948: Are You Ready for 2021’s Red-Hot Real Estate Markets? Realtor Kyle Renke

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Real Estate Rockstars This is Aaron Amuchastegui. Today I get to interview Kyle rinky. Now Kyle’s with kW and the David green team from Granite Bay, California, which is right up the road from where I used to live in in California where I still have a house for sale in Loomis, and the and I’m excited to get to talk to Kyle today. Kyle, thanks for coming on.

Kyle Renky 

Great to be here. Thanks for having me, Aaron.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

You know, I think it was maybe 18 months ago, I saw you at it was it was pegged as an investor meetup. And it was at a at an acting Academy. But it was like you guys just, it was at night for people just to come show up. And you guys were giving a pitch that said, this is reasons to invest in Sacramento, here’s things going on in downtown, here’s an example of a good investment over there. If you guys are interested in me finding you these properties, you know, reach out. And I remember I went there and i and i and i watched your guys’s presentation, I thought it was really good info. You know, I was a big investor at the time. And it even made me think like, oh, maybe I should be, you know, looking for investments in downtown Sacramento at the time, I was only investing in other places. I’d kind of retired from the California investment world. And but I didn’t know that at that time. You were a part time agent.

Yes. Right.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

And now, and now as of end of 2020. How many? How many? What’s your gonna be your gross volume by the end of this year.

Kyle Renky 

So end of 2020, I’m going to have about just under 25 million in gross volume about 45 transactions.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Okay, so 18 months ago, Kyle’s a part time agent, and just getting started and hosting meetups to try to get a client. And it was a really well done meetup. And that’s probably a whole different conversation later about, you know, different ways to get clients. And because it was really just an add value as a present, present, present, make people excited. And hey, if you need a real estate agent, I’ll be your agent. How did you go? Tell us just talk about that transition? How did you go from part time to full time and 25 million in volume?

Kyle Renky 

Yeah, definitely. So yeah, I’ll definitely back up even a little bit before that, because there was definitely some stepping stones that we had to line up along the way. So I’ll kind of back up to when I graduated from college, I graduated from college with two masters degrees and six figures of student loan debt. I was working in medical speech pathology, working in the hospital, helping people that have had, you know, strokes, brain injuries, those types of things. And about a few years into my career, I realized that I didn’t want to do that forever. I didn’t see myself being a speech pathologist for the next 20 or 30 years. And so I kind of wanted it, I was looking for a way out looking for something different. But I was saddled down by heavy student loan debt. At that time, my wife and I had a big mortgage for a big house that we didn’t need. We call it the big house. We had two kids at that time. So the first thing we actually had to do. So that was back in about 2016. Correct? Yeah. And so we actually had to sell our house to put ourselves in a situation where we could start paying off our student loan debt. So the four of us, my wife, and our two kids moved into a small half Plex, less than 1000 square feet in Loomis and started paying off our student loan debt that brought us up to about 2017 2018. So it was around that time where David Greene, co host of the BiggerPockets podcast. He just had him here a couple weeks ago. He and I are best friends. We go way back. We’ve known each other for 20 years. He was the best man in my wedding 15 years ago. So I always Yeah, so I like to make the joke. I knew David before when he had hair. So he actually approached me he knew I was looking for something different in my life as well. And so we sat down at a Starbucks. He showed me this big red book called The Millionaire real estate agent by Gary Keller. And he showed me what he was doing. He was just starting to make some traction in his career and as a new real estate agent. He said, I want to start building these teams and I want you to help me build the one in Sacramento. So fast forward end of 2018, beginning of 2019. That’s where I got my license, started working part time as a real estate agent. And working part time as a kind of part time full time, I worked 32 hours a week at my w two job as a speech pathologist. So I was able to scale down a little bit because our finances were finally stable. And so started working part time did about 12 transactions in 2019. And then, at the end of 2019, that was when you saw us doing the meetup over at Acton Academy in Roseville. David was really urging me to make the jump into real estate full time, I was a little bit hesitant, a little bit nervous, felt like I needed some more time. But essentially, I left my job put in my two weeks and left my job on Friday, the 13th March 13 2020. Go into my first day at the job with David at my broker’s office on March 16. on a Monday, at noon, my broker comes to me and says, Hey, Kyle, you got to leave and you can’t come back. And that was the day that all the counties were shutting down. And so I basically went home and basically became a real estate agent at that point full time and had no other choice, I couldn’t go back to my old job. And from there, it’s, it’s been a crazy year.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

That is, I talk about now that my team does so good working from home. But, and it’s my like property management team and the employees of our businesses. But if they hadn’t been trained in an office first, I worry that they wouldn’t have gotten the skills. Like it’s really tough to start from home. And you are, and there’s probably agents right now that are apprehensive of starting. Because they’re like, Hey, I’m gonna have to start from home. Can I be my own boss from them? What was that? Like? What were what were some tips that made it work? And what were some things that made it difficult?

Kyle Renky 

Yeah, it was definitely a transition at first to being able to, to work at home. And I think this is something everybody’s had to adjust to. But especially when you’re moving into a new career, you’re trying to establish new habits, and you’re trying to make sure you’re doing really well at what you’re doing. And so and then obviously, you’ve got kids at home and homeschooling. So it was definitely an adjustment, I the first thing we had to do was we had to just ward off a certain portion of my office and say, This is exactly my area. And I have to come here and this is a work area. And that’s all it’s for. And then especially with kids, the biggest thing that that we did was, I would wake up earlier before the kids and that’s where I can get most of my work done distraction free. And then from there, it’s been a little bit more easy and a little bit. Yeah, a little bit easier to attain that way for sure.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, I think those are, those are some hacks that you know, if most people haven’t learned yet this year, they’re great, right? Like, like waking up before the getting some distraction free work time in helps. You know, one of the gals that I interviewed, she talks about making sure you know, Kelly talks about making sure that her kids are, are well fed, right. So she sits down and gives them a good meal, you know, then she can actually go get about an hour work done, because they’re going to be you know, they’ll at least be like settling down for a little bit with that. And so we get to learn these. So everybody’s made the transition of going from working in an office to working at home, you had an additional challenge of trying to learn a business, like learn a new business, learn a new job while while working from home, and you had kind of been kind of been doing it but it’s not as busy. So really interesting to have that happen. And then so what was what’s it like right now in Granite Bay, when it comes to what’s open, what’s not What’s life, like? How are people feeling about, you know, about the market about restaurants, everything? Yeah, so

Kyle Renky 

it’s it’s very positive right now. So on the real estate side of things, people are super excited about the Greater Sacramento area in general. So realtor.com just came out with an article a few weeks ago, Sacramento is predicted to be the number one city nationwide metro area with the most growth in 2021. I saw that. Yeah, yeah. So we definitely have a lot of interest. Obviously, you’ve heard all the stories about people moving out of California, right. But what you don’t hear is there’s a lot of people moving out into the bay area, and they’re just moving to Sacramento, if they’re not moving out of state, they’re moving out here. So there’s a lot of interest from people that are migrating away from the city to a little bit more rural parts like Sacramento, and they can still keep their Remote Jobs. So the upside is great. Restaurants are definitely still closed down. But fortunately for us in real estate, we’re still considered in demon essential service. So we’re still able to show homes and list homes and we just have to do it a little bit more carefully nowadays.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. Cool. So these I think Placer County has been a place where there is so much else and I think that was one of the biggest factors. So what did it say in that article about why Sacramento was going to be because I’ve been even saying it like people are leaving San Francisco moving up there. The reason we listed my Loomis house on the market was we said hey, so many people from California are coming in they’re buying are from San Francisco are essentially buying we’ve got 10 acres and people are moving out. The cities wanting to have acres and they’re paying way more than I think properties are worth. So the as there was there any in the article that talked about that to be one of the cases driving Sacramento growth or what were the things they said we’re going to do that

Kyle Renky 

that was primarily it, healthcare is a big thing here as well. So healthcare is definitely expanding, you have the stable government jobs that a lot of that aren’t really going anywhere. And then in addition to that, you have all the new tech jobs and the people that are moving out this direction and keeping their homes and it really, it just comes down to affordability. That’s the biggest thing. And so the the prices here are much more palatable than they are in the Bay Area. So people look and they can see what they can buy out in this area. Whether you’re an investor, a house hacker, or just a first time homebuyer, it makes more sense for a lot of people to move out this direction, because they look at the prices and they say, wow, this is much more affordable. I can get this much more for my house.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. Yeah, what a What an interesting time with that affordability is key. I mean, that’s been what’s been driving all sorts of growth, like people used to live inside cities, because it was so they wouldn’t have to commute so they’d be close to where their work was. They would pay more to live there. But they would pay less on commuting and gas and you get that amenity bonus. So the you know, the cost of living is really what’s driving everything right now, especially now that people can work in more more often than not in jobs, people can work from home now. And if you can work from home, then you can choose to live where it’s just a little bit more affordable, especially if we’re not commuting. We’re not we’re not driving for two hours in our day anymore. podcast listeners have been way down this year. Because of that because less people are in their car. And people love to listen to podcasts while they’re in their car. You know, they love to they love to as they’re on their drive home, turn on the podcast and listen to it. And the when you’ve got kids jumping on you and chasing you, it’s just less, less fun to sit down and listen to a podcast. So Real Estate Rockstars This is Aaron Amuchastegui with a quick commercial break from our sponsor rent ready? Why do you invest in real estate to retire early to build your dream home, start your own business. Whatever the reason, whatever the dream rent ready can help you reach it with rent readies unlimited property management features. Your real estate dreams are also unlimited rent ready as landlord tenant software that covers all of your real estate investing needs, including unlimited properties, tenants and live customer support. So you can start small and grow your business without increasing costs. You know, I’ve had plenty of subscriptions before where you get charged, like per house that you own, or per deal you’ve done. And what they’re saying is, hey, it’s gonna cost the same thing no matter what whether you have one house 10 house or 100 houses they’re not going to penalize you when you grow, and they’re going to help you grow. Right raise a flat price and scale for your needs. No need to shell out big bucks for multiple management software’s with rent ready, they have everything you need. It’s all in one platform. So you manage your rentals and grow your portfolio. As a special offer. You’ve heard it on here before you can try rent ready for one year for only a buck. But wait, you have to use our code. Here is the code Rockstar r o ck STR and sign up for rent raise annual plan at rent ready.com. That’s entrdi.com with code Rockstar to get ready for a year for just a buck. And if you want to learn more about rent ready, or you want to learn more about Ryan, the CEO and founder of rent Ready, go check out Episode 939 where I interviewed him about why he created this this platform and what they’re doing that.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So you’ve been in real estate for a short period of time you became an agent full time in March. What was your first deal? Like? Like? What was your first deal after starting in March? Did you already have some lined up? Did you have a couple months of a delay? What was what was it like? Yeah,

Kyle Renky 

so I actually and this is probably not the case for most people. But I actually had seven houses in escrow when the pandemic hit and when I made the jump so when I was told by my broker, you have to leave the office and you can’t can’t come back I basically had two options at that point I could either a go home, curl up in a ball and just be super scared and or, you know, go ask my boss and see if I can get my job back. Or B which is the the route I took, which was I’m gonna keep I’m going to do whatever I can to keep these transactions alive, right. When the when the shutdowns first started, everybody started having knee jerk reactions, everybody started kind of panic selling or just you know, a panic ensued. So my goal was to be the calm that I could to my sellers, my buyers that I had in contract at that point and to make it through the entire transaction. So I was calling listing agents, I was calling buyers agents, I was calling my clients every single day I was calling the lenders just to make sure that everybody was feeling okay, reassuring them calming them down that hey there’s there’s nothing huge going on here. We’re gonna make it through. I know this is scary because I had a lot of people at that Time that wanted to back out of their transactions. They were nervous and they were scared. So that became my number one job was to help these people get through. And then we could kind of figure out, Okay, what does it look like from here. And so a big part of that was leaning on David, our team leader to help us come up with a vision and a strategy of how we wanted to pivot and move forward in this new kind of this new economy.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So you had seven in escrow when COVID hit?

Kyle Renky 

Yes. And it also did all seven close. They all closed. Yeah,

Aaron Amuchastegui 

that’s that is, that is impressive. I think that’s, I think that was totally smart. Like when that first hit to go like, hey, instead of like I said, how’d you get your first deal after that? You said, Hey, for what we weren’t focusing on on to get a deal. We’re focused on saving the ones that we had. So important, so important, and so crucial, especially as some lenders stopped lending, you know, some jumbo loans like stopped funding, like there was a lot of stuff that got really crazy, really fast. And so when that first hit being the call in the storm when everybody else was there, because yeah, people were cashing out their 401k, everything, it was just how do we get ready for something that’s going to be really crazy with that. And now those I bet those buyers now the ones that almost got cold feet, their houses are probably worth like 20, or 30%, more than they bought them for in March, right?

Kyle Renky 

Oh, I get text messages all the time, saying, I’m so glad that I was able to get through that I’m so glad you helped me. You walked me off the ledge at that point. And they’re happy because it’s less competitive, if they would have gotten out of the race at that point, gotten out of the market and then tried to buy something later, it would have been twice as competitive, and they would have ended up paying even more.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, I love just that idea of being like the calm for your customers in the middle of the storm, you know, the calm in your relationships to say, you know, we’ve said on here, that, you know, fear is contagious, you know that, but but so is hope. So his leadership, so his confidence. And so when you get to tell them, hey, let’s let’s stay the course. And let’s do this. So, once you did reset, or like, what are you doing now to get clients that like? Is it something where you just have plenty? What what are the challenges and the things that are going right and wrong?

Kyle Renky 

Yeah. So right now, well, let me back up. So after we saved those seven transactions, from there, it was Yeah, what’s the path moving forward look like from here, a lot of where we had gotten our clients in the past, we’re doing meetups with David, holding these in person, you know, types of events with people. And obviously, with COVID, you couldn’t do that anymore. So a big part of what we did was switch to zoom switch to online. And that was really an opportunity for us to refine our buyers consultations and our listing consultations. And so we really focused on, let’s get really, really good at presentations, let’s get really, really good at zoom. And so that was a big part of it. So I remember at one point, David had said, You know what, I’m just gonna, what if we just gave 100, listing consultations to people just for quote unquote, practice, right? How many do you think we’d get out from that? And so that’s kind of where our mind mind set shifted towards was, how can we just focus on getting really, really good at, you know, presenting ourselves online. And it’s funny, because with a lot of the people that I work with, especially I work with a lot of Bay Area buyers, people that are either moving out here, or they’re investors, and they’re going to be non occupied. And so it’s not uncommon for me to meet somebody face to face in person, not until we have that home under contract, and when we have it, when we meet them at the inspection. So that’s usually the first time I meet clients right nowadays. And so because we’ll go through it, we’ll do video walkthroughs. So that was another thing getting really good at doing video walkthroughs for buyers sending them things, because without hot the market is they can’t get over here super quick to look at a property. And so we have to use video to help with that.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. So that’s really interesting. So then it was like, well, let’s just get really good at the skills that it’s going to take now. So if listing presentations are going to be on zoom, now, let’s make sure that we’re really good at it. Yeah, if the if there’s going to be there are so many virtual showings now, where it’s, you know, pre shelling, and the So you said be doing really good at that. What are some tips for doing your, you know, PowerPoint, online listing presentation? And what are some tips for virtual showings?

Kyle Renky 

I think the key is number one, too, you really have to know who your audience is, who your client is. So for us and the buyers that we work with, and they’re coming from the Bay Area, I kind of know what they’re looking for, right, from a general perspective, because a lot of them are looking for the same thing. And I know what they’re looking for in an agent. They’re looking for somebody who they can trust, they’re looking for somebody who has really good market expertise. They’re looking for somebody who knows about the areas that we would consider the path of progress, and they’re really leaning on us for that information. And so, that’s a huge part of getting to know who they are and they want to know somebody that can help them you know, run the numbers and and and Analyze properties. But the other side too, is is sort of being a coach. Right. And so being a coach is getting to know them, and what their goals are understanding what their Why is. And so that’s a big part of of the zoom presentations is really, my job is not to talk and sell them anything, my job is to really get to know their goals, figure out what their driving motivating factors are, and then help them reach their goal based on what the what they want to help them, you know, reach it. So that’s, that’s a big part in terms of just getting to know them, and what makes them tick, and then helping them reach those goals.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, I mean, you said, you know, what people want, I was gonna ask you, well, how do you know what they want? And the and you answer that already, just by saying you actually just asked them so that first presentations, you’re just asking them? Hey, what’s important? Where are you going to get here? I mean, that’s always been part of real estate is, you know, is making sure that you’re actually finding them the house they want. But now, real estate is a new experience. Some people may say, hey, I want to show as many houses I want to go see as many houses as I can in person. And someone else may say, Hey, I don’t want to see very many in person, I want you to do the virtual showings first, and then I’ll just come see the other ones that are really good. So you help because it’s different because now there are options, there are five or six different ways to do a real estate transaction today. And there weren’t as many before, maybe they were always there, but they just weren’t quite as acceptable. Right, like virtual showings, like, yeah, I kinda remember a couple virtual showings a few years back, mostly when military was moving, you know, to a new place sight unseen, but technology didn’t even really allow it to be a lot of like, you know, agents would go see the stuff of the pictures and say, yeah, this is good. I hope you like it. And now there’s all sorts of, you know, 3d tours and pictures, and everything else as people get to figure out the new way to do it. So when you’re doing the virtual showing, the is there, is there a key to that? So somebody says, hey, go look at this property. For me the what are your What are your tips and experience with that?

Kyle Renky 

So the first thing is, we have to be able to get out and see that property as soon as possible. Because in this market, if you wait a day or two, that house could potentially be be gone, it could be off the marketing go pending, go into contract. So there’s a couple things that we do, the first thing we always do is we call the agent first to make sure that there aren’t any other offers on that property. Or if there are, we want to know when the offer deadline is because we don’t want to waste our time and our energy in our effort to go out there to see these homes to take some videos of it, where it’s already kind of going to go into contract, you know, in the next hour or so. So we try to do as much due diligence upfront as as much as we can. That’s where COVID has really helped. Because you do have the virtual tours, you do have Google satellite views, you have the Google Street views. And so we encourage not only our buyers to do this, but we’ll do it ourselves to try to do as much due diligence upfront. So because a lot of times we can rule out if this is a solid property, if this is a contender for this for this client, but we also want to make sure that they have a chance of getting this house if they are interested in it. So we try to rule out the house first, then what we do when we go out to take the video of the property, what I’ll do is I’ll talk to the clients and I’ll have my voice as I’m walking through. And what I found is clients don’t want to be sold a property, they want to be educated on the status of that property, and if it fits what they’re looking for. So I will, I’ll make sure if I point out, hey, there’s, you know, some dry rot here, or, hey, here’s some stains in the carpet, right? Because I don’t want to necessarily try to make it look like it’s in this great, you know, great, great light, make it look like it better, like it’s better than than it is my goal is to give them a reasonable view of that property so that when they come to check it out, after they get it in contract, they’re not surprised, and they don’t feel like they’ve been sold this limit or had this bait and switch, they actually say a lot of our clients will say, hey, this actually is exactly it looks exactly like we saw in the video that she sent us. And so that’s usually what we try to do. So there’s no huge surprises when they first view the property for the first time.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

And do you record the video and send it to them? Or do you do it with them on the phones, they can ask questions,

Kyle Renky 

a little bit of both. So if they’re at work and they can’t do it, then we’ll definitely do like a pre recorded and send it over to them. And then if they can, it’s not uncommon for us to maybe go out to three properties in one day and then we’ll take videos of all three and then put it all up in a Google Drive and then it could watch them all and they love to go back and they’ll watch it all the time they’ll watch it three or four times because after a while once they get it under contract they want to go look at it again and say okay, well what does this house that look that I’m buying actually look like?

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Oh yeah, when when people are in escrow then it’s like they look at the virtual tours every day. And it begins the the picture of the pictures of the houses look more beautiful than they do in person, a lot of time like just the lighting that everything the way that it catches. And I think the you make a good point about being able to research so much about the listing ahead of time. We’ve always been able to do that. But like spending a day looking at houses used to be a fun experience. It would be like hey, there’s these 10 houses. Can we go see all 10 of these, you know, Diego, my agent in Austin, I mean poor guy showed me and my, my wife and get probably 50 houses, when it was like over, you know, a couple different weeks, we saw one and it was the year prior. And then we had flown out again to try to lock them in. And by that time they had sold. And so then we just take took some time off, and then went out again, he had showed us so many houses so many times. But there are so but but so many of them, right, we could have actually ruled out just from a Google Maps view just from a Google streetview you get caught up when you’re looking through so many listings to go, Okay, this one’s great. This is great. This one’s great. But now, but now Yes, time is more valuable. Now it’s more difficult to do a showing, it’s just not quite as easy to go see, you know, 10 houses in a day or five houses in a day, it just takes so much extra effort that it’s making people say, hey, make sure that you that it’s got a chance before you show up, don’t just you know, it’s not going to be let’s just go for the heck of it. Are the are they doing open houses at all in Granite Bay now.

Kyle Renky 

So we aren’t doing any open houses per se. So they’ll do kind of a mock up, they’ll do virtual open houses where the listing agent will be out at the property and then do like some video tours. The only other type of open house that I’ve seen is really just blocked periods of time. So it’ll be on Saturday, from 10 to two, but the buyer’s agent still has to make a has to make an appointment and then you have to be able to go out there within that timeframe. So there’s still separating parties, you can’t all go into the property at the same time.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, different world. What do you think? What’s your 2021 predictions?

Kyle Renky 

I think 2021 is going to be as long as the interest rates remain low. I’m thinking that 2021 is going to be a great year, especially here in Sacramento, I feel like Sacramento is somewhat insulated from major issues just because we do have a pretty strong infrastructure out here. So I’m thinking 2021 is going to be very similar to 2020. If anything, I think a lot more people are starting to move out. So we’re prepared and we’re ready to go. And we’re excited about it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. What’s your number one piece of advice for real estate agents to succeed in today’s market?

Kyle Renky 

I would say that the number one piece of advice is you have to be adaptable, you have to be able to pivot and move fast in and that’s true with any entrepreneurial endeavor. But especially right now in a COVID related world. And in in in real estate had I come in with the fixed mindset of Okay, all I have to do is come into my broker’s office and sit and learn and everything will come to me, I would be I would not have been at the place of where I’m at today with relative success. And so I had to quickly think and take action on these are the items that I have to focus on in my life I have to focus on, you know, at first it was getting those clients through the escrow but then secondly, it was okay, how can I help new people in this world and so that’s a big part is just understanding where you’re at, and being able to move quickly and move fast.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, that is, that is good advice, the being able to stay stay adaptable, and not have that, because things are gonna happen, like there’s gonna be something is going to surprise us next week, next month, something that really puts a big wrench in the way that we do business. And when they say like, hey, there’s no open houses anymore. You can either say, oh, man, that my whole business was based on open houses. I don’t know how I’m going to do it next door, you can say, all right, how am I going to replace that? Right? And being able to, to quickly change the mindset and how you’re doing becomes a big deal. So what about so you’ve been an agent, you’ve only been agent for a few years. But what is something that you’ve learned over the last couple years that you wish you would have known on the first day?

Kyle Renky 

I probably wish I would. So if I would have known on the first day that a big part of this job is putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, and taking action and, and just not being afraid of rejection, right. I think for a long time, I wanted to slowly move into real estate, I wanted to dip one toe and then dip the other toe and slowly get myself in. If I if I would have just jumped in. And given everything I had, I probably would have seen success come a lot faster. And David and I were actually talking about this the other night, he said, Kyle, it took you about three, four months to make the jump when I told you I wanted you to make the jump and you didn’t make it. And he says looking back, how much money do you think you left on the table from not making the jump? And I thought about it, I did some math and it was a pretty significant amount of money. And he’s like so you were actually trying to you were so focused on avoiding risk and mitigating risk that you actually ended up hurting yourself by not taking action. And so that that’s probably I wish I would have known that sooner in terms of if I would have just made the jump and not been afraid and and you know, not have been afraid of the risk, then I definitely could have been in a better position today probably then than I am now and I’d be a little bit further along.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

What are some of the most uncomfortable things you’ve done.

Kyle Renky 

So probably some of the most uncomfortable things that I’ve done is putting myself in situations where I can avoid rejection. So a big, big part for me is, you know, when I first got my real estate license, and I’m sure anybody who’s just getting their real estate license right now, or if they’ve gotten in before, one of the first things you hear from all your friends and family is one of two things. Number one, Oh, I know a ton of people that already have their license, which is their way of saying, Hey, I already have an agent. or number two, they’ll say, Oh, I already have an agent. So there’s this, this thought and this feeling of how am I going to generate business if everybody else out there has a license, right. And so the way that I put myself in uncomfortable situations, I can remember when I first got my license, and I was posting, you know, houses and things online, I would actually block certain people from seeing that because I was afraid that they would judge me for it, or they would think, oh, he’s not going to be good at what he does. So I had a lot of fear. And so there was a point where I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna lay it all out there and put it all out there. And, you know, for the whole world to see. And so that was a big part is just not being afraid of what other people think about you not being afraid of the judgment that can come with it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

I think that’s such a real fear that so many real estate agents have because a lot of people love real estate, they love the idea of buying and selling houses, they love the idea of making a deal. They love the idea of being able to analyze prices, they want to help people get into the house. But the but they get nervous, they get nervous socially, right that they just did, it’s just they’re not super comfortable going on blasting on Hey, I’m a real estate agent now. Or, hey, I’m this now the fear of like, you are not the only person that has made those posts. And actually, I’m sure a lot of our listeners are like, yeah, I’ve done that I’ve made the post and I made it. So some people, some people couldn’t see it. Because I didn’t want them to say, Oh, this is some pipe dream or whatever else. But we talked about it so much like, it’s so important, people will not make the post because they feel like, Hey, everybody already knows I’m an agent, or everybody already has an agent. But you need to stay top of mind. And social media is usually one of the best ways to stay top of mind and letting everyone know, hey, by the way, I’m an agent. Now, by the way, I’m an agent now. And hey, check out this house, you have to remind people, we say if you’re mailing a letter to a seller, and the letter says, I want to buy your house or I want to be your agent, you’ve got to send like eight letters, right? Now to actually get a call back. Because of the eight you’re gonna send, they’re gonna throw four away. I, I like I go through my junk mail yesterday, I got a companion certificate sent to me from American Airlines, right like free companion, I almost threw it away because I thought it was junk mail. Right. So like the, it was a 15 $100 value, and it was almost in the trash. Because as it’s coming, I’m like, Oh, this is this is a nothing and then you open it, you’re like, Oh, that’s just, that’s what happens is the mail, people just throw it away, the they’re looking at. So you got to send eight letters, you know, to be able to get that person out there. And so I think social media is the same thing. And the way social media works is if you make a post today, you know, 5% of the people that follow you will see it 10% like you could actually make the same post 10 days in a row. And still only half or a quarter of the people will see it and so it’s important to get yourself out there and, you know, multiple times that you’re the fear of like, Oh my gosh, people are gonna think I’m always posting about this, I’m always posting about that sometimes you have to remember to that. Not everybody’s gonna see it, not the another not even even the people that are trying to follow you just because of the way that stuff works only 10 or 15 or 20% will actually see it. So the so 2021 What are your so how many transactions in June 2020.

Kyle Renky 

So 2020 I’m gonna end with 45.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

And what’s the average sales price up there?

Kyle Renky 

We’re at about 450.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So 450 so are the so knowing Placer County is that mostly like Roseville, Rocklin. Lincoln?

Kyle Renky 

Yeah. And I also extend a lot out into Sacramento County, El Dorado County, so pretty much the entire greater Sacramento area is where we’re serving right now.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So 450 is is that like the the median price for all like the Sacramento area? Because there’s Yep, I’m just like, I guess like, just like anywhere, right? There’s 510 15 $20 million homes, the and there’s, is there still homes for you know, two or 300,000 in Sacramento area,

Kyle Renky 

you can find some some $200,000 homes, except those are going to be really, really competitive. And those are going to be mostly in your like D class neighborhoods.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Okay, so rough areas 200,000 it’s a it’s a fixer getting something else. So you’re saying right around 450 you get a lot of a lot of places in that market. Are you mostly a listing agent or mostly a buyer’s agent now,

Kyle Renky 

so I work heavily with buyers. So I basically have three types of buyers that I’m working with right now. versus just your traditional buyer. Hey, I want to buy a house for my wife and kids and they really just want to live in a house and they want to own a house. The second is what we work with from the BiggerPockets community what we call house hackers. These are people who are going to live in a portion of their house and maybe rent out the rooms rent out A portion of the house or maybe buy a duplex live in one side and rent out the other. And then third type of buyer that we work with right now is our investor clients. And those are non occupied investors looking for solid areas and the path of progress where they can get some cash flow right away.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Cool. Yeah, the end, how do you get? How do you get most of the buyer leads right now.

Kyle Renky 

So we get a lot through, believe it or not, we’re still getting people from the meetups that we held a year ago. And so we’ve we’ve built this community in this tribe, in the northern California market, both both out in the Bay Area and in Sacramento, where these are people that were calling on a weekly basis just to check in and see how they are. It’s a really cool group of people, because these are people who, when you call them, they’re gonna be happy that you call, they’re gonna be glad they’re gonna want to talk, they’re gonna want to ask questions, they’re gonna, they’re very engaged. And so we’ve built relationships. And a lot of these people have actually become really good friends of mine. And so that’s been the probably the biggest way. And then, where a lot of my other clients have come is just from, you know, friends and family and my old co workers. I took a while when I was working at the hospital, everybody would say, oh, Kyle, he’s a speech pathologist. And it took a while for that mindshare, and that identity to shift over to Oh, Kyle, he’s the guy that I can ask for real estate related questions.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think are you going to? So do you think virtual meetups are going to work for being able to get investor type clients where you guys before

Kyle Renky 

I do the challenge with the that, I definitely believe they can bring some value. And it’s something that we’re exploring, I think the challenge with virtual meetups is you lose that face to face connection. And that face to face connection is super important for binding that relationship early on and getting to know him, it’s definitely an option. It’s definitely a way to, you know, help get more people in your quote unquote, funnel. But it’s, it’s not as authentic as of a medium as obviously in person. So we’re looking for ways to maybe do some kind of distancing meetups. And so that’s something we’re exploring here, probably in q1 of 2021.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. I mean, if you have the right venue, there’s got to be ways, you can still do it, right. But the but it does change the whole, like people wanting to be able to shake your hand, like just to come up. Because at every one of the meetups, what happens is you present on stage, or present at a restaurant or somewhere, and then afterward, everybody wants to come up and get a little bit of one on one time with you. Right? And they want to come up and say, Hey, thank you. And that was it. And they want to shake your hand and they want to get pictures with you guys. They want to do the whole thing. And the and yeah, there’s gotta be there’s got to be some sort of a happy medium people are meeting again, you know, we did our go abundance mastermind, the, we’re able to still do some meetups. But the but a lot of times, like our big conference in Austin this year, when they showed up, everybody had their own desk, and all the desks are like 10 feet apart. So instead of, you know, 40 guys getting together, they could have met in what used to be like a, I don’t know, a 30 by 30 room, and now they’re in a giant ballroom, so everybody can be spread out and do it. So there’s, there’s ways to do it. It takes more creativity. I would say it’s probably more expensive right now, but maybe because venues aren’t getting used at all. Maybe Maybe it’s not more expensive right now, but the venue you guys had before that do a shout out to our friend Matt Boudreau at Acton placer. You know, up in, up in Rocklin, like the his Acton Academy there, you know, great venue, great place for for schools and things like that. And it was really fun to get to come see all of you guys out there, and so crazy to see what you’ve done since then. So now you’re 45 transactions, you know, the 25 million in the and you’re heading into next year, kind of on fire and ready to see what’s next and rated it to keep growing. So any last things you want to tell her ready, Kyle? What are some things they should be thinking about as they head into 2021?

Kyle Renky 

I would just say if you feel like you’re at a place where you maybe feel stuck, or you feel like you can’t make any progress that you definitely can’t, right. There’s nothing wrong with taking a step back to help you move forward, I had to take a lot of step backs by, you know, selling my house and moving into a half Plex, a lot of people at my age in their mid 30s. With kids and a wife, they’re not willing to do that, right? They don’t want it they don’t want people to see that they’re taking a step back. But there’s nothing wrong with taking a step back, especially if it helps you think about the future. So I would say if you’re thinking about what you want to do in 2021 also think about what is 2022 and 23 and 24 and 25 and a decade from now look like because sometimes those tiny little step backs are really small in comparison to what you can do and accomplish in the next decade. So I’m definitely trying to take a much longer term view of my life and my goals and my business and my family. As opposed to just thinking about you know, here’s what I’m going to do for the next quarter for the next week or for the next month.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, it’s such good advice. Like it’s not just about, especially right now, there are plenty of families out there. So like, there’s a lot of real estate people that are crushing it, and a lot of people that aren’t. And there’s a lot of businesses that have no unemployment and a lot of businesses that do. And it is, it is much tougher as people are adults, and they’ve had success before, it’s really tough to have success and have it taken away and be willing to downsize. Right? And so, being willing to say, Hey, we’re going to downsize, we’re going to take a couple steps back to get closer to our future. Because if we don’t, our debts gonna get bigger. Our income, like our housing payments, not going to get down, the government’s not going to save us with a bailout that if we keep not paying our rent, it’s going to get there. Sometimes it’s about hey, what can we afford? What can we do? How can we do make the tough decision now to have a tough life right now? So that way, a year from now or two years from now, great advice. When I say how, what do you think, what do you do for 2021? And you’re saying, hey, people should be thinking about 2022 2023 and 2024. Also, like maybe it’s the year where you get to put your foot on the gas, and you’re crushing forward. And maybe it’s the year where you say, Hey, we need to, we need to cut some costs. We need to reinvent ourselves. We got to try a new business plan. So we’ll be ready to hit the ground running after that. Kyle, thanks for coming on. If people want to reach out to you, if they’ve got questions about stuff they want to learn about, you know, real estate or how you’re doing or any of your other stuff. How can people reach you?

Kyle Renky 

Yeah, thanks for having me on. It’s been great. The probably the best way to reach me is Instagram at Kyle ranky. or Facebook. I’m on both of those the most. And that’s also Kyle ranky on Facebook. Awesome.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Kyle, thanks for coming on the show. I hope that you continue to have just an awesome 2021. And as this comes out, this probably comes out a couple weeks after New Year’s but the but Kyle and I are talking with just a couple days left in 2020. And I am like Kyle, I am ready to hit 2021 hit the ground running ready to just face the new year. I love the end of the year stuff. Some people are like, hey, New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Or, hey, you should always do it or don’t wait till the end of year. I don’t care. It works for me. I see the new calendar, I get excited. I get to say hey, here’s my new goals. And here’s what I’m going to do next. So the Let’s all hit the ground running Real Estate Rockstars Thank you for listening. Kyle. Thanks for coming on the show.