Turn Tax Knowledge Into Lasting Wealth Through Cost Segregation with Yonah Weiss

[0:00] Welcome back to the REI agent. Today, my guest is Yona Weiss, business director at Madison Specs, and one of the most prolific educators in the cost segregation space. Yona has been involved in more than 15,000 cost segregation studies, helping investors unlock over 3 billion in tax savings and has appeared as a guest on more than 300 real estate podcasts. He has a rare gift for making complex tax strategy genuinely understandable. And today, we’re going to use that gift to break down exactly how agent investors can legally and significantly reduce their tax bill through cost segregation. Yona, welcome to the REI agent podcast. Thank you so much, Matias. It’s great to be here. And like you said in your intro, it’s something hopefully we’re going to be able to blow the minds of our listeners, agents out there to help unlock tax savings, which I think everyone who pays taxes knows that it’s something you would love to reduce or get rid of if you can.

[1:01] Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I don’t think any of our audience really thinks this way. But I know that there’s definitely people who look at like, you know, saving money from taxes, like or when the people do these kind of things is like, Oh, what are they doing? They’re cheating the taxes. But no, this is like tax code written there. And anybody who files their taxes, they’re going through and saying like, you know, yes, I have a dependency or yes, they’re taking tax advantages of what the tax code says. This is just specific to real estate and even more specific to real estate designated professionals, which we can get into in more detail. But I want to first kind of ask you how you got into the space in general. We mentioned a little bit off air about some of your journeys in investing. So maybe we can start there and then kind of dive into why anybody should care about cost segregations. Absolutely. So I got involved in real estate about 10, 11 years ago, I was a teacher before that. So my background is in teaching. And really, it’s still what I do today is education and really been my passion since I’ve been a young, like since I was a kid, you know,

[2:07] I used to have to tutor people and do kinds of all that kind of stuff. About 10, 11 years ago, I had some major health issue in my immediate family, some crisis and put us in the hole like big time. I still had student debt, but this put us like way back. And as a teacher, wasn’t making too much money. So going deeper into debt really was a wake up moment for me. And I realized I had to do something else, either get another job or, you know, find a different profession, something entirely. And putting it out there to acquaintances and friends of mine, I, real estate kept coming up in conversation. And so I realized, hey, why don’t we try this out through what I describe as, you know, divine providence, just, you know, meeting a friend one day in the parking lot and telling him what I’m going through. And he said, hey, why don’t you come work with me? He was doing commercial mortgages, very successful real estate investor as well on his own. He owned a bunch of multifamily properties on his own and his family. And I knew nothing about mortgages. I knew nothing about real estate.

[3:07] He took me under his wing. I literally apprenticed him, as I call it, for about eight, nine months, and learned everything there was to know, at least I thought at that time about commercial real estate. It was incredible, incredible experience. From that, I got my real estate agent license as well, broker’s license. And then I did a few fix and flips. Long story short, I ended up, you know, through various connections. And really, that’s one of the things we’ll talk about a little bit later. But making connections and through networking, I ended up meeting someone who worked for this company, Madison Specs, which now I work with. And they were looking to hire someone in business development.

[3:47] And I didn’t really know anything about cost seg at the time, but reached out to one of my mentors and asked him, hey, what do you know about this cost segregation thing? Really successful real estate developer, you know, been doing it for 30 years. He’s like, oh, yeah, we use Madison for all our cost projects. It’s amazing. So I was like, okay, that tells me something. But what I found was even more fascinating is when I started, I, again, didn’t know anything about the topic, which hopefully we’ll get into a little more. I reached out through my network that I had built over the past, you know, prior couple of years in the real estate world to all my contacts. Like, hey, you guys know what this costing thing? You have any properties? You have blah, blah, blah. 99% of the people I reached out to in the real estate space, whether investors, agents, lenders, you name it, 99% had no idea what cost seg was. Okay. And that blew my mind. And it was like a light bulb moment for me because I realized what’s stopping people from unlocking these incredible tax savings with this tax strategy called cost seg was literally just education. And I was like, hey, that’s where I come in. That it’s

[4:50] perfect for me. This is, this is going to work out really well. So kind of that’s my transition in a, in a nutshell of how I got into it. I love it. And just to maybe set the stage a little bit for a personal story, I was I invested in my first deal, my first syndication deal. And for people who don’t understand what that is, is basically I became a limited partner. I had no say I didn’t run the business of this mobile home syndication. This is multiple mobile home parks. But I trusted the operators, I thought it was a good opportunity. I liked the projection, the plan for the whole investment. And so I invested $50,000 into it to get a feel for what this space was all about. And the first, I actually only was own an owner in it for a few months. And we got to write off $66,000 off our taxes for investing 50,000. And that doesn’t, and that’s not what sold me on this deal. That was still a good deal where I was getting, you know, a preferred return on that $50,000.

[6:02] And had, you know, the plan was for that property to get to a point where they could refinance the money out back to me. And then I would still have ownership in this deal kind of indefinitely. So the next year, I think we made like $16,000 or $12,000 off of our taxes, or we’re able to save that much. So not near as much, but still, we’re up to like 70 almost by now. And so anyway, that’s just kind of a little foreshadow as to the power of what a cost seg is. And that’s the vehicle that they did to get to this. So yeah, please take it from here. Explain to people what the heck a cost seg. Yeah. Well, we’ll take a step back because we have to understand what depreciation is first. And some of them may know what that is, but really it’s just a borrowed term when it comes to real estate. It doesn’t actually mean your property is going down in value. It’s the name of a tax deduction the IRS gives you when you buy a property besides for your primary residence. So it can be residential, commercial, it can be a single family, multifamily, or like you said, a mobile home park, office, you name it. You’re able to take this deduction called depreciation. And it’s based

[7:10] solely on you as the buyer. So based on your purchase price, and when you bought it, you get to start what we call depreciating it. And it’s over a 27 and a half year time period. Basically, we take the purchase price, we subtract a little bit for land, and then we divide the rest over 27 and a half years. If it’s a commercial property, it’s over a 39 year period. But essentially what that does, it allows you to take about a two to 3% deduction of your property value every single year, as if it were going down in value by that amount. It’s not. Okay. So we’re able to take, which is amazing in and of itself. So that’s depreciation. You buy a million dollar property, take a little bit off for land, divide it by 27 and a half, just to keep it simple, but around $30,000 deduction every single year. Okay. That’s simple depreciation. Most accountants know about this, should know, all accountants should know about this. A lot of real estate investors do know about this. Obviously you’re taking depreciation deduction, lowing your tax liability. Great. Cost seg is basically an advanced form of depreciation. That’s all it is. It’s not

[8:07] too complicated. What it is, is taking the property and segregating the cost. What does that mean? Breaking down the purchase price, right? The cost into different components or segments or whatever you want to segregate into. Basically there are three different categories where your property will fit into, okay? On a depreciation standpoint. So there’s something called personal property, which depreciates on a five-year schedule. And that can include anything like furniture or appliances, fixtures, things that are not integral to the structure of the property. So even like countertops, cabinets, flooring, you name it. Then there’s another category called land improvements. So this is anything on top of the land. The land itself doesn’t depreciate, but what’s on top of the land does, that depreciates on a 15-year schedule. So basically what cost seg is, it’s an engineering study of the property going in and identifying which of these components depreciate on which level, right? Is it a five-year depreciation? Is it a 15-year? Or is it a structural, you know, 27 and a half year depreciation? So they used to call it component depreciation, which makes a lot more sense.

[9:12] It’s called cost seg just, you know, confuses people a little bit, but that’s what it is. So what we’re doing by finding those components and accelerating the depreciation is we’re unlocking savings in the earlier years of ownership. Because if I have a million dollar property and I’m taking a $30,000 deduction every single year, that’s great. But what if I don’t hold the property for 27 years? Or what if I, you know, just plan on selling it after a few years or whatever? I can use cost seg and I can unlock, you know, let’s say 20 or 30% of the total depreciation of that property. So $200,000 or $300,000 of that million dollar purchase price and take upfront in the first year or the first couple years. So instead of a $30,000 deduction, I’m getting a $200,000 or $300,000 deduction.

[9:56] That’s literally 10xing. And so that’s the power of cost seg. It’s a cash flow mechanism. It allows you to pull from that pool of potential deductions and take it upfront in the first year or the first few years. Yeah. So one of the ideas with this is if you were, you know, just say like you’re a, you’re a really successful agent that doesn’t really have time to think about, you know, investing, buying single families, flipping them or, you know, renovating them to a point where they’re ready and putting a tenant in, fixing toilets, all that stuff. You don’t really want to think about that. If you’re, if you’re buying a, trying to get into a syndication every year you can then really significantly reduce your taxable income each year from these. And there’s, you know, like I said, there was still some residual. It just depends on the deal, how they’re syndicated, how they’re cost aggregating, how much you’re going to get every year, but at least start stacking up.

[10:53] And then once you have capital events and you’re able to get that capital back, you can reinvest that into the next one. But speaking of when the property does sell, can you, can you, can you tell us a little bit about what happens if you have accelerated depreciation, you’ve taken significant tax breaks? What happens when you go to sell the property? Sure. Anytime you sell a property, you’re going to be hit with a, what’s called a depreciation recapture tax. Okay. Now it’s similar to capital gain tax. Now it doesn’t mean what people think it means. Okay. Recapture people think, Oh, I have to pay it all back. Right? No, that’s a misnomer. Recapture taxes is the name of the tax. And it’s basically tax on the amount of depreciation you took. So if you took more, and again, this is regardless whether you did a cost seg, you took bonus depreciation or not. If you just took regular depreciation, you sell the property, you’re going to be hit with that tax. Again, similar to capital gain tax. Everyone knows capital gains. If you made a profit on the sale, you’re going to be taxed on that amount. There’s a big difference between being subject to a tax

[11:55] and paying a tax. Okay. And that’s a big distinction I want to make here because people get scared when they hear about depreciation recapture. Like, Oh no, it’s not worth it due to cost seg because I’m going to have to pay it all back. First of all, no, that’s not what it means. Second of all, it’s always going to be a lower tax rate than had you not done the cost seg and just paid taxes up front. Okay. It’s always going to be a lower tax rate. So you’re always going to have that arbitrage or that difference of tax rates from the recapture tax on the sale. If, and when that ever happens, you know, down the road and versus your regular income tax rates in the year that if you didn’t do the cost seg, that’s number one. Number two, there are many, right? Several, I mentioned a couple here just to keep it simple, many strategies that you can use to either defer, eliminate, or at least reduce your taxable, uh, your, your tax event when that happens on the, on the sale, recapture tax. So first, first and foremost is 1031 exchange, right? You can do a capital, uh, gains, uh, deferral that defers recapture tax as well. Not, not our topic necessarily. We can get

[12:55] into it if you want, but second one would be opportunity zones, a incredible tax strategy that also a topic. If you haven’t had someone, uh, speak about that, it’s an incredible topic as well. Uh, I think people don’t probably know less about opportunity zones than they do about cost seg, which, uh, which is saying a lot, right. Um, and that allows you to either defer or completely eliminate your capital gain tax as well as recapture tax, uh, from anything. So that, that’s an incredible thing as well, not just from real estate, but even capital gains from stocks or, or crypto or whatever, selling a business, um, several others as well. But the most significant one is just, as you mentioned, right, if you’re stacking up depreciation and you have more deductions than you actually have income.

[13:36] So those extra losses get released upon the sale and actually reduce that taxable income. Uh, and so you, you can maybe not even pay that recapture tax, even though you took all this depreciation upfront. So again, it sounds a little scary recapture, but really what it is, is you’re hit with a tax, which if done right, you may not even have to pay, uh, upon the sale. Yeah. So, uh, one of the things that you learn when you’re looking into real estate investing, um, uh, or you hear a lot is so important to have your team, right? It’s so important to have your team, have your professionals. Um, and I think a lot of people have accountants, not many people have like tax advisors or strategists. And, um, this is the kind of thing that is like your accountant may not really know, or they might know about this, but may not have done it much. It may not really like, it’s going to be a lot of like you pushing to figure this out. Um, and, and so I guess, is that, I guess that’s your service. Um, Yeah, well, partially, partially, yes, but you’re absolutely right that we, you know, everyone, especially if you’re a real estate investor. Um, but even if you’re a real estate agent,

[14:45] you should have a accountant, an accountant that understands real estate and that deals with real estate, because if not, you’re going to be missing out on a lot of these things. So we’re not, uh, doing taxes. So we’re not a CPA firm that is doing that. We’re also not tax strategists per se. Uh, we focus on the cost side, which is a service, right? It’s one time, you know, thing we do. I help to educate people upon that and definitely help love to make, uh, connections between great real estate CPAs and others, but you’re absolutely right. I’ve come across this literally almost every single day. Uh, I come across real estate investors who have a CPA and they just don’t know what cost egg is.

[15:19] Um, and unfortunately they’re missing out or they have missed out. But as, as long as you realize that now you can make that change and you can find someone who does, um, you know, it blew me away. It blows me away when I find people who, who come across this and very successful real estate agents or really, very successful real estate investors. And then their CPA is like, Oh no, you can’t do this or this doesn’t make sense or whatever. And it’s like, I don’t get it. Like, what, what do I miss here? You know, and I, you know, I think there’s a lot to take in. So I mean, if you know that you’re going to have a big capital event, you know, if you know, you’re going to have something like that, this is something you can use as, as a strategy. Um, if, if you are, you know, starting the year off and you’re, and you’re, your business is growing and building, um, you know, there’s different steps. Like, you know, if forming an S corp, you know, if you’re an agent, there, there can be, can be a good step in the right direction. And, uh, you know, there’s all sorts of things you can do along the way to try to, um, to, to improve your,

[16:11] your, your tax situation and your tax liability overall. Um, but, but certainly thinking ahead and planning for these kinds of things is just really critical mess again, where that like tax strategist, uh, kind of person would, would come into play and, and getting into, uh, you know, buying a property to do this with, it doesn’t like, I, you know, I mentioned the syndication route before, but you can go through and buy a single family house and do a cost seg. Right. I mean, that’s, I’m not sure. Right. For sure. Yeah. Any property for sure. So, so, I mean, this is definitely not something you have to go too sophisticated with, but definitely something that you should understand to, to have in your arsenal. Um, and you know, going the syndication route can just be easier, um, cause they’re going to do it for you. You’re not going to have to, to really worry about that at all. And you just get the, is it the K one? Is that what it is?

[16:56] The form at the end that, that will kind of tell you what, uh, you are able to write off. Correct. Yeah. There’s a K one tax form. And that, uh, usually is provided if you have any, you know, investments, but especially if it’s a limited partner investment, a syndication investment, you’ll get one of those. Um, but, but I want to mention here that, you know, if our listeners are real estate agents, a lot of you are also have clients who are investors, right? They’re not buying the home for, for themselves to live in necessarily as a residence, but you may have clients that are buying properties as investments and believe it or not, they may not know what cost seg is. And so it’s a great resource for you to be able to educate them and to have another great tool in your, in your tool belt to just, you know, inform and educate and be add value to your clients. So I think it’s really important this and so many other right important tax strategies out there. You can be, uh, you know, make, make the difference between, wow, this is an agent that I want to keep coming back to. Yeah. Being that professional,

[17:52] right. To, uh, in their, in their team, uh, that that is needed for investors, et cetera. Definitely, definitely true. Um, you know, I, you make a point here too. I want to make another quick, uh, you know, clarification. I don’t think we covered this yet, but like as a real estate agent, you have this like really incredible opportunity for this to, to write off your, um, earned income, your, your, your real estate sales, your commission, um, that, uh, with, with this kind of deduction that somebody like a doctor couldn’t. So if a doctor is just, you know, earning their money, being a doctor, um, if they were to buy a property, a rental, and please correct me if I’m, if I’m not speaking right here, uh, if they were to buy a rental property and depreciate it, um, they could, they could depreciate the rental income that’s coming in from that property or any other kind of passive investment things. They could not take off, uh, they could not write off their income as a doctor. Um, and so you will see a lot of, and this is another tip that you can use as, um, an agent, uh, helping people. You will see a lot of high income earners, um, a spouse of theirs

[18:57] become a real estate agent, or they will buy a short-term rental. And I know there’s a fine, uh, line to walk where you have to, you know, put in enough hours and you have to be the person that does enough hours within that business. Like you can’t, the cleaner can’t have more hours than you, things like that, um, that would then allow you to depreciate that property and take it against the, um, earned income of that high income producing, um, spouse. Um, so yeah. So all that to say is it’s, it’s a unique opportunity that a lot of agents are missing out on. Absolutely. And I’ll just reiterate what you said and add a couple points there, because this is probably the most powerful thing you have in the tax code as a real estate agent. You are what’s called, uh, designated as a real estate professional. It’s called reps, R E P S real estate professional status. You can Google it. You can find out more about it, but essentially like Matias was saying, you are not limited to just use depreciation against passive income. Whereas if someone has a W2, they have that limitation. Okay. So you may find, you know, gurus on the internet talking about

[20:00] cost again and saying, Oh, you can buy a property that never pay taxes or anything like that. If you have a W2, that’s just not the case. Okay. And yes, you can have a spouse. If your spouse is a real estate professional and you’re high income earner or vice versa, then this is a great strategy to use as well, because you can use the cost. So you can use depreciation to offset your active income. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. I want to lay out a couple of the ground rules just to make it, make it simple. The first one is your full-time job or your spouses has to be in the real estate profession. Okay. And that is included being an agent, right? Or a broker, you know, managing, operating, acquiring, you know, you name it, renovating properties, all of that is considered real estate profession. But again, it has to be the majority of your working hours during the year. So you can’t have another full-time job. The second thing is there is a minimum of 750 hours of quote unquote materially participating. So this is a clause that is also a little bit, you know, important to realize because that means you have to materially participate in not just the agent,

[20:58] but also in somewhat of managing or acquiring or doing something in the physical ownership of properties, which means even if you’re investing passively, you may not get that material participation hours if you don’t have any active involvement in real estate. And that’s one thing I think a lot of people miss in this as well. It’s not enough just to be a real estate agent. You also have to have the material participation hours. And as Matias said, there is a separate entire category of short-term rentals, which does not require you to be a real estate professional, does not require the 750 hours, does not require the full-time job. It’s just you own a short-term rental and you’re putting in a hundred hours a year, more time than anyone else. And then you can write that depreciation off your active income. And that’s probably one of the biggest, most powerful strategies as well. So there are a lot of tools here. I know we kind of spoke fast and talk about these things. That’s great. I didn’t know the 750 hour part. That’s a really good extra tip. I appreciate that. So it’s good. And another thing with syndications is if you’re getting to that point,

[22:05] you do have to often become, you have to be able to invest in them. And I’m blanking the term now, you have to be a accredited investor often, not always, but it does sometimes a path to becoming that could be owning a few rentals, getting to the point where you have gotten enough equity outside of your primary residency that you could have a million dollar net worth that you could then invest into real estate. The other one would just be income-based. But if you are needing to get that 750 hours, having a few rentals is certainly not a bad thing. So excellent, excellent point. If you have the time, I do, I think Opportunity Zones is a pretty fascinating topic. And to be fully transparent, I have not, I am familiar with them. I’m familiar with where they are in my area, but I have not walked somebody through an entire process of it. So I would love to hear more about the Opportunity Zones. Sure. I can briefly touch on it. I’d love to connect you with someone who would delve deep into the topic if you want to have a deep dive conversation and really, really get into the nuts and bolts. But simply put, Opportunity Zones, this came about back in the

[23:20] 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, where they enacted this benefit for real estate investors to basically get a tax deduction. And the premise of it was people have capital gain tax, right? From selling businesses or selling stocks or whatever it is, or crypto at that time, a lot of people had huge capital gains. And the government basically wanted to incentivize people to invest in certain areas of the country. Really, every single state has certain zip codes that are designated as Opportunity Zones. Basically, more underdeveloped or kind of lower income neighborhoods typically is where these Opportunity Zones are a lie. And what the incentive was is if you create a fund where you’re putting money into this fund, and basically, and again, I’ll get back to the capital gain tax. But what this allows you to do is if you buy a property or you develop property or you invest and spend enough money redeveloping, and again, it has a lot to do with redevelopment or has a lot to do with development, because again, that’s the whole point of it is kind of revitalizing some of these areas or zones, then you’re able to

[24:33] take this tax write-off or this tax deduction, which allows you to defer capital gain taxes. And if you hold the property for a 10-year period, then you get to completely eliminate capital gain taxes. So let’s say you made a million dollars from selling a business, and you’re going to be hit with a $250,000 capital gain tax on that potentially. So instead of just paying that tax, you can take that million dollar profit and you can invest that into an Opportunity Zone fund. And with that, it may be a syndication. A lot of people are doing this with syndications as well, or you may buy a property in an area and develop it or renovate it. And then if you hold that property for that certain period of time, I think it’s seven years and there’s another level of 10 years, et cetera, then you completely wipe out that capital gain tax bill that you had. So it’s a long-term play, but it is something that is out there and available. And again, as I mentioned earlier, it also eliminates or defers that recapture tax as well. So if you sell a property and you didn’t do a 1031 exchange, you can take the profit and put it into another property in an Opportunity Zone and

[25:39] defer that or eliminate that. So that’s in a nutshell what Opportunity Zones are. Again, there’s a lot more details to it and a lot more fun and understanding how that works. Maybe walking through a real-life case study would be a lot of fun. Yeah, it’s interesting. And obviously the hope would be that whatever you’re investing in, you’re not just sitting there. It’s not just sitting there. It’s hopefully growing in value. Hopefully you’ve created more value by renovating it. Hopefully it brings you some cash flow along the way. It’s a good investment so that you’re checking all those boxes and then being able to defer that is just kind of the extra bonus. And again, the reason for it, it’s not this like, you know, billion-dollar tax hole loophole thing like that. People are getting away with stuff. It’s that they are wanting to incentivize people to put money into these places. Like it’s not, if the economics aren’t there, typically developers don’t just go and take pity on a house.

[26:35] It’s just, they’re going to want to make sure that there’s a reason to renovate it. And this is further incentivizing that. But yeah, no, this is super fascinating. I think it’s definitely something, you know, I’ve heard people talk about like, you know, if you want to, if you want an easy way, not easy way, but if you want to have a raise, you know, like saving some money on taxes is one way to do that, you know, limit the amount you’re paying out to be able to increase your overall take-home pay. So this is definitely some strategies there. So I know people have learned a lot already from this. Do you have anything else you think that isn’t pertinent to our listeners before I ask you about your golden nuggets? Yeah, just I’ll drop a couple cost egg nuggets first.

[27:21] Just a couple of points that people, you know, really typical, you know, kind of FAQ that people talk about cost. I’ll just drop them pretty kind of rapid fire quickly here. One is that any property purchase for over $200,000, it usually makes sense to get a cost egg done. So it’s not something that this is for, oh, only million, 2 million, you know, $10 million properties. No, this is something that, you know, can be done even on single families, even on smaller properties. That’s number one. Number two, this can be done on a property that you’ve owned for a number of years. It does not need to be done in the first year of ownership. It does not need to be done. You know, really, it’s a strategy that you can utilize at any point. So even if you’ve owned a property for a number of years, you can go back and without having to amend previous year’s taxes, you can do what we call a catch up depreciation or cost egg. And you can do it going for basically take those deductions, catch them up going forward. Another important point is that I mentioned it kind of in passing earlier. But if your CPA, you know, ask them about this, right? If they don’t know what this is,

[28:21] or they’re like, oh, you can’t do that, probably good idea to find another CPA who does understand it. Um, one more where I kind of frequently asked or misunderstood things about cost seg is that, um, it’s, it’s not something that you can kind of just do off the cuff, right? I’m with Madison specs. We’re the biggest national company doing this. You know, we’ve been doing this for, for 20 years. It’s, it’s not something you can just, oh, your, or your accountant can just say, oh yeah, I’ll take this amount of depreciation off instead of my regular straight line depreciation. No, it requires an engineering, uh, report. There’s a very detailed process in going through it. It’s pretty complicated, but, um, so yeah, I mean, there are some like do it yourself cost seg things online nowadays, and, um, those will not hold up in the event of an audit. So it is important to work with professionals like, you know, in any, in any case, right? You, you want to work with the best professionals out there. So I want to make sure you’re doing it a hundred percent right. Uh, cause you’d hate to get audited and, uh, and have it thrown out and then have to pay fines and penalties

[29:18] and things like that. So those are just a couple quick fire, uh, nuggets about cost seg that, uh, people usually ask me about. Yeah, that’s a really good point. Um, I, you know, I had heard, uh, people think that they, you know, you can’t do it if like you need to start right when, um, you, you purchase the property. It’s like this, the tax strategy of that property kind of stays. Um, so that’s, that’s really, really good to hear, um, that you can kind of do it retroactively, but yeah. So what, uh, what golden nuggets do you have for our listeners? It’s already been a million dropped. I mean, you guys just heard some huge, huge possible savings here. So what else do you got for us? Um, some quick golden nuggets, I would say just in general about life and about investing. Uh, as we mentioned, I didn’t mention it here, but, uh, you know, I’ve invested, uh, passively in many deals as well as a limited partner. Um, I think one of the biggest things, what it comes down to is networking. And in my, my podcast, uh, Weiss advice, I say, as I introduce every single episode is your network is your net worth. And I truly believe

[30:17] that because the people that you surround yourself with and those connections that you build, um, is really, there’s so much to that. And so make sure to surround yourself with the right people, people who are forward thinking, people who are, um, you know, looking at the big picture and, um, people that you want to aspire to be like as well. Um, so that’s the first nugget I would say is, you know, keep building your network. Um, the second thing I would say is, you know, be humble. You know, if you’re listening to this podcast, that means that you’re interested in learning. And that’s great because being a successful investor means being humble and being willing to learn new things all the time. And it doesn’t matter where they’re coming from, right? Obviously this is a great platform, but you know, be open to learning from people who you may not even expect.

[31:02] I can learn from them because that’s the way you’re going to be successful is by being humble and continuing to learn, continue to educate yourself and you’ll grow your wealth, you know, substantially through that. Um, a third golden nugget I would say is, uh, is teach, you know, it goes in, if you know something, educate others, right? This has been kind of my, my goal goal in life, right? Is if I know something, I’m going to try to give it over and teach it to others out there. And believe it or not, you know, a lot, right? It doesn’t matter what you think, you know, you know, a lot more than someone else who doesn’t know that. And so be, uh, you know, add value through that. So one of, one of the principles that I live with through, uh, you know, having a religious life is, uh, is giving, you know, tithing. People understand the concept of tithing, right? Giving 10% of your income. Um, there’s also a, an aspect of that, of giving 10% of your time as well, right? You may not have money. You may not be able to, you know, share the wealth with those who are less fortunate, but if you have time, everyone has time, right? It’s,

[32:01] there’s no such thing as I don’t have enough time. No, it’s where your priorities at. And if you prioritize helping others, that to me is, is the most success in life. And as a good friend of mine, uh, said, use this acronym that I live by as well is the acronym of hope H O P E help one person every day. And so you want to just, you know, it’s not, you don’t have to like, Oh, I’m going to go and save the world. No, just do one small act at least every single day. And you will grow your, uh, you know, you’ll, you’ll become a better person. You’ll be happier. And, uh, I believe that’s really the, the path to success. I love that. And I think that is, that is directly, um, tied to sales. I think in general, like, I think, I think, you know, I’m a person that is, uh, runs their business through, uh, my sphere. My sphere is, you know, repeat, uh, people, uh, you know, refer in their, you know, their fan friends, family, et cetera. Um, and so imagine, you know, you making a point to help your sphere every single day and you have systems and stuff in place for that. Um, you can, you can really understand how that, you know, and, and like

[33:06] people smell BS a mile away. If there’s like a, do you know anybody about your, you know, it’s wanting to buy or sell their house, you know, line coming at the end of your, you know, helping them. It’s just going to feel cheap and inauthentic. But if, if you’re really just, you know, not, there’s nothing in it for me. Like I, yes, I may be systematically doing this, knowing that some stuff might come back to me eventually, but like in our conversation right now, I just definitely want to help you. And that’s, you know, if you have that kind of attitude, I think that is attracts people. Um, and that’s where that, um, abundance kind of mindset can come from, but I love those. Um, what about a, a favorite book, a fundamental book you think that everybody should read or just one that, uh, you personally find, uh, really good right now?

[33:49] Um, so there’s one I’m reading right now, which, uh, I’m not through it yet, but it’s, uh, called power connector and, uh, it really incredible book. Um, but again, I’m not through it. So I don’t want to go too deep into that, but one book that really changed a lot of the way that I function in terms of business and life in general is a book called who not how, um, credible book. You’re shaking your head. Obviously most people have heard of it by now, but, um, you know, it’s something that basically just changes your paradigm of, you know, only doing those things that you really love and enjoy doing and leave all the busy work and all the things that you don’t enjoy doing to someone else. And, uh, and you will grow your business, you know, 10 X basically. And I think there’s also often as assumption that the things that you don’t want to do that don’t, you know, don’t give you joy. Don’t give that, that you, why would you give this to somebody else? That’s just being mean, but like, like there’s other people that like to do that, those things. Yes, exactly. Right. For sure. It’s incredible. Um, yeah, well,

[34:53] you know, thank you so much for being on the show. Um, if, if people want to learn more about, um, this space, if they want to listen to a podcast, if they want to actually like inquire about doing a cost seg on a property they own or thinking about buying, um, how can they, uh, reach out to you? How can they find out more information? Yeah, you can go to yonahweiss.com, just my name. Uh, the best, the best place really, I’m pretty active on, on the social. So if you go to LinkedIn or Facebook, Instagram, X, all the fall, all the above, um, don’t just hit that follow button or that connect button, take 10 seconds and write a little note that you heard me on the IR, REI agent podcast or whatever, just a little note. I’ll know where you came from. You just hit that follow button. It doesn’t really do anyone too much good. Um, but I always love getting messages from new connections and, uh, you know, creating new relationships that way. So definitely reach out. I’m happy to help. And, um, yeah, thank you again, Matthias. It’s been a lot of fun.

[35:46] I love it. And man, I love that idea too. If anybody’s listening to this, um, or coming across this, uh, podcast, uh, from a reel that I, you know, that for a view dropping some bombs that are going to like, you know, save people tons of money. Um, yeah, do the same, uh, follow, follow and, and give me a shout out and say who, uh, for what, for what reason did you follow us? So, uh, I love that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Like I said, this is a huge, and one of the things, one of the many things motivators for me doing this podcast is understanding this whole space, uh, from kind of both sides, like being an active investor and being an active agent and understanding how much, um, is left on the table for most people that just don’t understand and don’t fully grasp and are, and are, could have, you know, succeed in, in whatever, and further, furthering their investments. Um, you know, maybe, maybe wanting to work less and pick a pickleball, uh, because they were able to achieve their, you know, what they, they want to earn in a year, um, from advice like this. So yes, thank you so much again for being on the show.

[36:51] Thanks for listening to the REI agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week, visit REIAgent.com for more content until next time, keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.