Quick Facts:
- Profit Strategy: Buy and hold
- Number of Units: 2
- Personal Money Invested: $170k cash
- Amount Earned: $1,100 positive cash flow per month
- Prior Experience: Teri and her husband originally ventured into real estate investing in the mid-90s doing single family house fix-and-flips, then she became a licensed real estate appraiser
Here’s her story:
A health and fitness specialist by training who was once the owner of two health clubs, Teri Domanski originally ventured into real estate investing in the mid-90s doing single family house fix and flips with her husband in Maryland. Discovering the downside of being uncertain and essentially unemployed as soon as she finished a deal, she became a licensed real estate appraiser, working in both the public and private side of the business. The many years she spent as a county assessor and in other capacities in that realm now serve her well as she engages in investing in small apartments after attending one of Lance Edwards’ virtual bootcamps in March 2021.
Teri had been through other investing bootcamps and coaching over the years, but never resonated with them the way she did with Lance’s system. In addition to not having to learn about syndication at the same time as multi-family investing, she resonated powerfully – for obvious reasons related to her appraisal background – with the Doable Deal Generator (DDG), a simple yet empowering spreadsheet which, as she puts it, “shows you if a deal works or doesn’t.”
She also liked the way her instructor, Bob Thornton, explained that the process of finding and generating deals starts with having one conversation a day with a buyer, tenant or broker – which she found appealing due her outside time demands. In the months since, Teri’s gone from a single conversation to five and now 15 per day, all as a way of challenging herself to create greater success and income streams from multi-family investments.
Pretty much all students who attend Lance’s boot camps appreciate and agree with his training on the importance of mindset – but Teri has taken that to the next level, creating for herself both a vibrant vision board and an inspiring multi-media PowerPoint presentation full of striking images and empowering words that help her focus on her personal and professional goals. In addition to the type of properties she would like to own and beautiful images of nature, the board includes cards that say, “We Make a Living By What We Get, But We Make a Life By What We Give,” “In 2021, I will tithe $15,000,” and “I control (blank) units that generate (blank)/month passive income right now” – the latter of which she can adjust to reflect her current totals.
Teri’s PowerPoint Presentation is a work of motivational and spiritual art featuring two minutes and fifteen seconds of an array of nature images, inspirational sayings and stated goals set to a segment of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony. It begins with the phrases, “I will begin each day with a grateful heart” and “My family is my ‘why’ for doing what I do,” then gets down the business with “We effortlessly generate $20,000 a month over a stirring image of a drop of water hitting a pool. These are followed by personal reminders of self-encouragement like “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls,” “My workouts energize me and keep me fit,” “I am peaceful in every situation” and “Service is what keeps us connected.” Drawing on her background in health and fitness, she includes (over a photo of a lavender field) “Nature can heal the body and soul.”
Like many multi-family investors, Teri is – as that one phrase affirms – doing this not only to give her more financial freedom in the short term, but to build a legacy of wealth she can pass on to her two adult sons. Interestingly, she found her first post boot camp deal because of one of her sons, who got into real estate investing around the same time and began investing just a year ago.
“It sort of came in the back door,” says Teri, a “Jersey Girl” by background who does most of her marketing and deal-seeking in the area around her home of Winchester, VA. “Shortly after the boot camp, I met a local gentleman via cold calling who told me had a two unit property he was selling for what he called ‘dirt cheap.’ I checked it out and felt it would need too much work and started looking for property in a different part of town. My son, however, saw potential, bought it and fixed it up. Three months later, the duplex next door came on the market but before I could bite, it went under contract.
‘While I kept looking elsewhere,” she continues, “my son saw that it had fallen out of contract and was back on the market for $180,000. I was told it fell out of contract because of a financing contingency related to the habitability of a duplex. One unit was definitely in better shape than the other, but we ran the numbers through the DDG, including cost of repairs and post repair value. My husband had just refinanced one of his investment properties and we used some of that money to offer $170,000 in cash with a four week close. We liked the fact that when you come in with all cash, you only have to own the property for six months before you have the opportunity to re-fi, if you so choose. With rents in the area going up, that is a viable option for us.”
For now, that duplex is a buy and hold which Teri estimates will give her and her husband $1100 positive cash flow per month, as long as the “good” unit (which rents for $1000/mo.) stays occupied. The inspection went smoothly because there is no basement or crawl space and the electrical wiring and plumbing had been upgraded in the last ten years. With those inspirational sayings as daily reminders, determination to reach her financial freedom goals and the confidence to make multiple calls a day, Teri is already moving beyond that first deal.
She and her husband currently have another property, a three unit building in the tiny town of Delray, West Virginia, under contract that they plan to quickly wholesale. They found it by simply mailing the postcards Lance’s organization provides as part of the boot camp. The Domanskis’ plan with that one is to quickly wholesale it. They also have a cash “backup” buyer in case the buyers currently under contract don’t complete the deal for any reason.
“Lance’s program made me feel it’s okay to start small and keep building momentum at a pace that makes sense for me and my husband,” says Teri. “When people ask for advice on how to do this, I say, ‘This is gonna sound cliché, but just do it.’ You don’t have to beat yourself up over little mistakes you make along the way. When I started, I made one call a day five times a week, and sometimes two or three. It’s still scary sometimes talking to people because you don’t know how the person on the other end will respond. But it goes back to mindset and remembering why you’re doing this in the first place.
“Another key to success is keeping consistent, a quality I know well from my many years of work as a private trainer,” she adds. “Just as you can’t impact your mental, physical health unless you consistently work at it, you have to follow through and be accountable to yourself and others as you start, maintain and grow your business and build your investment portfolio.”