10 Non-Obvious Value Adds for Real Estate (PART 2)

Mar 19, 2021

Welcome back to the Housing Literacy Podcast with host Matt Guarino!

In the first segment of this topic: non-obvious ways to add value…. we covered things to do and learn and execute about the property. The next 5 things are related to things that YOU can do or a mindset you can adopt to add value in other significant ways. These concepts are all centered on the idea that “if you change the way you look at things…the things you are looking at…change.”

Housing Literacy is all about creating more power and resources through our real estate assets but it’s also about developing more PERSONAL POWER by renewing and elevating our thoughts about things that challenge us both personally and as a society. Better solutions will create a better experiences for everyone. A little tough to understand but in this podcast we will demonstrate how this idea works and can dramatically change the value of your home (and YOU) over time.

As always we provide resources available to you relevant to each episode. Feel free to check them out below and if you have any questions feel free to contact Matt Guarino at 303-885-1644.

Episode Links:

https://nextdoor.com/ (Meet your neighbors and learn about your community)
https://www.amazon.com/Ettore-49036-3... (Grip & Grab)
https://www.hgtv.com/design/design-bl... www.irrigreen.com (irrigation app)
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/be... (Benefits of Solar Panels)
https://amzn.to/3cKuhye (The Infinite Game Book by Simon Sinek)
www.adoptaclassroom.org (Adopt a Classroom)

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the housing literacy podcast with host, Matt Guarino, founder of Powerful Homes. Matt's mission is to empower dreams through home ownership. We're here to help. We're going to do this together and now Matt Guarino.

Welcome back to the powerful homes, housing literacy podcast. My name is Matt Guarino and I'm the founder of Powerful Homes. And our mission is to empower dreams through real estate. And our mission through the Powerful Homes Foundation is to help 10,000 people in the next 10 years purchase their very first home because we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to buy a home for their family, regardless of their education level, their age, their race, or any of the other ways that our current systems may shut them out. So I'm glad you're here and if you're here for the first time, welcome, and if you're back, thanks for coming back. And what we do here is we try to create some very practical, practical things that you can use in, in your real estate career, either as a first time home buyer or a seasoned investor.

So what we try to do is take the experiences that I've had over the last 25 years, buying and selling all over the country and come up with non-obvious ways that you can, you can increase that your resources and value in real estate, as well as, you know, have some personal transformation things occur while you're doing that. And I have found that throughout my career last 25 years, I created a mindset and a set of tactics, which culminate in some housing literacy, actual understanding of how real estate over time could be one of the best investments you've ever you've ever had. So a couple of ground rules, one is a judgment free zone. I'm just going to be vulnerable and kind of share with you real experiences that I've gone through good and bad so that hopefully they can bring value to you. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm not trying to recruit you to any of my religious beliefs or anything like that. It's just judgment free. So take or leave with what works for you and use it as you see fit. So again, really glad you're here.

So today's segment is about the non-obvious ways to add value to a home, to a property. And a couple of times ago, I went through the first five non-obvious ways which all had to do with the property, right? Some ideas about increasing the value of the property. So this time, the next five are all about you. So how you can take personal responsibility to increase the value of your real estate. And the last time the governing rule was that quality always wins. Whatever you're going to do, if you can put a dollar in, make sure it's high quality.

So this week, the governing principle throughout these five things that we'll talk about, the non-obvious ways to add value, is a quote. I think it's attributed to Wayne Dyer, which says that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, I know that might sound a little fuh-fuh, a little existential. But as we go through this, please keep that in mind, this is about the Housing Literacy Podcast we were talking about is to create the resources through real estate. And while you're doing that have something activate in you that you change. You improve, you get better and by doing that, you improve the folks around you. So that's kind of the essence of that quote, which I just love. I've used that my whole career throughout my real estate investing and it's really served me well.

So again, these are things that you can do to improve non-obvious ways you can improve the value of real estate. So the first one is to be a good neighbor. I know that might sound a little Mr. Rogers and it probably is, but the idea there is that as we know, it's location, location, location, right? So assuming that you've picked the right location what do you do if your immediate neighbors? So there's three ideas with the location. One is your immediate neighbors, to the front and back of you say, and to the left and right of you. What happens if a couple of years into it, a fence falls down. What if five windows are knocked out of the property? What if trash starts to accumulate?

And what do you do there for your immediate neighbor? Do you call the cops? Do you start complaining to your other neighbors about them? Do you start blasting them in your Facebook group? What I would say is what you can do is to be a good neighbor? I would say, in a safe way, go knock on the door and see what's up and see how they're doing. All of the things I talk about on the podcast are things I've done or experienced. I've done them right, and I've done them wrong. And the ideas here are the culmination of that. So I've had that happen. I've owned a property many, many years and things like that happened. So I would always say to go knock on the door, see what's going on. See if you can help them. So often it's not what you think is happening. You know, it could be a financial situation based on a relative out of state It could be a declining you know, thing with somebody's mental acuity. It could be something to do with a job loss. It could be just so many things. But the first thing to do is go be a neighbor, be a person. Be a nice, good person. Go there and knock on the door and see what's going on, ask how you could help.

So one of the things I've done with the next door neighbor is I've painted a house. I've put on a new roof. I've changed, helped people haul things away. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm just throwing money around or throwing money at a problem. It's whatever you can do, whatever you can do. And there's so many creative ways to help people like that. If it's a senior citizen, possibly you can bring them food or drive them to the medical clinic or repair a window. You can rally some neighbors to help pay for the materials, ACE Hardware might donate it, things like that.

And then you have your block, those are also your neighbors and what you can do there is again, just maybe once a week, once every couple of weeks, just ask people how they're doing, keep an eye out, make sure things are going okay. And finally, one of the things I love to do, I love to walk my dog. I have the best dog in the world, by the way. I think every owner thinks that but I really do. So I take Delilah out and I bought a grip and grab. It's a little thing that just picks up trash. So what I do is just some nervous energy burning that off. I just pick up trash, I pick up beer bottles or whatever's out there, cigarette butts. I'm not doing it for credit. I'm not doing it for any attention. I'm just doing it because I see it, something on the ground and I pick it up and it's almost magical. It's crazy how many conversations have come out of that with neighbors and friends. And it's just awesome.

So one of the things on this podcast is at the end, in the show notes there'll be some tons of resources. But one of the things I'll offer is if anybody's listening to this and you want a grip and grab, I'll be happy to send you one, all I ask is for you to use it and to let me know how it affects your neighborhood. So that's the first one. So to be a good neighbor, why is that helpful? Why does that increase the value? Because people want to live in strong neighborhoods. People want to live in neighborhoods where there's a sense of pride of ownership, and you can be the catalyst to make that happen. Take the personal responsibility to be the one that picks up the trash, to help the neighbor. You'd be amazed how much the Goodwill that comes from that. Changing how you look at things, what you look at starts changing, starts coming back to you in crazy positive ways. So that's the first one.

So the next one will be for you to be green. So there's a few different things that are happening there. In other podcasts, you've maybe heard me talk about how we're going to have between nine and 11 billion people on earth in the next by 2050; the next 30 years, that's a lot. And it's probably the fastest population growth in the history of the world, of earth. So what's going to happen if we have go from seven or so billion to 10 to 11 billion, there's more houses, there's more pollution, there's more things. We have to be better stewards. We have to be more careful about how we manage our resources on earth. So the technology and things like that are so incredible today. So one of the ways to increase the value of your real estate, as well as help your community, you know, your city and your state and your country is to be more green. So a few things you can do to be green, some tactics is, you know, with your lighting plan, you know, you can have different types of bulbs that go on and off and have systems that shut them on and off when you're there or not there. You can have bulbs with different hues that when you're sleeping, they help you get better sleep. And when you're doing work, you can have different lighting come into the room.

Another super cool thing that's happening these days is irrigation systems that can help you be more green, to be green. How much water you put it on the lawn or not put on the lawn. And when it goes on, what time of day, all of that can preserve our water resources as a world. And finally solar panels. I know some people don't think they're attractive and there's lots of different things you can read about if they're good or bad or not. I would say it's a really good idea. And the solar panels these days are incredible and they're more attractive, they're more sleek. Lots of governmental state and federal agencies provide credits for things like that. So do your research, but I would say lighting plans, the irrigation systems that they have today and solar panels are fantastic ways that when you go to sell your home, it will probably sell for more. So one of the ways, one of my housing literacy moments there is I'm just so in awe, when I've sold properties, how younger people call it, millennials look at green things. It really inspires me and gets me hopeful about the future that I've sold properties for more because they had solar panels on them. And the people that were most excited were younger people. I just love that. So that's another way to increase the value of your home by changing things that you can do and be.

So the next one is to be smart. So what do I mean by that? So basically technology as we know with 5G and all of the stuff, we can't even keep up with it, but one of the things that's been happening the last number of years, they're smart technology. So you can make your home a smart home. So one of the ways to do that, to make it more efficient, more safe and secure is to get some of these technologies that are out there. For example you can put your thermostat with a NEST on an app on your phone. You can put your CO2 and your smoke detectors on an app on your phone. You can create a speaker system, is that's another thing that's going to be happening as we all hear about is voice activation. The next five years, everything's going to be voice-activated, our cars, our homes just incredible, right? So creating speaker system in your home that you can use to get voice activation going.

We have security cameras, you can put in your house to make it safe. And finally, if you haven't heard of it is IFTTT it's, you know, if this, then that technology, which that's how a smart home becomes a smart home, it just integrates everything. So if something happens with your thermostat that tells the other system what's going on, and maybe that sparks the fire department, it's just incredible what technology can do these days? So be a good neighbor, be green, be smart is the third way, non-obvious way you can add value to your home and do some good stuff for yourself and your community and your family.

The next one is being engaged in the community, to be engaged. So what does that mean? That means there's so many Facebook groups, there are HOA Associations. There are clubs you can be in to talk about your neighborhood and your community, and just to be engaged, to keep them apprised of what's happening is a really good idea. You know, we live in an integrated world, fully integrated world so the more you know about your neighbor and the more you know about what's happening and thee trends going in certain directions, the more you can do. So I'll give you an example of housing literacy moment there/ I've bought homes, I've built homes, I've done land development. So one of the things I did is I bought a parking lot and I got engaged in that part of Denver when I did that. And I attended 30 town hall meetings about how we were going to rezone that parking lot. Complete engagement with the neighbors, trying to come up with a sensible, practical solution for this chain-linked parking lot. It was like that for 15 years. So after 30 town hall meetings, after four years of discussion, we got it rezoned and everybody's overall happy with what we came up with. That's really cool. So those are things that are great to do and to stay engaged.

Another one is I bought a couple of old boarded up houses in a part of Denver right next to each other. And I was able to figure out that Denver wanted to up zone by the light rail. So I was able to buy those two pieces of real estate, understand what the market trend was because I was engaged. And then we found that Denver mental health was looking for land to create housing and it was so needed in our community. So again, the engagement helped me as an investor, find places to go and create opportunities that everybody wanted to see happen. So be engaged.

So finally, it's to be a champion of our local heroes. And what that means is, you know, I think one of the coolest things you could ever do is to adopt an elementary school in your neighborhood. Again, people want to live in neighborhoods that have strong communities, great schools, that are truly from the community that people are supporting each other. So if you adopt a school, you read to children, you support teachers or any of the other local heroes, say firemen, adopt a firehouse and do a fundraiser once a year to honor those amazing heroes, veterans that you happen to know who are in your community. It just creates cohesion. It creates a place where people want to live. So if you are champion your local heroes, you know, engaging with law enforcement, thanking them for their service. You can start a local fundraiser, a little run in your neighborhood to raise money. It just brings people together. It creates more community, it creates more pride of ownership. And all of that is good. It's good for the community.

And like I said earlier, the whole idea of Powerful Homes is to create the resources, but also to create some transformation in you. Something changes when you're an owner. Something changes, it activates something, a heightened responsibility for everything that's happening in life, which is awesome. Even as an investor the same ideas, but thinking about tenants that live in your property. Something gets activated when you just elevate your thinking. Like I said earlier, you change the way you look at things, what you look at changes. I think in a very, very positive way.

So hopefully you found some value in those five things. Check out our podcast from last time about the first part of the segment. And those things we talked about today will hopefully make your community stronger, better, and more sustainable, and also add value to your home. And as I always say, as I close these, please check the show notes after this podcast, I have a full transcript of everything I've talked about, as well as some great resources for you. If anybody wants a grip and grab, just call me or text me on my cell phone, (303) 885-1644. We'd love to see how that transforms your community by just taking ownership of picking up some trash and we're real excited you're back and look forward to seeing you next time.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the housing literacy podcast. Don't forget to like comment and hit that subscribe button and stay connected with Matt Guarino by visiting www.powerfulhomes.