The Keith Andrews Podcast

How One Triplex Launched A Real Estate Empire | Niyi Adewole E30

• Keith Andrews • Season 1 • Episode 30

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In this episode, Keith sits down with real estate investor and short-term rental expert Niyi Adewole to break down how he scaled from house hacking a Louisville triplex to building a real estate business with 225 storage units, 30 short-term rentals, and a 13-agent team in Atlanta. They cover how Niyi transitioned from medical device sales to full-time real estate, why short-term rentals still work in the right markets, the power of investor-friendly teams, and how to vet the right realtor, CPA, and lender. Whether you're just getting started or looking to go full time, this conversation is packed with insights on building wealth through intentional investing, house hacking, tax strategy, short-term rental management, and scaling smart.

Connect with Niyi:
https://linktr.ee/ekabohome

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want to be in this investor game. It's a long-term game and you want to surround yourself with investor friendly folks. The reason I have an investor friendly CPA is because I know he's going to be looking up all these tax codes so that he can save money for his own portfolio and now he can use that knowledge to help me save money in my portfolio. Same thing when you talk about a lender. An investor friendly lender is not going to ask you random questions about, why are you getting all these credits? What about this? What about that? They're going to be able to problem solve alongside you. to find solutions and actually get you across the finish line, as opposed to telling me what you can't do. And that's what I'd be looking for in my realtor. Hey, are you an investor? Are you trying to do, or have you done something similar to what I'm doing? And can you help me in this process? m Today I'm talking with someone whose real estate journey mirrors mine in all the best ways. Nihi Adewale started with a single house hack and turned it into a full blown investing business. Short term rentals, self storage, a full team and total time freedom. We're diving into how he built it, what's working in today's market and the mindset it takes to go from W2 to full-time investor. Let's get into it. Hey man, I am so glad to have you on my show. I see you're in your car right now. What's going on? Keith, I appreciate you allowing me to come on here. We definitely have a very similar background and story. And yeah, man, this is part of the game, right? In between meetings and going out and meeting with clients and I got caught in the car, but I appreciate you being patient with my signal and I'm excited to join you and the audience here today. We're done with this podcast. I'm gonna get in my car. I'm going down to check out a property That's the game that we're both in so tell me about your story Where you're from? you get into real estate I want to hear the whole thing Come on now. Well, I'm from all over. As you can probably tell by the name, uh, Nihi Adewale. I am Nigerian first generation born in the U S and I was actually born in Nashville, Tennessee, but I've lived in Nashville, lived in Philadelphia, uh, lived in Boston, Chicago, Louisville, Kentucky, and now have put down my roots in Atlanta, Georgia. And I've been here for the last five years. And most of that moving was with my W two back when I worked at W two in medical device sales, I was blessed to get continue moving up the ranks similar to what you were doing at the W-2 and it gave me more opportunities to move around this country and while I was doing all that I started investing in real estate. The piece that kicked it off was reading some of the books like the Purple Bible, Right? Rich Dad Poor Dad and listening to Bible. You know, I've never heard it called that before, but that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, and also listen to podcasts like Bigger Pockets. And so I was able to go out there and get my first investment property, which was a house hack back in 2016. Lo and behold, I didn't believe I was going to be in full time real estate, you know, in such a short time. But when I got that first one in 2016, it worked. I just kept going from there. So when you bought that first one, what was your original intention? Were you just testing the waters or were you like, this is going to be my path to financial freedom? man, so I had listened to Bigger Pockets for about a year before that. So I was convinced that, hey, I can do this. If these guys can figure it out, I can hopefully figure it out. But I was new into my career. And so I still love what I was doing. It was just a supplemental. I was like, you know what? If I completely messed this up, the worst thing that happens is I sell all the real estate and I go back to working on the 401k and just doing the normal path. But. If this does turn out to be like all these testimonies have been talking about and all of a sudden become a millionaire with this thing, then I'd be kicking myself if I didn't try it. And so that was the key. Plus, when you think about it, you have to have somewhere to live anyway. And so doing that house hack opened my eyes because I went from paying 1200 a month to live where I was living to literally having my full mortgage covered by the other two units in that triplex and saving that money. And so that's when I knew it could change my life. I in Louisville, So when I, when I, when I jumped into the, the, the, the W two, right, I was in a development program at the corporate location in Chicago. And after I completed that program, my first station was Louisville, Kentucky. Now I know, some of the military personnel that listened to this podcast know about some of the bases out there, but I didn't know where Louisville was on a map, right? I thought I was going to like New Orleans or something. I'm like, all right, where is this? And so, and so when I found out where it was. I was a little bit disappointed, but when I got there, it was a blessing in disguise for two reasons. One, you could make the 1 % and close to 2 % rule still work at that time. And two, it was a bit of a slower city compared to where some of my counterparts got sent, which was like Texas, LA, and things of that nature. And so I literally had nothing but time to stack money and focus on investing. That's cool. actually, um, basic training there and I haven't been back since, I do, but I do know another real estate investor that loves that market and has a ton of rental. you still have that trip No, so the cool thing is, I ended up building that portfolio out to about 30 units. Because even when I got promoted and moved up to Boston and did medical device sells up there for three years, I kept putting all my commission down into Louisville and investing with the same investor friendly realtor that's now my partner. And so fast forward to today, she helped me sell those units a few years ago because we've traded in our greenhouses for the Red House. If you're thinking about Monopoly. And so now we've built self storage from the ground up. We got 225 units and we have nine acres of land that we're building 105 townhome units on. So I've sold all those, she sold a good portion of her portfolio, and we've come together to build out something bigger. So when you guys this is something that I think my audience will like to so when you sold those and You partnered up with someone else to take the proceeds of those sales to buy something better, right? Did you do 1031s or no because you couldn't have done that if you're going in with a partner, right? Correct. If you're going to do a 1031, you really need to be doing that solo, right? And kind of updating to the next level. This one was a bigger project and so I couldn't do that. What I actually did was I talked to my CPA and I just asked him, hey, what would that tax liability look like? This is what we're looking to do. Does this make sense? And at that time he said, it makes more sense for you based on what you want to do to take the tax hit because you've done these upgrades to these properties. It's not going to be as high as you think. Take the tax hit. and go ahead and invest it freely as you want. Well, the other piece that I think a lot of people don't understand too is when you buy something else, you could potentially have a ton of depreciation write-offs even in that first year, especially when you're talking about like bonus depreciation and all that stuff, which is. 100 % I don't know but we'll see how this whole thing plays out. But yeah, I've done that too where Huge tax hit this is back when I still had a w-2 and I was getting the real estate income I thought oh man, I am so screwed this year, but it ended up working out because of real estate, right? There's this huge tax advantage that we get that often flies under the radar, you know savvy investors know about it, obviously If your CPA is not real estate minded then you need to get a new one because I've seen a lot of CPAs get that wrong as well So that's that's something else that Definitely if you're investing in real estate you you you for sure need to have a solid CPA And it sounds like you had one they you guys juggled it out and say hey, this is gonna be more profitable It's better to take this hit you're gonna end up further ahead And Keith, you're spot on. Literally, when you talk about getting into this investor world, you need to have everybody around you being investor friendly, including your CPA. And so we did exactly what you just described. We literally just did a cost seg on the storage. That saved me way more. And that's part of the reason we talked about it a little bit before we started recording. Why I've leaned into getting more short term rentals as well is it just offsets the money that you're making. So it's like, all right, I can just cost seg this, take all that bonus depreciation one year. Hopefully it does go back up to 100 % I'd be looking for that. Yeah, the benefits there. Yeah, so let's talk about the short-term stuff. So if you look at your portfolio right now, you have storage, you have short-term, but what about long-term? So long-term, have, now we're down to four long-term rentals, and then we have eight short-term rentals, and those are all in the Metro of Atlanta, right? And I consider the Metro of Atlanta anything within like a 25 to 50 mile radius, because it's big, there's a lot of different places out here. And then the rest of those are short-term rentals. And we also manage a total, including ours, of about 30 short-term rentals. cool that you were able to scale from that triplex you set up to you had 30 units Yeah, we had 30 units in Kentucky. When did you actually quit your 9 to 5? Okay, so I was investing in real estate and working that W-2 from 2015 all the way to the middle of 2022. That whole time period, most of what I did was long-term rentals, really from 2016 through 2021, beginning of 2021, all I had bought was small multifamily in Louisville, Kentucky, and like a one-off condo in Boston when I lived up there, right? Which I sold immediately. And then when I moved to Atlanta, what I saw that worked was the short-term rentals. Atlanta is the sixth largest metro in the US. I did a house hack where I rented out my basement as an Airbnb. I was hoping to pull in about $1,500 a month. And what I ended up pulling in was about $2,500 a month. I said, you know what? I'm gonna go buy a house and do this too. And it kept growing from there. And so the short-term rentals grew rapidly because it's just more income coming in uh from that standpoint. And so the whole goal that I had of leaving the W-2, right, was when I moved down to Atlanta, I had gotten promoted into a role that I no longer liked and you've probably experienced this or had friends that experienced this in different careers where what I actually liked and found out is chasing down deals and making it happen for clients. And so when I was selling medical devices in Boston, that's what we were doing. It was fun, but I wanted to be closer to family. wanted to be back in the Southeast and that's where I grew up. And so when I moved down here, I got promoted to a director level. And at that director level, you're no longer chasing down deals. You're getting chased with issues. You get CEOs of hospitals calling you and saying, listen, you're on a Saturday, like we need this. And when you win, you're not necessarily the one that's celebrating the win. It's like all the other teams. And so that got old really quick. And I started to shift my gaze to, hey, what if I just moved into full-time real estate? Could this work out? Could I do what I love, which is sales, but also combine it with my passion of real estate and be successful. And fast forward to today, it's worked out so far. So when did you get your real estate license? I got my license in November of 21 and we did our first deal in December of 21, which was actually my wife, and then started ramping up quickly through 2022. And by end of 2022, we had enough traction to say, hey, this combined with the short-term rental management combined with the investment properties we already have is enough to walk away. Is it gonna be a hit the first year? Absolutely. But do we believe in ourselves that we can grow this thing to where it can be at par or even more than what we making before? Yes, and that's how it played out. So there's a lot of, you, know, in the news right now, short term rentals, like there's a lot of negative press on them. And I know there's certain cities that are cracking down on them. I know here in the Springs, they just came up with some crazy new ordinance that says like, if like, so they have a non owner occupied permits that they'll issue out. Um, and they issued out a bunch, but the property is sold then It's no longer eligible for a non-owner occupied and they're they're changing the roles left and right and just making it harder and harder. How's it out there in the Atlanta market? Have you seen any of that? Are you worried about any of that? I know a lot of people out here are shifting from short term to midterm to kind of mitigate some of that. What's the market look like out there for you? Yeah, I think it's constantly changing exactly what you said. Now, the thing that's helped here is there's some precedent set in the southeast of other large cities like New Orleans trying to implement some of these ordinances and getting shot down. so in 2022, Atlanta proposed something similar to what you just said. They proposed a law saying, hey, you have to be an owner occupant. You can have that one and only one more. So you have to live in the city of Atlanta. But they got a lawsuit from a coalition of owners. And I stay very tight to the team that's doing this. It's called Amstra Atlanta Short Term Rental Alliance. And what they do is they essentially are lobbyists. They pull together money and they're lobbying with lawyers to make sure they get the law changed. And what ended up happening is Atlanta listened to them because they didn't want to go into a lawsuit that happened in New Orleans that ended up getting the rule overturned. And so now what they've settled on is grandfathering in those that already have short rentals and still this isn't even in place yet since 2022 it's just kept getting pushed back the ordinance but what they have on the docket now is something that's a lot more reasonable it's essentially grandfathering in any units that are already up and running and allowing you a 30-day period to get licensed you don't have to be owner occupied anymore but what they're going to do is they're going to have a limit on the total amount in the city and so if you have short-term rentals already there's going to be a premium to hang on to those because once you hit that limit it's very risky of whether or not you you'll be able to get a short-term rental. And so I'm actively trying to get as many as I can before it fully goes into effect so that I can get grandfathered in and then have a premium. But that's kind of what's going on. Okay, do you have any midterms or are they all short? When I look at it, if you're in the short-term game, I think you're also in the midterm game. don't specifically market to midterm, but we do get midterm rentals. Like for example, we just signed a lease agreement with somebody through Ale Solutions, which is a midterm rental company for one of our short-term rentals because somebody had an insurance buyer and we're going to get $4,800 a month for a four bed that's not the craziest or nicest, a four bedroom for the next six months. Right. And that could extend if they need more help without, they looked at a short-term rental listing. just connect with. the midterm rental people to. Got it. All right. Well, talk to me a little bit more about your real estate team and um what that's comprised of and what type of clients are you mostly working with? Keith, we essentially stole your whole blueprint. right. So we were investor friendly. 90 % of our clients are investors. And we do that purposely. When you look at my story, I was working the W-2 and had the benefit of meeting an investor friendly realtor ah that helped me build up the whole portfolio. Monica Dunlap based out of Louisville still owns more real estate than I do. When I needed plumbers, when I needed help, I needed walkthroughs, help running numbers. She was the one that was helping me. Now she's my business partner on the deals we're working on. And so my goal is to be the same for other people that are trying to invest in Georgia. And so we focus mostly on investors. I got a team of 13 agents. And when you look at it, most of those agents, we were actually doing this. was sitting out my director of operations and we were working through this. And it was a fun fact. Half of those agents that are on the team were clients previously, including my director of operations. And so some of them, helped them buy multiple deals. Then they got licensed. Then they're like me, you know, can we join your team? And so it's been fun. unexpected and now we're just trying to continue growing this thing and helping more people. What do you think about this? Should new investors, do you think that they should get a real estate license? What's your thoughts on that? The only reason I would say for a new investor to get their license is if they want to go help other people and make this a full career. If you're getting your license only for your deals and you think you're going to learn something through getting your license, it doesn't work that way. You'd be much better working with an investor friendly realtor or going to an investor networking group to learn more about this than get your license. ah I was one where I didn't get mine until it was, Hey, I think this could be a career. Let me go get it and see if I like it because the fees alone, that they charge you. If you're only buying one or two deals a year it doesn't make sense. not worth it. yeah, no, I agree. And you know, I originally just got mine so that I could, I did it while I had my, my W-2 still. mean, initially it was, I had people asking for my help and I would refer them to other agents and they would just drop the ball. They just didn't understand like the investor side of things. And I just, couldn't find a solid investor focused agent. anywhere like the ones that I thought were they really weren't and so I'm like, know what maybe I should just be that guy and Initially it helped with just shaving off like I could I could negotiate leverage my commission to get a better deal when I'm buying something right um But then it ended up I was helping other people might man I'm actually making a little bit of money doing this and it's fun because I get to like participate with other investors and network with them and learn strategies from other investors and everything that would just help me with my own thing. So it ended up just being like, it just made perfect sense. um And yeah, that's why we are like literally, if you look at my team, the three agents that work with me are all investors as well. that, this is our, this is what we speak this. So uh this is, this is what we do. It sounds like your team's very similar and that's awesome. So everyone that's listening, that's in the, in the Colorado Springs market. If you want to buy anything in the Georgia area, contact this man. I'll put links and everything else to you. If you're in the Georgia market, this is your guy interested in house hacking, real estate investing. This is your guy. But if you're in the Colorado Springs area, my team a call. Hey, come on now and Keith, we appreciate you for the shout out and we're absolutely going to send people your way for the Colorado market in general. I know it's been booming in recent years and anytime I visit Colorado, it's beautiful. I you got the mountain, you got the city. Like what more do you need? It's an awesome, especially where we are in the Springs. It's, it's a lot different than Boulder and Denver and those other places up North. It's, it's, it has its own vibe here. And the real, actually are saying that Colorado Springs will be the largest city in the state by 2050. And not only that, the price on homes is going to be more than in Denver right now. It's kind of hard to believe because medium home price in Denver is a lot higher than it is now, but They're saying by 2050, we're actually going to surpass Denver. So it's a great place to stick to your money if you're looking for a solid investment. uh the amount of like, we have a lot of military here that are moving here and they're not, most of them aren't going to buy. They're going to live here for three to four years. So they need a place to rent. So it's a very strong rental market. uh I usually, when I post a house for rent, like it's rare that it's on the market for more than like three days. Crazy. m yeah. You were a new investor, Because you've been there, I've been there, and you were looking for a real estate agent to work with. What are some questions that you think you should ask them to kind of vet them out to see if this is the right person that you should be working with? Yeah, I think first and foremost, it's that investor piece. you're just looking for a house and you're not an investor, then somebody that you can feel comfortable talking to and things of that nature is important, right? And somebody that makes you feel good. But if you want to be an investor and build this whole portfolio out, you need to understand does this person invest as well? That's one. And then two, does this person have the vendor contacts that can help you be successful over time? Because when I look at it, if you really want to be in this investor game, it's a term game and you want to surround yourself with investor friendly folks. The reason I have an investor friendly CPA is because I know he's going to be looking up all these tax codes so that he can save money for his own portfolio and now he can use that knowledge to help me save money in my portfolio. Same thing when you talk about a lender. An investor friendly lender is not going to ask you random questions about, why are you getting all these credits? What about this? What about that? They're going to be able to problem solve alongside you to find solutions and actually get you across the finish line as opposed to telling me what you can't do. And that's what I be looking for in my realtor. Hey, are you an investor? Are you trying to do or have you done something similar to what I'm doing? And can you help me in this process? Is your team doing any type of property management out there or is it just by representing buyers and sellers? So the team is mostly representing buyers and sellers, right? The property management piece, we specifically stayed away from long-term rental, only because, unless it's our own portfolio, only because there's just not as much money in it, right? And it's a lot of work to kind of build that up. You have to have a lot of units, at least in my opinion. The short-term rental management, there's some loopholes to get around, you know, certain licenses, things of that nature, because you're just a co-host, ah and you get paid a lot more. With the short-term rental slash mid-term, you get paid anywhere between 18 and 35%. Our fee is 20%. And so that's pretty good, right? We manage everything from a one bedroom up to this 10,000 square foot mansion. And that 10,000 square foot mansion does 30K a month, right? Cause it's crazy. And so that's six grand. It's not bad. So we, we lean more into that as opposed to longterm rental management, just because there's more in it. So you actually could help, if I had a client that was looking to buy in the Georgia market and he wanted to purchase something, he gets short term, you guys could pretty much provide a turnkey solution. You can help him find it, get it furnished, everything else, and then manage it for him as well. Absolutely, and more than that, we have done that multiple times, including that mansion. And so we've helped clients from California to New York to Denver to, well not Colorado Springs, but to Denver to Japan to Israel actually buy houses in Georgia, some of those short-term rentals that we currently manage. Alright, so if you're listening and you're thinking about the Georgia market and getting something that's a short-term rental where you'll have a lot better tax write-offs for one and two a lot you'll be able to generate a lot more cash flow from it definitely get a hold of this guy you want to talk to him. Man, we covered a lot of different things and it all started with that Triplex. Built an empire and now you're doing something that you actually love, right? You know when you were doing the medical device sales you liked being in the in the trenches, but then once you started having to deal with like the management side and problems and everything, it wasn't fun anymore. But now it sounds like you're doing something you enjoyed every single day. come on now and that's the piece and that was the goal. You know, when you start this whole journey, it's how do I make each day closer to my ideal day and now having that time freedom as you know, and being able to even start building up the team and seeing their wins and building out the portfolio and being able to say yes to opportunities like this jumping on a podcast with you in the middle of the day. There's no way you do this if you're working at W2, right? Like you just can't. So it's been amazing. And what I used to say is that, and I still say this, I used to feel those Sundays. Like the Sundays felt heavy when it got toward the end of the day, because like, man, tomorrow I got a bunch of meetings and things of that nature that I have to do that I'm not really feeling right now. And now each day feels pretty similar. Like Monday, I'm actually excited to get up and get to work and make it happen. Yeah, I know Mondays. Mondays are no longer Mondays when you're in this game. That is definitely true. Before I let you go, Nihi, is there any quote that keeps you going? Absolutely the one on my shirt which says Carpe Diem right which means seize the day in Latin and this is what I think Everybody must do if you want to survive and be good in this real estate game or even just get started like it's it's literally just looking at that day and saying hey What's the most important step I can take today? To get closer to my goals and get closer to my ideal day and then seizing that step So this is something that this is a shirt that we give out to a lot of our clients that are first-time clients that close a deal as part of their closing gift just to remind them that hey you did it you took that first step you've got your first one and now you've set yourself up for a future that can be amazing. That's awesome, I love that. And uh shoot, I want one of those shirts. Come on now, we just gotta get you a property in Georgia, that's what we gotta do. Yeah, we do. might have to, you know, I have, like I said, I have three out there right now, but I definitely am interested in getting closer to Atlanta and definitely interested in the short term. So I may be making some moves here. We're going to see what happens in the next few months. There's a couple of properties I've been thinking about doing the 1031 on, and I wouldn't mind moving it into another market because I have like right now at my portfolio, I don't have any short term rentals. I have one midterm and I'm turning another property into a midterm right now um because there's such a downside on the short term in this market. So I'd love to find a market where it would work because I know the numbers are crazy. And I'd love something that I wouldn't have to even like, it'd be turnkey for me, completely passive where I don't have to lift a finger. Come on now, it's one of those things where once you get into it, you kinda get addicted to building out that experience for different guests. And when you do it in the right market, you not only get the cash flow, but the appreciation. Yes. Well, man, it has been a pleasure. really enjoyed this conversation with you. Keep doing what you're doing. um And I'm going to be like following you on social media and whatnot and just kind of seeing where you take this thing. And if I have someone looking for anything, I'll definitely send them your way. And man, it's just been a pleasure. Keith, I truly appreciate you having me on and vice versa. We're gonna send some folks your way and I'm excited to continue going down this journey alongside you uh with a similar story, man. This has been exciting and I appreciate you again. Awesome. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. God bless and happy investing. you