work, whether it's planning or meeting or getting through some to dues or whatever it is, I like to get that stuff done. And then avoid email for a while. Because it can get you know your emails, you guys know your inbox and get crazy and you become a slave to it. And so I like to I like to really work on that hard stuff and, you know, get that out of the way so I can focus on the reactionary stuff during the day which which in our industry, it's always happening. We're always reactionary because things happen every single day here that we have to react to Do

Rick Ripma: 25:01

it's critical that you work on that. You have some quiet time to do the other things. Right. But what would you say your your superpower or superpowers are?

Jeremy Tallman: 25:11

Well, I can fly. No, just kidding. Awesome. Another one? I would say I superpower. Yeah, interesting question. I would say probably just I'm always curious. I stay curious I don't, I've been accused of never being satisfied, like, you know, you reach, you know, because back when we first started this, I remember thinking if we could get to 300 doors under management, we would be the biggest management company maybe in the country. Okay. I think the biggest advantage is coming down the country has over 40,000 doors, I mean, it's just changed fundamentally. But then we hit 300, then we hit 400, then we hit 500, then we hit 1000, we hit 1000, we kind of celebrated that internal we had shirts made, because that's a big deal to hit four figures and, and management. There's not many companies, I think it puts us in the top 5% in the country is like number of doors manage single family anyway. And now we want to get to 2000. Right, that's our goal in 2020 sector to get to 2000. So it's again, it's always staying curious, never thinking you've made it ever thinking you've learned everything. Because there's so much to learn. Our industry is evolving a ton tech is in our industry very heavily. So we have to stay on top of that tech. And just, again, just always iterating changing how you do business, finding Best Practices iterating, those iterating iterating iterating. Because, again, because I don't think you can ever say we were Hey, there's nothing to do here, we're perfect. Every system works perfectly. We have all the right people, all the right spots. It's just constantly looking at ways that we can serve our clients better. And that's typically through just you know, providing them better service, better systems, better communication, whatever it is. And I will never be one that says we figured it out. Because there's just to me, that's impossible. It's about the journey to always try to get better and better and better. So I'm a curious person, you know, I love to read, I love to learn, I love to talk to people, interview people, maybe my journalism background, whatever. But I just think if you can always stay curious, you can always get better.

Ian Arnold: 27:32

Now, you mentioned tech, how, what type of tech do you guys use? And then how does it benefit you guys?

Jeremy Tallman: 27:39

Oh, gosh, we use a lot of tech, you know, it's one of the things that as property management industry, I wish we could our tech stack wasn't so tall. Because we have a lot of different tech we use. You know, we have property management software, there's several different companies now that offer just basic software, it's really more like a counting system. And you're kind of a database of, you know, here's all your tenants, here's all your owners, here's all your properties, and the amenities and all that good stuff. So we have a system we use, it's called property where we've used them since 2007, we actually one of the initial customers is a property where we know their owners or their former owners pretty well. But you know, we use a lot of other stuff, we use process software, property management is full of complicated processes. If I white boarded, a process on how to renew a tenant, you guys would be like that is insane. Like that is there are so many steps involved in renewing a tenant. Because there's so many parties involved, there's so many boxes to check. And renewals are an incredibly cumbersome process. So, you know, we have, again, we use, we use this system for to manage most of our processes out of we have, you know, a showing service that we use, we use a company called tenant Turner, and they we can do you know, agentless showings for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. That is a game changer in our industry. It's something that we resist it because we're like, wait a minute, we're gonna let someone in a property without being escorted? And the answer is yes. And it is been a tremendous benefit to our clients, mostly because we can rent homes faster, you know, that whole idea of let's meet with an agent and schedule a time and and it just becomes a very, very difficult process, especially in our scale. So you know, we use that we use, I would guess our tech stack is eight to 10 deep and different software's that we have to use to effectively manage our properties. It's there's a lot and we would love to streamline that more. I think there's there's got to be a consolidation of software to where not that we can have one software that does it all. We don't pretend that that's even achievable. But there's a lot of tech that we use, you know, portals that owners can log in and see real time data anytime they want. You know, all those tools, self service tools that make our jobs easier, make the experience better for a client that they don't have to say, hey, what's my rent on this property and they want to find out 2am on a Saturday night, they can log in and find out what their rent is for that property. Or if they've collected rent that we collected rent for them that month, or what their maintenance work orders look like, they can see that all on their portal. So those self servicing tools are, are critical to adding efficiency into your system.

Ian Arnold: 30:35

Yeah. And I want somebody to be able to help help you, and then also help themselves being able to use those tools. What's the best way to get ahold of you guys?

Jeremy Tallman: 30:45

Well, again, t h Realty inc.com. That's the easiest way to get to us there's you can fill out a form or call us 317257767. Yeah, we're very easy to reach. We've set our systems up to be that way.

Ian Arnold: 31:02

Well, why would you do something so easy?

Jeremy Tallman: 31:04

That's right. That's right.

Rick Ripma: 31:06

It's a, one of the things you said early on, is you were talking about when you got into it, and you took that first property and you were bought, you were thinking you're gonna buy one a year, you ended up buying one a month. As a lender, you know, one of our rules tends to be you can't have too many properties. And the reason is, is because we see a lot of people sale, when they when they when they bring in too many properties at one time. Or, you know, until they get to learn what they're doing. So my thought was is, I mean, you guys did an incredible thing about being able to do that. But I'm guessing that it's a lot easier on people, if they have a management company like you guys to do that. Then if they try to manage it on their own, is that accurate? And what would you suggest for somebody who's trying to develop it that fast?

Jeremy Tallman: 31:59

Well, yeah, it's an interesting point, Rick, because I remember vividly, you know, running into those limits, you know, the Fannie and Freddie limits, that said, Okay, today, you can have 10 mortgages in your name. Well, now it's seven. Now, it's 15. Now, it's 12. It was literally like, every home we went to buy, we either were over the cap, or all of a sudden, we had a lot more we could buy. And it was an interesting conversation, you have to look at your debt to income, right, because we had jobs, we were working, but we weren't like big time earners. Back then at all, we were just average guys, you know, looking to, to invest and try to build long term wealth creation. So yeah, it was it was a challenge. Now, since then, we spun them all off into commercial loans were in Portfolio loans, which, you know, if we have a great relationship with a bank, so if they want to want to buy 100 properties, or tuna properties with them, they can do that, if they want to do it. But yeah, it was always a challenge back then to understand because, you know, we, I'll just say our perfect product back then, was 10%, down. And then our interest rate was around seven to 8%, kind of like today, not a whole lot different than today, we were doing a ton of loans at seven and 8%. But we put them in our names, we buy them under my name, and Scott's name. And then a bowl again, ultimately, we spun that up, as we got more and more and more. And we developed better and better relationships with banks than they would just take those on. So like, they would do a loan on 10 doubles that we own, for example, right? And that makes it really simple. It's one big payment. And they service that and, you know, if we want to sell one here and there, they would work with us and like, you know, piece it out. They're not that difficult. We got a flexible lender. But you know, today Yeah, I mean, it's a different world today than it was a year ago or two years ago, for investors, they're getting squeezed in a lot of instant, in a lot of different areas. Interest rates are higher, the cost of labor is higher property taxes are going up, we know that because assessments are going up the you know, the townships not going to sit there and like they used to be they weren't very good at all in keeping up with assessed values. Now, they're pretty good, you know, you're not going to get away with a lot. So yeah, there's a lot of squeeze there for investors and they just have to be creative with their financing and, you know, work for the best rate possible and, and realize that they're not necessarily married to that rate they can, you know, they can probably do better down the road, but I don't know what you guys think. I mean, you guys have to have an opinion about I'm curious what you think I don't want to hijack your podcasts. But I'm curious what you guys think rates are going to be like, Where will Where will your clients be able to buy a home next year at this time? What are your general Do you have general thoughts on that?

Rick Ripma: 34:53

Yeah, I both of us spend a lot of time watching the market. So we watch the mortgage backed security bond market, we use it A company called MBS highways, Barry Habib, and listen to what they have to tell us and, you know, analyze those numbers. And it's, it's not done what anybody thought it would do. We got we thought in May, we would see the market improve and rates start to come down. That hasn't happened. Right. But when you look at inflation, and you look at, you know, all the news, and you look at you really dig into the employment reports, there's a lot more weakness than the government is letting on. And, and so I believe, and it's, I mean, it's anybody's nobody has a crystal ball, right. But I do believe rates will be down probably in the in the low sixes, mid fives in a year. And but I tell my clients, listen, don't depend on that tape, you know, you got to do it based on the rate you're getting today. If they are going to go down, then you we refinance it, if they don't go down, and they go up and you did a great job, you got the lowest rate before they went up, right?

Jeremy Tallman: 36:03

That's right. So yeah, yeah, that that's what I hear, too. I think, you know, next year, we're gonna start seeing some easing and make that better. But yeah, I think it's just a fascinating time to be in the market. Frankly, I think, you know, we were just talking the other day, as a group, there's a lot of reasons for investors not to invest today. But there were a lot of reasons investors could come up with that they shouldn't invest a year or two ago, even back when interest rates they could get it could get a 5% interest rate as a as an investor. Because back then it was like, well, there's competition is too great. Like everybody's buying, and I have to compete with owner occupants, I'd compete with Corporation, corporate REITs and fun money. And so I'm just gonna wait until the market gets a little slower. Well, now the interest rate now the market is slower, you know, there's fewer homes going on the market, fewer transactions happening, more reductions happening days on market are going up. And others say, well, the interest rates are too high. So it's like, you know, when do you when do you do it? And I'll say this, I think this is true. I think I've said it 1000 times, and I think I've improved of it. I think it's nearly I'm talking about from an investment standpoint, if you're buying this as an investment property, I think it's nearly impossible to make a mistake in real estate, if you hold the property long term. Right. I agree. There are so many properties that Scott and I bought at sheriff sale. And the sheriff's I was almost exclusively to buy and sell, we were flipping those homes, and we went to sheriff sale. These are inventory for us. They're short term, 3060 90 days, sell it? Well, when you know, we bought 4050 a year for a few years that we made some mistakes, or they we thought they were mistakes back then. So we put them in our rental fleet. When I look at him, I'm like, wow, you know, we that that property at 50th and Rosalyn that we way overpaid for it$60,000 is now worth many multiples of that. Okay. And in the meantime, I've cash floated, I've gotten good rents, we've maintained it. And so it's been a really, you know, I will say this, I think the biggest mistakes you can buy in real estate from an investing standpoint are the properties that you sell too early. Because I know a ton of those properties I drive by and sometimes and go a while we used to own that, sure, wish we still did, or the properties you didn't buy, that you're like, you know, I could buy it, if I put another you know, five probably go 1000 more, I could have bought that property. But now you think, wow, I could have bought that property for this. And I heard someone interesting, or we sent some a bunch of people to a bigger pockets conference that happened in Orlando a couple of weeks ago. It's, you know, 2500 investors. BiggerPockets is an amazing organization. But the keynote speaker said in 2026, you will regret that you didn't buy more in 2023. And I think that's that's the mentality, it's like, you know, don't wait, you can you can fill yourself up with a ton of excuses of why not to buy. But ultimately, I think if you hold it long term, if you have that long term wealth building mentality, it's hard to make a mistake, if he's had to spend an extra $1,000 in the whole scheme of things that is literally nothing, it will make very little impact on your overall return and your equity build. So yeah, I think it's I think it's I think it's always a great time to buy. It's just, you know, you just got to understand that you're not going to have that perfect market of no competition, very low interest rates, depressed prices, those don't happen you're gonna get those types of markets it's so you might as well just go in and do it. And I think you'll be happy you did in the in the end.

Ian Arnold: 39:37

So let me ask this what hots are like hotspots for rental places here Indianapolis area.

Jeremy Tallman: 39:45

Yeah, I mean Indianapolis is getting less than less affordable as a market. You know, 10 years ago when we had you know, incredible influx of corporate money coming in, they were buying up these days. Bro, do you guys have seen the stories probably know the names, they came in hard and heavy and start buying up suburbs mostly. But yeah, there's still some pockets out there. I think there's some, you know, specific areas near downtown that are, you know, our prime, you know, you know, 510 years ago Fountain Square was placed, a lot of people wouldn't go to there, they were just, it wasn't like, I don't want to take that gamble, you know, the construction is not the best, it's their old or whatever. And now, you know, those people who invested heavily in Fountain Square are very, very happy they did. So there still are some pockets, you know, around town that you can do? Well, we've went a little further outside, you know, we find that, and I never would have thought this, you know, ever until about four or five years ago, Anderson, Indiana is a good place to invest. Prices are still good. Rents are strong rental market is a tremendous base of tenants up there. And we took on one as a favor to another portfolio, Skye had a portfolio here locally owned one and Anderson, we happen to have several employees that live in the Anderson area, strangely enough. So we're like, you know what, we'll do him a favor, we'll take it on, at least in like two days, good rents. And so we started making more concerted effort to go up there and make and make some stuff happen for some of our clients has been really good for us. But there's still there's still value out there, there's still opportunities out there, you just got to be, you know, get a good agent that can that is really well versed in that in our industry. I always tell people just don't google top agents in Indianapolis and expect that they're going to be the person that you find to get you the best investment deal. You know, most agents aren't in that mindset, they have a very different mission for their clients, their clients are motivated differently than investor would be. So they're not necessarily night and day because we get it's it's an adjacent type of thing they're doing. But it is important that people find really good agents that can that can speak like you guys have had a couple on. You guys had Zach canole on. He's a great investor agent, Peter Stewart's remarkable agent for investors, Devin Hicks in our company, I'll plug her she's remarkable as well. But these people deal with a lot of investors. And they have that mindset. And it's so important to employ that agent that has that mindset. And now there's a lot of agents that have gotten educated in it. It's not it's, it's not a unattainable skills. Like it's not some crazy skill set you have to have, but you do have to have some fundamentals and and be able to speak the language know what to look for. That can't happen overnight. But you can certainly get there. Everyone starts, you know, for Ashton, Devon was a fresh agent. And she's been, you know, she's been doing it for a few years now. And she's super effective. You know, three or four years ago, she walked in, she had no idea what she was doing. And now she's a very different person. And she, she can really, really sniff them out. And, again, it's a lot of windshield time. It's a lot of videos to our clients. It's just there's a lot of work involved in sniffing out those investment properties. Yeah,

Ian Arnold: 43:14

so we got a couple more questions before we let you go and start earning more money. So but what was your the question of the week? So what was your first car?

Jeremy Tallman: 43:27

Whew, my first car was a Ford Escort. Okay, my dad knew a guy that owned a body shop and bought it racked. I think it was 400 bucks. We bought it wrecked. And that he fixed it up. And yeah, it was a little blue Ford Escort. I don't remember the year, year would have been 88 Maybe. I don't know. It was something that somewhere maybe 84. I don't know what it was. But it was a it was a little blue manual transmission, little Ford Escort.

Rick Ripma: 44:01

So I've started taking value.

Jeremy Tallman: 44:05

I don't think that car made it to IU. I think in the wreck, it cost some engine damage that was undiagnosed, I think I think didn't last very long. So yeah, I don't I think i What did I drive to? I don't remember what I was driving at IU. But it wasn't great. Whatever it was, it wasn't a great car. It was a you know, I came from a very modest background. And you know, we were farmers and didn't have a lot of disposable income to spend on cars. So we just, you know, I did learn to drive funnily enough in a hay field. When I was probably about 12 I was driving trucks and hay fields and things like that. And I learned on a manual, old Ford pickup probably is what it was. So I was driving, you know, really early illegally in a hay field, tractors and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, driving was never a problem for May I kind of I was kind of a Driver's Ed was as smooth as possibly could be because I was already had like four years of driving under my belt by them.

Rick Ripma: 45:11

So I just love cars.

Ian Arnold: 45:14

Yeah. All right. What do you take away your most memorable transactions have been?

Jeremy Tallman: 45:21

Oh, boy. You know, one that sticks out is a sheriff sale purchase, and not sure how much you guys are familiar with the sheriff sale. You know, they used to be huge back in 2008 2009. Those those lists would go up to 1000 homes that were auctioned off every month in Marion County. I think today there's like 40, right, because there's no nothing that could that could change. I think the sheriff sale could be become bigger and bigger and bigger, we'll see. But we bought a house at sheriff sale at a really, really good area. And knew we'd hit a home run like it was an obvious home run. We toured it after the fact. And it's again, we did not get into a lot of these homes. We turned it after the fact and the assessor's record showed it it was on a slab turned out it was on a full finished basement. So that homerun became magnified even more and we were talking to our realtor. And he said, Hey, look, you know, this thing is worth X. I don't know what that X was and what we paid for. But there's a massive spread. And literally, as I was leaving the house, the tour, I got a call from the sheriff's department saying the attorney is contesting the sale, they're trying to set it aside. That means basically that the sale should be deemed null and void. And they would put it back in the system it would sell again. So you can imagine our euphoria and all of a sudden, just deflation. It was like, oh, you know, we thought we hit literally the biggest property we'd ever hit. And then we get the phone call saying, maybe not. So we lawyered up, we got an attorney. The Sheriff's Department came in and testified on our behalf that it was a ballad sale, it was competitive bidding, which we were bidding against somebody else. So it wasn't like, you know, we came in and just bought it. No competition. So theoretically, we paid a fair market value for because there was competitive bidding. And we were just the last one standing. And after a lot of consternation and stuff, we won that we want it. And so we got the house, and I think within a few days had it sold. And you know, it was it was a big moment for us in our flipping history. But there's just been a lot of fun stories, some not so fun. You know, we buy, we bought foreclosures, we don't anymore, we haven't been able to buy a home and at the sheriff sale in many years, because the competition is just incredibly difficult. They're paying full retail down there for homes, just another avenue for corporations and investors just to buy homes. They're not looking for value, or they're looking to buy it and read it. And that's a very different mentality than we had when we were trying and we had to buy it with margin in it. Because it didn't make sense. We weren't again buying and for rentals. But yeah, just been a just been a lot of fun experiences. You know, I think we flipped two or 300 homes back in the day. And so did a ton of transactions. Yeah, had a lot of fun doing that. It was like that was a fun, but auctions are fun. They're just fun to be a part of they're fun to win homes. You know, like I said, we didn't get into a lot of these homes. So you walk into them after you mind for the first time. And sometimes you're disappointed sometimes you're happy. So it was just it was just a lot of fun back then. And you know, we had a good agent Brian Sanders, we haven't had him on your show. You should. He's a he's been around forever. And we used him for a long, long time to help us buy and sell homes. And yeah, just had a lot, a lot of fun transactions on that, on that, on that side of the business.

Ian Arnold: 48:57

That is awesome. So I'll ask you this one last time. If somebody's wanting to get in contact with you, what's the best way

Jeremy Tallman: 49:05

just hit us up at T H Realty inc.com. You can google or name t and h Realty will come up. You can call us 317-255-7767 fill out a form we'll send you a bunch of information about us just you know, we're one of our core values here is to continually educate advise. And this is an industry that, you know, people think well I can be a landlord because I own this aisle and I can I can rent it. It's really important that they're educated. That's one of the things that we spend the most time on is just education. And it's important that you get very educated about what you're getting into understanding you're getting into a small business, again, whether you like it or not. That's what you're entering into. It's not a we've had people come to us who have said, well, I expected $400 A month every month I expected 40 $100 a year in positive cash flow. I got 4000 You guys aren't doing your jobs. I need to change management companies. It's like well, that is not going to be anyone's reality almost ever, you know, there's, there's going to be maintenance on the property. It's just, it's just a reality of what we do. And then to compound that, in today's market, that maintenance is so much more expensive than maybe they experienced two or three years ago. You know, I told a story recently, I, when we first moved downtown, we've been there almost exactly five years. And one of the things we talked about doing when we first moved down there is building a carriage house, there's a ton of carriage houses downtown, we thought it'd be a nice thing to do. We were quoted about 100 to 110,000, I think to build a carriage house back then, we decided not to for whatever reason, recently, we said, hey, let's do a carriage house, we think that might make sense a good place for people to come, or kids to come home to so they can have their own space, whatever. That same carriage house is now quoted out at$310,000. So that's the conversation I started with, they're like, hey, look, you're gonna get sticker shock here. And I was sticker shock a little bit, I thought twice, would make sense. But it was three times. And that's just kind of where we are as an economy is that, you know, to fix it to replace an HVAC system now is multiple 1000s of dollars. You know, usually we get over 800 to 1200 bucks, it's just not that same way anymore. And people will get sticker shock when they go in and they have to at full turn on a property. It's like, wow, these terms used to cost me$2,500, you know, to do this type of work. It's not the way anymore. It's just, it's just it's an expensive thing. So we have to educate them. Right? We don't want them to be surprised. We feel like if someone's really surprised by something, we haven't done our jobs. So we need to make sure everyone's that goes into this with their eyes wide open on what to expect. You know, it's a classic case of Ian, you want to you want to turn your property, you know, your house you're living into into a rental home. And you say, hey, look, I this stove, this one, this one stove. Control doesn't work the best I use a wrench to turn it on. Well, that's going to have to be fixed. Because the tenants aren't, you know, the way you live in your house isn't necessarily how we should expect a resident to live in your house, they're going to be probably they want it to be everything working well. If you provide appliances, they all work and they're maintained. So it's just a different mentality. It's like, Well, I live I live with my pink wall for 10 years. Well, the resident probably won't want to live with your pink wall anymore. So it's getting into that mindset of preparing your product, the house to be set up to be appealing, especially in this market when the markets extremely slow, right? And right now, it's very slow. So you got to be priced, right, you got to have your house shine. So people will be enticed to move to you because frankly, they have a lot of options. There's a lot of options right now, if you're a tenant to move.

Rick Ripma: 52:51

Well, you're an educator at heart so it doesn't surprise me you you want to educate. But if you want to get a hold of ESRI go to hard working mortgage guys.com That's HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com thats HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com Or you give us a call at 317-672-1938. That's 317-672-1938. And please follow us for more in these real estate gurus

Ian Arnold: 53:16

and reminder getting friends, family co workers looking to buy sell or refinance. Let us know we're more happy. Okay. Jeremy, thank you for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure having you on I love all the stories you got to share with us.

Jeremy Tallman: 53:27

Yeah, appreciate it. It's been fun. It's been a good conversation. Thanks.

Unknown: 53:32

Thanks Brent and Melissa number 33041 MLS NUMBER SIX orthodontic night normals NMLS number is 95469 People housing opportunity some restrictions apply