Corporate Employee to Investor Friendly Real Estate Agent with Taylor Dickerson

Are you planning to pursue a career in Real Estate? If so, this video can help you! Taylor Dickerson talks about his journey on how he went from a corporate employee to a successful realtor. He includes how he built his business to focus on investor clients

Transcription

Ariel Herrera 0:03

Hey everyone, today we have a special guest Taylor Dickerson, who is an agent out in San Antonio. And some of you may be wondering, are there agents available, who can actually really help investors? And Taylor is just that person. So welcome Taylor to analytics erielle channel.

Taylor Dickerson 0:20

Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Thanks for being here.

Ariel Herrera 0:23

Yeah, being an investor friendly agent is not always as common as those would think. And you really hit the nail there. Before we dive into that piece, how you work if investors love to just hear a little bit more about your background, how you got into real estate and San Antonio the market?

Taylor Dickerson 0:41

Yeah, sure. So I was actually born and raised here in San Antonio. So, you know, I kind of know the town like the back of my hand, I started in a home improvement company, just doing, you know, the vinyl siding and windows and patio covers. And I was, you know, at first, I was just doing the marketing for it. And a lot of that really just sent me all around town, I mean, and that would walk up and down streets, I would knock on doors. And I actually did that for almost 10 years, believe it or not, and I mean, and that's going in the heat of the day, I mean, it gets hot in San Antonio, and some of those summer months were just unbearable. But, you know, and so that, that at least kind of got my toes wet in just understanding all of the different neighborhoods, the different dynamics of the areas and sides of town. And then it also kind of correlated with the construction aspect of it. So I ended up going to college at University of Texas, San Antonio, and majored in finance and economics. And that's kind of when I first fell in love with just investments in general, you know, it started with stocks, it started with bonds, and eventually, later came real estate. But once I graduated, I got a couple of corporate jobs. And eventually, I was like, you know, I gotta get back out, do something on my own, you know, and I always thought about real estate, because, you know, I kind of come from that back when I was in high school working that, you know, construction job. And so eventually, I just said, you know, what, I'm gonna do it and see what happens, you know, I mean, I hear lots of success stories also hear lots of horror stories, and I'm just going to throw my throw my, my, my fishing pole out there and just see what bites you know, let's see what happens. And it one of my friends had a rental property that he wanted to just go ahead and get right on, he was just tired being a landlord. And so I went ahead and was like, you know, you'll be my first client. Hope I don't screw this up, but let's do it. So we listed it got it sold. And, you know, I kind of learned just baby stuff, you know, like that, which is not hard. But that kind of made me start thinking about landlords and now, you know, maybe there's a lot more people out there like him that have a, you know, property or they're just tired of being a landlord, or they're just tired of, you know, the tenants and dealing with them. So, then I started, you know, trying to market towards those people, and developed a number of clients that were landlords are looking to become landlords even, and kind of started finding my niche. And that's what I think a lot of people when I was first getting into real estate said is that you're gonna find a niche. And I didn't really quite understand what that was meaning back then. But as I as it really just kind of naturally started, the dominoes start falling in place. That was what was happening is that I was taking my, what I knew from investments from studying at UTSA, and finance and economics and just applying that with real estate and it was like, you know, the clouds had parted now, all of a sudden, I understood what I was supposed to be doing. Like I was supposed to be that agent for investors. And there's, I mean, it's a whole different world, it really is a whole different world, between dealing with investors and dealing with just retail clients, like people that are just looking to buy a house and that's just going to be their home. And, you know, while those are sometimes the easier clients I really just didn't like, I mean, it's not that I don't like helping people find a home to live in right but I just it became more exciting to me to find houses that were going to be profitable investments that were going to make money for people rather than just being like a house which I mean a house it makes people money is as a wealth generator creator and all that but for flips and landlording stuff like that was just a whole nother level and then understanding the finance behind it the math and building spreadsheets. and all that good stuff. That was really got that got my got me got my juices flowing. Yeah. So, um, yeah, so then I just kept working at it I started, you know developing a larger and larger clientele base. And before I know it, you know, I was able to just kind of be on my own and

Taylor Dickerson 5:20

just work almost 100% For investor clients, and they just keep coming back to me and keep asking me, Hey, I need you to sell this property, I need you to find me some more properties. And definitely the hardest part is always finding them. So that's kind of where I reached out to you and said, Ariel, I have an idea. Can you do this? And there you were, like a little knight in shining armor, saving my day and building some amazing tools for me to use and, and really helped my clients, you know, get to that next level.

Ariel Herrera 5:55

Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that and super excited in part two to go over more in detail about that tool. But going back to what you were saying and how you really were able to build out your investor clientele that start off more locally, and then expand to investors out of state, or what's the split there?

Taylor Dickerson 6:13

Yeah, I mean, almost all of the investors I work with are local. But a lot of the deals we source sometimes come from out of state wholesalers, for example, or just people that have moved out of state, and that's why they're selling is because, you know, maybe they were a landlord here in San Antonio. And then they're like, hey, well, we're old. Now we want to live in Florida. And that notice you living in Florida, but they want to go hang out with you instead of me. And they're like, I can't manage this property anymore, because I'm too far away or whatever. So you know, they just want to get rid of it to cash out and use it for other things. So that's, that's where we come in and help them get it listed and sold. But then also, on the same flip side of that there's a lot of people come into San Antonio from California and New York and all these people just have so much money. I'm like, man, and it's it's it's inflating our prices of property. And they're led by like some of my first clients actually were from California, they were nurses. And they just ended up buying two properties with me. And then they came back a year later bought two more properties with me in the year later came back, but more like, Man, you guys just have a supply of money up there. I love it. No, like, Well, yeah, finding us good deals. So why would we not know? Awesome.

Ariel Herrera 7:35

And if I could go back, I would have definitely been a travel nurse when I'm like, Yes, careers right now. Sure.

Taylor Dickerson 7:41

Yeah, get to see the world help people. And you have a great, great, great job.

Ariel Herrera 7:49

So as you are, you know, you have these properties that you're dealing with that pastors may be looking to sell, do you ever pick these properties up for your own portfolio as well?

Taylor Dickerson 7:58

Um, no. So surprisingly, not a lot of people always get bummed out when they hear Yeah, Taylor does not do investments on his own. Because primarily, I don't, I feel like there's a bit of a conflict of interest that happens when, if I'm buying properties down, I should be delivering those to my clients, you know, and and by realtor code, that's, you should always be putting that stuff up in front of your clients instead of you. I mean, you could always take it down if your clients don't want it. But you know, typically, if my clients don't want it, I wouldn't want it either. So like, Okay, I'm not gonna take their sloppy seconds, like, it's not gonna work. But yeah, you know, but it's also just, I, all of my investments have always started with stocks and bonds and stuff like that. So that's 99% of my investments are stocks. But real estate is eventually something I'll get into, but I have a feeling I'm probably going to get into it in outside of San Antonio is probably going to be I went to the Bahamas recently, and momma's had a really bad hurricane hit one of their their main islands. And the place just got decimated out there. It was almost it was really sad to see actually. But you know, it's it's just such a mess over there. But because of it, the prices of things were just ridiculously cheap over there. And there's zero conflict of interest in me picking up stuff in Bahamas and I even licensed in Arizona, that country. Yeah, I'm I've been looking at those opportunities and thinking like, this might be where I can, you know, start dipping my feet and taking what I've learned and bringing it over there and doing it for myself.

Ariel Herrera 9:41

Yeah, that makes sense.

Taylor Dickerson 9:45

Yeah, yeah. And that's the 2022 goals for sure. So talk to me at the end of the year. We'll see we'll see if i How many properties I own.

Ariel Herrera 9:53

But yeah, I'll definitely answer pick your brain about that in a later time frame. But going back to San Antonio market I mean Growing up there working, like on your feet as in high school and being an agent now, like you must have seen so much change over the last even 10 years, five years. Right and your mark

Taylor Dickerson 10:12

credible? Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, I briefly went to Dallas for six months, I came back and like all the gas stations were completely a whole new name. You know, as I was like, What city is this? What who's Valero but it was when I left their old Diamond Shamrock. And then, but I mean, the place just keeps expanding and expanding and getting larger and growing outwards. And I'm just like it. I mean, it's, it's great to see that kind of growth in the city. And, you know, I don't know if that's normal, because I never really lived anywhere else. But I would guess that it's not I mean, we are just going gangbusters out here.

Ariel Herrera 10:54

Yeah. When it comes to like top 10 to growing cities, San Antonio somehow always makes

Taylor Dickerson 10:58

usually, yeah, we're usually on it. I think this year, we're, I think it was like sixth or fifth for the largest population increase. So Wow.

Ariel Herrera 11:07

Yeah, a lot of Northeast people coming down as well as West Coast. So definitely a mix. So save someone's, you know, pretty fresh into investing there don't love that they don't feel like they're going to do it in their own market or looking outside markets, what would be like a reason to entice them to maybe look to invest in San Antonia.

Taylor Dickerson 11:28

Um, okay, there's a couple of variables there, one we used to have very cheaply. Being very close to Mexico, we do get a lot of migrant workers, and they work very cheaply. They do great work, especially if you have a good, you know, trainer or teacher for them. But we also just have a lot of old houses. And that's another aspect of it is like, this is a very old city, when you go downtown, the main thing that you want to go see is the hour, I mean, and that's been there since like, forever, 18, seven hour, and I don't even ask me, but I should probably know, but it's just that and San Antonio was very big on preserving that historic aspect of it. And because of that, though, a lot of these houses have really, you know, aged and the people that lived in them did not keep up with them. And we have a great supply of houses that need work. And, you know, a good portion of the city is starting to undergo a little bit of gentrification, because of that some people like it, some people don't, you know, I'm not gonna take sides on that argument. But Austin, not too far from us, definitely underwent that process. And now Austin is becoming very, very expensive as a city to live in. And San Antonio is just now starting to make a little bit of that push. And so as that happens, I would not be surprised in the least to see us follow us and in the next five to 10 years and experience that same level of price appreciation. Because we have very similar attributes, you know, Austin, have it being a very old town as well. Yeah. So, you know, to see everything become new, again, takes money takes investment, and we are getting that those funds to not only just fix up the houses, but just to fix up the general infrastructure around nice. We had a an old brewery here called the Pearl brewery, and it hadn't produced beer, and I don't know how long it was just a rundown, you know, area, essentially, and Big Bucks came into that thing. And now it's like, it was bigger than it's ever been before. I mean, it's like the main is one of the main attractions when I'm here is to go to the pro brewery. And what the city is really saw the city learn from that is that we can take all these old things and make them new again, and we're in the cities gonna start pumping money in towards those towards doing those initiatives. And as the city does it, so do private investors, and it's a win win for everybody. So, and we've got big business coming here. Tesla's going to be not too far from here. Yes, SpaceX is not that far away, either. It's a little bit further down south. But yeah, we've just got a lot of big things going for not only the city, the state, but just everything around us. I mean, I it's it's hard to create an argument against investing in San Antonio in this general area.

Ariel Herrera 14:40

Yeah, that's really incredible. I had to make my way over San Antonio at some point, but just go into your point of seeing something that's a little bit older and like being revitalized, is pretty amazing. That's also what's happened in the Tampa areas in the last several years. So I think both will have a lot of growth in the future. Yeah, outside being a real estate agent. What else do you do for fun or hobbies that you tried to occupy your time with?

Taylor Dickerson 15:05

Sure. So I have a dog. She's a little border collie. She's about 10 years old, and I'm looking at her now she just, she hates being on camera, it's like, pull out your phone to take a picture and she runs away. It's kind of sad, or is like, I want to see what it looks like. I'm like, I can't get a picture of it. But yeah, so I mean, you know, I got the pub, we run around, we play, play at the park and stuff like that. I mean, really investing or not investing, but real estate in general, and that it does take up a good amount of my time. So I don't say that I have much hobbies outside of real estate, to be quite honest with you. But if I'm not doing real estate, I'm looking at stocks, and it's one or the other. To be honest, I'm kind of a boring guy like that.

Ariel Herrera 15:54

No, that's what's super interesting. Yeah, it save someone else, like was interested in becoming an agent and be also working with investors and their own market, what are some like tips or resources you may suggest to them?

Taylor Dickerson 16:08

Um, I mean, I would say, give me a call, actually. And I can, I can, I can share some tips and tricks of the trade and how I kind of first really started developing my clientele. But number one thing is to always get education, you know, and there's unlimited amounts of education out there, especially on YouTube, there's tons of former agents or current agents or current investors that are out there, always just putting up YouTube videos and spreading the wealth of information that they have. So get educated, first and foremost, second of all, maybe find a mentor, find somebody to kind of show you the ropes and make sure that you don't screw up because you can. But definitely having like a support system around you and people to, to kind of confirm what you're thinking helps. And then third, and the third and last, I think would just be to get up there and go do it. You know, take a just just put your foot out there. See what happens. Yeah,

Ariel Herrera 17:12

I completely agree. Also, everything that you do, especially in the field of real estate, like you need to get your feet wet at some point.

Taylor Dickerson 17:18

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us just learn, try to try to build up as much preparation as you can. And then once you're prepared, go do it.

Ariel Herrera 17:28

Yeah, exactly. So tailor if someone wants to reach out to whether they want to invest within San Antonio or just ask questions in general of becoming an agent and working with investors, how can they reach you or follow you?

Taylor Dickerson 17:41

Um, so I go by the House talk, which is a whole nother story up to give you some other time, but the house talk comm is my website. Or if you want to get a hold of me, it's pretty easy number to remember. To one Oh, which is our area code. 899 POC ha Wk so 210-899-4295 and you can get a hold of me almost night or day 24/7 And if I don't answer I'll call you right back. I'm just on the other line. Text me email me the house talk@gmail.com The house hot. That's it.

Ariel Herrera 18:17

Perfect. Well, thank you Taylor, the house talk really appreciate your time and hope to see you again on the channel. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thanks. Awesome.