Episode 316 – Mackenzie Grate, The Machree Group, LLC

 

Juggling two careers is never easy. For The Machree Group real estate agent Mackenzie Grate, being an educator by day and a real estate agent in her free time is a challenge. But her passion for helping other people settle into their first home, as well as the amount of support she gets around her, fuel her to keep moving forward. “Mack-of-all-trades” Mackenzie sits with Bill Risser in this episode to share her knowledge about real estate investing, interior design, and supporting you in becoming financially independent. Tune in and be inspired by Mackenzie’s story as she walks us through her real estate journey.

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Mackenzie Grate, The Machree Group, LLC

Welcome to episode 316 of the show. Thank you so much for reading. Thank you so much for telling a friend. We are going to talk to the Rising Star of the Year and this was handed out by RateMyAgent as part of our Agent of the Year Awards in conjunction with Shelley Zavitz’s New Agent 365 coaching. Mackenzie Grate is great. She has been an investor, a renovator, a fix and flip, and a fix and hold person for years, but she got her real estate license during the pandemic. She has got an amazing story. I am excited to chat with her. Let’s get this thing started. Mackenzie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I am so excited. I think this will become an annual thing. I’m going to have the Rising Star from the RateMyAgent’s Agent of the Year Awards every year on the show. If you read my show, you know I like to get the backstory. I want to find out where people started and where they grew up. You live in Brooklyn, but you work in Kingston, which is way upstate from there. Is New York where you grew up? I have a pretty interesting upbringing. I was raised back and forth between two states. My father lived in Northern California in a small town called Modesto, and my mom lived in Indianapolis, Indiana. Every time I had off from school, I would fly to Indianapolis to visit my mother. I remember this was in the early ‘90s. At one point, there was even one direct flight from San Francisco to Indianapolis. Me and my sister knew the crew pretty well because they were always on the same flight. I have never been to Indianapolis, but I have been to Modesto. Modesto is a little town. It is the Northern tip and end of Central Valley in California. If anyone knows it, it is way up there. Modesto is not the most glamorous spot in California. Am I correct on that assessment? I always joke that it is the armpit of the state because of where it’s located. It is one of those places where it is very close to a lot of cool stuff. The location itself is not super awesome. There are tons of places to go to. It’s close to San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada. I did a lot of hiking and backpacking with my father growing up. If you are a skier, you want to get to Mammoth. You are right there instead of driving up from San Diego. You go to school there. Where was college for you? I wanted to get as far away from Modesto as possible. My friends say, looking back, that I had a bad case of senioritis. Believe it or not, I signed up for an acting school in New York because it was easy to get into and it was the furthest place from Modesto. At seventeen, I boarded a plane and came over here. My dad dropped me off, helped me get set up in a small little apartment, and then as soon as he hopped on the plane to go back to Modesto, I went down and unenrolled in college. I lived in these dorms for schools in the city that do not have their own dorms. I did not tell him at first. There is no need to disclose that information straight away to stress him, but come the second semester, they asked me for my classes and did not have a report to give them. They are like, “I am sorry, Mackenzie, but you can’t keep living here.” I had to go out and find a place. I did what everyone did back then, which was grab a copy of The Village Voice and look for the cheapest apartment. I found this studio that was tiny in Spanish Harlem. I dubbed it Spa-Ha at the time. I applied for it, and then that is when I had to tell my dad because, in New York, it is serious. You have to get a guarantor, and I did not have any money. I had to call them up and let them know what was up. At that point, we made a deal. He would co-sign on the apartment if I went back to school. I went to the community college, BMCC, for a couple of years and then I got a scholarship to finish up at NYU. I ask that question to everybody, “Where did you go to college?” You win with the best story. You are on your own in the Big Apple, and you are living your life. I can’t even imagine. What was your degree at NYU? [bctt tweet="When you work with people, make sure not to overpromise and under-deliver." username="billrisser"] That is a funny story too. To get the scholarship, there was a list of degrees you could choose from. I chose English Education because I was like, “How hard could that be?” Famous last words. I ended up getting a degree in Education and then going straight into the public city schools here teaching. That makes sense because somehow we’ve got to talk about the fact that you live in Brooklyn, but you work in the Catskills? For my real estate, I work in the Catskills. In Brooklyn, what is your job? In Brooklyn during the week, I am an Assistant Principal at a middle school in East New York. On weekends, how far away is your new job and where is that job? It is 90 miles North of the city. Kingston is the main area, but all of Ulster county, I serviced. That is real estate sales and then I have my own investment properties I work on up there too. You do own some properties up there. If anyone follows you on social, you are very thrifty but hip and cool, all at the same time. It is super fun. First of all, you were a teacher, and then you worked your way up into administration. Congratulations, that is amazing. Where do you get bit by the real estate bug and the fix and flip, and the important part is the investment part? I always knew that I wanted to get involved in real estate. I was not brave enough straight out of college because I was looking for steady work, that steady W-2 job. When you get a union job and those benefits, those are hard to walk away from. Being raised by a single dad, on the weekends, we would build fences and roof houses. I always had the bug for sure. I was fortunate enough to be able to buy my spot in Brooklyn years ago. As soon as I bought that, it changed my whole perspective. I was like, “This is doable.” There was a time when I thought I would never be able to afford anything, especially in New York. Once I bought that, I got the bug and I was like, “I want to buy more properties.” I started researching different areas that were not too far away that had a lower buy and price point. I googled the fastest growing job markets in New York state and two of them are way over by the Great Lakes. I was like, “That is a little far for me.” The third one was Kingston, New York. It had so much going on for it in terms of job growth, people moving up there, interesting culture, lots of city folks are moving up there starting businesses, and tons of art. It was exciting. I decided to start investing up there. That was in 2017. I bought that first property then I slowly bought a few more. During the pandemic, like everyone else, I started to reevaluate my life and see what I wanted to do. I said, “There is no other time in history. This is the time when I have extra time on my hands. Why don’t I get my license and see where it goes?” [caption id="attachment_4232" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Machree Group: Consider every new renovation that you haven't tackled before as a big teaching moment.[/caption]   I assume you have a place to live up there when you go up on the weekends. I do now. For a long time, each property that I would buy, I would crash in there as I was fixing it up and then I would rent it out. I had my little air mattress in the back of the Honda Fit and I would roll up, do a good day’s work, and crash on the air mattress. You said Honda Fit. I don’t think they make a smaller Honda than the Fit. Am I right? It is beautiful. I love her. Her name is Rhonda. She is perfect because she fits down here in the parking spots in the city, but her whole back folds down. She also carries anything from Home Depot or whatever I have picked up off the street to use in my next place. There has got to be a limit to your skills. You do have contractors for certain things like plumbing and electrical stuff, but I saw on the video you did some flooring on your own and figured out, “I can do this.” You’re unafraid to try things that can harm you. How is that? If it is something that is beyond my realm, I have no problems outsourcing it because I do not want to do it wrong. Even nowadays, some of the smaller stuff, I do outsource because of the time issue, but I love rolling up my sleeves and doing it myself if I have the opportunity. What is a typical timeline for Mackenzie? It’s Friday. I don’t know in the education world if Fridays are generally an easier, better day or not. What does it look like? Tell me the timeline of from Friday noon to when you show up at work on Monday. Usually on Friday, school ends. We have after-school tutoring, so I am there for a couple more hours. It depends if my husband is coming upstate, he works on Saturdays remotely. I will stop by the house and pick him up. If not, then I go directly up there. We usually get to the cottage around 7:00 PM or 8:00 and then I try and get a good night’s sleep that first night. They vary week to week, but usually, it is showings, final walkthroughs, networking, meeting up with people to have coffee, and meeting new clients. I will do that all day, Saturday and Sunday, and then we drive back to the city Sunday evening. I go to bed very early so that I can get up and get rested for that next week. I imagine that by now, you are building up a referral base a little bit. That is starting to happen. They all know you and what you do. You can’t hide the fact that you are 90 miles South of them. I tell everyone exactly what I do in my day job because if you are going to work with me, I don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver, so I need to be clear about what times I am available. If I am not a fit, I want you to be able to find that fit. Is it okay for me to ask you that in 2021, how many families did you help up there? [bctt tweet="Writers can put pen to paper and compel you to do something with words." username="billrisser"] I closed 23 or 25 deals. Most of them were sales and some were rentals. Sometimes I do work with mostly investor clients. A lot of people who are down here in the city want to do the same thing that I have done. After they close their house, a lot of times, they will ask me for guidance for either fixing it up or for renting it out and helping them secure a good tenant who is going to take good care of the property. You love finding a diamond in the rough. If they follow you on Instagram at all, it is pretty cool to see that you like finding good bones and running with them. I get so excited when I walk into a property and you can see the finished product. I love helping my clients to be able to figure out how to do that for themselves as well. That is rewarding. You are a young woman. Do you come across other young people who say, “I want to do this and you have done it. Can you help me?” All of a sudden, you are their mentor and walking them through this process? With most of my clients, that ends up being the case because a lot of them, it’s their first property that they are buying. A lot of them are in a similar situation to what I was where you are priced out of the city, but they want to get on the property ladder. A lot of them are within my age or a little bit younger and it’s teaching them the full process of how to buy the home, teaching them about owning a home, and all of the above and working through it. Some of them do end up using it as a second place. A lot of them like to Airbnb them out. We talk about the pros and cons of the different types of investing, long-term versus short-term and what fits with their lifestyle. The ultimate goal is to find their goals and what will work with their lifestyle and then help get them there. That is what you should be doing as a realtor. You’re talking to these people, so I know they are watching HGTV. You have got to have some stories where you had that come to Jesus meeting with people about that is not real life or what do you think? I go back and forth because, in a way, HGTV is real life and these people have established businesses, systems, routines, and giant teams. We do not see any of that in the episode, but it’s there. The conversation is around that and the conversation always comes back to being more realistic about renovation numbers. I even still am working on this myself and learning each time I do a new renovation with a type of home or a part of a home that I have not tackled before. It is a big teaching moment, but a lot of times, people will walk in and be like, “I’m switching out the flooring in this. It will be $10,000.” I’m like, “Yeah, if this was 2001.” Things will be a little bit more than that in the timeframe. You might have to double or triple that. We talk through that and I do my best to educate them. There are always curveballs. I have this wonderful client who bought a place and it was halfway renovated, not entirely finished. When he started to pull apart the ceiling to start the renovation, it turned out there was a fire that the previous owner had not disclosed. That was a whole learning curve too because it was not something that came up in the inspection. You do not rip apart the ceiling, usually in an inspection. Learning about that and how they do the testing to make sure that it is safe to continue on or if the structure is no longer good. Unfortunately, learning about the legal process, like what is your recourse after finding out something like that. It definitely always conversations around how much it is going to cost, what the actual process is, finding out if they are handy or not and they are willing to tackle it. I‘ve got one client. He bought this old tavern that had all of these guest houses above it. It’s a total project. I thought he was going to hire it out. I stopped by and he’s rolling up his sleeves. He is going to do a top to bottom with his dad and his mom. I am like, “I love this. I love everything about this.” I told him, “Whenever I have some free time, you let me know. I’m coming over and I’m going to help.” [caption id="attachment_4226" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Machree Group: Your number one goal in building your business should be enjoying every minute of it.[/caption]   You are such a do-it-yourselfer. It is super cool to be able to see that. Social media has changed the world for us on that because now you can document what you are doing and show all these great things. You are so excited when you are walking through something you finished. I love it. I love your Edison bulbs and your lighting fixtures. If you are tuning into this episode, go ahead and check out the blog MackOfAllTradesNY.com. This is a blog that you started. When did you start this? I started it around 2019 or 2020. There were different versions of it. I used to have a teaching blog long before this, but then once I decided to double down on my real estate and design component, I was like, “Let me document this and use this as a tool to introduce people to who I am before they reach out to me so they have a sense of who I am and how I can help.” You are very authentic about the way you do things. There is a lead generation aspect to that because if it somehow starts the relationship off earlier or quicker, that’s good for you. My guess is you enjoy writing because it is a part of what you do. I do enjoy writing. This is a secret. I am very dyslexic. I do have my husband, who is a professional writer, read over everything. If you ever see any errors or copy edits, I did not have him read that one. I love people who can put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and compel me to do something with words. That is such a cool skill and so powerful. I’m glad you are doing that. My advice is lame as it can sometimes be. It would be, “Don’t stop.” Keep that thing going because it is only going to get bigger and build a lot more love for what you are doing. It’s fun to look back on the blog posts from the past few years and be like, “That is right. I remember I was doing that two years ago. Look how much it has grown.” We met because you’re the very first Rising Star of the Year. The award is part of our Agent of the Year Awards at RateMyAgent. We do in conjunction with Shelly Zavitz and her New Agent 365 coaching platform, of which I got to be a part. It is fun. How did you find Shelley? Let’s talk about that program and what it has done for you. You already understood about investing, but how did it help you in the real estate side of things as a realtor? I found out about it through social media, like everything. What appealed the most was the cheap cost because when you are starting up your own business, you are counting every penny that’s going through. It was a program that I thought would work for me because I did have an investor background, so I knew how to buy and do the rehab stuff. I was trying out real estate sales to see if I even liked it because going into it, I had this negative connotation