Building wealth in real estate is mentally and financially challenging. But it’s very much possible! In this episode, fourth-generation Texas real estate investor Shenoah Grove of Texas Real Estate Investing Associations (Texas REIAs) shares her expertise in investing such as how to complete creative real estate transactions that work in every part of the market cycle, identifying the situation of the market, preparing your cash flow, and more! Tune in now to widen your knowledge and be better equipped in the real estate world!

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Real Estate, Real Wealth: How To Build Wealth Effectively In The Real Estate World With Shenoah Grove, Texas REIAs

In this episode, I am joined by the lovely Shenoah Grove. Welcome, Shenoah. I’m so happy to have you. Lauren, I’m glad to be here. Shenoah is a fourth-generation Texas Real Estate Investor who started investing in 2003 and went full-time in 2004. She has done over 1,000 real estate deals and as a result of her knowledge and success, she hasn’t had to rely on taking a paycheck from anyone else since 2003. Shenoah joined her local real estate investing association in 2003 as well and eventually purchased the association in 2008 and has grown it significantly since then. As part of that, she has helped train over 87,000 real estate investors on how to complete creative real estate transactions that work in every part of the market cycle. I was telling you, Shenoah, I don’t feel like that does you enough justice. We met at Quest and you are a force. Everyone wants to gravitate toward you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What got you started in real estate? Although I am a fourth-generation real estate investor, I am of the age and I’m sure most people who are reading as well are with the people who said, “I want you to go to college, pursue an advanced degree and get a job.” In spite of the fact that my great-grandparents and my grandparents invested and my parents still own over a dozen doors they’ve held since the 1990s, they encouraged me to go to school. I thought, “I’m going to do this and show you how income and wealth are made. I’m going to show you how this stuff gets done.” I was a redhead stepchild at that time in a way. I finished my degree and undergrad. I then got my MBA and started working in Corporate America. When I was in school, I jokingly referred to my mom as, “This is my mom, the slum lord.” When I was in Corporate America, I had to change the way that I introduced her to, “This is my mom, the multimillionaire,” as a result of what she did in real estate and real estate investing. As I changed the way that I introduced her, there was this lump that went down my throat swallowing a little bit of pride there like, “They were right.” Right about that time, my husband lost his job so he got fired. He had been in high tech for about twenty years, working at several different semiconductor companies and different startups over the years as well. He was looking at all different sorts of different businesses to be able to buy or start. He got hooked on investing in real estate. He said to me, “Shenoah, you’re going to be coming along for the ride with me.” I’m like, “I might be good.” Being in Corporate America, I had this identity of going and getting an education and being this person. It was a little difficult for me to say that I was ready to exit that identity, Corporate America and the blankie of checking your account every two weeks, insurance and other benefits. I love to work. It’s something I very much enjoy. As I got started, I was doing it on the side. At some point, I realized, “I’m making more money doing this on the side than I am doing my full-time job.” The company that I was with was a barely survived dot com boom and bust. It was like hanging on by the fingernails. They’ve been firing over half of the company. I’m like, “For sure they’re going to fire me. At least on the way out, I’ll get a severance package.” They were like, “Don’t go. Hang on. Stay with us.” I’m like, “I can’t anymore.” I went full-time in 2004 and I’ve never had to update my resume since then. I haven’t had to take a paycheck from anyone else since then. It feels fantastic as I’m going into my 20th year in 2022. It’s been a fun and wonderful journey. It has been one that’s helped me create an incredible amount of income and wealth, which is one of the most beautiful things about investing in real estate and an incredible amount of freedom. Both financial freedom and time freedom which is probably the thing that I value most and something that I’m so glad that I exited from what I will call my identity at that time. I haven’t looked back since. I’m so happy to do what I do. When I first started investing, it was all about money like, “I’ve got to create income and wealth. I didn’t have a 401(k) anymore. I also wanted to live in awesome wonderful houses.” At first, I was very singularly focused and then I realized as I’m working with many of these people, I’m being of service and being creative using several different strategies to be able to buy and sell houses. For me, I know how to make money whether a house has 100% equity or whether the house has little no or negative equity. Over the years, I have figured out how to make money every single time the phone rings, which is one of the things that has kept me recession-proof and has allowed me to not have to go up and redo my resume. At this point in my life, my career and resumes are in some version of dots that even techy people couldn’t resurrect. I wouldn’t want you to because I love what I do in investing. It went from creating income and wealth to, “I’m helping a lot of people along this journey,” then it’s also blossomed into training, coaching and mentoring. Not only do I get to help myself and help the people that I buy and sell from but also get to help the people whom I coach. We have our group coaches. What that looks like for me is watching them be successful like, “This feels fantastic and amazing.” Knowing that they’re going out and touching lives as well, it feels like life has come full circle. When people ask me what I do for a living, I’ve got two things that I typically say that I do. Number one, when I’m buying, I turn unrelenting, unwilling, unconvertible, uncontractable and unclosable homeowners into motivated sellers. I do it all on unachievable timelines all while solving unsolvable problems. As a real estate investor who also helps other people as they’re getting started, I get to help people put jobs that they hate so that they can do things that they love and enhance their lives and the lives of others. It feels amazing. For me, it’s been part of my mission and purpose to be able to touch those lives and watch those tentacles grow out and affect the lives of others. For the students who work with me, I know that I’ve done my job when I get to collect their badges when they log into work and open the door into work. I ask them, “When you quit your job, I want your badge.” My dream is to have a Christmas tree full of everyone’s badges that I have helped quit their jobs, change their lives and spend time with the people that they love when they want to do them. The only problem I’ve encountered with doing that is the first thing they ask you for when you leave your job is that badge. Either I’m going to have to have this dumpy, tiny little old Charlie Brown-style Christmas tree or work harder and longer. I’m in for the ride. It’s been a blast for me. It’s been incredibly rewarding for me and wonderful. I feel like that resonates a bit with me too. I’m the oldest of three girls. Whenever anyone asks about my real estate journey, it’s the same. I was like, “My family did real estate but wanted me to go to college,” then I was like, “I’m going to do my own thing. I don’t need to do what you’re going to do. I’m going to make my way.” I did the tech, corporate and Silicon Valley sales and lived that life only to look back at my younger sister who was like, “I’m going to stick with real estate,” and be like, “That was the smarter move.” As you grow a family and you realize your time is so valuable, I’m like, “Very much for being stubborn, oldest and all of that.” It resonates with me a little bit when I hear you went through that journey. When you first started, it was about making that income because you wanted to have your time and live in these houses. What were some of your first investments? What was your first deal? As a part of a family of real estate investors, what it was when I was in college, my mom said to me, “Shenoah, you can’t rent. You’ve got to own because we’re a family of owners. We’re not a family of renters.” From that standpoint, she’s like, “Let’s go find a house for you.” At the time, there was still a loan product called a non-qualifying consumable loan, which is what a college kid with no income speaks of at the time. I don’t want you to get jealous, Lauren, but at the time, I was making $4.75 an hour. American, right? I was twenty so I didn’t have any savings. The way that we bought that house is on a non-qualifying consumable loan. They don’t issue any of those loans anymore. They stopped issuing those in the 1990s. We bought that property in the early mid-90s. The way that we buy is subject to. It’s a similar process, taking over someone’s loan but it goes by a slightly different name. For me, that was the first house that I got into. After that, I finished college and then went back to get my MBA. I then was working in Corporate America. I put my real estate investing on hold. It wasn’t until I turned 30 that I got back into investing. I’ll tell you that the first house that my mom and I bought together is still in our family. When we bought it, we paid $105,000 for it. In 2022, it’s easily worth somewhere between $1.6 million and $1.8 million and it’s still in our family. That’s a proof point to buy it and hold on no matter what happens. That was my first investment. That was also part of what made me look back and say, “Am I creating as much wealth and my corporate career as I am in this one investment that I dabbled in when I was in college?” After that, as Phil and I started to invest together, I bought houses to be moved. I bought many houses subject to. I’ve wholesaled a lot of properties. I keep a lot of rental properties because I know that is a foundation of wealth and building wealth, holding those over a long time. One of my coaches very on taught me that the people who make money, the people who get rich and build wealth in real estate are the ones that can afford to hold on to properties in between market cycles. You have to have the capital to be able to hold on. The people who get rich and build wealth in real estate are the ones that can afford to hold on to properties in between market cycles. Share on X Especially in a market like we’re in, for those folks who are reading and watching who is getting started, cash is king. We’re in this simultaneous era where on one hand, cash is trash because of inflation. On the other hand, cash is king because of liquidity to be able to hold onto a product or project in between market cycles. That’s one of the dances that we’re having to do as real estate investors. We never want to be too cash-rich and too equity-poor or asset poor. We never want to be too asset-rich and too cash poor. There’s always this balance and that balance is a thing that’s going to help you survive and thrive no matter what the market throws at you. I describe my career as investing through multiple presidents, law changes and contract changes. I got started on the dot-com bust. That’s when I cut my teeth in real estate investing. I’ve invested through the Great Recession and the credit boom right before that. I’ve invested through the last several years, which were the best years ever. I’ve invested through a pandemic, hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms and snow storms. You’re in California so I haven’t invested through a wildfire. That’s a little about my journey. You’ve invested in down markets and great markets. What are some of the lessons that you’ve learned, not necessarily correlated to the market but in general? What were some lessons you learned the hard way or some failures that you had? I feel like people get this idea that it’s like, “I went from 1 house under contract to a multifamily of 200.” Overnight, it’s this grant success because that’s all we see on social media. We don’t see the Valleys people went through and what they maintained to get to where they are. Tell us about some hits you took or some wash. When we first started investing, what’s interesting is my first loan was about the same interest rate as the loans that they are giving out. Sometimes I feel like I’m Anne Boleyn. “Let them eat cake.” I have to realize that it’s perspective. For me, it’s like, “I’ve been through this. It’s all good,” but for someone who’s not a full cycle investor, it can unhinge you and cause a lot of trouble and frustration. One of the things that a colleague of mine taught me very early on was that my job as an entrepreneur is to look for the disruption in the marketplace and come up with a solution for that disruption. Put a process and system around it and hand it to somebody else to do for you while you’re looking and working on the next disruption.   For us, it was getting started in the dot-com bust and working in a community where there were a lot of techs. The part of Texas is like the sister Silicon Valley. A lot of the first deals that I did were short sales. I’ve found all of these people were having some decrease in income and/or increase in expense getting laid off. I did a ton of short sales. At the time when I got started, banks were doing their job which was lending. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, it’s like, “We got to do more short sales again,” but the banks stopped doing their job which was lending. I had a seller who was motivated. I had a buyer who was motivated but I didn’t have the glue in the middle, which was the bank that was putting the haves and wants together. For a long time, I hit my head against the wall. I thought, “This is easy. I got this. I’m going to work harder. This is part of my DNA.” All I was doing was hitting my head. I had all of these short sales and I didn’t have any buyers for them. At some point, I realized that the disruption is not that there are no sellers because there are a ton of sellers. Not that there are no buyers because there are a ton of buyers but the glue in the middle. Probably, it took me about six months before I was able to pull myself away from that old thinking and then put myself in that time thinking and be able to come up with a solution.   I was wrapping it, getting a property subject to that normally an investor wouldn’t touch, meaning a seller with little no or negative equity and finding a buyer who didn’t care about the equity position, just cared that they could get the house. Maybe a borrower who couldn’t get a traditional loan because of a credit score or a past hiccup but had the money and the down payment. You get this willing seller and buyer. Through the magic of subject to and a wraparound mortgage and having the skillset to do that, I got a part in some of that buyer’s down payment. The seller was thrilled and relieved because number 1) They didn’t have to do a short sale and number 2) They didn’t have to lose their property to foreclosure but it took us a while to realize, “This is what we’re going to have to do to be able to survive what was probably the longest Great Recession that we’ve ever lived through.” A normal recession is usually only about two years. If you look at what 2008 was like, we didn’t get out of it for most markets until January 2012. That was 3.5 years or 4 years. During that timeframe, just because the market took a 30% haircut in terms of the number of sales, there was an asset. I don’t even want to mention the name of the street because it makes my little heartbreak but it was an asset that we had to sell. If we had held onto it for another 5 or 6 years, we probably could have sold it for double what we sold it for and probably could have made an extra million dollars on it. That was a little heartbreaking but cash is king. We had to keep the cash coming in to stay liquid for all of the other things that were going on in that market. What that taught me is to be able to survive a recession even if it is uncomfortable. You’re looking at a lot of cash in your bank, especially when it’s a high inflationary environment. Cash is king. We have keep the cash coming in to stay liquid. Share on X Make sure that you service your debt and that you don’t have to sell anything that you don’t want to sell. It also gives you the ability to be nimble in a market where great opportunities come up, which are down markets. For me, it’s knowing that the average recession is only two years long. I can’t even say that we’re in a recession in 2022. If you look at unemployment numbers and job creation, it’s still so high. The people that are getting hit with layoffs it’s the tech industry but that’s a byproduct of them spending outside their means because money was so cheap. As a whole, the jobs don’t look that bad. It’s that one industry, which people see because they see Facebook and these big companies are laying off. It’s because the money was so cheap for them to raise that they didn’t plan for the possibility of this happening. I agree with you. We are headed there but I don’t think we’re there yet. It’s going to be one of the weirdest recessions we’ve ever had. 2008 had all the markings of a typical recession but 2022 and 2023 don’t. The number one marketing mark is a reduction in unemployment or unemployment going up. It was in the 9% to 10% range in 2008 and 2009 versus in 2022 where it was 3.7%. The government calls for full employment and an unemployment rate that’s below 6%. Technically, we’re still fully employed but the housing market is correcting. In Texas, for example, most of the markets had a 30% year-over-year haircut in the total number of sales. Our average price in Texas is still up somewhere between 5% to 8%, depending on the market. I was doing the math that we’ve gone from a 3% interest rate to a 7% interest rate. We’ve gone up four points in interest rates. The prices would’ve come down more. They’re not because of supply. I was doing the calculations that for every 1% increase in interest rates, it’s a 7.5% drop in total sales. We’re up for interest rate percentages and our sales are down 30%. Jerome Powell said that the next increase is probably only going to be 0.5% but then the next one after that will also probably be 0.5%. Another 1% might take our sales down 37.5% year over year and a 2% total increase so going from 7 to 9 could get us down 45% year over year. Thirty percent down year over year was where we were from our height to our trough in the Great Recession. We’re already there in terms of a reduction in the number of sales. It’s probably going to go lower but the sales prices are still up because of inventory. It’s basic supply and demand. One of the tips for a downturn that you need to watch out for as a new investor is don’t look at days on market. Days on market are the time on the market for the lucky ones that make it to the finish line. Look at months of inventory instead because months of inventory represents your full liability in terms of holding time for a real estate investor. A little scary about most months of inventory stats is because of the distribution of real estate sales, winter, spring, summer, fall and winter, it goes back a full year.   We always compare year over year versus month over month but because months of inventory take a look at the total sales over the last year, it’s pulling in sales when we were at the fever pitch up through May of 2022. Months of inventory, when the market’s going down look lower than what it is. It’s higher than that. That can be scary if you’re looking at a million-dollar investment where holding time days on market might only be 60 days but your total competition, if you calculate all that in using months of inventory, might be 6 months or 9 months. That’s why I said having that liquidity is key. The way the markets go up is it takes the escalator up but takes the elevator down. It goes down at twice the rate that it goes up, which can be scary. There’s almost like, “What do I have to price it at to be able to sell them?” There may not be that bottom price. What we’re seeing a lot of people transition to is we’re in a much better state than where we were in 2008 when interest rates were 7%. All of the people who refinance in 2020, 2021 and 2022 can afford to sit on these houses and keep them as rental properties and they’re cashflowing. In 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, there were adjustable-rate mortgages and balloon notes. Monthly mortgage payments were above rent rates. There were losing cashflow, which a lot of people can’t take at all. They had to sell at the bottom of the market, short sale, foreclose or whatever it may be. Those are some of the things that smart investors should be watching out for, especially in this market when you’re taking the elevator down. It feels like it’s happening very quickly. Ernest Hemingway has his book The Sun Also Rises. He was asking one of the characters in the book, “How did you go bankrupt?” The guy said, “Gradually and then all of a sudden.” It’s like, “What happened?” It’s those escalators up and the elevator down. You have to be good at forecasting and your future cashflows in a market like what we’re in. You have to be really, really good at forecasting your future cash flows in a market like what we're in right now. Share on X Something you pointed out is this is a very different type of recession that we’re heading into than 2008. People had tons of equity in their homes when they refinance. Typically, they’re probably going to be able to afford those mortgages and sit on them. I thought that was a good point that you made. All of these people who refinance in 2020, 2021 and 2022 were wearing these invisible golden handcuffs because they can’t sell their house and do anything other than maybe make a lateral move unless they’re saving another several hundred thousand dollars to be able to put down. That is probably one of the biggest saving graces. There are two that are out there that are going to help the housing market have a softer landing. Number one, we have all of these homeowners that maybe would like to sell but don’t have to and then can alternatively rent and don’t want to sell these properties because of these golden handcuffs of these interest rates. The second thing that has helped us is its builders. It’s probably even more than builders as it is the availability of data. That’s Moore’s law and technology. I don’t think a lot of builders were looking at months of inventory in 2008, 2009 and 2010. It was like, “We’ve started this so we’re building it.” Versus builders in 2022 have more data to be able to see, “What are the total permits? What’s coming on board? Should I or should I not be building?” They got so hurt in 2008, 2009 and 2010 that they were gun-shy already. The other saving grace at the same time is the lack of labor. Builders would’ve way overbuilt if we would’ve even had the labor to be able to do that. Luckily in a way, it was not having the labor that partially caused that market to go up and also those very low-interest rates. In 2022, that’s one of the things that has saved a lot of builders, in my opinion. Looking at where we are in 2022, what specific market opportunities do you see for someone who’s like, “I have cash. Real estate is something I’m interested in. I don’t know a bunch about it but I know that’s how people make money or long-term generational wealth. I want to get started?” Are there any specific asset classes, markets specifically that you’re like, “That’s where I have my eyes on?” We’re in the elevator that’s going down. You either want to get in projects that you can get in and out of quickly or you want to be in projects that are much longer so you can be on the upside of that curve. Meaning projects that you’re in and out in less than 6 months or projects that you are in for at least, for example, 2 years, which is looking forward. The average recession is about two years long. You have to be able to hold onto those things. We saw a lot of what I’ll call accidental landlords in 2007, 2008 and 2009. It’s like, “I can’t sell it unless I bring money to the table and do a short sale so I’m going to keep it.” We’re going to have a lot of accidental landlords who are fix and flip investors. Be nimble in your financing. Make sure that you have financing options and that you know what those are. If you’re borrowing from a hard money lender, typically, they want their money back in six months. They’ll do 1 or 2 extensions, which might give you another 1 to 6 months, depending on how long those extensions are. You need to be exploring bridge financing or whether you can get capital again to this long-term capital so that you can hold it. In general, any mistake that you make on the buy by overpaying or going into a market where it’s taking the elevator down can be remedied by time and appreciation. You just have to have that cashflow to be able to support that. I was reading in the Wall Street Journal. This had this hashtag. It was #Airbnbust. They said that a lot of people have Airbnb so the number of Airbnb bookings is higher than they’ve ever been. The problem is the supply is also higher than it’s ever been so the result is this delta that on average, most people have a 6% reduction. That’s assuming this higher level has a 6% reduction from what their bookings were in 2021. Last year is an example because your inventory was here. It may feel to you like a much bigger hit than a 6% hit because that is 6% overall in every property, even the new property that’s been out there. I’m seeing so many people get on that bandwagon. That bandwagon may have already left the station a long time ago. Sometimes when you get into these situations, it’s like you made a bad decision 6 months ago but you’re not going to find that out until another 6 months. The people who are looking at Airbnb, that’s awesome but make sure that your property can cashflow on a worst-case scenario. To me, what a worst-case scenario looks like is you’re buying it and holding it as a regular rental property if you can’t get the bookings. There are some trends I’m seeing and reading about. You’re in California and I’m in Texas and so many people from California are migrating to Texas. I’m in Austin. Tons of people from my area moved out. One of the companies I used to work for put an office there. Texas is still booming. The book that I have is called Upside: Profiting from the Profound Demographic Shifts Ahead by Kenneth Gronbach. One of the things that he said here is, “Taxes don’t redistribute income. Taxes redistribute people.” Think about that. We’re seeing a big redistribution from high-tax states to low-tax states. Being in Texas, we have a ton of people relocating here from other high taxes. Even if you go back to the last recession, Texas did well relative to many of the other large states. Our average sales price took a little dip but was flat over those four years. Versus if you look at California, Florida, Arizona or Nevada, it took a 30% plus dip. In places like that, you see the variation. It’s the above eighteen-year-old roller coaster versus if you look at the variation in Texas, it’s much tighter. It’s in this range. You can put grandma or your kids on this roller coaster. You’ve got so many folks that are in California but that is the reality of it. California is a beautiful place. The highs are high and the lows are low. To argue that, to play devil’s advocate, wouldn’t you say that there’s more opportunity than to get in on the low in California and ride that high? The trouble is you can’t time the market but as long as you stay in it long enough, you might sell here and it’s still going here or you might sell here after it was there. I’ll tell you a funny story. When we first started investing, buying and holding property, we went to the top property manager in town and said, “Where should we be buying a rental property? You’ve been doing this for 25 years. We’re just getting started.” That in and of itself is a great tip for people. They said, “You need to buy rental properties out here in the suburbs of Austin.” I said, “I don’t think that was a great area but tell me why we should be buying there.” The property manager said, “It’s because that’s where all the rental properties are.” It’s like, “Is there logic in that? I don’t know.” When you’re around a whole bunch of rental properties, values are typically going down as opposed to going up. I want to be the only rental property in an area of homeowners and they’re all improving their properties. I’m probably the one that looks bad out of all of them in there. We were continuing to talk to him and he was getting a little flustered and annoyed with us at this point. We’d asked him, “What about appreciation in this area that’s a suburb of a suburb?” He got a little flustered and then he said, “If you’re looking for that California-style appreciation, you’re not going to find it here.” Phil was like, “Aren’t we all looking for that California-style appreciation? What are you thinking?” Thank God we didn’t take his advice. What’s worse than trusted advice from a bad source? He was good at maximizing his business, which was managing rental property for owners but he was not also an owner himself owning these properties and seeing. For all of us, we have this cost of capital but then we have this thing called our opportunity cost of capital. We could have bought in that neighborhood where values were going up like this or we could have bought in a different neighborhood where values were going up like this. The thing is because of compound interest, over time, right at the end of that, that’s when the values start to make the big difference between investing in something that’s having an average 6% return versus something that’s maybe having an above-average 10% or 15% return. That compounding over time is where you need to make beautiful choices in terms of the ones that you keep, the ones that are going to build your wealth versus the ones that you say, “No, this is what I’m in and out of very quickly.” That’s good advice. It comes down to the timing. How long are you going to stay in something? Why would you stay in something longer? Be able to walk through that thought process. I’m curious, you lead your association in Texas and you have a huge group. I was in Texas when we met. Everyone knows Shenoah. You’re in Texas and when you don’t know her, I’m like, “Who are you?” Tell me a little bit about that, how people become a part of that and what you cover at these things. I’m sure we have people reading from all over. We have meetings in Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio every month. You can find us by going to TexasREIAS.com. REIAS stands for Real Estate Investor Association. It’s plural because we have several of them. We meet live. Every month, we do a coaching tip. If someone’s getting started or someone’s struggling, I bring them up to the microphone and I do some live coaching there, which is always fun for me because I never know what they’re going to say. I know that after doing this for many years, I’m probably going to be able to direct them in the right way. We do a tip of the week every single week. For example, what’s going on in the market, what to be doing and some of the things that we talked about here as well. Every week, we do a market update. We talk about the different major markets in Texas, how they performed last month and what the forecast is for the rest of the year. We do a training session on one of the different strategies that we’ve used to be able to stay unemployable for the last almost two decades. That’s our core meeting or introductory meeting. After that, people will come to a three-day training with us to be able to get down into all of the different things that we’ve learned throughout our investing journey and figure out how they can use that as well. Some people decide after that like, “I’d like a little more hand-holding from someone who’s been doing this, been able to survive and thrive a full cycle investor and made it through all the different market cycles.” Some of them will go on to do individual coaching and mentoring with myself, my husband and the rest of our coaching team as well. What I find is a lot of people who are interested in investing in Texas, both some of the ones who live here, get attracted by some of these national speakers and stuff. They can give you this super high-level knowledge but when it comes down to, “I need the name of the contractor, plumber or electrician. I need to know who can give access to the comps. I need to know where to close at. I need to know where I can get the contracts from.” You have to get that from local sources. A lot of these national companies will say, “I don’t know the answer to that. Go to your local REIA.” It’s like, “I’m glad you found us. Sorry, you had to go through all that other stuff to get here.” We are often that stop for people where it’s like, “Now I found a place that has everything that I need, that has the tribal knowledge and is willing to share that tribal knowledge with the rest of the group.” When I first started investing, I joined the local real estate investor association and then later bought it. I joined it in 2003. I bought it in 2008 but the rest of that story was I was a five-year volunteer at that association. They asked me to volunteer because they could tell, “Left brain organized, analytical. Have her help,” in some way. I got to know everyone in the group. I got to know who had deals, who had money, who was real, who was not, who had the power team, who had the strategies, the right contractors, the right attorneys and all of that stuff. The first deal that I did was when I was in my twenties with my mom. I got a deal from someone in that group. The last deal I did was I got from someone who was part of that group. This is a group that throws off money, deals, partners, all of the power team members and the thinking or that tribal knowledge that’s shared to be successful and be able to grow. I love this group. I continue to carry the torch. Not because I have to but because it has served me so well. It is truly a great place to be able to get those local ethical educated boots-on-the-ground investors from people who have been doing it as opposed to someone who comes in for one day and then you never see them again. I always joke with the members of the association, “You’re going to see me again whether you want to or not because this is my baby.” This is the foundation of my success and I know it’s the foundation of so many other people’s success as well. It’s that power of networking. You purchased this REIA in 2008. What did you inherit? How did you make that grow? What was your key to success in growing that? It’s interesting because of the woman who owned it before me. It was Angelique. She had gotten very busy in her personal life and she had fallen out of love with it. After the first 2 or 3 years, I didn’t even see her at the meetings anymore. I had been running the thing as if it were my own. I took extreme ownership of that thing and would drop off the checks over at her house but it helped me cut my teeth on my presentation skills and network. I build out my entire business. I was already running it before she said, “I’m going to do something else.” She asked me if I wanted to buy it. Since I had already been operating it for almost five years before, it was a make versus buy decision. I could have remade it. I had the list of all the members but it already had a presence and an online networking platform that we were using. It already had a couple of things that were a part of it that we had also grown over that time. It made sense. It wasn’t a large amount of money but we took it and we used those same foundational pieces to be able to build it into other cities and grow networks throughout Texas. It was the foundation of my success as a real estate investor. For many, that’s where they get their footing and tribal knowledge in a world where the internet knows everything. You can get anything on a podcast or a YouTube show. The problem is there’s a fair amount of ridiculousness sprinkled in. You don’t know which way is right or you get pieces but you don’t get the entire plan. You can go a couple of feet forward then there’s a skip between here so it’s like, “Now what?” We provide a lot of the and-now-what. You can find anything on the internet but a lot of it comes from people who do not have that full cycle experience that may have ridden the wave of the last ten years, gotten super lucky and become these experts. We’re going to see who the experts are and who can survive the next years doing what they have been doing or if they choose to adjust. You’ve been through it. You are real about it. It’s not just all rainbows and butterflies. If someone was interested in connecting with you or reaching out, how can they find you? TexasREIAS.com, that’s how you can find me and know where I am, know where we’re talking, know where we’re presenting. 90% of our members are in Texas but we have at least 10% that are in other states and understand the demographics that are creating so much opportunity in Texas that they want to invest or be diversified here. No matter where you are if you’re investing in Texas, I can help you. If you’re investing in other states, I am not going to be able to help. I’m not the one. I know those stuff but I can’t give you those local roots on the ground. There’s a beautiful saying, “They’re riches and niches,” and Texas is my niche. I love that. It was so great having you on. It’s good to connect with you again. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on this episode. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a friend, subscribe or leave us a review. Until next time. Bye.  

Important Links

• Shenoah Grove
• The Sun Also Rises
• Upside: Profiting from the Profound Demographic Shifts Ahead
• TexasREIAS.com

 

About Shenoah Grove

Shenoah Grove is a fourth generation Texas real estate investor. She started investing in 2003 and became a full-time investor in 2004. Shenoah and her husband, Phillip Grove, have transacted over 1,000 real estate deals. In addition, they have trained over 87,000 real estate investors on how to complete creative real estate transactions that work in every part of the market cycle. As a result of their knowledge and success, neither of them have had to rely on “taking a paycheck” from anyone else since 2003. Shenoah joined her local real estate investing association in Austin in 2003 and started to lead it in 2004 and formally purchased the association in 2008. In 2013 Shenoah created associations throughout Texas with monthly meetings in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Every month hundreds of members, guests and vendors attend. If you’d like to attend a meeting, head over to www.TexasREIAS.com to get started in your investing. These associations uphold the tradition of “Texans teaching Texans how to invest in Texas using strategies and systems that work and make money in Texas” which is the cornerstone of its success and the success of the members. It was that first real estate investing association that gave her the tools, funding, deals, knowledge, contacts, contracts, and contractors to be successful in this business. She continues to carry the torch so other investors can leverage the tribal knowledge within the association to create their own success. Shenoah is a licensed Texas Realtor (#0518223) and Broker (#0591721). She has her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and her MBA from Rice University. Shenoah, Phill and their son, Zilker, live in the Barton Creek community in Austin, TX. She actively invests in single family and commercial real estate throughout Texas and helps others by mentoring new investors.