Business
Tim Puffer – Self Storage Investor in Lansing, Michigan and Managing Member of Focus REI, who also has experience in the insurance and risk management industry, talks to Neil Henderson and Brittany Henderson, the hosts of The Road to Family Freedom podcast. Tim discusses how he transitioned from house hacking to investing in self-storage, how he learned and found financing, and what an average day in his life looks like to keep business running smoothly. Read Full Transcript (#) Neil Henderson [0:29] Are you going to make it for the interview question mark? Greetings friends and families. I’m Neil and I’m Brittany, you’re listening to the road to family freedom podcast. Our guest this week has a background in the insurance and risk management industry. He jumped in real estate in 2016 purchasing a duplex as a house hack. After coming face to face with the realities of toilets, trash and tenants, he has since transitioned to self storage. He’s part owner of one facility and as a few more in the works, Tim puffer Welcome to the road to family freedom. Tim Puffer [1:35] Hey guys, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Neil Henderson [1:39] Silence my phone and take care of that. So Tim, tell us a little bit. How do you recall an aha moment for you when it comes to real estate in general? Tim Puffer [1:52] I think it’s, it goes back to where a lot of real estate investors get started. So read and register Poor Dad. I mean, every time it’s it’s that’s just what it was it one of my best friends lives in northern Michigan and he kind of got into real estate as an accidental landlord with a condo. And he kept trying to get me to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I’m like, No, you know, out of college, I don’t need to read anymore. And you Well, that’s that’s the thought process of a lot of people unfortunately. And so eventually said, Okay, you got this real estate income coming in. That sounds great. And so I finally read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And that was the big aha moment like, whoa, whoa, you know, I can’t work a day job for the rest of my life and expect to get to the level of success that I want to get to. And, you know, reading that helped me realize that and help me jump into real estate and get my real estate license. Neil Henderson [3:03] So, you started with a house hack, correct? Yes. Was that first that was the first real piece of real estate you ever bought was that for the first investment property? Tim Puffer [3:14] first investment property first piece of real estate was actually my wife and I bought a used mobile homes to live in. So that was our first foray into owning a piece of real estate. And you know, that wasn’t going to set us up for long term success that we didn’t keep buying it those individually. But yet, the house had go was derived from reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad getting the real estate license and we decided we wanted that passive income coming in. And so we started looking for properties that were listed on the MLS using my real estate license and couldn’t find anything. You everything was either overpriced, they were really in really, really bad shape and or just weren’t in the right neighborhood because with having the forethought of wanting to do a house hack, I needed to feel comfortable with my wife walking our dog at night. And so we need to mesh a few different things to make the property be the right one on top of getting the correct rental rates and not having the numbers look good. And so not finding anything, we decided to do a handwritten thank you card campaign which is kind of different than most things so people do to just you know, like yellow letters or things like that. I like love psychology so like people love to be thanked for something and it doesn’t matter what it’s for. And so doing, doing a nice thank you card and you know, first line is that thank you for taking the time to read our letter, and then going into Hey, we’re looking to purchase a duplex we we drove by...