Episode 397 - Tiea Vincent, Owner/Broker NXT Level Real Estate and Property Management

00:00:00 - Tiea Vincent

I had another owner contact me and say, hey, my HOA is having a vote on putting restrictions on short-term rentals. What should I do? How should I vote? And because of my involvement at Florida Realtors and advocacy, I was able to say, listen, this sounds good. I know as an owner it sounds good, but if they can take away the rights to an owner and their private property rights, saying, you cannot do a short term rental, what's next? Because what's next is we don't want any rentals in there at all.

00:00:30 - Bill Risser

You're listening to The Real Estate Sessions, and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up-and-comers, and really anyone with a story to tell. It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drive me into my 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now, I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 397 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Today I busted out the mobile podcast package, which really is not much. It's a Zoom six digital recorder, a couple of wired Lavalier mics, and I decided to bring it along to the Florida Realtors convention. I was there for the re bar camp. I think it's my 7th year participating as a facilitator and a volunteer. But I knew Tia Vincent, right, the broker owner of next level real estate and property management was going to be there. I met Tia at a bar camp in Jacksonville. She's an amazing woman, doing some crazy good stuff in the world of real estate, mostly on the property management side, but getting into the sales stuff as well. So let's get this thing started. Tia, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:46 - Tiea Vincent

Hello.

00:01:48 - Bill Risser

It's going to be a lot of fun, right? So we've known each other for how long would you guess? Five years.

00:01:52 - Tiea Vincent

Five years.

00:01:53 - Bill Risser

Five years or so. It started with bar camp up in the Jacksonville area, rolled over to the Florida Realtors event. You're down here a lot because you're very active. I am at the association level, and we'll talk about that. But the first thing I always do in the podcast is I love to find out where people are from. And you let it slip. On this trip here, I found out that you're from a very rural part of Tennessee. So let's, first of all, give me the town, how many people, and what was it like growing up there?

00:02:17 - Tiea Vincent

So town is called Ashland City. It's about 30 miles west of Nashville between Clarksville and Nashville. So I tell people I'm from Nashville because nobody knows where Ashland city is. The county sheriff is my cousin. I'm related to basically everyone. I could not date anyone from my high school because we all have. The last name is the same. Very small. I don't know the population. You know, back then, maybe two or 3000. It's a little bit bigger now because Nashville's spreading and they gotta grow somewhere.

00:02:45 - Bill Risser

But is it almost a bedroom community getting that way of Nashville where people are.

00:02:50 - Tiea Vincent

Not really. But there's a couple of Airbnbs starting to pop up. And they did put a condominium on the river where a couple of country music singers have purchased. So we got a Walmart. We were very surprised when we got our first super Walmart. So that was exciting. But there's still only like two red lights in the whole town.

00:03:06 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:03:07 - Tiea Vincent

Yeah, wow. And I love it.

00:03:08 - Bill Risser

So you lived there your entire childhood and you went to school there? High school. Tell me what it's like.

00:03:15 - Tiea Vincent

My grandmother was a lunch lady. She used to ask me, she used to say, well, sweetie, what do you want on the salad bar? And I always wanted sweet gherkin pickles on the salad bar. And so my grandma was the lunch lady.

00:03:24 - Bill Risser

Wow. I mean, I just can't even imagine. I mean, I grew up in San Diego.

00:03:28 - Tiea Vincent

A little different.

00:03:29 - Bill Risser

A little different. So what I would imagine if you were, you know, misbehaving as an eight or nine or ten year old in another part of the town that your mom was gonna find out about it pretty quick.

00:03:40 - Tiea Vincent

I turned the wrong direction one time on a road, and before I could turn around and go back, my dad called me. Somebody had seen me because I had a very noticeable truck. I wanted the big jacked up with the tires and the lift and all of that. I wanted to be the biggest truck in the school parking lot because I was a girl and I wanted to set an example for the boys. And so I always turned left to go to school. And that day I wasn't going to school, but, you know, muscle memory. I wound up turning left and I was like, oh, my bad. Let me go down to the church and turn around. Before I could turn around, my father was calling me, where are you going? And this was before gps. He wasn't tracking me. Someone had seen me and was like, oh, I just saw your daughter on the road. You get away with nothing.

00:04:17 - Bill Risser

Nothing, nothing. Yeah, but tell me the good parts about it. There has to be these great parts about being in a small town.

00:04:24 - Tiea Vincent

Oh, yeah. Like, I know everyone. It's amazing. I go back. It's so down to earth. It's not the hustle and bustle. I'm telling you, when I drive home, I cross the Tennessee state line in Chattanooga, and it is like the world falls off my shoulders, and I just can breathe easy. The air seems cleaner. It's beautiful.

00:04:41 - Bill Risser

Are you a rocky top fan? I mean, is that something that's a big part of your life? Cause I know sec is massive here. You know Sean Carpenter, and he's a gator guy. He doesn't like Tennessee at all.

00:04:51 - Tiea Vincent

So my sister, die hard rocky top fan, like, all the girls wear the little cheerleading outfits and things like that. I will say, when I was younger, I dated a gator, and it was a very pleasant relationship. He was very nice, a gentleman. When we did broke up, it was for mutual reasons, and he was very polite. And since then, I was like, you know what? Those gator boys, they're okay. And so if I had to be a fan, it would be of the gators, and my sister would shoot me. A fan.

00:05:19 - Bill Risser

You can't say that in the state of Tennessee.

00:05:21 - Tiea Vincent

You can't say it in Tennessee.

00:05:22 - Bill Risser

It's so funny. Why? I think I keep thinking Georgia's so much closer to Gainesville, but they did not like gators. But it's a big thing with Tennessee, and. Yeah, I don't know what it may be.

00:05:31 - Tiea Vincent

My sister is very clear about it when we talk about it.

00:05:32 - Bill Risser

Very clear. Very clear. Okay. All right. I love that. So what did. What was 16 year old Tia thinking about for a career? Now, I know you're in a small town. My guess is you wanted to leave.

00:05:42 - Tiea Vincent

Because I wanted to leave.

00:05:43 - Bill Risser

Okay. For sure.

00:05:43 - Tiea Vincent

I was one of the very few, I think, out of my graduating class. Only two of us got out. Two of us left.

00:05:48 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:05:49 - Tiea Vincent

In that small town, you get married, you have babies, and you stay there. My sister just moved out to Clarksville, which is only an hour away. That's as far as she's got. Is it bigger? It's bigger. Clarksville's got an air force base. It's a much larger city, my brother. So my parents live on the end of a dead end road. 1 mile. I know it's 1 mile because we had to argue with the county to get a school bus to come down. So we had to extend our driveway with grasshead to make it exactly 1 mile so we could get a school bus and next door to my father and mother is my aunt Wanda, and next to her is my aunt Suzie, and now next to her is my brother has built a home, and now my cousin is also trying to build a home. So my grandfather, back in the day, bought up all this land, and every time one of his family members would get married, he would give them two acres to build a house. And it was just side by side by side by side. So now the county has a rule that you have to have a minimum of five acres to build. So it's a little different, but all the family's still right there next to each other.

00:06:43 - Bill Risser

So you. What was. What was that thing in your mind? Like, I'm going, I'm leaving, and I want to do this criminal justice.

00:06:51 - Tiea Vincent

I wanted to be a detective. I wanted to be a police officer, a potential lawyer at some point. But something in the law filled. I actually had a full ride scholarship to UTC Chattanooga for a criminal justice degree, and I gave it up to get married, to move away.

00:07:08 - Bill Risser

Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it happens, yeah. So you end up marrying somebody in the military.

00:07:13 - Tiea Vincent

I married a guy that went to not my high school, but another high school nearby, and he joined the military. So I tell people, you know the song, like, where were you when 911 happened? I remember. I mean, I have chill bumps right now. I remember exactly where I was. 11th grade, homeroom class. They said, turn on the tv. My boyfriend at the time was texting. We had next tails and little two way talkies, and he said, they just told us to turn on the tv at his high school. And at that moment, he said, I'm joining the Navy.

00:07:43 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:07:44 - Tiea Vincent

He watched what was happening, and he said, I need to serve. And he said, I'm joining the navy. And in that moment, I knew that I had to choose college or to follow him. And I followed him. Yeah, I followed a boy. That's what we do as girls sometimes.

00:07:56 - Bill Risser

Yeah, sometimes. Right. Tell me. So he's got to go off to boot camp. He's got to do his thing. I'm sure it was on the east coast. He didn't throw him out in San Diego?

00:08:03 - Tiea Vincent

No, he was in Chicago for boot camp.

00:08:04 - Bill Risser

Oh, Chicago. Okay.

00:08:05 - Tiea Vincent

So, graduated Valentine's day, and I went for the graduation. I don't know if you've been to Chicago in February. It's cold. That's the coldest of cold. Of cold.

00:08:12 - Bill Risser

It's windy.

00:08:13 - Tiea Vincent

Never want to do that anymore.

00:08:14 - Bill Risser

Yeah, don't do that anymore. So were you working at this time then because you knew you weren't going to go on to college. You knew it was time to, you know, get a job. What were. What were you doing at this time?

00:08:24 - Tiea Vincent

I started working at a very young age. I got my driver's license at 14.

00:08:27 - Bill Risser

Is that legal?

00:08:28 - Tiea Vincent

In Tennessee, it's called a hardship license.

00:08:30 - Bill Risser

Okay.

00:08:30 - Tiea Vincent

So it only allowed me to go to and from school to and from work if I had a job, and I could transport my brothers and sisters to and from their activities in a.

00:08:38 - Bill Risser

Big lifted, jacked up truck in a.

00:08:40 - Tiea Vincent

Well, I had a dodge spirit at that time. The jacked up truck didn't come until I was 17, and I helped pay for it. But.

00:08:47 - Bill Risser

But.

00:08:47 - Tiea Vincent

So I was driving since I was 14. I was working since I was 14. My first job was at a drag strip race cars. So I still can smell the smell of rubber burning, and I love it and the gasoline, but that was my first job. And then during summers through high school, I worked at a company called pay Systems. They did payroll. Like Adp?

00:09:06 - Bill Risser

Sure.

00:09:06 - Tiea Vincent

AdP was their big competitor. I did accounts receivables, accounts payables for them. So I got some accounting background, and then I moved away when I turned 18 and got married, we got our first apartment, and I said, hey, man, I'm new to the area. Do you know anybody hiring? And they said, we are. And that was how I got into real estate by accident. They said, if you live on property, we'll give you a discount. And 18 year old Tia thought, rent discount sounds amazing.

00:09:29 - Bill Risser

So that's great.

00:09:30 - Tiea Vincent

And here I am, 21 years later, still in real estate.

00:09:33 - Bill Risser

So you started off in property management, I guess, from the get go, because that's what. That's what you're doing in an apartment complex.

00:09:39 - Tiea Vincent

When I fill out applications nowadays, they ask, like, what was your career before real estate? And I'm like, high school. High school was my career because I really didn't have one.

00:09:48 - Bill Risser

Yeah. That's awesome. So tell me, did you have to do any travel? Did you have to move around quite a bit? You know, because I don't know how his station was or what his deployments were.

00:09:57 - Tiea Vincent

We got really lucky. So my husband, now, what he did in the Navy was very specific. The plane he flew on was a very specific plane. There's only so many of them in the world that have the equipment, and so there's only so many bases that have a plane like that. So we had very limited options of where we could go. So of the 20 years he did in the military, 17 were in Jacksonville with a three year hiatus to Hawaii, of all places, which is where my daughter was born.

00:10:23 - Bill Risser

Okay.

00:10:24 - Tiea Vincent

But, yeah, so we. We mostly stayed in Florida.

00:10:26 - Bill Risser

Okay. I mean, that was your, you know, first. I mean, you've been to Florida before, I would imagine. Maybe, maybe not.

00:10:32 - Tiea Vincent

Listen, Florida is where. Tennessee, you know, country people go for vacation, and we save up for years to do so. And I remember as a child, we had saved money in this big cauldron, a metal cauldron, like a witches cauldron kind of thing. I have no idea where it came from as a child, but we had it, and we had all this change in it from my dad's pocket to save up to go to Disney, and someone broke in our home, stole a bunch of things, and burned our house down.

00:10:59 - Bill Risser

Oh, no.

00:11:00 - Tiea Vincent

It was horrible. And when I remember being there holding my mom's hand, she swore I wasn't there, but I can remember seeing her belly. She was pregnant with my sister at the time when it happened. And I remember the firefighters pulling the cauldron out. All the money had melted into one big brick of metal. And so I didn't get to go to Disney until I was probably 17 because we saved up money to get.

00:11:22 - Bill Risser

There, and that was the big deal.

00:11:24 - Tiea Vincent

And that was the big deal. So Florida was where we came for vacation. So by the time I moved here, yes, I'd been here before, but a totally different experience. When you're going to the mouse house at Disney versus living in Jacksonville.

00:11:34 - Bill Risser

Okay, I get a little different. I totally get that. So when you're in Jacksonville, you're in this apartment complex. There you go. How did it continue for you? Because you obviously picked up some skills as a leasing agent. Is that.

00:11:47 - Tiea Vincent

I was a leasing agent. Within a couple of months, there was. I remember Tricia. Her name was Tricia, and she was the property manager. Beautiful woman. And I remember she had a Tiffany jewelry. And it was just. I just looked at her like, here's 18 year old Tia going, teach me your ways. Right? And I remember her going into her office one day, shutting the door, and she was raising hell with somebody, but she was just so affirmative and strong in the way she presented herself. And I was like, I don't know what I need to do to become that, but I want to be like her. She's so secure in herself. And so I went and said, how do I get her job? And they said, well, you have to get a license. You have to be a real estate agent in order to be a property manager. So within six months, I got my real estate license, and then they had another community open up over off of university in Bowden, and they said, we need a property manager. Come on over. And so I took over a 400 unit apartment community at, like, 18 years old.

00:12:39 - Bill Risser

Wow. So you're.

00:12:40 - Tiea Vincent

Yeah, yeah.

00:12:41 - Bill Risser

That's cool.

00:12:42 - Tiea Vincent

And I tell people I'll never go back to multifamily, and it's mostly because I don't like being stuck in an office where I don't get to see the world, and the same tenants are coming in and complaining right to your face, and you can't escape it. But I did get one really amazing skill from it, and that is sales. I can sell like no other, because when a person comes into an apartment community and they don't like the floor plan, it's not like you got ten other houses to show them. You gotta show em. The only thing you got is the same floor plan. So you learned how to sell the community and the environment and the floor plan and the pot. So I learned how to sell from apartments.

00:13:16 - Bill Risser

Yeah.

00:13:17 - Tiea Vincent

And then when we moved to Hawaii, I got my license in Hawaii, and I was looking for an apartment community to manage. That's what I thought I was gonna do. There are no apartments in Hawaii.

00:13:27 - Bill Risser

Yeah, I imagine in certain parts, especially.

00:13:30 - Tiea Vincent

There'S no land to build these massive complexes, so there's duplexes, quads, things like that. But they're all condominiums where each one's owned by a different person. So I was forced into single family management in Hawaii, and I never looked back.

00:13:44 - Bill Risser

Okay. So that was a radical change. Right, for you. Talk about just how tough. I mean, you touched on it there, but I always think it has got to be very tough in property management. You have to be tough, and you've already kind of identified yourself here on this episode. You're very tough.

00:14:00 - Tiea Vincent

Yes.

00:14:01 - Bill Risser

So we'll talk about that part of the story. And I imagine you probably have numerous.

00:14:06 - Tiea Vincent

Examples, 21 years of examples of toughness. But I've mentored several property managers over the years, newbies into the business. And my number one thing is, there's no crying in property management, and you have to be really tough. They are going to call you names, they are going to lie, they're going. They're just. It's going to happen. I will tell you. In 21 years, there has been one scenario where I actually cried, and it was when I was in Hawaii. We had a tenant who'd been in a property for, like, seven years. I didn't manage it for the full seven years, but they'd been there that long. And they started getting behind on their rent. And I went over to deliver the notice of eviction. If they don't pay, like pay up or get out, right? And the woman answered the door and her kids were there, and I gave her the notice. And it turned out that she had had to quit her job because she had cancer. So the husband had taken a second job, and he was trying to. But the drugs that they were giving her for the cancer were making her very volatile. And so when she answered the door and the kids were there, there was a noise in the background, and it was like the smoke alarm going off. And the kids like, mom, mom, the food's burning. And I was like, do you need to go get that? And she's like, no, that's okay. You can starve my kids, too. And the kids are like, who is this? I remember, and I had my baby. I just picked my daughter up from childcare. She was maybe six months old in the car. I was doing this on my way home. And when the kid came to the door and said, who is this? The mom goes, this is the woman that's going to take our house from us. And I handled it in that moment just fine. But when I got in the car, I cried all the way home. And that was the last time I cried in property management.

00:15:37 - Bill Risser

Wow. Well, that's, that's.

00:15:39 - Tiea Vincent

That's a story.

00:15:39 - Bill Risser

That one is understandable.

00:15:41 - Tiea Vincent

Completely.

00:15:41 - Bill Risser

Yeah.

00:15:41 - Tiea Vincent

But you work for the owner, you don't work for the tenant, and that owner has bills to pay.

00:15:46 - Bill Risser

Yep.

00:15:46 - Tiea Vincent

You know, for a couple years, though, they called me the Grinch because I evicted my neighbor like three days before Christmas. But she's like, I have to buy Christmas gifts. Well, so did the owner, and he has two mortgages to pay now.

00:15:57 - Bill Risser

Correct.

00:15:58 - Tiea Vincent

You know, it's not that I don't feel bad. There's that sympathy versus empathy. Yeah, I can feel bad, but it can't change my direction of what I have to do, you know, to my fiduciary responsibility.

00:16:07 - Bill Risser

Yeah. It is just part and parcel of what it means to be a property manager is that's, you know, no matter how big you can have. Operation has 2000 doors and six property managers, or eight or however many it takes, they're all going to have that experience.

00:16:19 - Tiea Vincent

As you can see, at some point in time in the career, it's going to happen.

00:16:22 - Bill Risser

So it would seem to me that those relationships you have with owners can lead to, you know, the other side of the business, which is buying and selling. Right. You must have had some owners who said, hey, things are going great for me. I'd love to look at a couple of other options. So can you be, do you handle those kind of deals where you're, you're kind of having your own lead generation for buyers and sellers?

00:16:42 - Tiea Vincent

So we kind of hinted off record earlier about my previous business partners and previous brokerages, but that was one of the things that we didn't see eye to eye. They did not want me to do any sales, and I have these relationships with these owners, and a lot of times if the owner's selling, they want the property manager to list it because we have got a relationship with the tenant. So showings are a lot easier here, like trying to get them to cooperate with showings. But a lot of times the owners are wanting to buy more investment properties. There was a year a couple years ago when my partners decided they didn't want me to do sales. I sold five houses, but all five of them sold to the tenant living in them. So I wound up with both sides of the deal. Most of my deals are what they call birthday sales, where you have both sides of them.

00:17:22 - Bill Risser

Okay.

00:17:23 - Tiea Vincent

And they call them birthday sales because they typically only come around once a year. But for me, most of my sales are birthday sells because the tenant is buying the property they're living in.

00:17:31 - Bill Risser

Yeah. I mean, do you have, do you help set up rent to owns and on that kind of.

00:17:35 - Tiea Vincent

I'm not a fan of rent to own.

00:17:36 - Bill Risser

Okay. Why is that?

00:17:37 - Tiea Vincent

A lot of the contracts are written in a way to purposely almost screw.

00:17:41 - Bill Risser

Over the tenant, make it really, really hard.

00:17:43 - Tiea Vincent

Make it really, really hard. Yeah.

00:17:45 - Bill Risser

But you give up a lot of money trying to get there.

00:17:46 - Tiea Vincent

Trying to get there. And if you go into some of these investor groups, they're doing a lot of rent to owns and they're doing it and they're giving the loan, the mortgage to tenants they know are not going to be able to close in five years. They know it and then they'll take all their money for the next two to three years as they're doing rent to own. And when it comes time to make the payment, that big payment.

00:18:06 - Bill Risser

Yeah.

00:18:06 - Tiea Vincent

They can't do it and they foreclose on the mortgage note and you're out. And then they go find another person that wants to rent home. So I'm not a huge fan.

00:18:14 - Bill Risser

Not a huge fan? No.

00:18:15 - Tiea Vincent

I like, if the contract was written properly, maybe I could discuss it, but I'm not a huge fan.

00:18:20 - Bill Risser

Give me, give me the typical day for you. I know for a residential real resale realtor, right, who's out there doing, buying and selling full time, not doing any property management whatsoever. I'm pretty comfortable with their day. If they're really good at what they do some prospecting in the morning, putting out some fires, going through emails, and then it's, you know, lead generation and follow up and then they have a lot of appointments. What's a typical day for a property manager, an owner broker of your company?

00:18:44 - Tiea Vincent

So I time block my broker portion of it. So I know when I'm supposed to do my bank reconciliation. So there's two days of a month that just gets, it's just for accounting. It's just accounting. But on the day to day property management. I just did a content video that I haven't released yet on this because I think people think we're rent collectors. Like, oh, we just collect rent, maybe write a maintenance order. But for example, last week I pulled permits to put a fence in on a property. I had a plumber go by and stake out the septic tank on a property because the insurance said that we need to trim the tree that hanging over the roof, and I can't put the crane on the property until I know where the septic lines are. I had another owner contact me and say, hey, my hoa is having a vote on putting restrictions on short term rentals. What should I do? How should I vote? And because of my involvement at Florida Realtors and advocacy, I was able to say, listen, this sounds good. I know as an owner it sounds good, but if they can take away the rights to an owner and their private property rights, and you cannot do a short term rental, what's next? Because what's next is we don't want any rentals in there at all. And as an owner, you may not like the short term rentals or the rentals at all, but it's your right as a property owner to do what you want with your property, within reason. Don't have a drug house, right? Things like that. But these are the things that property managers are doing. You know, this morning I had a tenant say, oh, I have no water. Well, why didn't we have any water? There was nothing wrong. She's been, the bill's paid, you know. Well, the water is paid by the owner, the whole building. Well, it turned out unit four that's vacant popped a leak and jea, the electric, the water company, noticed the leak was a gallon of water. In a minute they came over and just turned the water off. Then for everybody for everyone. So all three tenants came home with no water. And here I am going, let's get a plumber out there to find a leak in a vacant room.

00:20:30 - Bill Risser

Yeah.

00:20:31 - Tiea Vincent

And get the water turned back on.

00:20:33 - Bill Risser

That's brutal.

00:20:33 - Tiea Vincent

We just firefight.

00:20:34 - Bill Risser

Wow. So let's talk about your company. So you're the broker owner of next level real estate.

00:20:41 - Tiea Vincent

Next level real estate.

00:20:42 - Bill Risser

Nxt.

00:20:42 - Tiea Vincent

Nxt.

00:20:43 - Bill Risser

Why?

00:20:44 - Tiea Vincent

Because somebody had NXT. Ironically though, I love this portion. I named it NXT. I wanted something a little edgy, a little fun. The next level came from leaving a business relationship with some business partners where I knew that I could get us to the next level. And I was being held back and being told no. And so when I went out on my own, I was like, oh, my email is levels up, tia levels up, and it fed into next level real estate. But I went with NXT because of branding reasons and trademark violations and things like that with another company. And then right after I released it, Nar rebranded their conference as NXT.

00:21:22 - Bill Risser

Oh, that's right.

00:21:23 - Tiea Vincent

So now, I mean, literally within two months of me announcing they rebranded. So now every time I go to conference, I'm taking pictures with all the NXT photos. I'm like, this is free. Like proph. Like when you're done with this, just.

00:21:33 - Bill Risser

Give me lots of content. That's very cool. What, what are the plans? So is it you don't have a big staff, right. It's just you?

00:21:41 - Tiea Vincent

I'm still growing it. Yeah.

00:21:42 - Bill Risser

So let's do that. Sort of a boring question. So five years from now, what do you see next level being?

00:21:48 - Tiea Vincent

Yeah, so I'd like to grow it, the portfolio under the management, bring on some more commercial. I did commercial with my last brokerage, so I have the experience, but like to bring on some commercial and do more sales. I'm really enjoying the sales I'm doing. Yeah. Right now I've got an investor that's selling a bunch of padsplit homes. So I got the option to like, go into a new niche market and learn something new, which was fun, but I want to have a good work life balance. I didn't have that before I grew that company. We had over 250 doors. They had 125 agents. I didn't have time to go boating with my daughter or take her to get fabric shopping because she sews all her own clothes. Like, I didn't have time for that. So I'm really enjoying the work life.

00:22:31 - Bill Risser

Balance, which is really hard to do in real estate.

00:22:33 - Tiea Vincent

It's very hard. I will tell you I have a 13 year exit plan, so my plan is to retire in 13 years, which is very young. I'm only 39 at this point, so 13 years is very young to retire. But my husband did 20 years in the navy, so he has a pension from there. He's currently in the elevator union, and so he will be able to retire with a second pension in 13 years. So my goal is to build the company large enough that I can either hire a broker and just collect residuals or just sell it and retire with him in 13 years with his two pensions and our health insurance from the military for the rest of our lives.

00:23:07 - Bill Risser

And all that money you're going to make from selling your brokerage.

00:23:09 - Tiea Vincent

Selling the brokerage and go see the world.

00:23:11 - Bill Risser

That's awesome.

00:23:12 - Tiea Vincent

It's an early retirement plan, but I think it's realistic.

00:23:15 - Bill Risser

Think it is, too. And I think what I know about you, I'm not gonna say no. I could say you can't do it. Tell me, you mentioned pad split. Let's talk about that for a second. It's kind of a new niche. Like Adus were a big deal. Right. You know, but then you probably have. Maybe you deal with those every now and then. But let's talk about what a pad split is, because the first thing you think about is, well, the homes are built on pads and so you're splitting.

00:23:37 - Tiea Vincent

You're kind of splitting it up. Yeah.

00:23:38 - Bill Risser

Okay. All right.

00:23:39 - Tiea Vincent

So take your standard four bedroom, two bath house, take your living room and divide it into two or three more bedrooms. Take your garage, pipe cooling to it, heated and cooled, turn it into two more units, and you wind up with like an eight to twelve bedroom house. And then they're renting out each room weekly, about $150 a week per room. So if you have a ten bedroom house, you can add, you can do the math. And the cap rates on it for investors are triple what they're getting on your typical long term single family investment. Yeah.

00:24:10 - Bill Risser

So I like, I've got a buddy that goes to Hammock beach.

00:24:13 - Tiea Vincent

Love hammock golf and the golfing on the ocean course.

00:24:16 - Bill Risser

Yes. Right. And there's, there's homes there that have like 16 bedrooms or twelve or 14. Are these big mansions or is those.

00:24:22 - Tiea Vincent

Are big mansions?

00:24:23 - Bill Risser

That's different.

00:24:23 - Tiea Vincent

Those are big mansions because they also.

00:24:25 - Bill Risser

Have a bathroom for each bedroom.

00:24:26 - Tiea Vincent

Correct. And you're going to have a hard time doing pad split there because the hoa is going to have a problem.

00:24:29 - Bill Risser

They're going to say no.

00:24:30 - Tiea Vincent

So you're going to need to be outside of an hoa where the municipality allow the pad split program. Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston. All big cities for pad splits.

00:24:41 - Bill Risser

Wow. So investors know about this? They love it. That's great. Good. Give me your best take. What do you see the market doing in the next year? I know that's a hard question. Why would I do that?

00:24:52 - Tiea Vincent

It's going to rely on interest rates and it's going to rely on the election.

00:24:57 - Bill Risser

Yeah, I think you're right.

00:24:58 - Tiea Vincent

And everyone's waiting on the election to see what's happening. And a lot of people are choosing nothing, to do anything, not to move money around, not to buy or sell anything until they figure out what's going to happen. But I'll tell you this whole, we're waiting for the rates to drop. Oh, my goodness. I keep telling people, you date the rate. You marry the house, buy the house, always refinance. You can refinance. And a lot of lenders now are offering products where when you close with them, you can pay like, a flat 250 and they'll refinance within five years for $0.

00:25:28 - Bill Risser

Oh, sweet.

00:25:29 - Tiea Vincent

Because they know it's coming. They know it's coming. They're just trying to catch a little money up that money, and they keep the customer and they keep in the long run. So date the rate, marry the property, because if you wait and the rates drop the same property, you're going to spend more money because you're going to be. You're going to be in multiple office situations because all those buyers are coming back.

00:25:47 - Bill Risser

Tia, this has been great. This is awesome. So I'm going to. What I would do is I want to wrap up with the same question I've asked every guest. So you're episode 390. And so we're gonna. The question is, what one piece of advice would you give a new agent just getting started in the business?

00:26:03 - Tiea Vincent

Don't say yes to everything. It's what I tell property managers as well. We get so money hungry in the beginning. You know, we're eating ramen noodles and PB and J, and we're just out there trying to make money. But you will find that the wrong property or the wrong seller or the wrong buyer will waste more of your time and make way less. When you divide that paycheck up over the number of hours that you've worked, you're going to make a lot less money when you could have taken that time and invested in finding the right buyer or the right listing. So learn to say no when you should be saying no.

00:26:35 - Bill Risser

If someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

00:26:38 - Tiea Vincent

My email is tialevelsupmail.com dot. My cell phone is 615-533-2326 awesome tia.

00:26:46 - Bill Risser

This has been fantastic. I knew it would be cool. Awesome. You're no nonsense, no nonsense. And you have a lot of fun too, though. There's a you know when to have fun, right? As opposed to when it's got to be serious and when you got to get your work done. That's awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show.

00:26:58 - Tiea Vincent

Thank you for having me.

00:26:59 - Bill Risser

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