An interview with Stas Matias about how networking changed his life and helped him become a successful Real Estate Broker in Florida. 

In this episode of Finding Recess, we have invited Cameron Lam to talk to us about his journey into restate and getting on the game. Cameron was raised in Los Angeles, California but he moved out to sunny Phoenix, Arizona about four years ago, after graduating from college. He started working in the corporate but six months one year into the corporate grind, he realized that it wasn’t for him. And that’s where his journey in real estate began.

Episode Timeline

 [02:55]                                                                               

Cameron worked at Intel and was making he thought was a great salary, $57,000 out of college, He worked in Finance and went to day to day, even months but there was no training. Cameron found out that a few months in, his was deemed low performer by Intel standard.

[07:16]

The Phoenix area is a hotbed for new build communities. There’s suburb called Gilbert southeast of Phoenix, about 25 minutes. There’s a lot of farmland, there's new builds going on, when he stumbled upon the community. He went and look at the home purchase price, and it's $263,000. Cameron thought that's a great price.

[14:23]

Cameron wish he had known back that then you don’t need to put 20% down. Family and friends, other are people who don't really know a lot about real estate might tell you, hey, put 20% down, try and pay off the house as fast as possible. So you can have a lower payment, you can avoid PMI private mortgage insurance.

[15:13]

You could do a 5% down for your primary home, so that prompted Cameron to start reading, like all about bigger pockets. And Cameron though maybe this is something that he could do if I only have to put 5% down on the home he was purchasing

[26:22]

Cameron’s no 1 for those who want to get into real estate is don't quit your day job and try to maximize your day job income. When you get into restate game, there’s a lot of people who jump all in, and they're doing creative financing deals, they're trying to, you know, they might not necessarily have that steady w two income, they're doing fix and flips. But for Cameron, being able to have that steady w two income, and now, much higher w two income has allowed him to qualify for all these properties. So he can get into the real estate game and stay in the real estate game

[29:12]

Cameron wouldn’t consider himself a real estate guru. But looking back on his journey, he saw how much he changed and learned together with his wife.

[30:20]

If you are interested in real estate, if you run the analysis, if you know if you know how to run the numbers, run the cash on cash run, you know, run all the revenue, expenses, CAPEX, repairs, vacancy, get all that stuff, you just got to go in and do it.

[39:09]

Cameron’s biggest mistake so far is when he bought a tiny house he got from a great deal.  He came to terms $30,000 on this tiny home. And he is paying like 550 bucks a month, zero percent interest, and just wanted to pay it over for 5 years like a car loan. His grand plan was he was going to put this tiny home in his backyard in Gilbert, and connect it to the sewer system,  connect to the electric,  and make a nice backyard and put on Airbnb. Then Cameron found out that in the city of Gilbert, that's illegal.

Books mentioned on the podcast:

• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• The Compound Effect

Get free real estate knowledge at https://www.biggerpockets.com/

To get to know more about Cameron’s story in his journey from how he started in real estate and staying in the game, visit his website at https://www.sixfigurepassiveincome.com/.

You can also check out his socials:

Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn