About Us

Investor- National award winning apartment owner generated a whopping 600% return in 3 years, structuring win-win partnership and is now training and partnering others.

Agent -Licensed Texas real estate broker who built one of America's leading apartment real estate brokerages National Income Property from the ground up and with over $100,000,000 in transactions to date.

Trainer -Million Dollar Apartment Formula reveals the secrets of building an award winning rent house and apartment business. This course has been described as "common sense real estate investing meets uncommon customer service".

Founder - AustinREIA, Austin's Official real estate investors association  offers education and networking opportunities for investors, agents and vendors specializing in rent houses and apartment buildings.

"We're on a mission to help other real estate investors and agents gain similar successes by giving them the real world training, advice and support they need to capitalize in this once in a lifetime buyer's market."

When Scott and I wanted to buy our first house together 15 years ago we had no idea we were on the path to starting our Real estate Investing career we just wanted a house to live in together.  We were in our early 20’s and had looked at several houses to buy.  We decided on this cute older house in a great neighborhood of St. Louis Mo.  When we went for our final walk thru before closing the basement was flooded!  We decided not to buy it and went back to the drawing board.

The wife of Scott’s co-worker was in Real Estate so we asked for her help.  She was busy at the time and referred us to a friend of hers named Steve.  Steve became our first Real Estate Investing Mentor.  We didn’t know at the time what we had stumbled across and the path we would walk from here on out but when we look back, we were definitely on the road to our real estate success.

Steve was a Real Estate Investor with a company like the “We buy ugly houses” company before they existed.  The first house he showed us was in the same great neighborhood of the other house that we passed on.  This house, when we walked thru was filled with furniture and junk to the ceiling with dirty ashtrays piled high with cigarette butts… it was pretty disgusting!  But he showed us how we should look beyond the junk and see the potential it had. 

We didn’t own a hammer but we decided to trust this guy and buy the house!  He took us by the hand, gave us a list of things we would need and came by every few days to help us rehab our first house.  Steve just met us and he was working side by side with us!  Why?  Because he knew we would be long time clients of his and because he loved this stuff! 

This house was truly one to learn the business of rehab on… We tore down the drop ceilings to find 3 layers of wall paper on the ceiling!  Who puts wall paper on ceilings and 3 layers of it!  That took some time to remove so we could paint but we did it. 

We bought our house for $50,000 put $10,000 into the rehab and sold it for $85,000 making a $25,000 profit in just a few short months! 

We were hooked!  We called Steve and he found us our next house.  This time we didn’t look at the mess inside the house, we immediately saw the potential of what we could make it into.  Stand back… there was no stopping us!  Before, we didn’t own a hammer now we were tearing down walls…we couldn’t believe it ourselves neither could our families. 

This was great… we were still working our corporate America jobs but had our Real Estate business on the side.  We were making over $100,000 a year at our jobs so we weren’t quite ready to give that up but we really liked real estate.  So Scott decided to get his real estate license and started working with our mentor Steve buying, selling and teaching other people how to rehab properties.  We knew this was our calling in life but we were young and even though we were making good money in real estate we still wanted to keep the income from our jobs…so we continued to do both.

We moved around the country with different job promotions and a few years later we ended up in Houston TX.  We had decided that when we got to Houston we would start up our real estate business full time.  We found that Houston was so big we didn’t know where to start.  We were lucky the first time when our Mentor Steve appeared but this time we decided that we should be pro-active and seek out a new Mentor. 

As soon as we decided to do this, Scott picked up a newspaper and the first page he turned to was an ad for a real estate investing club!  You have to believe in the law of attraction…it really does work!  This is where we found our next Real Estate Mentor that would help us take it to the next level. 

Our Mentor owned several apartment complexes’s and ran a real estate investing seminar company that helped people buy single family houses and apartment complexes.  He taught us why we should buy and hold real estate and that this is how you build a business and why flipping houses was a job. 

Scott and I started buying single family houses and duplexes and renting them out.  This really worked well!  Your tenant pays your mortgage and you make a monthly cash-flow.  Not to mention the tax benefits you get as well and when you buy it right you make money when you sell it… this is a win, win, win!  It was great…we were on a roll again and an even better path than the fix and flip!  Our next step was to trade up to the apartment level…this was very exciting to us.

Not long after we met Our Mentor, he asked us to come work with him.  We decided this time we would say good-by to corporate America for good.  Scott started mentoring other investors on how to buy and sell properties and I started Managing his apartment complexes.  His business skyrocketed with our help. 

I took his apartments from 50% occupied to 100% in a matter of weeks and in a few months time added $3 million dollars to his bottom line!  We were an unstoppable team so we decided we would partner together on the next apartment we bought.

This is how we made a 600% return on our last deal…We purchased 2 apartment complexes together, 140 units total, Garden Oaks (106 Units) and Thornton Village (34 Units) Apartments.  We bought them together as a turn-around project for $3.2 million @ $23,600 per unit with $750,000 down Owner financed.  Our Partnership agreement stated he would put in 85% of the capital and we would put in 15% of the capital plus 100% of the management of the project.  On the back end when we sold both properties we would split the capital gains 50%/50%! 

When we decided to purchase these properties we knew we had our work cut out for us but we were seasoned investors so a turn-around project didn’t intimidate us too much. However, we also knew that we had a great location and that the rents were way under market because of the other properties our Partner owned and I managed in the same neighborhood.

The Project Management was a lot of heavy lifting the first year because the previous Owner did not put any money back into the property… he was a textbook “Slum Lord”.  So we had to repair, replace and virtually reconstruct both complexes to bring them up to acceptable living standards.  Just to give you an idea of his operations… he kept his numbers on a notepad in his shirt pocket!

When we purchased the property they had Management issues as well. For the first few months we worked on evicting the bad element, the non-payers and changed the Manager who couldn’t give us a straight answer on anything and the Maintenance Staff who had rigged everything on the properties. We knew going in that we would change the Management so we were prepared with a new manager ready to go. 

They did not have applications or leases on the majority of the Residents and the homemade ones they did have were expired. Since it is our policy to run criminal records on all tenants and have them sign a TAA lease with all addendums, we had to have a good majority of the Residents come in and sign a lease or renew the one they had. Our occupancy remained above 90% the first 2 years and an average of 97% percent in the last year and half we owned the properties. We increased rents steadily over the time we owned the properties. 

With all the capital improvements, increase in rents and stabilized occupancy, we were able to sell the properties for $1 million dollars more than what we originally paid in 3 ½ years plus we made over $200,000 a year income!  That is over a 600% return on our 15% investment!  We also won The Paragon Award from the National Apartment Association for Investor of the Year for this project.

The same week we closed the sale of our apartment complexes, we found out we were pregnant so we decided to retire to Austin TX and live on the lake.  We are living our dream…  Retired at 38 with a beautiful baby girl and the luxury to do want we want when we want!  In reality we retired from corporate America at the early age of 32!  This is when our investments paid us enough that we didn’t have to go to our 9-5 job any longer.  We made our own hours with overseeing our real estate investments and mentoring other investors and brokering Real Estate.  We would like to pass on our 15 years of experience to you…Why shouldn’t you be able to do the same thing!

Contact AustinREIA Now
Membership Hotline:  (512) 366-3349
Email us at: membership@austinreia.com