Podcast Transcript
Introduction:
Welcome to Real Wealth Real Health, the show that empowers you with insights, information, and inspiration to achieve your version of financial wellness. Learn how to balance living a full life today with planning for the future. This podcast is brought to you by Alpha Investing, a real estate centric private capital network that provides exclusive investment opportunities to its members. And now here are your hosts, Ada Pia d’Errico and Daniel Coca.
Ada Pia:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Wealth Real Health. This is Ada Pia d’Errico and this is a special bonus episode that is a little different from what you’ve been used to hearing up until now.
Ada Pia:
This interview was recorded live between myself and Heather Schwarz who I’ll introduce in just a moment and we recorded this live at the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference, during the weekend of February 20th of 2020.
Ada Pia:
This is a quick 30 minute episode. It’s a concentrated conversation, a lot of energy. You’ll hear a bit of background noise. That is the conference going on, people having networking events, conversations, evaluating deals. And this is really what we get into in this episode, around the non -obvious and that is related specifically to evaluation.
Ada Pia:
Looking at the non-obvious when you’re evaluating an investment opportunity, a sponsor, a partner. These are really important things that we don’t necessarily look at or know to look at. So it’s a nuanced and in depth, really concentrated 30 minutes around this topic.
Ada Pia:
We also talk about the intersection of intellect and intuition. So the ‘fact check’ and the ‘gut check’, and we both tell personal stories where our gut check told us something was off about a specific person and investment partner, and we talk about what happened to each of us.
Ada Pia:
So without further ado, let me give you a quick introduction to our guest today. Heather Schwarz, who is a certified financial planner with a background in private banking asset management. And today she is the president and principal of Mosaic RE Ventures. She’s a commercial real estate development company that either does joint venture or direct development projects in mixed use, retail, senior living, and hospitality assets.
Ada Pia:
Heather spent the past two decades working alongside companies and individuals in capital fundraising, investments, strategy and idea generation, technology and corporate restructuring. She was the co-founder and chief strategy officer of earlyshares.com, a real estate crowdfunding platform which she exited a few years ago. Heather continues to travel around the country doing deals, speaking about private investing and other advancements in financial investment technology, and she actively manages a U S commercial real estate portfolio for American as well as a Brazilian and other Latin American investors.
Ada Pia:
I hope that you will enjoy today’s bonus episode with Heather Schwarz.
Ada Pia:
Hi Heather.
Heather Schwarz:
Hi.
Ada Pia:
This is so much fun.
Heather Schwarz:
I know it is.
Ada Pia:
We are actually recording this live at the Best Ever Conference 2020. We are in Keystone, Colorado and we have this opportunity to do a recording in the conference, and I’m here with my good friend, Heather Schwarz.
Ada Pia:
And we’re going to talk about some nuances today, nuances of due diligence, nuances of choosing an investment partner, a syndicator, just generally speaking, what is the non-obvious when it comes to real estate investing? And that’s a big, big topic.
Ada Pia:
So what I’d like to do is start, of course, with Heather, asking you to give your background, which is fascinating. It’s such a rich background from where you started to getting to where you are today. And so yeah, tell us your story.
Heather Schwarz:
Thank you, thank you. Well it is very exciting to be here, especially we’re in the lobby and there’s a lot of motion and people in conversation. So it’s great to be like in the mix and also talking about, you know, something I’m very passionate about, which is real estate.
Heather Schwarz:
So my career started, I hate to say this, it’s what been like 22, 23 years now. And it started in private banking, wealth management at Merrill Lynch in Miami. And it eventually grew and evolved to commercial real estate. And I spent a lot of time focusing on the debt side, and then I moved over into the equity side. And something that we’re hearing a lot about at the conference, and I think people are hearing a lot about in general, is about crowd funding.
Heather Schwarz:
So back in 2011, 2012, I started one of the first equity crowd funding platforms. Did that for about five or six years, was a really unique and interesting process. And I know you’re laughing ’cause you can totally appreciate all of the shared experiences based on your experience with crowd funding, but I’m fortunate enough, you know, to exit out of that platform.
Heather Schwarz:
And then I went into, specifically equity investing on the limited partner side. Did that for a few years. And then about a year, 15 months ago I transitioned over to developing my own properties and doing joint venture partnerships as a general partner.
Heather Schwarz:
So it has been a very interesting transition for me. Looking back at my career, seeing where I started, I’ve always been in finance. I think it’s fascinating, particularly, you know, just looking at the opportunities that are available and how many different ways that you can participate and play. And to me, since the very beginning of my career, and I remember when I was even in high school, I was working part time at a law firm. I always gravitated toward real estate. So it’s so fitting that now, you know, I’m really in the mix and I’m 100% focused on that.
Heather Schwarz:
So with that said, I mean you bring up a really good topic that I think gets overlooked because when investors and even sponsors that are entering into these joint venture type of partnerships, when you’re looking at your own due diligence process, you know, a lot of times you focus on some of the obvious things, right? And I refer to those as the four P’s.
Heather Schwarz:
So you’ve got people, right, who are the sponsors, you’ve got the property, what is the actual project that’s being developed or purchased.
Ada Pia:
Right.
Heather Schwarz:
You’ve got the sponsors and the process – how they’re looking at it. And then you’ve also got performance, like what am I going to make on this?
Heather Schwarz:
So a lot of times, all of that energy and effort gets shifted and focused into those four categories and some of the most important details, and what I like to refer to as non-obvious, get overlooked.
Heather Schwarz:
So I think it’s a very fitting topic, particularly sitting here in the middle of an investment real estate conference that we talk about those non-obvious factors.
Ada Pia:
Right. Right. Because at this conference, there are so many real estate investment companies, syndicators, all kinds of different ways that somebody can invest. And when you’re in front of all of these opportunities and also meeting all these people, everyone’s giving you the sales pitch.
Ada Pia:
I mean everyone’s always selling, in general. So they’re giving you the sales pitch and you might like the person that you’re speaking to and they’ll give you the obvious, right? Because at a certain point you can only deliver so much information upfront as well.
Heather Schwarz:
Sure.
Ada Pia:
Because as we know really well, real estate is complex. It’s not difficult, but it’s complex. And so understanding all of these terms, all the returns, what anything means, you know, you can’t just dump everything on somebody right up front. You know, you have to give it in bite-sized chunks. Then digging deeper and deeper.
Ada Pia:
But before we go into that, I wanted to back out really quickly and ask you, because you’ve been on both sides. So what is an LP, for those listening who may not know? What’s an LP and then what’s a GP?
Heather Schwarz:
Okay, perfect. So limited partner is an LP and that is an investor that is taking a passive investment role into a project. So typically, limited partner return structures look like they’re getting a preferred return. They’re participating in either a common or a preferred equity. Typically its preferred equity, what I commonly see. And then they’re getting a share in the profit, which is also referred to as the promote share.
Ada Pia:
Okay.
Heather Schwarz:
So a GP is the general partner, and they are the ones that are actively, you know, participating in developing the project.
Heather Schwarz:
So limited partners have very minimal risk when it comes to like the greater picture. General partners, they’re the ones that are getting in from day one. They’re the ones that have the most risk. They also have the highest returns when you’re looking at it as a percentage.
Heather Schwarz:
So the risks that general partners typically take is, you know, they have to go ahead and maybe do an add-on development deal, you know, buy the land, get entitlements, get zoning done. You know, all of that costs money, especially when you look at plans and permitting and the lawyers and designs, and I could go on.
Ada Pia:
Insurance.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of those fees are incurred before you even get to the closing table, when you’ve got your debt and your equity aligned. Lined up. And that’s something else. General partners will typically sign on the debt.
Heather Schwarz:
So they’ll either personally guarantee or they’ll do something called signing on the carve-outs where they’re just attesting to, you know, certain turn bank covenants. Where limited partners don’t have that, aren’t involved in that process.
Heather Schwarz:
So when you look at the actual role, particularly, I mean all of the details that are involved in putting together a real estate project, it is vast. So that’s why GPs they do get the higher returns.
Ada Pia:
Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
Heather Schwarz:
So the GP is a word that’s interchangeable with operator, with sponsor, with developer.
Ada Pia:
Correct.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. Okay. ‘Cause there’s another thing in real estate, all these terms get thrown around, which can also be really confusing to people. So general partner can be operators, sponsor, developer. Anything else? Am I missing?
Ada Pia:
I don’t, I think you pretty much covered it.
Heather Schwarz:
Okay. So we have … that’s the difference between an active and a passive role when it comes to real estate.
Ada Pia:
Right. Perfect.
Heather Schwarz:
And typically, here’s another thing, and limited investors get their money out first. So when you’re, again, you’re not looking at the fees that general partners are taking from the deal, from doing all the work on the deal. But when you’re looking at the capital stack, how the project is financed, whenever you have any kind of liquidity event or whenever you have any kind of cash flow that’s being returned to investors, the limited partners will get their investment first and then general partners will get their investment.
Ada Pia:
Got it. Got it. Perfect. Yeah. So that’s after debt, right?
Heather Schwarz:
Correct. That’s right.
Ada Pia:
Okay, perfect. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I think it’s good to reiterate also, even for those who know a lot about real estate investing, it’s always nice to have that refresher because you never know what … you know, the obvious and the non-obvious, so thanks for the refresher on that.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah.
Ada Pia:
So let’s dive into the obvious and the non-obvious.
Heather Schwarz:
So the obvious, the four P’s, the people, the property, the process, the performance, right? Those are some of the things that, that’s how you first learn about the deal. That’s kind of what brings you in and gets you interested and entices you into the deal.
Heather Schwarz:
So after you’ve done your diligence and you feel very comfortable with those categories, then let’s look at the non-obvious. So on my list, number one, is the gut check. And you’re laughing because you know very well, we both have good stories on the gut check.
Ada Pia:
Yes.
Heather Schwarz:
So not every decision can be made based on what you see on paper, all right. So what I encourage investors to do is meet with the people face to face, right? Get comfortable, ask a lot of questions, see if you’ve got really good chemistry.
Heather Schwarz:
Also ask yourself, is this too good to be true?
Ada Pia:
Right. Oh, yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
Because it usually is.
Ada Pia:
It usually is, yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
So I’ll share with you a personal story. I was looking to lend a certain sponsor some money on a deal and I went and I met with him, and I met with a banker that was going to do the takeout financing for my money that was going to come in.
Heather Schwarz:
And I had … it was a 20 minute meeting I’ll never forget. And it was me and a business partner. We left and we went to lunch right after and my stomach was in knots, like I had awful cramping. And then I looked across the table at my business partner and his nose was bleeding, and I was like, how often does that happen, to him. He goes, “I don’t know. Since I was a kid.”
Heather Schwarz:
I said, “Oh no, that’s not good.”
Heather Schwarz:
So everything on paper looked great and our, you know, the way that we were feeling was the total opposite of great. And it turned out, later on, we discovered it was 100% fraud.
Ada Pia:
Wow. Wow. You dodged a bullet. Wow.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah.
Ada Pia:
So yeah, it’s incredible. And it’s funny because this is the talk I’m giving tomorrow about holistic passive investing is the gut check. And listening to our intuition, and that marriage of intellect and intuition in making investment decisions.
Ada Pia:
I was also a defrauded for a lot of money. And my gut the whole time was saying something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something is wrong. But my head, my ego, you know, the personality wanted that to really work out, and it was this inner conflict. And since then I’ve really learned to listen to my intuition and it speaks to us, you know, in our body, it comes as signals, it comes as synchronicities that we like to talk about.
Ada Pia:
But you know, most people dismiss the gut check.
Heather Schwarz:
Right.
Ada Pia:
Because they’re taught or they think that they only have to look at things on paper, do the analysis. And of course, you read every chart you can read, you know, every demographic trend, like look at all of the paperwork, but there’s this really important component that is like a super power if we know how to use it. So I’m so glad for you. You listened.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. So what were the reasons that your head was telling you to make your investment?
Ada Pia:
I wanted the returns that were supposed to come because I had built up in my head, that “I’m going to do all these good things with my money. I’m going to build my financial foundation.” Which, you know, ironically then was the opposite of what happened because I lost all this money, which was all my life savings.
Ada Pia:
And I really wanted it to work because I was so emotionally invested.
Heather Schwarz:
Right.
Ada Pia:
My emotions were invested in an outcome that I really wanted that to happen. And even though I did my due diligence, I didn’t do enough. I didn’t do enough of it. And even when I was doing it, there was always that nagging little thing that was pulling at me. But of course I was dismissing it and dismissing it … and I never dismiss the inner nag anymore.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. You can’t, you can’t. And that’s something that I feel like a lot of people have fear of talking about or admitting, like it’s hard to admit I didn’t invest in him because, or in that project, because I didn’t like the guy. And they say, “What do you mean you didn’t like the guy?” Yeah, no, it just didn’t feel right.
Ada Pia:
Right.
Heather Schwarz:
And that excuse is dismissed very easily. It doesn’t feel very empowering to say that but-
Ada Pia:
But it’s more empowering than, you know, like ’cause on the opposite end of that, I lived in so much shame about losing it because I’m supposed to be smart and I’m supposed to be all these things.
Ada Pia:
Again, my ego, my head and this idea of who am … I sat and I lived in shame for years and years and years around having gotten it wrong, in a way, or trusting the wrong person. And that really messed with my confidence; big time messed with my confidence.
Ada Pia:
So sometimes the non-obvious is very much not visual. It’s not apparent. So that I definitely … I start with that. Like energetically, like do you feel like a good person? Do I think I can trust you?
Ada Pia:
So to your point, you know, meeting people and, granted in my situation, you met your person, I met my person that he introduced me to his family, like all these things.
Heather Schwarz:
Sure.
Ada Pia:
So even then, you know, you really have to be super careful when you have that conflict inside that’s saying something’s wrong. So keep digging until you find what’s wrong or walk away, as you did, ’cause you know your partner getting a nosebleed, that’s like, to me, call me superstitious. I’d be like, that is a no go, right.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. Wow. Lesson learned. Right. The hard way. So anybody listening to this, hopefully you don’t have to learn that lesson the hard way.
Ada Pia:
Yeah, exactly.
Heather Schwarz:
Take it from us. Learn our lesson. All right, so here’s my second point of the non-obvious is the sharing of information, okay.
Heather Schwarz:
So yeah, when you’re looking at a deal, you look at, you know, the pitch book, right? That really pretty-
Ada Pia:
The marketing document.
Heather Schwarz:
The marketing document, probably professionally designed and everything looks wonderful. Great. Then you look at the underwriting model and what I’ve seen in evaluating deals, like when I get an underwriting model and Excel spreadsheet, that’s maybe one tab. It’s like, okay, that’s a big red flag.
Heather Schwarz:
So I do like to look for complex models because the more detail like I can … I know what to look for.
Ada Pia:
Right.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. And every deal, every type of asset is different and they each have their own unique variables. But I know certain things to look at and one of the big things to look at is exit cap rate.
Heather Schwarz:
So when you’re getting pitched a deal, you know, you’re getting pitched on an IRR basis, an internal rate of return. That’s kind of what people lead with when they’re marketing their projects. Well, that IRR is calculated on a future appreciation. It’s the cashflow plus the appreciation on an assumed value sometime in the future. So that value is being derived by an assumed cap rate, which what somebody is going to pay 3, 5, 10 years from now, which again is a guess.
Heather Schwarz:
And one of the things that we heard this morning that one of the speakers said, that Jillian from Realty Mogul said, is “the performa is always wrong” and she is 100% right.
Heather Schwarz:
And even somebody with the best intentions, right? And the most solid research and data will still get it wrong because nobody can predict 10, 7, 5 years in the future. Because you don’t know.
Heather Schwarz:
So anyway, it’s important to look for that exit cap rate. And let’s say that you’re buying at a 5 cap and you’re exiting at a 5 cap in 10 years. Well, uh-uh (negative).
Ada Pia:
That’s wrong. Yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
Something’s up. So anyway, sharing of information. You know, do the sponsors give out their cell phone? Can you do some research on them on social media? Do they have LinkedIn? Do they have a website? And you would be surprised in my experience when I was with early shares of the crowd funding platform, how many sponsors did not even have websites.
Ada Pia:
Yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
I couldn’t believe it. Successful guys, but still you want to feel like, you know, you’ve got information, shared public information.
Ada Pia:
It’s interesting because I think one of the biggest benefits that crowd funding brought to real estate is actually forcing sponsors to come with a much deeper level of transparency. It forced people to get in the game. It forced them to get a website. It forced them to be more visible, ’cause that’s a piece of the transparency and that just didn’t really exist in real estate before. As we know, everything was done in the country club, everything was done behind the scenes, but if you’re trying to raise capital nowadays, especially from unrelated individuals and people that you don’t know that aren’t necessarily part of your network, you do have to show up with a website, more than a website, I mean.
Ada Pia:
Like you said, the website helps, but what’s the rest of the track record that is made available? One of the things that I’ve found really important that we do at Alpha is we’ll talk to people in our network or in a new sponsors’ network, let’s say, to find out what other people think of them or have had experience with them.
Ada Pia:
That’s a really important piece because they’re going to give you, you know, like first date. They’re going to show up, but for a first date, but like what about what have other people’s experiences been with that sponsor.
Heather Schwarz:
Sure. Another good party to speak with is lenders that they’ve worked with in the past.
Ada Pia:
Oh, yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
because you know, the lending process or the financing process, I mean it’s so arduous and detailed, and that really shows, you know, true colors, who people are.
Ada Pia:
Yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
But you know, part of the sharing of information like sharing due diligence reports, appraisals, inspections, marketability or market feasibility studies, things like that. Really showing, like, sharing the spreadsheets, you know, being able to interact with the underwriting models. Are the models stressed?
Heather Schwarz:
All right, so, I talked about cap rate. So let’s say that that particular project, they’re going in with a five cap rate and they’re exiting with like a six and a half. Well what do the returns look like if you exit an eight or a nine? Like you know, play with the model, see what happens in a worst case scenario or in just a stress scenario.
Heather Schwarz:
And then risk factors. So this is something that is typically hidden within the offering memorandum.
Ada Pia:
Okay.
Heather Schwarz:
In the private placement documents. So any good PPM will have a series of risk factors. Okay, well they’re there for a reason.
Heather Schwarz:
Take a look at them, make sure that you understand all the risks that are involved in the deal, and that you got your own gut check and your head and your heart check, with all of those things.
Ada Pia:
Right. Yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. ‘Cause there might be something there that’s like, ooh, I didn’t think about that.
Ada Pia:
Right.
Heather Schwarz:
Right so it’s good to fully analyze all the materials that are there, and good sponsors, they will be very open and willing to share with you. So I heard there’s a sponsor that I worked with that shared bank account, so gave view only bank account access to investors.
Ada Pia:
Wow. That’s amazing.
Heather Schwarz:
I mean, that’s transparency.
Ada Pia:
Yeah. Right.
Heather Schwarz:
Wow.
Ada Pia:
Yeah. Yeah. So quick question on that. If you don’t know how to read a model, what do you do?
Heather Schwarz:
You ask for help.
Ada Pia:
Okay.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah.
Ada Pia:
Perfect.
Heather Schwarz:
You definitely ask for help.
Ada Pia:
Yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
And if it feels like it’s just too complicated for you to get comfortable with, and then you say, no. Just there’s always going to be a deal.
Ada Pia:
Right. That’s good advice.
Heather Schwarz:
There’s always opportunity, always.
Ada Pia:
Right.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. I think when we really make our biggest mistakes is when we have that fear mindset and that scarcity mindset is when, “Oh my gosh, I don’t do this deal, I may not see another deal for another year or so.”
Ada Pia:
FOMO.
Heather Schwarz:
I have to do this. And FOMO. Absolutely. The fear of missing out. You’ve got to get past that.
Ada Pia:
Which goes back to that, watch your emotions and how they influence your thoughts, because that’s that influence that will make you irrational.
Heather Schwarz:
And to be really mindful of your own tendency, if you have that, to be overly emotional, override the rationality, and then also then, potentially, override your intuition.
Ada Pia:
Sure. Yeah, absolutely.
Ada Pia:
And let’s see, I’ve got two more.
Heather Schwarz:
Okay.
Ada Pia:
I’ve got site visits.
Heather Schwarz:
Yes.
Ada Pia:
So you have some of the larger sponsors, are they going to every property that they invest in? That’s number one, because I have heard of sponsors that they’ll buy something on the recommendation of, let’s say, a consultant in that, but in a different market, and they’ll do the deal based on consultants and advisors, but they’ll never go to the site. Okay, that’s a red flag.
Ada Pia:
And also do the investors themselves … are you going to the site? Now I know that can be a little bit of a challenge if you’re sitting in Palm beach, Florida, and you’re looking at a deal in Seattle.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah.
Ada Pia:
But again, if you want to get 100% comfortable in investing in deals, then I highly recommend you go walk the site. Right?
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah. Right.
Ada Pia:
Let’s say you’re making a $10,000 investment into a deal online. Okay. And that represents, this is important, that represents a very small portion of your portfolio. Maybe you don’t have to, okay. Maybe it’s not worth the plane ride or the ticket.
Ada Pia:
If you’re making a $500,000 investment into that same property, you know what, it’s worth getting on a plane for a couple of days, and you can probably write it off.
Heather Schwarz:
You absolutely can.
Ada Pia:
There you go.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah, you absolutely can.
Ada Pia:
You can write it off.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah, like we do site visits. So we are that in between piece where we’re raising capital and we’re syndicating. So we’re doing the analysis and all that underwriting and the due diligence. So we go on-site.
Heather Schwarz:
And then we also tour the comps. So the other builds. So not only the comps, so buildings similar to, to understand if the projections and the business plan around it are feasible, but also what other projects have they done, especially for a new sponsor. What else have you done? Show me what you’ve done so we can see the quality of the work, we can see that it’s accomplished.
Ada Pia:
Right.
Heather Schwarz:
So, you know, like putting your building where your mouth is. Like here it is, I’m going to show it to you, right?
Ada Pia:
Yeah, absolutely. And then the last thing is the walkaway factor.
Ada Pia:
So is it easy for a sponsor to walk away if things go wrong?
Heather Schwarz:
Oh yeah.
Ada Pia:
Okay. So how do you look at this and how do you analyze that?
Heather Schwarz:
So when you are looking at the sponsor/developer/GP, look at how they’re compensated. What kind of fees are they getting, what kind of backend profit share/promote are they getting, what kind of ongoing management fees?
Heather Schwarz:
And that’s something that also ties back to the underwriting model where somebody with a detailed model will not highlight, but they will show you very transparently what all of those fees look like.
Ada Pia:
Right.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. How much is the sponsor investing in that deal? So you brought up a really good case that you should share about how you turned somebody away because of that, you know, mismatch.
Ada Pia:
So we were looking at a senior living opportunity; a big one, a great one. The numbers were great, the opportunity is fantastic with a sponsor that we trust and know really well.
Ada Pia:
And there was a partner with the sponsor that would be new to us, and where we had to walk away, which kind of was unfortunate because it was a really good deal, is the fact that the way the compensation was structured, there would be no skin in the game after a year. So it was a great deal. Smart operators, everything was there. But if you have no skin in the game after just one year of operating this, then what’s your accountability to us and to our investors because that’s on the line for us, and our investors are our number one priority.
Ada Pia:
So we walked away from a fantastic deal because we just weren’t comfortable with that. And I would say that comfort level is really important for any investor. Are you comfortable with what you’re investing in? Just a little bit of like the gut thing, but it really is can you sleep at night. And skin in the game helps us sleep at night.
Heather Schwarz:
Right. And then another tie into that is when you’re looking at the debt component of a deal. So typically with development deals, you have a lot of the financing and the debt that is personally guaranteed by the sponsor, the GP.
Heather Schwarz:
But when you’re looking at more like value-add or cash flowing deals, there’s so much non-recourse/non-personally guaranteed debt available that, you know, sponsors don’t have that marriage to the deal, that tie to the deal. So that makes it a lot easier for them to walk away.
Heather Schwarz:
And again, like track record, you know, all of this kind of plays into the the walkaway factor. Reputation.
Heather Schwarz:
So that’s my list.
Ada Pia:
Great.
Heather Schwarz:
So I have really good quote that I think is good from Marcus Aurelius. “The secret of all victory lies in the organization or the observation of the non-obvious.”
Ada Pia:
Wise words.
Heather Schwarz:
So that’s again, it just … wise words. Reinforce all the things that we’ve been talking about today.
Ada Pia:
So this is great. It’s been fantastic. And let’s end it with some takeaways and what would somebody do, at this point, with all this information that you’ve just given them?
Heather Schwarz:
So the first thing that you ask yourself as an investor, do you have a checklist? A lot of investors say no. Like, what do you mean, a checklist? That sounds like work to me.
Ada Pia:
Yeah, it’s work.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah. Well you have to have a checklist. What does your checklist look like? So some of the things that I talked about today definitely should be on your checklist.
Heather Schwarz:
And if you don’t have a checklist, I highly encourage you to develop your checklist when you’re not looking at a deal, because it’s really easy to cater that checklist to what deal you’re looking at to make it fit to make you feel better about making that investment. Okay?
Ada Pia:
Yeah.
Heather Schwarz:
So that’s number one. And then the last thing is, do you have an investment policy statement? And this really talks about the greater picture of what your investments look like, and how does this deal or your other investments fit into what your personal goals are, what your objectives are, your risk tolerance, what your investment mantra is, the things that you’d want to do and also the things that you don’t want to do and don’t want to invest in.
Heather Schwarz:
That’s something that’s very important to always have as a guidance for just general investing. And then your checklist reinforces all of that.
Ada Pia:
Right. Perfect.
Heather Schwarz:
Those are my takeaways.
Ada Pia:
Amazing. I love them. Well, Heather, it’s been such a pleasure doing this live podcast here at the conference.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah, it’s so much fun. So much fun.
Ada Pia:
Thank you so much.
Heather Schwarz:
Yeah, thank you.
Ada Pia:
Thanks for tuning into Real Wealth, Real Health. We hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and found it both informative and insightful.
Ada Pia:
We welcome all your questions and your feedback about today’s episode and, especially, we welcome your questions about specific topics that you would like us to cover.
Ada Pia:
So shoot us an email at [email protected], and if you have a moment, we really appreciate ratings and reviews as it helps us grow our online community and our interactions with you. And we’ll also be linking to a number of relevant articles on topics that we might have touched on during our conversations.
Ada Pia:
Some of them are broad, some of them are technical, but we’re always aiming to provide information that helps you better understand the mechanics of building this healthy financial foundation, especially if you’re looking to do this with real estate.
