How to Build a Passive Rental Portfolio with Lane Kawaoka

https://www.jayconner.com/how-to-build-a-passive-rental-portfolio-with-lane-kawaoka/
Lane is a buy and hold apartment deal investor. He has a group of investors who he offers his deals to. To buy an apartment you need a big downpayment. He never puts more than 5% of his net worth into any one deal. www.jayconner.com/Lane Lane looks at non primary markets, so not at NY, LA, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago. So he looks in areas like Alabama, Ohio, Atlanta, Little Rock and teritary markets, Huntsville. AL. * The basics of building a passive rental portfolio while working a full-time W2 Professional job * Lane's Ideal Rent-to-Value Ratio * Should you invest in primary, secondary, tertiary markets? * Should you invest in Class A, Class B, or Class C assets? Lane's answer will surprise you! * Other than apartments and rentals what other recession-proof asset classes are there? Lane shares some very interesting, under-the-radar asset classes. * Emergency fund 2.0: creating an opportunity fund with liquid investments and infinite banking. * The top things you should consider in the assumptions in a pro-forma pitch deck * Cap rate to reversion cap rate delta * Annual rent increases 1-3% * Full occupancy assumptions 3) prefs, General Partner - Limited partner splits, IRRs * Being an Entrepreneur - Raising funds through his syndication business through building relationships via my podcast and internet marketing. In 2016-current, the Hui Deal Pipeline Club has acquired more than $155 million dollars of real estate and raised $18 million dollars. “The true meaning of wealth is having the freedom to do what you want, when you want, and with whom you want. Building cash flow via real estate is the simple part. The difficult part occurs after you are free financially to find your calling and fulfillment. But that's a great problem to have ;) excerpt from “The One Thing That Changed Everything” Today, Lane invests in syndications which buy Class C & B Multi-Family Apartment, RV Parks, mobile homes, and assisted living facilities because of this Nation's demand for affordable housing - not rich people Class-A assets. His mission is to help regular people into good deals that were once only accessible to the rich. The passive income from investing in stabilized rental properties made it possible for him to move back home to Hawaii where the cost of paradise is 10%+ cost of living and -30% less pay for comparable jobs in the US mainland. There he was able to live a lifestyle where I was able to bike to work. It did not take him long however to finally quit the day job and ditch the e-bike for a Mercedes. "Don't do anything you can't scale to a 7 figure income." ~ Lane Kawaoka
----------------------------------------------------------------
Jay Conner (00:09):
Well hello and welcome back to another exciting episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I'm Jay Conner, your host and The Private Money Authority. And if this is your first time to the show, I want to give you a special welcome here on the show. We talk about everything related to real estate investing. We talk about all kinds of deals, we talk about single family houses, apartments, commercial land, sell storage and on and on and on. And if you've been following and listening in for a little while, you know I've had just some amazing guests and experts here on the show and today is no exception. But before I bring on my special guests today, I've got a free gift for everybody and that is if you are looking for more funding for your deals, regardless of what your mortgage broker or your hard money lender or such my site, I've got a free on demand online class that gives you the 5 steps that shows you exactly how I went from having no funding to over $2 million in funding in less than 90 days.

Jay Conner (01:12):
So you can check it out and get right on over to www.JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast. So with that, I am so excited to have as my guest today, a good friend of mine also, we're in a mastermind group. His name is Lane Kawaoka and he currently owns 2,600 units as in apartments and et cetera across the United States. What you're going to love about listening to Lane today is that he is truly a virtual investor, meaning he lives in Hawaii, but all of his investments are in elsewhere in the United States. So we recently quit his day job as a professional engineer and he is now enjoying the wealth and the freedom that I know all of you all are looking for.

Jay Conner (02:11):
So what Lane does is he partners with investors who want to build a portfolio but are too busy to mess with the tenants and the toilets and the termites, et cetera, by curating opportunities. And his company, which was called the HUI Deal Pipeline Club. Whereas investors have personal access to him and know that Lane is perfectly putting his money on the line too as well. Well, his pipeline club has acquired over $155 million of real estate and it's acquired by syndicating over $15 million of private equity just since 2016 so he's also another great connection as I am in this world of private money. So what Lane does is he reverse engineers the wealth building strategies that the rich use to the middle class via the 50 investing podcast, which you can check out. It's SimplePassiveCashflow.com and Lane's mission is to help hardworking professionals out of the rat race one free strategy call at a time. So with that, Lane welcome to the show!

Lane Kawaoka (03:15):
Hey, thanks for having me, Jay. Aloha!

Jay Conner (03:17):
Aloha. I love it. I love it. Like what's that thing you call when you put them around the neck and they welcome you to Hawaii, a lei. There you go. There you go. Yeah, well, as I said about Lane and I are in a high end mastermind group and we've gotten to know each other and in fact we were in the same focus group at our last mastermind meeting and I was just very, very intrigued with Lane and what he's got going on and it's therefore invited him here to the show. So whether you are a investor with capital or if you are a real estate investor and you're just sort of tired of going to the local REIA club, hanging around some broke people and you actually want to change what that looks like, you're definitely going to want to tune in today closely and learn how to connect with Lane. So Lane, give us your background story. How did you get, well, first of all, before you give us your background story, give us an overview of what you've got going on in this world of real estate investing. I mean, you've got over 2,600 units. What does that look like?

Lane Kawaoka (04:23):
Yeah. So I'm kind of more evolved buy and hold investor instead of buying one of single family homes these days, I get sent apartment deals that get syndicated and I get to know the operators and sponsors and I do my due diligence, run the numbers, get the PNLs and rent rolls. Then I see if I want to invest and to bring along my investors with me.

Jay Conner (04:45):
I got you. So you just said through syndication, just to make sure everybody understands what we're talking about. What do you mean when you say syndication?

Lane Kawaoka (04:56):
Yeah, so a lot of these properties that, you know, say you're buying a hundred unit building, you know, you're going to need a couple of million dollars with down payment and you know, potentially funding from someone like yourself. But you know, you're going to get that private equity raise to get the big loan with the bank who controls 80% of it and you're going to pick up a $5 million property. Most people don't have $2 million lying around, nor is it very smart to you know, most of my investors, we go by this principle, we don't put any more than 5% of our net worth and to any one deal, [right?] So we diversify it over multitude of these types of syndications.

Jay Conner (05:38):
So really what we're saying, when you say syndication, what we're talking about is using other people's money, private money, and having them invest into the deals with you. Right?

Lane Kawaoka (05:46):
Right, right. So we create a couple of asset classes for general partners and limited partners, you know, limit partners, very little liability. They don't do anything other than bring your money in and check some monthly statements and hopefully we all get to the destination. Right?

Jay Conner (06:05):
Exactly. Exactly. So you're living in Hawaii, none of your investments are there. All of your commercial properties are elsewhere in the United States. So how do you decide where you want to invest and where to go look for deals?

Lane Kawaoka (06:23):
Yeah, I mean, my first criteria is cash flow. So the rent to value ratio is kind of what governs where I even start looking. So just like when I was buying single family homes, you know, I'm looking for a hundred thousand dollar house that rents for at least a thousand dollars a month. Because at that point I know I can pay all my expenses, all my mortgage expenses, and have a little bit buffer there to be able to cash flow because let's face it, I think over sessions coming up in the future and you know, even if the price goes down a little bit, I still want to be able to cash flow

Jay Conner (06:59):
sure. That makes sense. So is there any particular area of the country or cities that you are focusing on or not focusing on?

Lane Kawaoka (07:09):
Yeah, I mean most of the deals that I kind of look at are in the Southeast. More of the red States with very landlord friendly and a lot of blue color job force growth out there. A lot of manufacturing. Some of these places might be more tertiary market settlers. People hear less about, you know, like a Huntsville, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, Gulf port, Mississippi, Lake Charles, Louisiana. You know, those are typical markets that we like to target as emerging markets.

Jay Conner (07:43):
I got ya. So let's say you know, you've determined a particular city or area or the Southeast that you want to focus on. So where do you go find the deals? I mean there's other websites that you use. Do you use direct mail campaigns? I mean, if somebody is starting out, where do they go to look?

Lane Kawaoka (08:01):
Yeah, I mean if you're starting out, I mean, I hate to say this, but you don't have a shot. I mean, I think in single family homes, we can all agree, most deals, 80% of them are found off market in the commercial realm, over 50 units, 80% of deals are controlled by brokers. Unless you close a hundred or 200 units before, he ain't going to get a shot at closing. This next one, people are saying, well, what about the other 20% that are out there? It's like, yeah, you can direct market a sophisticated seller who owns an apartment, but unless that property is some huge issues and you know, I target properties that are 90% occupied or more, so I can get that qualified for them. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, non-recourse Monday, I won't really want to deal with those 20% problem property even though they're out there. So it's an unfair game.

Jay Conner (08:54):
Yeah. So you

Jay Conner (08:56):
say if you've never done one of these deals is going to be very hard for you to break in. So how does somebody start?

Lane Kawaoka (09:04):
Well, I mean that's where most of our investors, they've done a bunch of single family homes. They fill up their net worth to be half a million dollars or more. They've gotten sophisticated in terms of they know the risks of real estate and they know how it works. But then they come into deals as a passive investor and they invest anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 into a deal. And it's kind of buying your way into a big company. But it's, you know, you know the operators,

Jay Conner (09:36):
right? So in other words, to really get started in this game, you need to be partnering up someone starting out. It needs to be like partnering up with someone like you that's already got the relationships that already knows the ropes that already knows how to do the workings of the deal. Right?

Lane Kawaoka (09:52):
Right! And because we follow, we follow SPC protocol and there's a big thing about mass smart it being out there. So a lot of it, is you have to have a preexisting relationship with the sponsor you're going to work with. [Right] Most deals out there, 90 to 97% of deals are for non-acute investors, but you need to have a preexisting relationship.

Jay Conner (10:18):
Exactly. I got you. So what's a realistic ride-over return that people can anticipate to get in these types of deals?

Lane Kawaoka (10:26):
You know, from the get go, a lot of these properties with prudent leverage on it, your cash line, you know, high single digits, you know, maybe 8% that's usually, but these properties along of course cap rate compression has kind of taken over and it's hard to find these properties, which is why you've got to get about a thousand properties to find one that actually works. But the kind of deals that we kind of folk it's on or actually today, but there's some kind of value add opportunity. For example, putting about $4,000 into every unit with new paint, new flooring. And then it's just like on a pig. So they, we can raise those rents. 50 a hundred dollars if you get that bump in net operating income, which in commercial real estate, that's your operating income divided by your cap rate equals your, market place.

Jay Conner (11:22):
Okay. So lane, you know, we hear people in your space and apartments talking about primary, you know, secondary, you know, other types of markets. So what's your comment and thought about, you know, should you invest in particular kinds of markets or not invest in particular kinds of markets?

Lane Kawaoka (11:42):
Yeah, so I mean just to kind of define it for folks who don't know what primary, secondary, tertiary markets are. Primary markets are your top tier markets like Los Angeles, Hawaii, York, San Francisco, Seattle. You're not going to find the rent to value ratios out there to be able to cash flow. Now you know, I'm not going to knock anybody strategy in terms of investing, but my strategy is I want to cash flow on the property because my number one was not to lose money. You know, [that's a good rule.] You know that whole, you know, investing in those kinds of markets. Yeah. Everybody wants to live in a place like Seattle or San Francisco and generally the prices are going to be going up. But you know, we all seen what happened in the past and there's always going to be another recession where the prices kind of tank.

Lane Kawaoka (12:36):
Again, I would rather skew my portfolio to more of, Hey, the property creates more rental income than it has an expenses and it can support itself. You regardless of what the market price is and when I can do that, I can sell at the right time whenever I want, at my price I want to be in. So to do that you need to go to a little bit off the beaten path to secondary markets like Birmingham, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Memphis, Little Rock or tertiary markets, which are about 50 a hundred thousand in population. Like you know, I guess El Paso is probably a larger Trisha market, but a Lake, Charles, Louisiana, Huntsville, Alabama would be good examples of tertiary markets.

Jay Conner (13:24):
All right, I got you now. So that's the markets. So let's talk about for a moment the different kinds of properties or assets. So you know, in the commercial world you hear people talking about class A, assets class B, assets, class C assets. First of all, define for everybody what are these different types of classes of assets and what should you invest in?

Lane Kawaoka (13:48):
Yeah, so the A-class or your brand new properties, these are the luxury assets that you know are usually brand new builds built anywhere from the last 20 years till now. The class B assets are kind of your 1980s 1990s vintage, a little bit older. And then the class C assets are like your 1950s to 1970s it doesn't go by age. There's no hard and fast rule, but you know, you talk to a broker, of course they're gonna bump up the rating on you for one grade, right? But you know, investors, you know, kinda know this lingo and they can kind of know what kind of class of building it is. But you know, just like how I said you don't invest in primary markets, you don't really want to be investing for class a luxury. We kind of target class B and C because that's where we can get a bargain. And we're not competing with unsophisticated investors just looking for a choppy asset. Right.

Jay Conner (14:45):
That makes sense. Now you've mentioned a couple of times, you know there's another recession coming and of there always is. Nobody knows when for sure, but I know that you practice what you preach and you invest in what you would call recession proof assets. So other than say apartments or rentals, I have you got any other, of course nothing's guaranteed, but anything, any other what you would refer to as recession? Proof of assets?

Lane Kawaoka (15:15):
Yeah, I mean another option are like mobile home parks. You know, I think when you talk about mobile home parks, people think about trailer homes, which that scares a lot of people off and that's a good sign. When people are scared on sophisticated, dumb money doesn't follow. So mobile home parks in a recession, if what you're thinking is people are going to the A class, people are going to move to the Bs, the Bs, they're going to move to the Cs and move into mobile home parks. It's an asset class that they aren't going to build any more of because of late on, no politician wants the responsible for permitting a mobile home park and also mobile home parks. Don't generate revenue for the city. So cities and counties don't want them, so they're, you know, most people in America believe it or not make under $30,000 and they need good housing like mobile home parks. That's one form. I'm, you know, I'm kind of getting into that a little bit. I know apartments the best, but I understand it's smart to invest in different asset classes. It's still sort of impacted by the economy. If you want to really go to the deep end and get totally non for later with the economy, I would say like settlement investing would be another good one. You know, investing off people's life insurances when they die, you get paid. Is that Saint out there? Nothing guaranteed more than death and taxes. Right?

Jay Conner (16:38):
Right! Interesting. Interesting. Now I heard you mentioned this a few minutes ago, but I want to drill down on it. You referred to the rent to value ratio and that's you know, a common phrase in the broader commercial. So first of all, explain to everybody what do you mean by rent to value ratio and then what is your rule of thumb on what the ratio needs to be for the deal to make sense?

Lane Kawaoka (17:00):
Yeah, so you know, just a quick example, some of the first properties when I was purchasing rental properties was a hundred thousand dollar house that rented for a thousand dollars a month. Threats evaluation. As you take the monthly rent divided by the purchase price, and that's the rent to value ratio, you're looking for something 1% or higher, 2% awesome. But it's sort of hard to find good areas. That's not a war zone, but you know, you're going to have to put it into the spreadsheet and go down. But line by line and every expense and income, but from a quick and dirty way of doing this, that the rent to value ratio above 1% is a good indicator that shows good cash flow, now I invest off cash flow. That may not be your, your listeners personal strategy. But when I'm investing off cash, I look for that 1% indicator. You know, like here in Hawaii, you know, this million dollar house rents for $3,000 a month. That's a 0.3%

Jay Conner (18:04):
that works doesn't fit your formula, does it?

Lane Kawaoka (18:06):
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's the California will say no one all, you know, that doesn't work.

Jay Conner (18:12):
Right. I got you. And you know I know this about you Lane, and that is, you know, it wasn't too long ago that you retired from your day job as an engineer, but you've been building this empire of real estate assets while doing a day job. How in the world do you do that? How do you find the time to do the, you know, actionable items that you gotta do in order to build this kind of investment company while you're working full time?

Lane Kawaoka (18:45):
Yeah, I mean when I was just picking up single family homes my first five, seven years, you know, I use property management companies, you know, they're well worth, but 10% of your income that you bring in. Someone told me that you know, you don't do things unless you can scale it to seven acres and a single family homes are a great way to get started. Especially turnkey rentals. You know, like my first 20 podcasts were all about turnkey rentals, how I started. But as your network grows, you kind of drift into more syndications and private placements like all I have. And yes we use property managers, but there's also asset managers who are another layer of managers who kind of make sure we're doing the right thing with the asset and they are partners aligned with the passive investors. So everybody has skin in the game. And that's a key component that I don't invest without.

Jay Conner (19:40):
Well that makes sense. That makes sense. Well, Lane, I know we put together a special URL for my listeners, which is www.jayconner.com/Lane, and tell our audience what is that URL address and why would they want to go there?

Lane Kawaoka (20:01):
Yeah, so one thing that I've kind of, pretty much the only product I've made is, you know, your network is your net worth is what they say. And I work with high paid professionals who have money, most of which are accredited and you know, to get access to these deals, you've got to build up your network. Unfortunately, the worst place to go is these pre internet forums and the local real estate club because let's face it, they're just a bunch of broke people, you know, how do you prefer, you know they're not going out to be skiing scrapyard or whatnot. Use my podcast, which attracts passive investors and created this little mastermind.

Jay Conner (20:45):
Excellent. So folks go to www.JayConner.com/Lane, and that will get you in contact with Lane and have a strategy session with them and have the opportunity to work together with him on commercial projects and invest if you like, and get connected and truly learn what passive income is about. So Lane, parting comments? Last piece of advice for our listeners and audience.

Lane Kawaoka (21:15):
Yeah, I mean if people want to book a call, my email is lane@simplepassivecashflow. Just to make sure you tell me that Jay sent you because, and I think that's a big thing. That's why you and I joined these different masterminds, right? Jay like it's all about like it's a small world out there and you know, you never really want to work with some random person, so at least know they came from you. You know, I know that they're, you know, I can kind of follow the breadcrumbs, what kind of, what they're all about.

Jay Conner (21:45):
You know, so our viewers have definitely heard me say this before, but I don't know who came up with the phrase that opposites attract. That's stupid. I mean, I want to hang around people that are like me, right? So yes, birds of the same feather do flock together. So anyway, Lane, I'm sure you'll be hearing from a good number of our, audience members Lane. Thank you so much, man, for taking the time to come here on the show and tell folks what you got going on.

Lane Kawaoka (22:12):
Yeah, yeah, we'll catch up in a couple months there in San Diego. Good to see you again.

Jay Conner (22:17):
You got it. Lane, thank you so much for coming on and I'll see you soon. Well there you have it folks. Thank you for joining in for another episode. I'm Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority, wishing you all the best and here's to taking your real estate investing business to the next level. We'll see you on the next show. Bye for now.