Table Of Contents
In this episode, we're joined by Justin Shore, EA. Justin is a Senior Advisor here at The Real Estate CPA with over 10 years of accounting and tax experience, including running the accounting department for a REIT and running his own firm. He is also an investor himself and owns 7 rental units in MO.
This episode is sponsored by Landlord Studio and Tax Smart Investors.
Full Transcript:
This podcast has been transcribed using AI, please excuse spelling, grammatical, and other errors.
Brandon Hall 0:00
You're now listening to the real estate CPA podcast, your source for all things real estate, accounting and tax. Here we reveal our secrets that can save you 1000s in taxes, streamline your accounting process and help grow your business. Stay tuned to hear insightful interviews with industry experts, successful real estate investors and current clients on what strategies they use to grow their business, and how they steer clear of Uncle Sam.
Thomas Castelli 0:30
Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in. Today, we're joined with Justin shore. He's a senior advisor here at the Real Estate CPA. And he has experience working as an accounting manager at a real estate investment trust, as well as running his own firm where he provided accounting and tax services to an array of clients, including real estate investors. Justin is also a real estate investor himself. Well, I'll let him tell you more about that as we get into the interview. If you haven't already, go ahead and check out the tech smart investor community on Facebook. You could find that by going to wwe.facebook.com/groups/tech smart investors, or by searching for tech smart investors on Facebook, and you could join that community. There's a ton of great conversations taking place right now. And we'll be doing a special webinar for tax smart subscribers on October 6, about the Biden tax changes. You can learn more about becoming a tax smart investor by going to WVU dot tax smart investors calm. But that's enough for now we're going to go ahead and dive right into today's episode. Justin, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show today, would you be able to give our listeners some more information on your background?
Justin Shore 1:37
Yeah, salutely I'm super excited to be here. Appreciate you having me. Um, so yeah, I live in Springfield, Missouri, which is in the kind of Southwest sort of corridor. I moved here years ago to pursue an accounting degree at Missouri State University. And after that I spent a little bit of time working for there's couple of fortune 500 companies have their headquarters here in Springfield, it's kind of got got my field working for the really large, you know, corporate kind of environment. But I'd always had a really strong interest in real estate. And a few years ago, I had the opportunity to manage the accounting department at a real estate investment trust, but more commonly referred to as a REIT. And for those listening who aren't very familiar with REITs, they're basically an investment vehicle that allows for a larger number of investors to be kind of pooled together, because it allows them to buy shares in real estate while remaining current 100% passive. And there's a lot of tax deferral benefits to reach that make it more possible for members execute 1031 exchanges into the partnership, essentially through a manner of like ticks and 721 exchanges as well, which is a process more commonly referred to as upgrades we've ever seen that one thrown around out there. But it was fantastic experience get to work there. And I was able to kind of rub shoulders with a bunch of other real estate professionals, you know, that had founded the REIT and kind of absorb a lot of knowledge about the real estate industry. And while I was working there, it's really what kind of just made me have the bigger itch to scratch of wood for real estate. So that was run by the time when I finally decided to go ahead and purchase my my first rental property it was while I was there, because I was surrounded by a lot of people that were doing exactly that. And ever since then we've acquired a property or two each year to kind of build out our portfolio a little bit as well. And then from there, after the REITs went through a merger with another larger REIT that I assisted through the process of I decided to go into public accounting and co founded a firm here in the local area. And we mostly worked with kind of small to midsize businesses so worked with a lot of different you know, a lot different areas of tax and, and consulting. But I always had that big pole kind of pulling me back to real estate. So over the years there, I worked more and more with focusing on advising clients on how to use real estate and you know, to be able to harvest all the tax benefits, as well as the wealth building strategies that a lot of you're familiar with. Um, so that that was really great. Being able to spend time in that kind of public space and working face to face with clients to really provide them with those tax solutions and things. And then from there after, you know, my partners and I had some different ideas on which directions to take the firm, but I went ahead and separated from that engagement and worked with a company that consulted primarily with physicians to help them build ambulatory surgery centers, and operate them and manage them all over the country. And now, just recently I've joined the guys here at the Real Estate CPA, because I'm super excited to be able to do that because it's circling back to where my main passion is, which is real estate and tax planning.
Thomas Castelli 5:05
Awesome, awesome. So definitely want to dive into a little bit about your professional experiencing helping real estate investors as well as your investing experience as well. So let's let's just kind of like just start off with the investor side. So I know that I noticed, you said that you had a handful of rental properties, kind of what is your portfolio look like today?
Justin Shore 5:22
Today, we have a duplex and we have five other single family rentals that are kind of spread around our local market.
Thomas Castelli 5:33
Nice, nice. And when it comes to those those properties, have you ever had any, any any struggles or success stories? You would you'd want to share with the audience about operating, you know, a portfolio of about seven or so properties?
Justin Shore 5:48
Sure, absolutely. Um, you know, I would say, initially, I think I went through what a lot a lot of investors run into when they're first starting out, too, is figuring out should I hire a property management company or not. And, you know, when we just had our first two or three, I was self managing, trying to kind of, you know, save a little bit of money and things like that. Um, and the the first instance, where I finally kind of that breaking point and said, Okay, it's time to hire a property manager was when I was on vacation. I'm in Colorado, I was snow skiing, and I literally had my gloves off and shoved underneath my armpit, standing on the side of the mountain, making phone calls to local plumbers, because it was around Christmas time, and one of my tenants had called and said that their water heater had gone out. So that was the first time where I kind of threw my hands up in the air and said, Okay, we're gonna need to do something about this. And we were looking at acquiring more units. So that kind of made sense. And then we dealt with a lot of issues. I think people were experiencing last, you know, last year with COVID, and whatnot. And we decided to go ahead and take management in house in house again, and do it here ourselves, largely because our littles are in school now. And we've got a little bit more time. And so I've actually been tasking my wife with a lot of the property management duties. So I can focus on on the tax advising side of things. But yeah, we certainly have had our fair share of ups and downs of the rentals. But probably the most notable one is we have a duplex that was my first big bird property. And I was not very confident about going into that, because I'm not great on like the kind of improvement repair side of things as much as it was some people that are really great at that. I wish I was better at that. But we went ahead and decided to purchase it because it was a great off market deal that another investor had had thrown my way. And the tenants were on a month to month leases. So we told them, we'll give you a couple months, but we want to renovate and improve this property. So why did you guys go ahead and vacate. And apparently, the sons of one of the tenants on the one side of the duplex, who were very upset with that determination. And a couple days after they moved out, one of them came back in the middle of the night, and actually threw a Molotov cocktail in through the back window of the duplex, in an attempt to burn it down. Luckily, one of the neighbors actually saw them do it. So we were we were in the clear as far as the fire marshal not thinking that we or anything like that. So that was pretty wild experience. It was also a good testament to how important it is to have good insurance. And it's one of those relationships that you definitely want to cultivate as a real estate investor. You know, I definitely think that your tax advisers really high up there then close second is going to going to be get to know your insurance broker very, very well and ask them a lot of questions just like you ask us a lot of questions. So that was pretty crazy. Luckily, things ended up working out fairly well because we were planning on renovating it anyways and we're able to use a lot of insurance proceeds still fund a little bit extra projects type items on that when we put it all back together. So that was crazy. But
Thomas Castelli 9:08
definitely interesting experience. Like it's one of those nightmare experiences that people have. And you know, it's funny when you on the property management side, you know, another experience I think people are always tread is you know, it's it's a toy, it's a two p 2am. In the morning, someone's calling and ask for a plumber for you. You were on a vacation trying to have a good time you're on the mountain skiing and you have in meanwhile you have to stop what you're doing, you'd say and start calling plumbers, trying to put out those you know those fires, if you will, for your tenants. When you did get property management, how did your experience with property management go? Because I know you said you took it back in house. But while you had property management was that did it work out all right, or you know is any tips you could share there given your experience using third party property management?
Justin Shore 9:55
Yeah, it went it went pretty well. I actually had known the person who I ran the property management company from from earlier years when I was working at the reed as well. So I kind of built a little bit of a professional relationship with her prior to engaging their services. But I think that being able to set really knowing what you want setting clear expectations of the property manager went a long ways, as far as being able to figure out what kind of deliverables that we could get from them, because I'm a very detail oriented person being an accountant. So I wanted to know that I could get all the information from their property management statements that I could, I was also very familiar with the software that they were using. So I kind of had a lot of, you know, questions about how they were inputting data and how it was going to come back up to me. Because I wanted to know, how am I going to be able to integrate that into my financial reporting, that I was generating on a QuickBooks to be able to still get the kind of information that I always had had when I was self managing the properties too. So I think just asking the property manager, you know, when can I expect to get statements from you guys each month? If there's a large repair expenditure that comes up? What's the dollar mount threshold that'll kind of come up before you call me and say, Hey, are you okay with this, you know, $1,500 repair? Or would you prefer to go you know, cheaper route, bandaid, temporary kind of fix type of thing, you know, stuff like that. So and they were really good about that of being able to tell me, Okay, we have this floor expense this month, we but we think it's necessary, because of x y&z reasons or something like that. So get like that, that helps a lot.
Thomas Castelli 11:42
Guys got interesting. So I do have a few follow up questions there. First one is what what software are they using? You know, what property management software?
Justin Shore 11:49
They were using? AppFolio?
Thomas Castelli 11:53
Yeah, a lot of we have a lot of clients use that folio built in. And you know, one of the things that one of the one of the things that some of our clients, some of the people we talk to some of the investors is there's a disconnect between what you know, the property managers doing, verse, in terms of accounting and the reports you get from the property manager, versus how it connects to the to what you do as to what like an investor needs to have ready for tax, your tax filing to make tax filing a very seamless process, would you be able to kind of kind of discuss a little bit about what the property manager does versus what is needed to kind of bring it all together?
Justin Shore 12:34
Yeah, absolutely. So the property manager, largely, you know, is handling the day to day activity at the properties, but in really that, but they're completely outside of, you know, what's kind of more like on the investor side. So, you know, things like repairs and maintenance expenses, collecting the rents, collecting security deposits, you know, potentially refunding portions of security deposits, when you have move outs and things like that, of course, charging, like their leasing fees, and or management fees, all those types of things are going to be present on the property management statement. But effectively, everything that, you know, that I'm doing as the investor that's outside of managing the property is gonna all be housed on, you know, on my system, whether it's spreadsheets, or an accounting software, something like like, you know, steps that are QuickBooks, and those are going to be things like, you know, paying for the the property insurance, the property taxes, all the mortgage payments, any of the other types of cash flow that's happening outside of property management, like for having, you know, owner contributions or anything like that, that are coming into the property bank account to fund new acquisitions or capital projects, things of that nature. So yeah, the challenge sometimes becomes marrying those those two systems together, what the property management side of the story is, with the investor side,
Thomas Castelli 14:03
guy got so what I'm hearing is that property management statements, there's not the is not the end of the line in terms of bookkeeping and accounting. There's another step, another layer that investors have to go through.
Justin Shore 14:13
Exactly, yeah, what I always tell my clients in the past is it's, you know, maybe a little more than half the story, but it's not everything that's going on with, you know, with your company books, by any means.
Thomas Castelli 14:26
Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, we here at the Real Estate CPA, we do have a service where we can help you for anybody who's listening if you're ever interested, help you kind of set up a QuickBooks Online account kind of bridge the gap between what your accountants providing you, excuse me, your accountant, your property managers providing you and what you ultimately need to get the full picture of your of your rental portfolio as well as kind of make tax streamline tax filing for you having tax ready financials. So if you're ever interested, something like that, you can go ahead and explore the real estate web real estate CPA website to get additional details. But you know, kind of going back along the lines of property management, what made you take it back in house again?
Justin Shore 15:07
You know, during the COVID outbreaks, you know, things kind of shuttered a little bit, I think, you know, here in there for everybody, and you know, we all have our lenders were actually really, really helpful and working with us. And as far as like figuring out, you know, if we could do any kind of, you know, abatements or delays or extensions and things like that, or loans and whatnot. But it seems to me that I think the it made sense, probably that the property manager was overwhelmed a little bit with all of the additional workload that was coming up, because of, because of COVID, there was just way more I think, probably resident contact and things like that going on. Because they were trying to figure out, how do we manage all these, you know, collection type situations and stuff like that. So, um, and we had, we had a handful of tenants, like during that time period that that weren't paying. And so it was kind of a two prong part where, you know, we just wanted to get better eyes and ears on what was going on at the property level to make sure that, that we were just apprised of everything in real time of what was going on. But also, we started to become a little bit concerned with just the actual, you know, the resident experience to, you know, if they were getting longer and longer delays on things like maintenance calls and stuff like that, we felt like that was going to kind of start chipping away at kind of our residents morale, and which of course, is going to make them want to move, which causes more turns and more expenses and things like that. So we decided to kind of, you know, take charge of that situation and control a little bit more. And then also, with our little is getting a little bit bigger, and being in school, my wife had a lot more time to be able to handle some of the property management activities. And, and that's been something that we've talked a lot about, as far as like getting her more involved with our real estate holdings since since my full time, you know, gig is being a tax advisor, she's got a little bit more capability as far as being able to put in substantial hours into real estate to be able to potentially hit real estate professional status at some point down the road. So I figure it'd be good to really start dipping her toe in the water a little bit with it now and sort of plunging her into it all at once years down the road.
Thomas Castelli 17:30
I've heard this is a natural segue, his next question would be what strategies you use to minimize your portfolio. So kind of, you know, we everybody knows, listen to this podcast, the real estate professional status allows you to take losses from your rental properties, essentially, and take them against your W two income or your other active business income that you may have. So I'm curious, just to know, from your perspective, with your current portfolio, I think it's about seven units. You mentioned, how far how close would your wife be, you know, how is she close to she currently? And how far do you think you have to go in terms of the size of your portfolio to actually achieve, you know, the real estate professional status?
Justin Shore 18:08
You know, um, I think we that we would have to more than double the size of our portfolio, just kind of roughly based off of how much time that's not investor hours that we're spending on actual property management. And it's certainly ebbs and flows, depending on the types of tenants that that we have had. But since we disposed of a few units this year, we definitely need to add some more back into it. However, my wife's expressed more interest in looking at more like burger properties and being able to get more hands on involvement with, you know, doing some value add types, types of properties, which is something I have always wanted to engage more fully. But I've just never had the time myself. Whereas she's got more time on our hands to be able to handle that which is killing two birds with one stone or Verbena do something that she would probably enjoy more, but still be in real estate, and we'd be able to rack up quite a while she'll rack up quite a bit more hours, if we're doing like a couple of those big value add projects during the year. So I think that's that's probably how we would probably try to shortcut getting to that getting to that point a little bit quicker.
Thomas Castelli 19:18
Guy guide. So it's the kind of sounds like these, you know, once the properties are rented out pretty steady, there's not that much that goes into it necessarily, or there's not enough that goes into it to be able to achieve the real estate professional status, but kind of by taking on these more heavy these heavy and the more intensive value added projects where there's a lot more involvement that needs to go on that could that potentially kind of move the needle and, and help her meet those requirements to become a real estate professional.
Justin Shore 19:47
Exactly. It's almost a double edged sword where you think I need more hours but I don't want my tenants to be calling me with problems that I need to go to the properties for so we can definitely control it more and make it happen. With with purchasing value add properties.
Thomas Castelli 20:02
Yeah, and you know, you know, becoming a real estate professional we are we always have conversations with our clients about this isn't isn't isn't the easiest thing in the world to do because you know, part part of you wants roasted to be passive, the other. The other part is okay, we want it to be active so we can get through real estate professionals, that's kind of two things that are at odds with each other. But good to hear that you have a few, you know, good handle on on your strategy and what you're going to do to achieve that. For anybody who's listening, we went through an entire prep series on prior episodes, that's reps, episodes, 012, and three, we did those a few months back, go ahead and check those out if you want a more more fuller understanding of the real estate professional status and what it takes to to qualify. You know, one thing you mentioned, while you were talking was, you had actually sold a few properties this year, kind of want to get an idea of why you made a decision to sell those properties and why now,
Justin Shore 20:58
yeah, that we had a couple reasons for that, several of our properties, or a pretty good distance away, you know, a few of them would take us 4515 minutes to drive to that we're kind of on the far side of town. So with, you know, transitioning the self management, what if we had a small, you know, issue where we had to run over to one of the properties that only took five minutes. For example, last last fall, I had a situation where the tenant said that something was leaking on one of the laundry lines or whatnot, I learned lesson from that of, hey, send me a picture first before I drive all the way over there. Um, but I drove all the way out and it took just a few turns with suppliers or whatnot to kind of tighten that down, and then leave. So a three to four minute kind of fix ended up taking two hours out of my day just for that driving to and from, so we're looking to divest some of those properties that were further away, just that we'd be able to acquire some that are closer by so they're a little bit more reasonable to manage ourselves. And, you know, also save, obviously, some of the expenses involved with traveling that far to them. But also, we have wanted to start kind of upgrading properties. In the past, we had always kind of been most mostly in kind of class B, you know, lower class B kind of single family rentals and things. But we'd really like to shift a little bit more to acquiring a little bit higher quality of units that we can kind of focus more on, you know, fewer tenants, but closer, better relationships with the tenants. And in getting some more of those, like long term renters, because in my experience over the years that we I think that initially most people are really worried about is about vacancy of what's going to happen if if I have these units vacant? How much is that going to cost me. But I think in my experience, at least your turn costs are way, way higher than just the vacancy itself. So resin retention is a huge, huge priority of mine, which goes hand in hand with the resident kind of experience to with us as a as a owner manager. And the other thing too, the other reason we're looking to sell was just the market is exceptionally high. And it is everywhere, we really feel it, especially in our market. And thought if there was any good time to dispose of a couple of properties that probably this, this time frame was going to be best for that to reach some of the gains. So because we weren't able to 1031 exchange those properties, because the market was just so hot, everything was going within a couple of days around here. We kind of knew we anticipated that that was going to be an issue. I was even going out and looking at auction properties to try and you know, make something like that work, but we kind of figured going into it, it was gonna be really difficult to do. So the current backup plan I was planning on deploying is, you know, we have tried to take advantage of the de minimis Safe Harbor rule, which allows you to deduct you know, expenses that are less than $25. On you know, on any of these kinds of more more significant repairs and improvements, use the term improvements kind of loosely there but, um, you know, where it was like, Okay, we've identified, you know, some of these appliances like refrigerators, we've had have, you know, this one service a couple times in the last 18 months that this particular rental, or stoves or things like that, that we're probably going out, because we went ahead and purchase a few of those. And I've also thought about looking at how the numbers kind of flush out towards the end of the year to the side whether or not we want to do any retroactive Cost Segregation studies on the remaining properties that we are holding. In order to offset those gains and depreciation recapture. We experienced some of the ones that we sold
Thomas Castelli 25:00
Nice, nice, nice said it taken advantage of some of the strategies that are available to real estate investors. See, I was gonna ask you what your favorite strategies were to minimize taxes on your own portfolio, I mean, outside of outside of the exit on some of these is there anything else you use or particularly fond of, for your own portfolio?
Justin Shore 25:17
You know, I would say, but 1030 ones always, always up there, um, you know, anytime that that we have made a sale, that's always kind of the first go to, and then it looked at some of these others as a backup. And I don't know, if you necessarily consider a strategy, but I'm just I feel like I'm always bringing this app is talking to folks about mileage, especially, you know, with the situation I was just talking about where someone's having to drive, you know, 4550 minutes one way, just to get to a property to do a quick maintenance call or something like that. I mean, so pairing that with the home office, deduction, the home office deduction is not that significant. But being able to establish, you know, my tax home for the purposes of the recording mileage and stuff like that. That's huge, especially for, you know, if you're looking at a whole lot of deals and stuff like that, or if you're an agent, we know agents drive a ton. I mean, that's always as far as simplicity goes to, it's a very easy strategy to, you know, to execute, make sure you're not missing out on those deductions.
Thomas Castelli 26:27
Now, they said, so, you know, kind of shifting gears just a tad. So it kind of went with the, with your own clients you've worked with in the past? Who were real estate investors? Was there any particular strategies that you work with them
Justin Shore 26:38
on? Yeah, you know, I'm in my local market, especially, the short term rental strategy has become huge, especially if you're trying to couple it with a, you know, small portfolio of long term rentals. You know, if you're in the sense of having like a failed 1031 Exchange, and you're kind of grappling with these, these large gains that you're experiencing, you know, elsewhere in your portfolio, we have a, an area, that's just about 30 minutes, of the the large, Springfield's about third largest city in Missouri, but just south of us is a fairly large kind of tourist destination attraction kind of area. So the short term rental strategy here has become exceedingly popular among real estate investors, because of, you know, the maneuverability of being able to, you know, treat their, their income, or lots of should say, from those activities as non passive, as long as they're staying underneath the seven days or less criteria, and not providing substantial services. I've talked to a lot, I mean, more more people than I could count, probably at this point about that as an option. But because as many of the investors that, that I know, that have been doing it for 1015 20 years, most of them had not heard of that strategy yet, and didn't realize how many different ways that that is treated compared to their long term rentals. So yeah, that's got to be the number one go to least I've, you know, heard people utilizing last year so
Thomas Castelli 28:26
nice. Nice. So I think it's gonna be the final segment, if you will of the show today. So you mentioned before you know, you work for REIT, you learned a lot of different things, you rub shoulders with a lot of different professionals in the in the, in the industry there. Was there any particular takeaways that you got from working at the REIT and through your experience there that made you a better investor?
Justin Shore 28:50
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm the I think, I've heard this said in so many different, you know, circles, and it's something that I wish I had learned earlier on in my investing career is that you really, you you make make your money when you buy it, right? Or not, not when you sell it, it's all about you know, if you buy it, right, because, you know, you can you can manage your property correctly, you can renovate it properly, however, that is but ultimately the biggest, you know, deciding factor on whether or not I think that you're going to be successful from a cash flow and even from a tax standpoint, is is buying right. And we worked very extensively on the due diligence process there. We are typically buying 100 250 unit apartment complexes. So those analyses were were pretty complex and extensive. But you know, that's that's easily you know, scaled down to even getting the the size of single family rentals. So that kind of pairs with the other. The other item is, is be patient, you know, and and don't rush deals, I've heard a lot of people in my investor circles that have said, there's always another deal or there's always another house or another unit out there, you know, so there's, there's no sense in trying to rush a deal rush your diligence, you know, don't you know, don't skip any steps with that process and in you know, trust trust with the people telling you but but verify, you know, go and actually get some boots on the ground at the property. You know, especially with the larger units or whatnot, where you can kind of get in there and do your own analysis on what repairs need to be done. So yeah, I think that'd be probably the number number one thing that I picked up there as especially of course, I was very prevalent on our minds, because we're dealing with investors capital, so we really had that fiduciary responsibility to make sure we were maximizing the returns. But same thing goes obviously if not, probably more, so you're doing that with your own money.
Thomas Castelli 30:59
Of course, of course, definitely due diligence is key, you know, in buying right, you know, he listened, if you read any books, this many podcasts on buying in buying investment, real estate, it's always, you know, buying a property a lot, right? Not falling in love with the property and overpaying for it. Because you have to get a deal done. And putting yourself you know, getting yourself in the property at the right price is going to be key to you know, to maximizing your overall investment return. So, good to hear that that was a great takeaway there. Any any other takeaways from the REIT on the investment side?
Justin Shore 31:33
Um, ooh, any other takeaways from the REIT? Mmm hmm. Yeah, definitely, you know, I would say talking to, you know, a tax advisor and potentially also just a, you know, getting a strong legal advice on that, to be able to analyze the, the private placement memorandums and really getting an idea for the scope of what you know, what that read is going to do tell you, I can tell you, you know, the one that I worked at had a very, very specific scope, as far as what they would do with the investors funds, what types of properties they would seek out, even kind of the geographic areas that they that they were in. Um, so you know, those those can get very, very specific. Um, but, you know, they, I mean, they, they can also be kind of general to allow the management group more flexibility and whatnot, too. So, um, but there's a lot that are out there. So I think being able to get some good advice on what exactly is this thing saying that they're going to do with my money is, is pretty important. But you know, I really liked I thought that they had a very good scope laid out in the PPM that really designate exactly what territories and areas that we're going to even invest in. So, you know, if there's something that is, you know, if you have a market in mind, or you're looking at diversifying your portfolio, because maybe, maybe you live on the east coast, but you really want to invest the west coast or you know, in the Rockies or something like that, is keep an eye out for something that aligns with your interests. And you can find that by really picking through the offer documents, but nobody likes reading legalese. So definitely have your, your tax advisers and your legal advisors get involved in that situation.
Thomas Castelli 33:17
And that is great advice. And I think that goes for anybody out there who's in it kind of investing in syndicates, or really, really to, to an extent have fun, even though it's not structured like read, there's still generally going to be a PPM with those agreements is going to be certain criterias and stipulations as to what the group is allowed to acquire. Because, for example, if you're investing in a blind pool, applying a blind pool fund, for example, I mean, you're relying on the managers to expertise sponsors, to go ahead and make those acquisition decisions on your behalf. So you just kind of want to make sure that you're, you know, what you're getting into, before you go ahead and make that investment. So I thought that was that was great advice. Last question, probably probably coming up on the last question here, in terms of the REIT, you know, on the on the on the accounting and tax side, you know, you ran the entire accounting and tax, the entire accounting department, excuse me, was there anything specific that you took away? That he better accounting and tax professional from being on from from that experience?
Justin Shore 34:18
Yeah, definitely. You know, I had the pleasure of working with a lot of different property management companies, because we we, of course, outsource property management to local property managers, and just being able to kind of get to see how a lot of different managers liked to do things, you know, as far as like, how they were booking things in the software, or even just what software's they like to use and figuring what some of the pros and cons were between those different sets of software, but it that really, it opened my mind quite a bit more to like, okay, you know what, what What's important to them? What do they need? What kind of tools are they using to kind of to get to get the job done and which things are less important to them. Because if I'm identifying some of those things that are very important to me, though, is I want to make sure that I'm asking those questions of the property managers just kind of knowing that they're going to look at things a little bit differently from a management company perspectives, and they are the investor perspective. So I think that I got a good insights into how a lot of different property managers kind of like to operate. So that that was really great. And then, you know, figuring out how to combine all of that data into one system. Had a lot of fun challenges with that. But But yeah, it was just pretty great.
Thomas Castelli 35:48
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Looking forward to getting it out there. And I'm sure that there's gonna be a lot of our investors a lot of our listeners gonna get a lot of value out of it. Awesome. Thanks
Justin Shore 35:56
for having me on.
Brandon Hall 35:57
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