Craig Shares 40 Year Investing Journey

0:00America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home, and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them? Or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at AmericaCures.com. Pay for by Farma. Howdy. Hi. Welcome back to one rental at a time. We're here at the center for the blind for the 2026 one rental at a time of that. I'm sitting here with Craig. Craig, where do you live and where do you invest? I live in Scottsdale, Arizona. I invest in Phoenix, Arizona and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Okay, so two markets, one pretty close to you like 30 minutes away. Yes. And then one five hour flight away. Correct. Okay. Before finding one rent, did you come to last years of it?

1:04No, because it's on Valentine's Day. And the year before? So this is your first one? Yeah. Do you still have your partner that you were with last year in the year before? Yes. Okay. What change that made you able to come this year? I just decided that I needed to come. Okay. Well, I'm glad that you did. I'm really I mean, I hope it causes no friction at home, but I brought my wife, but she's not physically at the conference. She's doing a lot of fun stuff. So she gets to enjoy Vegas. There you go. That's a that's a Valentine's. I like it. We've all talked with Zuber about maybe changing the weekend for a few different reasons, but I think this is the one that works out best for him for some reason. So and maybe some of the people that have asked for this. Before finding one rental at a time, what did your investing look like? It was about the same. I started investing back in 1987 when I was in college. I started investing because my parents invested in real states starting

2:04in 1977 when I was in fourth grade. Wow. And my first property was a duplex purchase while I was in college. I bought it with my brother who was five years younger than me, so he was 15 at the time. And then the following year, I bought a condominium. And throughout the 90s, I have to write away to law school. I was buying lots of properties in New Jersey. I eventually moved that in New Jersey in 2005. I sold a dozen, a dozen rental properties that I owned relocated to Arizona for the weather. And since 2015, I have built the portfolio of 65 units. I have 11 condominium properties in Arizona. And 54 units in Pittsburgh, all single family and duplex units. The duplex units are all my favorite. They're all side by side. I've got 19 duplexes. All summer, then a lot of my properties I bought in bulk purchases. But I also bought a lot

3:08individually. I bought about eight or nine properties off a Craigslist. I bought one off the Zillow for sale by owner. I bought a lot of properties off the MLS. You still have the New Jersey accent to say, you know, my best friend is from New Jersey. And there is no end of jokes that I make to him about New Jersey. That is a very impressive portfolio. What do you think has been the biggest challenge along the way as far as investing in real estate goes? I have a different setbacks and problems that occur. But I would not have been able to scale the portfolio the way I have without hiring a property manager. Because back in New Jersey, I managed everything myself. I did everything myself. And when it got to 20 units, it became very tough to expand and grow because it was taking 15 to 20 hours a week of my time to just manage the portfolio. By having property management, it's enabled me to grow as much as

4:11I can afford to grow financially. Yeah, I like that. Michael Zuberd has a lot of units and I think primarily because he had a property manager, you don't have to deal with the day to day. So for some people, that's the right call. Once you found one rental at a time, do you think there's any video topic or lesson or anything that we've covered as any of the presenters that changed how you think or change what you do? I've got an encouragement because Mike Zuberd keeps repeating over and over again, make this respectful offer, keep making offers, keep looking, checking the market every day. And I do check the market every single day. In fact, I do it automatically because I've alert sent to me from various places like Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, it just shows up in my inbox where I have the searches just automatically set. And I also regularly check Craigslist, Zillow for sale by owner, and I also check a couple websites of a couple wholesalers.

5:14If somebody were starting today and they, you know, they have some knowledge, they've found YouTube, but they don't have any rentals yet. What would be your advice for them to get started? I would keep it very simple. I would just watch Mike Zuber one rental at a time, read the book, and and do things simply like you said. Start with finding the market where the numbers work. There's lots of markets in the Midwest and other places where the numbers do work. Make sure you comply with the 1% rule. Make sure it's a B-class neighborhood. And you can go conventional financing. The first few, you don't need to go off market. Eventually, when you get a whole bunch of properties underneath your belt, then you can start looking at your sale by owner and looking at wholesalers and other things. A lot of people try to start with those and make bad choices. I agree.

6:17I think it's really cool that our strategies are very different. The Lumberjack Landlord strategy is very different. Mike's and Zuber's are very different. It's almost like we say this in the video is a lot. There is no one right way to do this, but there's a one right way for you. I like that you were able to just kind of list off your buy box. I want to hit this yield, this asset, type of asset class, and so everyone should be able to figure out in their market based on their goals, which strategy is going to work best for them. If somebody wanted to reach out with questions, how would they get a hold of you? I guess they could reach out by my email, C-L-E-S-S-L-E-R-I-YAHU.com. Awesome. Thank you so much. I do have one follow-up question. Sorry, the last question. If you were alone with Michael Zuber, right? Nobody could hear you guys. It was just the two of you that he asked for on his feedback. He said, what would you change about one rent a lot of time to podcast the book, the events like this? What would you say? I would not really change anything, but I would like him to continue to be critical. He finds other people

7:19on YouTube or other people that are making suggestions that are not good suggestions. I'd like him to continue pointing that out. That's very, very important, even if it upsets some other people. Yes, sometimes we lose followers and subscribers because we point out a fact. And I'm with you. I think that's a great idea. Thank you so much.