Quick Facts:

• Profit Strategy: Buy & hold
• Number of Units: 3 building package (30 units total)
• Personal Money Invested: 20% down payment
• Prior Experience: Dr. Nfor, a cardiologist, had limited experience prior to Lance’s training. He had previously invested in 3 deals that worked out that he described as “okayish”.

Here’s his story:

As the father of four young children (three boys and one girl) ages 6 to 11, nothing matters more to Dr. Tonga Nfor than building a legacy for his family and amassing a substantial nest egg that includes a large college fund for the kids to draw from when the time comes. Over the past three years, even before reading Lance Edwards’ book “How To Make Big Money in Small Apartments” and enrolling in Lance’s boot camp, he began working on his goal by investing in real estate, with a focus on small apartments.

“I felt like that was an easier place to start accumulating wealth because I wouldn’t need a ton of capital to get going and in trying a new venture, it made sense to start small before working my way up to something bigger,” he says. I knew enough about investing in small family homes to realize that it wasn’t worth the amount of work I would have to put into it dealing with a single tenant at a time, especially compared to small apartments where you spread your risk over six, 10 or 15 tenants.”

As eager as he was to build a portfolio, Dr. Nfor’s extremely busy schedule as a cardiologist (specializing in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology) limited the amount of time the Milwaukee area physician could devote to this sideline passion. So his initial forays into small apartments were passive investing through other people and with a partner. He was part of a group that would pool their money to buy buildings, but was not directly involved in the purchases. Prior to discovering Lance’s book, he had invested in three deals that worked out, in his words, “okayish.”

Dr. Nfor was impressed by Lance’s way of breaking things down simply and the explaining the role of mindset in achieving one’s goals even before embarking on the math involved in doing a deal. He enrolled in a virtual boot camp during COVID – preferring the convenience and saving money and time compared to attending live – and, as a numbers person, took immediately to the crucial process of analyzing the figures  quickly via the Doable Deal Generator to determine whether a deal will work or not. He also liked the boot camp’s quick immersion into finding and analyzing deals.  

“It was also important to learn that I could generate and complete a deal all by myself,” he says. “Previously, I always assumed that I would have to go through an agent to be able to make an offer and close a deal. It was liberating also to know that I could negotiate directly with a seller, without any representation. By the time I left boot camp, I was already online looking for deals and analyzing them.”

In line with his desire to start investing in properties “in my own backyard,” the first deal Dr. Nfor closed on involved three small apartment complexes about 30 minutes from Milwaukee. Browsing realtor.com, he zeroed in on a 16-unit complex and reached out to the realtor. As they were discussing the numbers, the realtor revealed that the seller had two other buildings that he was considering selling that were not on the market yet. After some discussion, Dr. Nfor agreed to work on a package deal that would include smaller properties of six and eight units. All were “C class buildings,” meaning older structures that might need some upgrading, cosmetic work and repairs – but crunching the numbers, Dr. Nfor felt overall like the bundle was a solid deal that would generate good cash flow.  

He made his close to full price offer during a boom time in the market when there was a lot of competition and many others showed interest in the original 16-unit property. The numbers were $600,000 for the 16-unit (down from the original asking price of $650,000), $350,000 for the eight-unit, and $250,000 for the six unit – for a total of $1.2 million. During inspection and due diligence, Dr. Nfor was informed of some repair issues with the roof and also cracks in the exterior of the eight unit, which led him to go back to the seller and seek a $30,000 price concession, which led to a renegotiation on that building to $320,000.

“At that point, the seller was very invested in having the deal for his three properties go through so he didn’t object to changing the selling price,” says Dr. Nfor, who closed on the properties in January 2021. “I know Lance extols the value of seller financing but this seller was not interested in that. He wanted cash to roll into another deal he had going, so I personally put up the down payment from money I had and was able to secure 80 percent via bank loan. This was fine for me because my primary purpose in making this deal is to build equity and value over time.”

By mid-year 2021, he had mostly positive things to report. In line with Lance’s teachings, he has found an efficient and reliable property management company to take care of the buildings and help with marketing efforts to draw good tenants to consider living on the properties – which has resulted in a current 90 percent occupancy. However, the enduring effects of the pandemic on rentals have resulted in a major cash flow challenge, which Dr. Nfor says, “no training or prep could prepare anyone for.”

One of the biggest overall problems, he says, was that the market during the pandemic was crazy, and hot properties were overpriced. A second issue – and one that had a major impact on him and his properties, was that some buildings had tenants who lost their income due to COVID and couldn’t pay rent. Yet because of a state moratorium, they couldn’t be evicted. Dr. Nfor is hopeful that when the moratoriums end, the rent collection challenge will disappear and over the next few months, everything will bounce back to the numbers he envisioned when I bought the properties.

“For a first time small apartment owner,” Dr. Nfor says, “this kind of issue can be quite discouraging, and I freaked out a little bit because of the prospect that I might lose money. During this time, my goal was to simply stay afloat, pay the mortgages and other bills and not worry about profit. But I am optimistic this will pass and everything will settle down. The main thing I have learned through the ups and downs of this process is to trust my gut and trust the numbers that the deal analyzer gave me. You can lean on your feelings and intuition, but ultimately it’s the numbers that should guide your decisions.

“I would urge anyone thinking of getting involved in small apartment investing to educate themselves, formulate a plan and then execute it to the best of your ability – understanding of course, that unexpected setbacks are part of the learning process along the way to success,” he . adds. “Once you have the baseline knowledge, it’s all about taking action. I feel like I have a strong vision for what I want to achieve and am excited to start building on the foundation I have in place.”

Quick Facts:

• Profit Strategy: Rehab and hold
• Number of Units: 3
• Personal Money Invested: 20%
• Amount Earned: $200 profit per month
• Prior Experience: Politics, advocacy, financial services, etc. with some single family home investing in 2021.

Dan had a problem to be envious of. His business paid him well, and he was frugal. By 2021 he needed a place to invest the money he had accumulated. 

Dan ran a thriving political advocacy business. The path to this success started when he was elected to the state legislature at 24. He served in this role for 12 years. 

Now he does advocacy projects around the country. He incorporated his business in 2011, and after a couple of great years, he generated cash that needed to be invested.

Dan’s Call to Adventure

But that isn’t the start of his story. His life wasn’t always financially abundant. He was married when he was younger to a woman who fancied herself a high roller. He recounts a story about the end of their relationship. “The last month we were together, she wanted us to look at a million-dollar house. It was a stately house on the top of a mountain. I was doing okay financially, but there’s no way I could have afforded this house. She was doing well financially, so we went to see it. I pooh-poohed the idea of buying a million-dollar home. It made no sense whatsoever financially. She looked down on me because of that. When we separated, I left feeling down on myself. I engaged in a lot of negative self-talk.”

He had some liens and a business loan that went bad. The unpaid debt and his ex-wife’s opinion made him doubt his ability to do “big things.” 

He has “been at the bottom.” While he never went through bankruptcy, there was a time when he “didn’t have two nickels to rub together.” His credit score was “in the tank.” Less than ten years ago, he was “at the bottom, looking up.” He shared, “I just had to get up every day and not let the bad stuff drag me down.” The key to this ability was his introspection. He was committed to self-exploration and self-development. 

Dan began asking himself, “how can I improve? How can I add value to people? That’s what life is all about. Zig Ziglar said it best, ‘you can get anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want.'”

So that’s what he did. He worked hard at uncovering what others needed so that he could provide value. He explains, “when you do that, you start snowballing goodwill and fortune.” 

That is probably the secret to his business’ success. But first, he had some weeding to do. With his divorce, he was freed of the burden of his ex-wife’s spending habits. Next, he had to clear his mind of the resulting negative self-talk. His blossoming business then took priority. The final move was to get out from under his looming pile of debt.

Perhaps the start of his quest for financial freedom came when he began following the teachings of Dave Ramsey. Getting debt-free became the objective.

Dan’s Quest

Dan and his wife were true teammates, tackling their finances together. “One of the reasons we are in a healthy financial position today is because of decisions we made early on as a young married couple. We worked in unison to be debt free. We were both fans of Dave Ramsey.”

They worked tirelessly to pay off their mortgage and erase all their debt. Dan and his wife were finally 100% debt free. The position they were now in was powerful, but to achieve financial independence, they needed to make a mental adjustment. 

Dan’s Mental Shift

He began the process of researching investment vehicles. “Do I put our savings in the stock market? Do I invest in real estate? Should I buy another business? What do I do with this money?”

He suspected inflation was inevitable, so “it became ‘mission critical’ for me to find where to put these funds. I settled on real estate. I did a bit with the stock market, but it felt like Las Vegas. It didn’t seem wise to bet on my family’s future.”

He and his wife decided to go the real estate route. His dad and brother were realtors, but Dan had never been interested in real estate.

“When I decided to invest in real estate,” he explains, “one of my mentors suggested I buy ten books on the topic. He advised me to immerse myself in real estate before I purchased my first property.” In Dan’s research, he learned to look for a single-family residence in a nice neighborhood. “Not the best house on the block, but not the worst.” 

His goal was to build passive income — the specific objective was $20,000 per month. He bought a couple of single-family homes. “The cash flow was great. They were good properties that didn’t need a lot of repairs.” But he’s an intelligent man and did the math. After the first two investments, he realized, “this is going to take me 20 years to scale this process.”

He shared the predicament with his brother, a Lance Edwards graduate. His brother advised him to read Lance’s book “Big Money in Small Apartments.” The name captured him. 

When he read it, “the lights went off.” He realized this would be how he would scale. He loves Lance’s quote, “single families are ‘feel estate,’ not real estate.”

He quickly learned that apartments are all about numbers and scalability. He has an MBA, so that made sense to him. He decided to start Lance’s program.

His lessons continued. 

After focusing for years on paying off debt and living frugally, he and his wife faced the challenge of understanding leverage and the risks and rewards. They wanted to remain free of consumer debt but quickly learned the value of leveraging their assets. He clarified, “we realized that if we didn’t leverage, we’d have very little bandwidth.” 

Dan’s Why

Lance’s teachings advocate creating a vision board and uncovering your “why.” Dan emotionally shares what he discovered while creating his board. “I’ve got two young children, and COVID amplified my need to be self-sufficient. It taught me that the government will not always be able to come in and solve my problems.” He continued, “I’m a country boy. I grew up on a farm and now live in the city. My ‘why’ is to get back to my roots.”

He says it’s become a game for him of how frugally he can live so that he can “spin off more cash to buy more properties. The goal is always to increase the passive income.” His vision board has him achieving the goal of $20k/month of passive income within the next 3 years. He’s on track to do that.

The Results

Following Lance’s training, things happened pretty quickly. It only took four and a half months from starting Lance’s program to his first multi-family closing. 

Now he has an incredible pace going. He writes offers often and closes deals frequently. He’s pursued some “big ones” that haven’t happened yet, but he is confident they will.

The Vision Develops

Dan was taught by his parents, “if you do something, go all out and do it well.” He feels that real estate is a “fun, fun thing to do. There are days I wish I could just do this full-time.”

Dan is familiar with Operation True Potential — Lance’s movement to enhance communities by improving small apartment buildings. Dan agrees that this mission is essential. “What’s your purpose for being in real estate? I’ve got personal reasons that we’ve talked about. But, I am on the county commission here in Greenville, South Carolina. We hear a lot about the need for affordable housing. A segment of society can’t afford houses at the prices they’re going for today.” Operation True Potential resonates with Dan. He wants to be part of the solution. 

His Mindset

Dan has always been strong-willed and capable of overcoming obstacles. But he attributes Lance’s mindset training as a part of what has sped up and increased his success — in all areas of his life. 

“Something about Lance’s program helped supercharge my mindset.” He describes his morning routine. “I’m in the office most mornings at 4:30 a.m. I go through my vision board and do all the exercises that Lance taught us to do. This mental training has spilled over into other areas of my life.”

His Advice

“Small apartment investing is easy if you put your mind to it.” He recounts a story about his early days with Lance’s program. He talks about how he went through the “assignments” before attending the Bootcamp. He religiously used Lance’s scripts to talk to brokers. He noticed opportunity flow sped up because the brokers would send him listings — and pocket listings, too. He realized Lance’s process works exceptionally well. “I’ve learned that anything is possible if you jump in with both feet with a good, positive attitude.” 

He quotes Winston Churchill about “never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever giving up.” He advises, “You’ve got to take the good with the bad. Life will throw you curveballs, but you must keep going.”

He expands on the need for a process that anchors you to a positive mindset to ensure you keep going. He’s developed a robust daily routine. “I do affirmations. I’ve got pictures of my family. Every morning, I look at these pictures, which make me smile. I read my affirmations and my statement. When you do it repetitively every day, it changes your mindset and anchors you to the affirmations you’re talking about or the concepts you’re thinking about. Five or six times a week, I’m in my office going through my affirmations and photos and thinking about my “why.” That process anchors me through the good and the bad.” 

He continues, “when I read my statement every day, it feels like it has already happened. I live my future every day. I go online and look for that perfect piece of land I will buy. In my mind, it’s already happened.” He sees himself sitting on “150 acres with my kids. I have a tractor, so we can plant food, and we’ve got a house we built. The kids are running around on ATVs and fishing at the pond. It’s an idyllic life where time is slowed down.”

His morning routine — the affirmations, visualizations, and connection to his “why” — has “supercharged” his mindset. “I see the benefits of that in my real estate business. I see the benefits in my home. I see the benefits in my advocacy business. A positive mindset changes your outlook on life. That’s been a huge benefit to doing this.”

Dan’s Final Advice

“You have to look for your North Star. You have to think big and dream big. Realize that if you just stick with it and work hard, you will get much further than you ever thought possible. Take action. Be bold. Develop a positive mindset. Every day you need to work proactively on ensuring your attitude is helping you, not hindering you. And then you just never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up.”

CREATE. A. MINDSET. ROUTINE. AND. NEVER. EVER. GIVE. UP.

Quick Facts:

• Profit Strategy: Rehab and Wholesale (using owner finance to their buyer!)
• Number of Units: 20 units
• Amount Earned: They estimate they’ll make $87k within 2 years
• Prior Experience: Mary is a longtime real estate professional in Dallas, TX

Here’s their story:

A Certified Property Manager with nearly 40 years of experience in the multi-family realm, Mary Lindner has the distinction of being the only person who attended a Lance Edwards boot camp to do a wholesale and an owner finance of a property in the same deal. She and her husband and investment partner Paul had two essential requirements for their first deal: that the property be small and require a minimal down payment, and that it be in Texas because, as a longtime real estate professional in Dallas, Mary had easy access to Texas Association of Realtors form.

Paul found a suitable property in the border town of McAllen, some eight hours away, on Loopnet, and the couple reached out to the daughter of the owner, whose family had owned the ten unit single bedroom apartment building for 30 years without spending much time on upkeep and leaving the rent without increases. Checking comps in the area on Apartments.com, the Lindners learned that all the rents in the area were higher. The property also clearly needed some rehab work.

They also engaged in several of the strategies they learned from Lance, including using Google maps to start “driving the streets” around the property to make sure it’s a decent neighborhood. The property was very close to the bus line and close to buildings and businesses that were part of a downtown revitalization project. Mary raves about the success they had using Lance’s famed “Doable Deal Generator,” which she describes as “five year pro forma projection of income and expenses on the property. The beauty of this spreadsheet is that not only can you plug in actual numbers off the financials from the seller, you can also compare those to expenses you expect to incur.”

The McAllen property was listed at $280,000, and once the Lindners saw it was in a decent neighborhood they realized they could increase the rent, and once they did some rehab on things like faucets and fixtures, maintenance expenses would go down for the person they would be wholesaling it to. They negotiated the price down to $250,000.  

“We had never done a wholesale deal before, but knew how it worked,” says Mary. “We put together the pro forma in the Doable Deal Generator, which came up with numbers for us in three different potential scenarios, an all cash deal, an owner finance deal and one that fell somewhere in between those two. Based on the numbers, which included the money we put into rehabbing the property, we marketed it like Lance told us. Someone found it on his website and contacted  us. The prospective buyers knew that if they could buy with owner financing, they would be able to pay us more for it. We worked with our coach Hoku, and Lance helped us with some of the nitty gritty questions we had and helped us structure the deal.

“Ultimately we sold it for $330,000,” she adds, “and we got almost $10,000 at the closing table since we owner financed. We loaned the buyer $70,000 at 5% interest, and they are currently making monthly payments of $305 – with a balloon due in 23 months. By that time, we estimate that we will have made $87,000 on the deal. Our plan is to do wholesaling for a while to gain more capital for more permanent purchases down the road.”

Mary Lindner brings a dynamic background to her current endeavors as a multi-family investor. In the early 80s, she started out in as a leasing agent in multifamily property management, overseeing a 350 unit property. Over the years, she worked her way up to assistant manager of a 440 unit property, and then manager of huge properties ranging from 264 to 500 units. She later became a regional manager supervising eight apartment managers handling a total of over 2200 unites – and became one of the few women in the 90s to attend the Institute of Real Estate Management and receive a CPM. All of these experiences opened doors for her as far as learning the financial end of multi-family housing.

All told, Mary has been a realtor for over 30 years and became a broker six years ago. She and Paul became investors some years ago via their involvement with one of the local investment clubs in Dallas. Despite her background in managing apartments, their investments were limited to single family properties. Because they were focused on work and raising their children, they only had so much time to devote to these endeavors. Several years ago, she met Lance at an investor club meeting where he spoke.

“I really liked what he had to say, and quickly decided that if we were ever going to get into small apartment investing, he would be the person I wante to learn from,” she says. “He had made a lot of money for many investors and I knew he could help us do the same. Once the kids were out of the house, we knew it was time. We saw he was having a boot camp, and decided to sign up. Our March 2020 sessions were moved online because of the pandemic, but we still found them very informative. We also loved the fact that he and his staff are there to help us every step of the way.”

Like many families, The Lindners’ interest in investing in small apartments is legacy-related, based on their desire to leave something to their two children – which they adopted from Russia many years ago – and two grandsons. But their vision also extends beyond family to buying properties they can convert into specially equipped homes for disabled veterans and single parents struggling to get to the next phase of their lives.

“Many of our family members are in the military, and I feel sad when I hear things about disabled vets being forced to live in undesirable places because they have no other options,” Mary says. “It’s something I have been wanting to do for many years and now with small apartment investing, I see a path to do that. Just recently I took a course in this type of thing to learn more. We want to set things up where we would have a small apartment property and maybe a large house we could make modifications to for those in wheelchairs.

“Likewise, we’ve always had a vision to own a small apartment property as a place where single parents can live till they get back on their feet,” she adds. “We could help these single parents get schooling and learn how to interview for jobs. It would also be an opportunity to employ elderly people who could come and take care of the children as their parents go for interviews and start working. Sure, we would all like to have more money to live on, but we don’t have to be rich in the conventional way. Helping vets and single parents stay off the street and get back on their feet is a very worthwhile goal to us. With Lance’s help, we have laid a foundation to eventually achieve that goal and are currently looking for the right deals to take the next step.”