Ashley Wilson, the Co-Founder of Bar Down Investments, LLC & HouseItLook, LLC, Co-Host of The Passive Investing Show, Best Selling Author of The Only Woman in the Room, and a BiggerPockets’ Series Host is this episode's guest. She started investing in real estate in 2009 with 1 rental house and has grown that to an investment of over $100 million in both single and multifamily real estate across over 1,500 units.
I am so excited to have Ashley Wilson as our guest for today’s episode. Ashley, is the Co-Founder of Bar Down Investments, LLC & HouseItLook, LLC, Co-Host of The Passive Investing Show, Best Selling Author of The Only Woman in the Room, Knowledge and Inspiration from 20 Women Real Estate Investors, and a BiggerPockets’ Series Host. She started investing in real estate in 2009 and has been involved in over $100 million in transactions within both single and multifamily real estate across over 1,500 units. When Ashley is not working on her businesses, she enjoys spending time with her family, including her husband and their two daughters. Additionally, Ashley enjoys competing with her horses, Diacara & Wow!
Ashley always dreamed of being her own boss and running her own business. So, when she was presented with the opportunity to transition from her career in big pharma to real estate, she jumped at the chance. Ashley is passionate about empowering women and helping them build confidence. She believes that every woman deserves to have a seat at the table and she is dedicated to helping women achieve their goals. Ashley is a strong advocate for financial independence and she encourages all women to take control of their finances. She is an inspiring example of a woman who has taken charge of her career and is living her best life. Thanks for tuning in!
Memorable Moments:
7:22- It's interesting to see, when you have major changes in a market, how different groups respond. And to me, you can always find a deal no matter what cycle we're in, it's a matter of just being more creative.
11:25- When you first play Monopoly, you think the objective of the game is to buy as many houses or properties as possible. But what you quickly realize is, that's not the object of the game, the object of the game is to buy the right properties and build hotels as fast as possible, which means you have to buy houses as fast as possible. So you have to allocate your funds differently, and you strategize to play the game in a completely different way than you do the first time playing Monopoly. Well, I think most people in life are playing Monopoly and playing life as if they don't know the rules.
13:57- Every journey is different. And the great thing about real estate is real estate is still a business especially multifamily. I always say you're buying a business and real estate's just attached to it. It's not a real estate business, per se.
22:24- I like to always run a potential partner through what I call the three C's, which are character commitment and capacity, going through that exercise with someone and taking personality tests as well as working with them prior.
57:53-I think most people look at a deal first, and then the market and then the team. And I think you should always look at the team first, and vet the credibility of the team before anything else and not be swindled by return metrics. But really know a team very thoroughly make sure that they've all worked together previously, that they have experience on that type of deal and that type of market all the way down to have they worked with a property management company before.
Connect with Nancy:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/nancysurak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancysurak/
Website: www.nancysurak.com
Connect with Ashley:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-wilson-2835685/
Website: https://www.badashinvestor.com/
Bardown Investments Website: https://www.bardowninvestments.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badashinvestor/?hl=en
Ashley’s Book Recommendation:
Anything Malcolm Gladwell
Only Woman in The Room- Ashley Wilson
https://www.amazon.com/Only-Woman-Room-Knowledge-Inspiration/dp/173559590X
She's WILD Sound Production by:
Luke Surak, Surak Productions: surakproductions@gmail.com
Nancy Surak 00:00
Welcome to She's WILD, the podcast for women in land and development. I'm your host, Nancy Surak. I created this podcast as a way to collect conversations of women in the land and development industry. I've been a land broker on the west coast of Florida for nearly 20 years. And I love to empower other women and to tell them about this amazing industry. But I find often that there just aren't enough women being featured on big stages, whether that's at local conferences, or nationally. So I set out to find these women myself, that are killing it in my business across North America that are changing the communities that they live in every single day, whether they're building condos, multifamily, single family, office, or industrial projects, I hope that you will find this space to be inspirational, motivating, and educational. From time to time, I will feature women who are not only in my business, but also career coaches, and motivational speakers. Hello, welcome to She's WILD, the podcast for women in land and development. Today's guest is Ashley Wilson. Ashley, welcome to the show. I always love for my guests to go ahead and give an introduction on their background and tell us a little bit more about what you're doing in real estate and how you got into the business.
Ashley Wilson 01:29
Well, first and foremost, thank you so much for having me. I got into real estate in 2009, my husband and I were both looking for an alternative investment outside of the stock market. We both were very young. And you know, following the traditional route that most people fall, which is thinking that you can only invest in the stock market, and that's where your 401 K's gonna land. And one day, if you're lucky enough, you will be able to retire off that I don't know many people doing that these days. But that was the dream that, you know, we were fed from a little kid to that point in our life. And it was really my husband who took it upon himself to figure alternative investments. He landed on real estate and he started having me listen to real estate podcasts, actually, I think it was more in 2007 is when we started doing research. But in 2009 is when we actually pulled the trigger with our first investment property. And it snowballed from there. So we've done everything from short term rentals, long term house hacking, flipping high end flipping multifamily, and then we passively invest in a tremendous amount of things. So anything from you know, precious metals, insurance. I mean, I can't even think of everything, crypto blockchain, just a lot of different investments. But it's kind of built upon itself. So there's no part of the journey that I regret, as everything is transferable and helped us continue to grow our business as it is today.
Nancy Surak 03:19
Awesome. So So is your husband's idea initially, right? You're like I'm in. Take me back to your first deal. What was the first deal you guys ever did?
Ashley Wilson 03:31
Our first deal was, it was a house hack combo, short term rental. So my husband was a professional ice hockey player, and he had teammates who needed housing. So we bought a house and his teammates rented from us and and rented other rooms in this house. And then in the summertime, we would short term rent it. So this is pre the technology smart home technology that we have today. So I had to come up with a strategy because this is not a location where we lived. In the offseason, I had to come up with a very efficient strategy that would allow me not to have to manage it over the summer. And I I look back on that situation. And I can't believe that I didn't continue in short term rentals because just to put it in perspective, the first season, we made 20 grand in three months, the second season 30 grand, the third season 40 grand and this is net, you know, so this is something that was very easy for me to do. And you know, I just put all these systems in place and during the season we kind of broke even we didn't really charge any one of his teammates, you know, to make this huge profit because we figured out as long as we cover our expenses, we don't really need to make money on this because we're living for free. And then in the offseason, we make all the money. So that was kind of the strategy at the time. But we did that, while both working full time. I mean, my husband had his hockey career, I was in clinical research and development for a pharmaceutical company. So we both were pulled in other directions. Besides real estate, it really initially was supposed to be more passive, even though we chose an active strategy.
Nancy Surak 05:31
Okay, so you did the first deal. One house, take me to your biggest deal, what was the biggest deal that you've done to date, or that you're currently working on was the unit count? Or size of the deal.
Ashley Wilson 05:47
We just did a 409 unit. In February, we acquired a 409 unit property, we're doing a six and a half million dollar renovation on the property. And that's going really, really well. So that was an off market find, you know, through a relationship I have with a broker. And what's interesting about that relationship, is when I first met that broker, in 2018, they, they told me that they only work with and they listed their clientele. And their clientele are names that everyone knows. And those are the only people they work with, and I dismissed the broker as someone I would never really do business with until I got to that scale. And that that's a pretty large scale. I'm not even at that scale of the people they were talking about. But what's interesting is, you know, I still stayed in touch from time to time, but I didn't, I didn't put a lot of energy in that relationship, because of the fact they were so adamant. But as the market shifts, it's, it's interesting to see that even people that you have put on this pedestal, and I don't mean the broker, I mean, the the people who are buying from this broker, you have them on this pedestal, and you just assume because they're so big, they know what they're doing. And it's interesting to see, when you have major changes in a market, how different groups respond. And to me, you can always find a deal no matter what cycle we're in, it's a matter of just being more creative. And we've been creative from the beginning, since we're more conservative with our underwriting. So it's forced us to be more creative on how we maximize value of properties, where other people have been able to get by off of just being the bigger fish. Now, I've also been on the other side of that when I had my single family business, it was very easy for me to get complacent on, okay, we're gonna just do a certain amount of homes a year. And I never really learned or honed in the skill of raising capital. Because, frankly, we used our own capital. And we had a partnership with a lender that really looked favorably on us and gave us great terms. And, you know, we didn't want to get beyond the bandwidth that they wanted to lend to us on. So is this perfect relationship. But for about a decade, I never learned how to raise capital. So that, by far is I mean, I wouldn't say we're weak at it today. But we aren't as strong at it as we are on other fronts. I think bringing on the partner that I have today has overnight, you know, significantly changed the way in which we raise capital. And he's tremendous at it. So that, you know, is this amazing partnership for a lot of reasons, but one in particular is because it filled a void that we had.
Nancy Surak 09:14
So I think it's pretty interesting that you sound like you beating yourself up a little bit in 13 years, you've gone from one house to over I think 1000 units that you've either owned or you're currently on and manage your morent, most st recent, largest deal is over 400 units. And you're saying oh yeah, we kind of did a better job raising more capital being able to ramp up I mean, that is really remarkable. Actually. Like I'm like, wow, like I want to you know, learn from osmosis. It's really really truly amazing to see a company go from one unit to where you guys are today in 30 years. So celebrate that that's very substantial. And I know cuz I see other people do this. Sometimes you you're so focused on the next goal that you forget to kind of say like, holy crap, look at what we've done. So I'm going to do it for you, because I look at what you've done. So I just, you know, I don't want to get lost in this. So I want to make sure that I kind of go back to. So you were in a different field, you're in pharmaceuticals. And you got into real estate, at what point in your real estate journey Did you say I don't need to work full time in the pharmaceutical industry anymore.
Ashley Wilson 10:28
I actually left pharma before our real estate business was carrying what I made in pharma. What happened was my husband when he first started using the miners, and the miners don't make a lot of money. And, you know, I was doing very well, and he was doing well too. But he then went to the NHL and the NHL, obviously, you make a lot of money. The one year we got a tax return back and my entire salary, which I was making six figures at the time healthy six figures was not even enough to cover our taxes this year, that year. And I was dumbfounded and I was mad, I was mad at myself, because why had I just worked for free for an entire year. And it's my own fault, because I didn't educate myself on the rules of life and the rules of life or the tax code. So I always equate it to if you're playing Monopoly, when you first play Monopoly, you think the objective of the game is to buy as many houses or properties as possible. But what you quickly realize is, that's not the object of the game, the object of the game is to buy the right properties and build hotels as fast as possible, which means you have to buy houses as fast as possible. So you have to allocate your funds differently, and you strategize to play the game in a completely different way than you do the first time playing Monopoly. Well, I think most people in life are playing Monopoly and playing life as if they don't know the rules. So affiliating yourself or aligning yourself with a CPA who is real estate focused. And why I say real estate focus is because real estate, besides oil, real estate, those two are the most tax incentivized investment classes you can invest in to not only, you know, defer your taxes, but then ultimately allowing you more capital to have more money working for you. And that's how you build wealth. So that's something I did not realize until you know, in my late 20s, when going through this aha moment. So just continuing on that path and kind of realizing, okay, I've got to work smarter, not harder. So I left pharma and it was either 2013 or 2014. But we didn't even have our single family business build up by then. So our single family business start started in 2014. Fortunately, I was in a situation which, you know, I could leave my job. And I actually created three other companies in the process. So I started four companies when I left my company, and only one of them was real estate related. The other three were not. And you know, we had success in real estate, but at that time, it wasn't super passionate about it. So it took a little bit of time for me to grow passionate about real estate. And I didn't start my multifamily business until I partnered with a group in 2018. But I didn't start my own company until 2000. And I think it was 2000. When I decided to go about it the way it is today we're doing my own thing as opposed to partnering it was 2020. But prior to that I was partnering with people 2018 and 2019. So multifamily didn't really start until then. But you know, everyone has a different journey. And no one's journey is right or wrong. Every journey is different. And the great thing about real estate is real estate is still a business especially multifamily. I always say you're buying a business and real estate's just attached to it. It's not a real estate business, per se. So you can take knowledge from one industry and apply it to another because at the end of the day, it's a business and it's how well you can run a business. So how did you go from the single family rental to multifamily multi unit projects and buying those types of assets? When my husband retired in 2016, from December of that year through March of well, actually, no, I'm sorry, it was 2017 to 2018. From December until March. My husband and I threw 22 different real estate asset classes on a dry erase board which I have like right over there. I don't have the list still up there. But I have the actual board, we used to do it. And for three months, every single Saturday, we did like a high school debate class. And we went through every single asset class and decided which one we wanted to pursue, and which one we both were passionate about. Both thought aligns with what we wanted out of life. And we came to the conclusion together, that multifamily fit all of our needs, and fundamentally what we believed in for investing. So in two, in March of 2018, we came to that conclusion. And then I went and told everyone and anyone who listened to me that that's what I wanted to do followed up by saying what value I could provide. So my dad's a general contractor, I grew up in construction, my dad is done both residential commercial. And I have been privy to all of that knowledge and exposure my entire life. So it's natural, and it fit perfectly that I would then go into an asset and construction management role. Because in, in pharma, it was more of like kind of a similar asset management type, I was running clinical trials. And then I had this construction knowledge. And there was someone I knew who had just put under contract 124 unit property. So they asked me to run construction on it, because one of the buildings burned to the ground while they were under contract, and they didn't know anything about construction.
Nancy Surak 16:34
That's so cool. I usually ask, so I'm glad you brought it up, you know, knowing where you are now. Could you have perceived, you know, looking back at your childhood that it would? Would you were there signs that you might end up in this arena running this type of business? And sounds like you were around construction your whole life? Did you think back then, when you were a young girl, I'm going to own these types of buildings and projects.
Ashley Wilson 17:00
I knew that I wanted to be ahead of a company. And I knew that I was a natural entrepreneur, everything I did, always, you know, I was always the captain of a team, I was always the team lead of a project, I always took control of everything that I did. So I knew that I had that type of personality. I also too, grew up in a pretty poor working class environment. And I stole it from the other side. So I never realized there was a way you could actually make money on it, I saw, you know, my dad struggling during market cycle shifts with being able to get work and then also to my mom worked for a small family, auto body repair shop of luxury cars. So that also has a huge impact during recessions, because people don't get their luxury cars replaced or fixed up, they just deal with it. So that also has an impact. So I saw things on the other side. When I first went into, into corporate America, I actually my ultimate goal was to become the CEO of one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the in the world. And that's what I was doing. I was on my, on my track to do that. That was my ultimate goal. As fast as I could get there, I was willing to work anywhere from 100 to 130 hour weeks to get there. I got my masters full time while working full time, and nothing was gonna stop me. So it doesn't surprise me that I shifted over and more into an entrepreneurial do running and doing my own business and having more control over it. I think what shocks me more is the the sector that it fell under.
Nancy Surak 18:48
Which is really interesting. Because when I was a young girl, like I didn't become a broker until I was in my mid 30s. I was around the commercial real estate industry in business development roles, younger, but my dad had when I was like 17 basically pulled me to the side and said you should go into commercial real estate, you should be a broker. And I was like, what? And because I was so young, even though I had a glimpse of commercial real estate, in my mind, real estate was houses, even though I knew what commercial real estate was, I was like, I don't want to do that. A big part of it was he invested in a bad commercial real estate deal. Right before the savings loans failure, right? So he invested in a self storage deal. And I look at that and I go that kept me out of real estate, because I watched him lose his entire investment on that just terrible deal. And it wasn't that while the deal was bad, but he just didn't have the knowledge and he aligned himself with some pretty sketchy people who really didn't do I don't know if they didn't do a good job of educating him as to what he was really agreeing to or if it was just the nature of the business but either way, it kept me out way for a really long time and had me soured on real estate and commercial real estate, which is, which is interesting that you said, you know, you came from this place, and you looked at it through a different lens, so did I. And then when I got in, I was like, holy cow, this is not what I thought it was. And, you know, then I kind of went back and said to my dad, like, why did you invest in something and not do your homework, but it just, there was somebody that they trusted? And, you know, unfortunately, they just did a deal with somebody who was not a good individual, you know, and that happens sometimes. Yep. Which is really unfortunate. So, I'd love to, you know, segue in that question, how do you when you were going and partnering with some of these groups? How did you find folks that you felt like, were just a really good fit for you, professionally? And personally? How did you figure out like, who are people you could trust?
Ashley Wilson 20:52
Well, let's just first say that not every deal that I've done is been a good partnership deal. So I've learned along the way, I've learned to look for what to look for in a partner, I've learned also to not only to look what to look for in a partner, but also to, I've learned so much about myself. And what I personally need in a partner versus a person can still be a good partner. But that doesn't mean they're a good partner for me. And that is really critical, too. Because I think when you don't get along or have respect for someone, or, you know, there's something that I always say with my partner, so my husband and I first started the multifamily business together, but since then, my husband is wanting to exit the business and focus on her family more. And I've brought on a new partner. And one of the things his name is Jay Scott. And one of the things that I think we both say about each other is, wow, I can't believe I get to partner with this person. Still, after years of partnering with them, I still am just enamored at the fact that, you know, I get to partner with him, and he is the same way with me. So I think when you have that mutual respect for someone, you have complementary skills, I like to always run someone through what I call the three C's was, which are character commitment and capacity, going through that exercise with someone personality tests. Also, to kind of testing the waters, Jay and I worked together for a while before we agreed to be partners, we only, I mean, we partnered on other things, but in smaller capacities, we only fully agreed to be you know, full time partners last March, like not this past March, but March or 2021. But I had known Jay for four years prior to that. So even doing other deals, you know, where you bring on partners. I don't think I've ever done a deal with a partner that I didn't know before. You know, it takes a long time, especially flipping is one thing, flipping you know, you're in and out of it pretty quickly. Multifamily and commercial real estate in general, it's a it's a marriage, it's not a date. So knowing that you want to be in a good relationship with someone for a long time. You really have to test the waters, you can't get married to someone until you date them. So I would highly recommend that to anyone when they're trying to figure out the perfect partner for them.
Nancy Surak 23:42
Right? Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I'm not very trustworthy. So I'm like terrible for that. I'm always like, what are you hiding? When's the boggie man going to jump out?So tell me what's been your favorite deal so far that you've ever done?
Ashley Wilson 24:02
Um, I think every single deal has good things and bad things about them. I could literally go through every single deal and say what was great about it and what was horrible about each deal. It's not always tied to partnerships. It's about lessons learned. I think any deal where I can go through the deal and say that I didn't learn something in the process would be the worst deal I've ever done. And fortunately, I can say that I've never gone through a deal like that. I've always learned something on every single deal and then taking that knowledge and applying it to a future deal is something you know, really critical to continuing to grow. But I've enjoyed all of them. I can't say one is better than another. I know most people will be like, Oh, well this one was amazing because i to X my return well, what about intellectual growth? To me that is worth more than a two X return on your capital, because you have intellectual capital, and then you have your cash capital. But intellectual capital can grow so much faster than just cash capital.
Nancy Surak 25:11
Yeah, it's funny that you say that because I have some favorites, right, some of my favorites. But one of my favorites is a deal that I didn't close. And it was a heartbreaker deal. And, and when I tell people that they're always so surprised, they're like, wait, the deal you didn't close is one of your favorites. And I'm like, I learned more on that deal. of things to avoid, and people to avoid in situations in how to see a situation coming a mile away than 10 other or 15, other deals that I did around that same timeframe. And so I from that perspective, a lot of heartache, a lot of pain, but I learned a ton, and I replicate those lessons, or I bring those lessons forward and every deal now, which is it's great, you know, wasn't fun when I went through it, it wasn't my favorite, then. But it's certainly one that I look back and go, you know, that made me better. It made me a better broker made me a better negotiator, and maybe really look at the deal through the lens of, you know, my seller and their concerns. It's just a much more sophisticated way. So I really appreciate that conversation. Okay, so since you can't tell me a favorite, how about can you tell me about a deal that you look back on now, and you say that was the strangest thing I have ever dealt with? Well, I say that and then something else comes up and someone else comes up, it's constant. There's so many things that are just residential real estate is so predictable. It's predictable in terms of, you know, if it's on market versus off market, there's certain things that are probably going to come up on an off market deal versus a non market deal. And that makes it you know, makes it easier to deal with when something's predictable. But with commercial, it's the Wild Wild West, everything from the contracts being created from scratch every single time to the terms of the contract to just nuances with the different sellers and brokers. I'm hoping that I get to do a deal one time where I'm like, wow, the broker was amazing. And well, the seller was amazing, or the buyer was amazing. But I I find it very peculiar that in commercial, you rarely have a deal, where you have both the broker and the seller or buyer, being easy to work with. There's so much drama, there's so many just posturing. It's very egotistical. And it's, you know, people are saying they're not playing games, while they're playing games. It's very frustrating. So you just have to, you know, cooler heads prevail and not take it personally. But there are I mean, I, I've think I've seen it all at this point. I don't know, you know, from I mean, just horrible things like human cages, Oh god.
Ashley Wilson 28:23
For like people who've been trafficked to, you know, like, sewer line breaks that they don't tell you about what you know, after DD making sure you have, you know, a final walkthrough, like taking concepts you learned in residential real estate and playing its commercial, because typically, commercial real estate doesn't have a standard clause on, you know, a final walkthrough. But there's just so many different nuances to commercial real estate that I feel like every single deal it feels like it's your first deal. Like your, you know, like there are no two that are like, so you get better at it, that's for sure. But it's still it's never like, Oh, this is old hat.
Nancy Surak 29:16
Yeah, I would agree with that. I've been doing this almost 20 years and every single deal I learned something new or have some new issue I have to overcome. And it's really interesting for me when you first started saying like, a broker, right? You know, because that's my role. Well, a good broker and a good seller, and I'm sitting here and I'm laughing as you're talking, my face is lit lit up because I'm like, oh, yeah, I would believe most of the seller or buyers I've worked with because I you know, when I represent the sellers, they're like, We love you. But in every case I've heard we love you. You're a great broker. You're awesome. It's like the most challenging seller that literally, like I have to educate the buyer like listen, like not that I want my buyer seller to just do any deal, it has to be the right deal for them. Yeah. But if you just let me help you, like, my goal is for everybody to get to the same conclusion, which is a closing. So just trust me, and I will guide you. And if you don't want to trust me, then we're not going anywhere really quickly. With some of these really challenging sellers, I tend to have a little bit of a reputation down here. I always say I get the most challenging deals. So I look at some of my competitors. And I'm like, how did they get that deal? That's easy. I get all the the problem childs,
Ashley Wilson 30:36
You would, you and I are so much alike. I have said that since ever since I started working, I've always had the most challenging situation. So when I worked in pharma, a friend and a friend of mine, and I started at the exact same time, and we both were progressing at the same rate. But everything she had was super easy, she could come into the office at nine, she could leave at five and be totally everything would be super easy. All of our studies enrolled easily, no issues, you know, got regulatory approval and record time. And here I am, I'm working on getting in the office at 6am or leaving at 6pm. I'm working weekends, I'm struggling to get enrollment. I'm the you know, like all these issues with the trials and then transferred over to Real Estate. And the exact same thing happened. All the properties are extremely difficult. All of the, you know, leasing back and running all these things. I remember, I had a conversation with someone after I'd been in the business for like a year and a half. And they had been in the business. They're very big owner. And they had been in the business for about 20-25 years. And they were talking about something I was like, oh, yeah, I had that situation come up in this design it Oh, yeah, I had that situation. And after talking to this person for half hour, they were like, the level of knowledge that you know, in a year and a half, I did not know, for the first 15 years I was in this business. So you may be saying yourself, why me? Why me, but you have so much experience that I did not have that you are further ahead than anyone else. I know, just because of that. And that meant a lot, you know, for someone to, to kind of show me that perspective. Because before that I you know, like you I was so frustrated that, you know, everyone's getting these Cakewalk deals. And I'm like, literally sleepless nights to it, you know, getting two to three hours of sleep a night trying to make these deals not be taken over by the bank.
Nancy Surak 32:43
Yeah, well, and you know what I like to say that there's a reason why I don't know what that is, right? Like, I'm in this place, universe, God, whatever you believe it has me here, because I'm meant to be here. I'm meant to learn these lessons. I'm meant to help the people that I'm helping. And that's, that's my role. And and, and so I sort of just embrace it and say, This is what I'm meant to do. And so then I find a love, and can really appreciate that, because I'm like, You know what, I'm getting that deal, because I can handle that deal. That other broker, he would have fired that client, and then that client would have not have been able to reach their ultimate goal. So I have to find enjoyment in that. But, but it can be frustrating and crazy, especially, you know, when you tend to see things time after time after time, again, you're like, can I just get an easy one, like once would be awesome. So, you know, this whole podcast is about women, you know, is about my way of putting a spotlight on other professional women in commercial real estate in land and development, primarily because I'm a land broker. But I look at all of real estate as a form of development, because you're repositioning assets you're going in, and you're trying to add value where there's value add opportunities. But I know you wrote a book with a bunch of other women. And your title of your book was the only woman in the room, which I say a lot as a land broker, the only woman in the room after 20 years still. And it gets under my skin. To the point of it was the genesis of this podcast, because I was like, I'm so tired of being the only woman or the only one or two or three women out of 50 people in the room like I don't want that anymore. So how do I get exposure for other women to come into the industry? Or how do I go find them? So that was the genesis of the podcast. I want you to tell me what made you write that book.
Ashley Wilson 34:49
There are three reasons. The first reason was because of the fact that I was at a conference and the co founders of the real estate investor community Liz Faircloth and Andresa Gadelli asked for all the women in attendance to have lunch together. And out of 450 attendees, 16 of us put together two tables and had lunch together at this conference. And, you know, I went to an all boys high school, I have never I, my senior year of college, I lived with 13 other boys and I was the only girl in this house. I have never, ever been fazed by the fact that I was the only woman in the room so to speak. Until that moment, I don't know what happened. But it really came over me like a wave. And it made me so sensitive to the fact that there was no one there were barely any women at this conference. And I couldn't believe it. I went home that night, in the car with my husband and said, I'm going to write a book called The only woman in the room and I'm going to talk about women in real estate, I had no idea what it was going to look like. And then over the next year, I secretly without women knowing was interviewing women to find 19 other women who I thought could inspire and educate other women to come into real estate. So part of it, the first part was to bring other women into the fold and shine a light on this industry that not a lot of people are talking about with at least with women. That was number one. Number two was because I was frankly, sick of going to conferences where women speakers, were either on a panel being asked what it's like to be a woman in real estate. To me, that's an insult. It's a waste of that woman's time and expertise to be sitting on a panel talking about their gender, with respect to real estate, as opposed to talking about their credibility of why they should be on stage, let alone that they're only on panels, or they're in a breakout room. They're never the on the main stage. And they're never the keynote speaker, frankly, it pissed me off. And then the third reason was because I have two daughters. And I wanted them to I know they look up to me now because they're five and seven. But when they're teenagers, I'm positive, there are going to be many days where they don't look up to me. And selfishly, I wanted to highlight other women in this space to show them that women can do frankly, anything. And we're not limited real estate's not limited by gender. The inch, I think it was the intro to my book, I talk about this woman that I came across who's in her 80s, who's an astrophysicist from University of Pennsylvania, that I came across, who's this huge real estate investor. And she became a real estate investor, because she realized that rent was not dictated by her gender, that she could collect as much rent as a man, but being paid as an astrophysicist with a degree from University of Pennsylvania was still dictated by her gender. So that was pretty profound, to speak to someone, you know, who is significantly more experienced and wiser than I am. And he's been at this for a lot longer than I have been, but I just part of it was anger. Part of it was all show you. Part of it was to highlight women and get women the credibility that, you know, apparently, we need to get on the main stage, we have to have a book behind her name. Okay, well, here's 19 other women who have a book behind their name now, a best selling book, so you have no excuse not to have them on as your keynote speaker. That was pretty important to me.
Nancy Surak 38:56
Yeah. And I love that. And I'm so glad that you told the story, because that's really what we really have in common is that I look at those stages, too. And I and I look at the emails when when panels or presentations or conferences get announced and they sent out the email and I'm like, all white men 12345 of them awesome. You mean to tell me and I won't say any names, but I could this organization or this publication, or this event, institution or whatever, they can't find one female in our entire industry in all of North America to get to speak? Are you kidding me? It's a huge thing. It's become like my personal brand. So and I'm like, You know what, if that's what people are gonna say when I'm not in the room anyway, that I always bitch about that. While I might as well go ahead, just make a podcast about it. So that I can continue to share the spotlight like You're like you did with your book I've I'm about through, probably about 85% through it. I have been reading it, I think it's awesome. I love that. It's all these women telling their stories. But what I think I love more than the fact that it is gender based, is that so many of these women came from very little economic riches, like someone, I mean, so many of them was like, oh, yeah, I had no money, or I was unemployed when I started this, or I did that. And I'm like, that is remarkable. I mean, that is really wealth creation. And I have been saying, for years, because I was the youngest of five kids, like you lower middle class, family, lots of sisters. I looked around and said, you know, the only way I'm going to have economic freedom, and I'm not going to have somebody pushed me around in life is I have to go earn it. And that's how I'm going to change my future, is I'm not going to ever let this be somebody else's job to take care of me financially. So if you could get that book into the hands of other women and change one life 10 lives, honor lives. I'm all for it. I really have enjoyed it. And I think more of those stories need to be told so that women can understand that they can create their own wealth. Yeah, I think one of the things that I heard in your book, yesterday, when I was listening to it was one and I forget who one of the women who said this, but she and it might have been you, but I think it was one of your, one of your co authors talked about when they were raising capital, and how hard it was, I think it was you actually to go get the capital, because so many women are saying like, Oh, you have to go talk to my husband. And I'm like, Oh, my God, like what? Like, we have to stop that. It's okay to have those conversations, but it shouldn't be your gatekeeper.
Ashley Wilson 41:56
Well, it's, it also perpetuates the problem, because, and I'll just be fully transparent. When I first started raising capital, and this was pre only woman in the room. I, I'm a very perceptive person, I've always been, and when I'm making phone calls, and my conversion rate with men is 80%, my conversion rate with women is 10%. What do you think I'm going to gear my time to towards talking to I'm gonna gear my time towards talking to men, because I can convert men, I can convert them to want to invest. But women, they're more reluctant to invest there. You know, there's deal is, you know, time is the biggest deal killer. And you know, when they say I need to go talk to my spouse, and that's fine. But men don't say that. They don't, they make decisions on their own, and they inform their spouse, this is a decision I made, I'm going to invest in this, or maybe they don't inform maybe they're just controlling the finances all together. But I can tell you that many times when I talked to women, they they did not want to make any financial decisions, they wanted the man to make the financial decision. And I totally understand there's a part of my book where I have my own philosophy on why that is, I think generationally. If you look back, you can see that women weren't encouraged to get an education, when they finally were encouraged to get an education, it was limited into what type of education they could get, then it was expanded. And you know, only in the past generation or two, have women even considered STEM fields. And if you don't have a foundation in STEM, I don't care, you're not going to feel confident when it comes to investing. Because to me, mathematics, accounting, finance, those are all the basics that you need to have to have any sort of confidence when you're making an investing decision. So when you limit someone's educational opportunity, right from the get go, unless someone takes the time to self educate. They're at a detriment compared to the general population on making investing decisions. So we're continuing to perpetuate this problem, when we never fill in that gap of knowledge. So we have two potential solutions, we either ignore the situation and continue just target men. You know, I get a lot of analytics on all of our marketing efforts. And even my followers on Instagram, they're predominantly men, they're not women. You know, so my content is geared towards attracting more followers and how, what type of content do you think that um, publishing, you know, there's a business behind it, you know, I can't go out and do more deals and I can't provide more opportunities unless I have a larger following and Capital behind that, and where's that capital coming from? So there's that option. Or the other option is that we do it coinciding with education and providing tools to bridge the gap. So by, you know, I do a lot of speaking engagements for women in investing. You know, I'm flying out to Wisconsin in a few weeks for a women's events, the book, I work with real estate investor community, also providing more education and support for women, real estate investors. So we all have to do our part, we can't just rely on one person to do it. We all need to do our part. But that involves, you know, I, I spoke at an event one time a couple years ago, and I brought my notes up on stage. And I didn't read from my notes except for one part. And I said, can, and I handed it some to someone I said, can you read this line right here on what I'm supposed to say during the slide, and they said, look around the room, there's less than 10% of women in attendance in this room. Everyone here has a sister, mother, friend, and cousin, etc, that they could have brought to this meeting with them. It's a free meeting, but no one chose to do so. And everyone looked around the room. And there were less than 10% of women in the audience. And I said, I didn't get the roster in advance, I just knew that was gonna be the case. So that was really eye opening to a lot of people, everyone came up to me afterwards. And we're like, I can't believe you have that typed out as a note. And that's what actually happened. And it's like, that's the lens that women see things in. It's not just me, every other woman that is sitting in this room recognizes this, whether consciously or subconsciously, but it sends a message. That's why when we go to these events, women don't typically if they see a table, and there's a couple of women there and they see a table of all men only naturally goes over to the table with women at it. I make a point. Anytime I go to an event that I find a table of all men and I make sure they all are really chummy chummy with each other, like all attend RIAs where I haven't attended them before. And I know, oh, this group of guys always sits together. And I go and sit with them. And it like totally disrupts their whole ecosystem they have going on there. What's the point of going to a REA unless you expand and try to learn from each other network, you know, if you're just sitting with the same people every single time, so I'm doing a benefit to them, too. They just haven't realized that yet.
Nancy Surak 47:31
I absolutely love that. And you see me like shaking my head because I literally do the same thing, right? It's not hard in my business. But I do look around the room. And I'm like, Okay, I go through two questions. I either go Okay, is there somebody that I need to get close to? Right, or that I want to meet? Or what group of guys can I disrupt today? Who can I learn from? How can I expand my network, like what I'm going to do, but you know, that doesn't mean that I always do it, but I do it a lot. Because every once in a while, I'm pretty confident. I will see some women and I'm like, Okay, I need to like bring that level of confidence to them. So occasionally, I'll actually grab somebody else, you know, another woman, I'll be like, come with me. We're gonna go sit at that table. Yeah, there's two spots. Let's go over there. But you know, it's really great. It's really important. I agree with you on STEM mathematics in particular. I was always a really strong math student. And, you know, I use that every day, every single day. I'm like, I use that more than any other skill that and, you know, communication, obviously, but, and I'm a land broker. But now I'm like you I'm in analytics. I'm watching Market Trends. I'm, as a land broker in my field and what I do, I have to know a lot about a lot. I have to know what's happening in cap rates, I have to know what's happening in vacancy rates of, you know, industrial, and multifamily and what's happening in sales in the single family, because those are the selling the land that's going to become those things. And that makes a difference in my business. Which brings me to one more question to before we sum up things. How challenging is it for you guys right now, given the current capital environment? I mean, there's some significant changes that I'm seeing affecting my business, from debt inequity, is are you guys seeing that shift right now too, and how do you balance that?
Ashley Wilson 49:28
Excellent question. A couple of things with respect to the shifts in debt and equity. I think with respect to debt. I think it's more predictable than if you had asked me four months ago. You know, when we were looking at April going into May, like it was it was pretty uncertain. You know, what the Fed was going to do with the interest rate hikes, but now it's a little bit more predictable. I mean, they said what they're going to do for the whole year. So if you took that underlying assumption and plugged it in, you know, we were off by a little bit, but who knows what they're gonna do the rest of the year, they might balance it out. But, you know, interest rate hikes, they said they're going to do at every single meeting for the rest of the year. And there were six meetings and remaining when they made that announcement. With respect to how that's impacted the debt markets, I definitely see lenders being more cautious on lending right now, I see that through lower LTVs.You know, obviously, the interest rates are hiking up a bit, but to me, it's all a seesaw effects, because you can't be super cautious unless LTV and all these things and deploy the same amount of capital. They have quotas that they need to hit, as well. And if we look back over the past two years, COVID, disrupted their metrics in terms of deploying capital and when capital is not deployed, they're losing it and losing money. And not only are they losing money, but arguably, in a high interest rate environment, they're losing even more money than what they would have been losing pre COVID. So in terms of, you know, when we look back at the lending that they were doing, during COVID, they got like a little bit more aggressive for a period of time, because of the fact that they needed to deploy this capital, cap rates are still compressed that created the perfect storm for this multifamily frenzy that was going on. And people are just buying that insane. Compressed cap rates and, and the lenders were supporting it, I think a couple things, I think a couple things we're gonna see coming down the road. First and foremost is the fact that prior to all of that a lot of people were buying off of floating interest rates, and floating interest rates, I think are gonna rear their ugly head, because I don't think people plan for the interest rates to go up as quickly as they've gone up. So I don't think in terms of their DSCR, they're gonna be able to hit those metrics with where the interest rates are today. And whether or not they can buy a new cap rate, just to kind of give a comparison, I bought a property in September 2020, and purchased the cap rate through your cap rate for $30,000. That same cap rate today is $411,000. So in terms of someone being able to, you know, have accrued that capital over the past two years, because you know, in a month from now, it'll be two years to have accrued that type of capital over the past few years and the year remaining, you know, if next year when the cap rate expires, to have 411,000 ready to be deployed to buy another cap rate of, you know, similar terms, I don't think I don't think people plan for that. So I know frankly, we didn't plan for that either. So we is is we started to see the cap rates go up, we started accruing more and more and more money to make sure we do have that cushion in place. And that's why you have operational reserves, etc. But the the thing that I think is that's happening now is, you know, people are gonna want to get out of those variable interest rates, those floating interest rates. So I think we're gonna see that I also still think that there's a lot of 1031 money's still circulating on the equity side of things. So I think that the cap rates have expanded more than what most people are saying they're at right now. I think cap rates are actually inflated, but compressed, inflated. So not inflated in terms of expanding expansion, they're there, they're more expanded than they naturally are, I think they're compressed more than they really are because of the fact that we still have 1031 money that needs to be needs to be nice to find a home. So with respect to equity, I think equity is not as available as it used to be coupled with the debt. So you have kind of this tightening of the market. Well, what are the lenders gonna do? Because going back to what I originally said, they need to find ways in which they can keep this money working for all of their, you know, investors, their individual investors, so I think they're gonna get loose on terms. Again, I think we'll probably see that probably in the spring of next year. I think we're gonna see some loosening of the restrictions, again, whether that takes the form of net worth and liquidity requirements, whether, you know, government back loans like Fannie and Freddie become more competitive to seek out, you know, once Fannie and Freddie are close to bridge like, you know, that that kind of tells some of the story right there in terms of the rates, so, I think there's going to be some balancing going on once again spring of next year until we to get to a more stabilized lending rate again.
Nancy Surak 55:04
Yeah, I would agree with that even though I'm on the other end of the deal, I hear all those discussions, right and talk with those different capital groups. It's painful being on the land side, though, because what happens in underwriting is they'll come back and they say, well, we can't pay for the land, we can't give you X dollars per unit for the land. Because they're trying to anticipate those changes. And I'm like, Come on, y'all, by the time you build, and you get it out of the ground, you get it stabilized, you're looking like four years down the road, three and a half years down the road, like, nobody can predict what's gonna happen, but they still do. Try. So it's a little bit of a challenging time right now for the landowner, who is being asked to kind of take all of that fraud if they want to sell. But that's where we are in the cycle. And it is cyclical, and you have to kind of know what's happening. So even from like you said, math, finance, even though finance isn't considered technically a STEM field, it probably should be. really important. You have to kind of be paying attention to what's happening from the federal government and globally to like, where's where people investing? And where's the yield? And now, one thing I'm starting to watch, and just kind of pay attention to is what's happening in the Chinese residential market? You know, I'm like, Oh, what are the implications for that? Is that coming to a town near us soon? And what does that look like? You know, I think it's a whole different set of circumstances. But at the same time, I'm like, is that going to be something here? We might see in some way. I think if I had to predict, I would say, possibly in the office market. You know, we have a huge shift happening, but but we'll see maybe I don't think in multifamily. I think if anything happened with COVID, is that where people live has been really shown as being like one of the safest investments you can make. Yeah, people need a place to live, and to gather, and that's going to be homes or apartments for ever. You just have to buy right, and sell right. Okay, so I know this has been going on for a while, I'm gonna go ahead and get right into the last few questions I have for you. And I think you kind of already spoke about this briefly. But I'd love for you to maybe take this to the next level. If a young woman or a woman in general said, Okay, I've been in commercial real estate my whole career, I'm not doing my own investment. Hey, Ashley, do you have any advice for me? How would I get started? Like I know what I'm doing I know how to underwrite a deal. I know how to look at it. And they called you and said, What would be your best piece of advice?
Ashley Wilson 57:42
What would you tell them? For a passive investor or for active investor, you pick for, I guess, for either one, but really, for a passive investor, I think most people look at a deal first, and then the market and then the team. And I think you should always look at the team first, and bet the credibility of the team before anything else and not be swindled by return metrics. But really know a team very thoroughly make sure that they've all worked together previously, that they have experience on that type of deal and that type of market all the way down to have they worked with a property management company before. It doesn't have to be yes to all of those answers. But the majority should be yes, you shouldn't be going with someone who everything is novel. So you don't want them learning on your dime is basically what it comes down to. I think a lot of people look at returns, and they look at markets, and someone has a deal in Austin, and all of a sudden everyone wants to invest because it's an Austin, there are a lot of different parts of Austin. And there are a lot of people who can take a great deal and make it horrible. But there are a lot of good deals that can be made from towns that you've never heard of before from an excellent team. So, you know, we have an example that we had an investment that we sold in September, in Amarillo, Texas when I was raising capital for it. Half the time I had to educate people were Amarillo, Texas was they had never heard of it before. But that deal in in two years in three months, provided a 34% average annual return to our investors. So the investors were quite happy with that deal. But that goes to show you that it doesn't always come down to investing in the hottest market. You can get really solid returns with a really solid team a really great business plan and strong market fundamentals. One thing about Amarillo, Texas and I'm not pitching and I don't have a deal in Amarillo, Texas to offer to anyone I don't even know if I would go back there to be honest with you. But at the same time, I can tell you that Amarillo Texas was one of the top five most recession resistant markets in the entire country. And most people don't even know that most people don't even know how to analyze for a recession resistant market. So these are things that you have to look at when you find a good team, have they done a very thorough market analysis? It's not just, you know, the team in terms of likability and visibility and you know, experience it's, it's, it's, are they considering market economics? Are they considering capex strategies? Are they business savvy, those are all things that you should consider. So it takes a lot of work. There is no such thing as a passive investment, in my opinion, because there's a tremendous amount of active work that you need to do before you can, quote unquote, passively invest. So I would encourage everyone to do that homework up front, so you don't get burned in the long run. And then you're doing a lot of work when you're angry. Not only at the deal, but kind of out yourself for not have putting in the work in the first place.
Nancy Surak 1:01:04
Yeah. Great advice. Okay. So other than the book that you wrote with those other women? Is there a book that you love that keeps you inspired, or that you go to and you reread, and you say, you know, this is a really good, really good book that I could recommend to someone else to read in business.
Ashley Wilson 1:01:25
I surprisingly like to reread almost every book that I read, because I'm of the opinion that when you are at different points in your life, you pull different components out of a book that help you at different points in your life that you didn't recognize before. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy kind of theory. But I also am a huge fan of anything by Malcolm Gladwell. I was a psychology undergrad. So when I look at economics, I'm always looking at the why behind it. I don't look at metrics and just look at them in a silo. I'm trying to identify all of the causes so I can do a better job of predicting future events. Great advice. Okay. Finally, and this is the really the easiest one. If someone is here today, and they're listening to our conversation, where is the best place for them on social media to follow you on some of the content that you share? Like I already know the answer to this, but I would like for you to share it as well. So on Instagram is probably my most entertaining out of all the social media handles. So my instagram handle is bad ash investor. So it's b a d, a s h for my name Ashley investor. On LinkedIn, though, I post a lot of more strategic content, my analysis of markets, the multifamily sector, real estate in general, and tips and tricks along the way, but Instagram is definitely the more entertaining platform. Yeah, I'd love I love your post. And one thing, I'm going to leave you with a very, very final question I'm going to ask, because I actually went back and start your Instagram, and I love I love it. But there was one that I actually came across this weekend. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna ask her about this, because this one was a really good one. So on May 13, for you to know which one you posted, I think it was Tik Tok that you really created and then you posted it on Instagram. And I just thought it was like quite entertaining. So as a point of view, post, and you had your first loi versus your tempo ally in the same week. And for those listeners, you had the first loi that you didn't get accepted. You had Olivia Rodriguez, driver's license music, and some of my audience might not know what that song is about. But I have a 21 year old daughter who loves Olivia. So I know. And then your 10th Post was a lattice more sets, you ought to know. I literally laughed out loud because I feel like that's my life all the time. As we part I want you to tell me how you felt when you made that decision when you said I'm gonna post this because this is my life. Tell me a little bit more about that. Um, I like posting more entertaining content content. So, to me conceptually, in my mind, I'm like, this could be a really great post, but like putting it together, the self consciousness that comes over me have putting together that kind of real is overwhelming. So typically, I haven't in my head for like a week to two weeks, but it takes me a while to build up the confidence to pull the trigger and do it and I have all these excuses in my head like, Oh, I didn't do my makeup today or Oh it's gonna it's gonna take too much effort moving the lighting into this other room, or, Oh, I don't have time to edit the reel. Um, but I think that's the takeaway for life, that's the hardest thing to do in life is to get started. And once you have the idea, if you pull the trigger, you'd be you know, that post, I think you said it was May 13, that post could have probably been posted on May 3. And that kind of speaks to, you know, opportunity costs, like what opportunity cost was lost by needs aligned, posting that. Now, this is so trivial, and it might be something stupid. But you know, what, if it was something that was game changer, like, I'm trying to raise capital for a deal, and what if, you know, just, there was some other trend on on Instagram that day where everyone was looking up real estate memes, and it happened to be on May 3, and I had tagged mine with real estate memes and it had come up, maybe I would have gained 100 followers, maybe I would have been able to fund another deal. You know, who knows, but because of that self confidence that I had of posting that reel and it took me so long to do it. You know, that also, too, is a lot of, you know, a space in my brain that was taken up by thinking through all these kind of negative thoughts on why I shouldn't do it, as opposed to just doing it and then freeing up my mind to move on to the next thing. So I don't know if that's actually what you really wanted to hear. But so internal conflict I have with life.
Nancy Surak 1:06:35
Yeah, that you that you mentioned the internal conflict, because where I was going was, it was the mindset mind set shift. So as we end again, the first loi, when you make a, you know, an offer of the week, if you do it on a Monday and you don't get it, it can be so deflating. And in your post, you're like in bed, or like crying sobbing deal, you're not getting right, and you're like, Oh, I know you love this other person. But like I really want to do and the amount of work that goes into saying like, alright, hit the send button, you know, and then by the end of the week, after you've done 10 of these, and you get the 10th one rejected, you're like, I'm a badass, are badass, right? And I'm just gonna keep going, I'm gonna put my sunglasses on, I'm gonna be like, Okay, you like you ought to know who I am by now, like, for me, I was hoping for the angle of the mind shift. But the mind set shift. But I think you did that even in talking about posting the confidence, right that it took for you to kind of do it get past it. And hopefully, I've given you some inspiration of saying like, I loved it, I laughed out loud. Because I feel like I live it. Maybe that will give you you know, a little bit inspiration to go and do something else entertaining today or later this week. Actually, it was a pure pleasure to have you and to have you give so much time to us here today. You know, I can't stress enough how important it is not only for us to have a spotlight on other really successful women in our business, but also sharing our stories and our careers and our lessons that we've learned and encountered throughout our careers and what we're working on. And I just want to thank you for helping me fight for parity, even though really our first encounter was like a week ago. I've been following you for months and online. And I said months ago, I'm going to interview her one day, you know, because I so admire the messaging not only in your business, creating wealth for yourself and your family and your investors, but also making sure that you're pulling women in the room with you, and helping to share the stage with them. So thank you for that. And I hope Thank you. All right. Take care. Thanks again. Thank you for joining us for another episode of She's Wild the podcast for women in land and development. If you enjoyed today's show, please go out and rate us so that we can be found by other women in our industry. And if you know women who are working in land and development, please share this podcast with them. And if you know a total rock star woman, badass chick who is killing it in land and development anywhere in North America. I want to know who she is. Please reach out to me so that I can feature her on an upcoming episode.