S2 E24: How Military Families Build Wealth With Every PCS | VA House Hacking Explained

What if every PCS move could become a step toward financial freedom?

In this episode of the Closing Chapters Podcast, Brittney sits down with Dallas Frye, Marine veteran and mortgage loan officer, to break down one of the most powerful wealth-building strategies available to military families: VA house hacking.

Dallas explains how service members can use the VA loan benefit strategically at each duty station to purchase modest homes, rent them out when they move, and slowly build a real estate portfolio over a military career. From understanding BAH expectations to learning how to analyze cash flow and leverage appreciation, this conversation dives into the practical side of building long-term wealth while serving.

Brittney also shares her perspective from the real estate side — including how choosing the right agent, building the right team, and planning with your next PCS in mind can make or break your long-term financial success.

If you’re a military family wondering how to make your housing decisions work for your future instead of just solving a short-term need, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

Key Takeaways

• House hacking with a VA loan can help military families build wealth over time.
• Every PCS move can become a buy-and-hold investment opportunity.
• Buying based on BAH, not ego, keeps housing decisions sustainable.
• Starting small (duplex, townhouse, roommates) can be a powerful first step.
• Cash flow is only one piece of real estate wealth — appreciation, principal paydown, and tax benefits also matter.
• A property manager can make owning rental property far more hands-off.
• Choosing the right real estate agent and loan officer is critical to long-term success.
• Military families don’t need to rebuild their support team with every move.

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Disclaimer: This podcast education only & is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Talk with your own pros about your situation. Opinions are my own.

© 2025 Brittney Frye. All rights reserved. Realtor, license # 352197 in NC. Brokerage: RE/MAX Southern Properties. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Hey there, friends, and welcome back to the closing chapters podcast where every mission has cool. So I have one question. If you have siblings, whether it's in-balls or not, is there a rivalry of like who has the best uh branch? We we see that a lot in our family.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Yeah, that's uh that's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Welcome back, friends, to the closing chapters podcast. I am your host, Britney Frye, and today we have an awesome guest. Um, our guest is Dallas Frye, absolutely no relation, but also another really cool person in my world. So I'm honored to be able to have Dallas on today. And he is a mortgage loan officer. Um, also a veteran per the year. A lot of the people in my business are in the veteran space. So I would love for you to tell us a little bit about your world, Dallas. Where did you serve? When did you serve, and where are you at now? And how did you get there?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah, Britney, thank you so much for bringing me on. I've really been looking forward to meeting with you and talking about the VA loans specifically, house hacking. Uh, just a short little snippet of me. I'm a Marine. I come from a military family. My grandfather was a colonel in the Marine. I got two siblings, one's Space Force, one's uh Air Force. You see them in the picture, they're actually sibling in-laws. And now about 90% of the business I do is VA loans, helping people use their mortgage. So that's me in a little nutshell with uh my mortgage experience and military background infantry officer was my MOS, and uh super stoked to be talking with you today.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

That's so cool. So I have one question. If you have siblings, whether it's in-laws or not, is there a rivalry of like who has the best uh branch? I mean we see that a lot in our family.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yeah, that's uh that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

So the the nice thing is I always, you know, as an infantryman, I never fight a fair fight. So I'm always gonna we're gonna fight on my terms. So we're gonna go uh with uh physicality and toughness. And if we're going with brains, I just uh uh I retreat from that one. They're super smart. That the guy you see in the background was like fifth in the Air Force Academy F-16 pilot now. Uh, and then his uh uh sister right there, TJ, she is uh uh doing work right now um for Space Force Force and and they're also she graduated top her class from uh weapons school. So yeah, it's a friendly rivalry, but I don't get in fights, I won't win.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

So cool. That's so cool. Um the F-16s, I am friends of. That's as you know, we were just talking about this a minute ago. Shaw Air Force Base is kind of where the majority of my husband's military career was at, and we have F-16s there, and it always used to be the thing where it was like almost a false sense of security for us that the F-16s would fly over our house all the time.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Uh simultaneously, though, whenever we he was CE civil engineering, and um we would have all of our like change of commands at the fire station, which was on the side of the flight line, and we would have to time it between takeoffs. So you'd be in the middle of a change of command and then like stop, wait for the jet to take off, and then resume. It was it was quite uh an interesting, you know, like dynamic, but we it was really fun. It honestly brought a little bit of humor to something that was so stuffy to say, you know, very uniform, like very like professional, and it made it something fun and like that it was a real human, even if they were some um, you know, big tough officer standing in front of you. It just broke the ice. It was really cool. Um, so I would love to talk to you a little bit more about VA house hacking. You and I have had this conversation offline, and I'm so excited for you to bring this to my folks. Uh, you have some really good information to share with us about how they can start out from the beginning of their career and use this for the duration of their career to build wealth and have a retirement plan in place before they hit that 20-year mark. So I'm gonna let you take it away and add in of where I can, but I'm so excited for everything that you have to share with us.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Man, me too. And then just a quick note you didn't serve, right? No, no, aren't we brat, but have not because the level of sophistication, which how you just talked about that change of command in your husband's MOS is astounding, being that you don't have that. So uh that is really unique. So I just wanted to do a shout-out. Like, this is a like A plus military spouse, right here. I I have not seen anybody else rattle something off like that. So great job there.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Um when we're talking Air Force world, I do okay. To be honest, Army World has tripped me up. He is he's in the army now, and uh yeah, the structure is different, the the ranks are different. So, like you said, I don't I don't fight in a fight that I can't win, so I kind of stay out of the army conversation, but Air Force, I can I can keep up pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Oh, that's good. You yeah, very you very uh very much can. So um let's kick right into it. Are you able to see my screen, say VA house hacking right now?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Okay, right on. So we'll dive into this a little bit more. This is really inspired of another infantry marine, David Pereira. Uh, this guy was uh enlisted, I think he got out when he was E4 and basically just built an entire portfolio. So I get a lot of my inspiration for him. I'm gonna show you, guys, the book, uh, The Novius Guide to Military Life. And whether you're 05 and just starting out or 04, or like you're E6 and you're gonna buy your house for the first time, there's a starting place for everybody, and it's never too early to start. So, what we're gonna show you is where you can start and how we can just use each PCS as a lily pad so that you just continue up with that upward trajectory. So there's this is the book, No BS Guide to Military Life. Uh, highly recommend that by David Pereira. So every PCS is a built-in and buy and hold opportunity. Over a 20-year career, most service members will move between six to eight times. And there's no reason that you can't purchase a house every spot. You might not purchase sometimes, like I was in Camp Pendleton, and uh officer housing was in San Clemente, right on the beach. So I didn't buy because you know we got to surf every day and you're not gonna pass that off. But you could buy every place uh and really just stack up your portfolio. So we're gonna talk about how we can turn all of these moves into a cash-flowing asset uh instead of just paying somebody else's rent and making somebody else wealthy. So here's a little quote from David Pereira um talking in just five years. So at the end of year six, your net worth can be$500,000 and$3,300 a month in passive income. And we'll talk a little bit about all the different ways that we can build wealth, and it's not necessarily just the cash flow. So we'll dive into that a little bit more here in a second. So here's an example this is the first time David Pereira ever bought a house. He bought a duplex in Missouri, and we know in Missouri that housing is really inexpensive. So before he was paying$500 a month for rent, and then he ended up buying a house, a duplex, uh, with his VA loan, and it was$615 was his mortgage. He rented out one side for$500, and then he lived in the other house. So he went from paying$500 a month to$115. And this he did when he was in E3. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. So a lot of uh one of the big disconnects that people have, everyone knows that when you're uh E3 or you're Lance Corporal, you make less money than uh the O2 who comes in, you know, second lieutenant. But how does that affect BAH? We know about base pay. So what we're gonna talk about is just kind of what the military thinks that you should afford for a house. Uh and what we're gonna encourage, and what I encourage all my clients is let's match our purchase to our BAH so we're not living beyond our means and stressing ourselves out. So we're house poor, right? So this is what the VA looks for when they're assigning BAH wherever you're at. Say you're in Hawaii, you're in Missouri, you're in North Carolina. They think that if you're between E1 and E3 and you get BAH because you're married, that you should live the rental should be a studio apartment or a one-bedroom apartment, right? When you get to E6, you can see maybe a two to three bedroom townhouse or a small single family uh house. That's you know, for you and your family, that's what your BAH is gonna cover. And then 01 to 02, a lot of people know this, you know, everyone's heard of the lieutenant mansion. So a really good thing that you could do as an O2 is buy a house, get three other single lieutenants in there, and they're gonna be paying less rent than they are somewhere else. So they get to pocket some of their BAH, and that can be your first house. And that's kind of how we want to structure this thing. So, like an E3, uh, get a duplex with some roommates, an O2, let's get a lieutenant mansion, so to say. And the goal always with that is that your mortgage gets covered when you have the next tenant in there when you leave, right? So, in the example with the duplex, when you PCS to your next location, you want to make sure that your whole mortgage payment is covered by those tenants because if it's not, then you're gonna run out of income and you're gonna have more debt than income when you try to qualify for that next house.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

That's awesome. Um, I want to interject to you real quickly that's this is like such a when you sent this over to me before, I was like, this is so eye-opening. Uh, I work with a lot of you know, first-time homebuyers that are E4s to E6s, and they really expect that they are supposed to buy their first home as a single family home, have a backyard. I mean, with all the fix-ins. Yeah. And uh, this was like really like, wow, you know, we our expectations are not realistic a lot of the time. And I don't think this is truly being shown or shared with the military very often so that they can create proper expectations. However, if you think about on base housing, this is very true to form, right? Whether you're in the dorms or like I think about Fort Bragg, they actually have apartments on the base that are still considered housing for you know a lot of the army folks, but it's no longer in the dorms. And then the majority of the housing on our installation is all duplexes or townhomes. Um, there's very few single-family homes on the installation that is housing for uh military members. So it makes a whole lot of sense when you're comparing to like what you're used to seeing on an installation. So this was like a very eye-opening piece for me. And I think it also I love your quote uh buy base on BAH, not ego. There's no race. It's it's what works best for you in your situation, and what is going to stick with you and be that per thing that propels you forward for the future, whether it's one bedroom or five bedrooms. You know, every situation can be very, very different. So I really love that you brought light to that.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

And I think that what you're saying is something that real estate agents should not shy away from. So when we're talking to military members, I tell a lot of real estate agents, and you're very good at this, Britney, is they're used to very direct communication. So if you can confidently come as a real estate agent and say, hey, look, you know, let's be realistic. If you were in the barracks right now, you're going to be sharing a room with another E3, uh, maybe even have three different E3s in one little room where you might have some black mold in a place right this. Like, so, you know, we're looking at like you being in, you know, sharing a studio or doing that duplex and you're living large, way better than everybody else. And they're like, oh, okay, yes, ma'am, that makes sense. So I think that's a really good point with you know, and you can be stand on firm ground communicating this to service members or veterans. So uh next next thing. So we're gonna talk about how the VA loan really sets you up to have multiple properties. The nice thing about the VA loan when you compare it to say an FHA loan or a conventional loan, uh, is that we only need to live in the house for 12 months, and then you can lily pad and buy another house using your VA loan. Let me give you an example with an FHA loan, and then we'll deep dive into this a little bit more. So let's go back here. So I had a client who had one FHA house and was going into another house. Because they didn't have first month's rent, damage deposit, and a rental agreement, they had to prove that they had 25% equity in a house. With a VA loan, if you're moving from one place to another and it's a reasonable distance, we can just get an appraiser to see what the average rent is and say they're like, hey, you can rent this house out for$2,000. We can then offset your first mortgage so you can qualify for another house. And it's a lot more difficult and more strings attached with other loan programs. Were you gonna say something?

SPEAKER_02 13:28

I just think that's very cool. Yeah, I think it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

So the next thing that we need to do is before we ever sign a contract, we need to know our numbers. We need to know what the cash flow is, not just what the principal and interest is. We need to include taxes, insurance, repairs, etc., etc. Um, what we what I tell my clients, and David Pereira says the same thing, is we want to walk away with at least 100 bucks. And 100 bucks might be like, oh man, do I want to do all this work for that? We're gonna talk a little bit more about what big picture looks like if you start with a hundred bucks and you buy and you hold. But here's an example of a quick little snapshot from um us doing a budget with our income from that's what the tenant's gonna pay us, and then our expenses on the other side. And you can see here we're counting principal interest, taxes, utilities, trash, property management. Because if you have a property manager, they're gonna need to get a little cut. And this is what we're walking away with. Um, on that note of property management, what would you say, Brittany, if somebody was asking you, is it worth it to get a property manager?

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Yeah, one uh 100% it is worth it. I mean, you need to be selective and vet your property managers and make sure you're comfortable with them. But there's a lot of emotion when it's your property and you're trying to choose someone to be there. And we're not great at being like very analytical when we're looking at a tenant for our own property. And on top of that, they have the tools and systems in place already to pull credit reports, pull pull background reports, verify income. Those are like the three biggest things that I don't ever want to have to worry about doing, right? Like on the sales side or on the rental side. I don't want to have to know for sure, you know, where their money's coming from or what they're doing, because my job is to say to be very subjective, you know, and like not judge, right? So they do it from a very check mark situation. And also, it is amazing just knowing that somebody else is keeping tabs on your property. So for instance, we have it set up where, like, if there's a repair needed on the property, that's less than X amount or an emergency that my property manager just does it. I mean, we get notified of the work order, but we don't have to have the conversation of do I have to get someone over there or are you getting someone over there? She just does it. And that is simply amazing. So it's very hands-off. You know, my properties stay rented. Um, I get a check every month, I get a statement at the end of the year, and the only time I know anything is if there's a problem, honestly. So it's very nice to be able to like almost set it and forget it.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

That's that's a really good point that you bring up because I think those conversations and that level of tactical detail go so overlooked. And that's why you need a good real estate agent. So a lot of times people like, do I need a real estate agent? But if you're, and we're gonna talk about this a little bit more, but getting into like the second property and the stuff that's really gonna stress you out, especially if you're a service member and you might be deployed, you need a good real estate agent that's gonna answer that. And I I've dealt with that specifically personally, that I never thought about like, oh man, like what happens when the fridge goes out? Now I gotta be the one dealing with this on the weekend when I got 20 other things to do. It's a really good point you bring up. So let's talk about the four different uh pillars of real estate wealth, right? So we talked about cash flow, everybody knows that. How much money are you gonna get after all your expense uh expenses? Principal pay down. This is pretty straightforward too. Everybody knows you have a mortgage. It takes 30 years to pay off the mortgage if you don't make any extra mortgage payments. And the tenant's gonna help you pay that mortgage and help make you wealthy there. And that's pretty self-explanatory. But the secret sauce that a lot of people uh, and when I say secret sauce, uh all credit to David Pereira on this is the appreciation and depreciation. So a lot of people know appreciation. You buy a house in the year 2020, it's gonna be worth more in 2025. And we know it could increase depending on the market. Brittany would know her market and other markets better, but let's just say 5% per year. But what about depreciation? So the IRS on a traditional residential property thinks over 27.5 years a property will depreciate. So what that means is like if it's a$100,000 unit, you're gonna be able to write off$3,636 a year off on your taxes. And if it's a commercial building,$1 million, you're writing off$25,000 a year because it would depreciate over 39 years. This is a significant benefit in the tax write-offs that you get for owning real estate, is something that a lot of people overlook. And like even me as a mortgage professional, I don't get the same benefits as somebody that has a real estate license. So this is this is something that shouldn't be overlooked. And uh, there's a lot of different ways to make money. Did you have any other additions on that?

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah, I I think the other thing too is the reminder of whoever, regardless of whoever is um doing repairs, you know, like in my example, I just said, like, hey, it gets handled and I'm pretty hands-off. It's still very important to know that you've got the receipts and know how much money was spent on your because all of that adds to this. And it is such a big difference because you don't think about the fact that yeah, it's cool that I'm making, even if it's a hundred bucks a month, right? They're not looking at that hundred bucks a month that you're clearing, they're looking at the total rent amount that you received as income. And then you can take the interest from your mortgage payment and claim that. But so there's a couple of different things you can do to counteract it, but you're still gonna have a big gap. It's it's very rare that we're fully equaling out the amount of income we're receiving versus what's going out for the IRS purposes. So this is such a key component to making sure that the that it's helping you now and in the future, right? Because I mean, it's great if we can make sure that we're not making ourselves drowned in the immediate, like right now, and only you know, knowing that the future will help us. Um, so I think that's really a good point that like we have to equal it all out, you know, like it has to be a good situation now that we can maintain and not go backwards when we're trying to go forwards. So this is very helpful.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

And that's one of the questions I wish I would have talked about with my real estate agent when I bought my first house, right? I think sometimes people look at an individual who's buying their first house and like, oh, they probably know this. But you know, I was getting out as a first lieutenant who, you know, has a college degree, and I just didn't even think about asking these stuff. So you really need to get with a good real estate agent because frankly, I bought the wrong house. I bought a house where I'm now breaking even four years later when I got somebody renting out my house. Um, so a lot of these lessons were learned in blood. So get with a good real estate agent who's gonna advise you on all this stuff. That's that's one of the biggest um pieces of advice I have. And we talked about this a little bit, right? So why the VA is is better than uh other loan programs. Eventually, if you have six to eight properties, you're not gonna have six to eight VA loans. Uh, we'll get into a little bit more what that entitlement looks like. But the big thing that you can know is that if you have these three things, no matter what type of loan, you're gonna be able to offset the mortgage. So I have a client who just got under contract today. He is a conventional loan, and we have an active lease agreement, we have uh first month's rent and a damage deposit, and then continuous rental, right? If somebody's in there living there, you're gonna be able to offset that mortgage. But the VA has a nice thing that when you depart your first residence, say you're a E4 and you're getting deployed or you're PCS and you don't have time to deal with this, they understand that. Like, hey, we're gonna get somebody in there eventually. We're gonna take that comparative market analysis to see what we can get for uh for rent. And that brings us to our next point: entitlement. A lot of people are wondering, like, dude, what the heck is entitlement? Uh, can you reuse it? And how does the partial entitlement work? So I'm gonna break this down pretty simple for us. So I've had clients, I just last month had a client who had three active VA loans at a time. This is kind of unique, and she had to make a down payment on her third loan. But what you really need to know with entitlement is that if you start small and you have this conversation with your real estate agent and buy something modest, you can buy another house with your VA loan. And really, the entitlement is kind of confusing how the math works. You only get$36,000 of entitlement. But the two big things I tell clients to walk away with is no, is there is no max purchase price for the VA loan. I had a client who bought over a million dollar house last year. He moved out of a million dollar house into a new million-dollar house and we closed on that same day. So he sold his first million-dollar house at 10 a.m. And then at 11 a.m. he bought another million dollar house. So the entitlement restores anytime we sell or refinance a VA loan. And your loan officer, they're going to be able to be the ones who guide you through that and pull your entitlement, your certificate of eligibility, et cetera, et cetera. You looked like you had a thought on that, Brittany.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

No, I just I you're you're totally right. And I think this is part of like being strategic too and having somebody that has like that 10% edge where they understand the different options to help build your portfolio. Um, one, it's just absolutely mind-blowing that someone can purchase a million-dollar home with a VA loan, right? Like that is an amazing benefit. And I actually was just looking at comps on a property in South Carolina recently and just saw that. And I was like, dang, you know, like that is so cool. Because I mean, we think like a million dollars is in the Southeast, a million dollars is a lot of money. That's that's a huge property. Yeah, um, so the fact that that's happening in our everyday life is is just amazing. That is something like not to take for granted. But two being able to refinance and get some of your eligibility back is just like absolutely mind-blowing. You know, it's like, okay, I got to buy this, you know, with no money down. And now that I've built a little bit of equity, I can just change the loan and then restore my entitlement and then hit play again. And we've done that on our personal properties. So we our first home that we bought in 2015, we kept it and then we ended up refinancing it. However, I do have a question and you can elaborate on this. There is a first entitlement and then a secondary entitlement. And so when we refinanced it, kept it in our name, the first entitlement still stayed with the property. So we actually went back and did a DSCR loan to get it into an LLC's name. So it was completely out of our personal name and restored the full eligibility. But can you speak to that on like if you own a property, as long as it's still in your name, that first entitlement still stays to it? Is that correct way of describing that?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yeah, that's that's a good one. And for that one, you want to be really precise with it. So that does apply that if you still own it, like up to a certain point. But this really only comes when you're like a black belt like Britney. So, like after you're having like multiple properties and you're trying to use your VA loan for the third time, then we're gonna be like, okay, like you still have this uh property in your name. So we're gonna want to get a little bit creative with uh what we do with that first property, with whether it's doing the LLC, like you just correctly pointed out, or paying off the property, because the VA loan, what we need to remember is a couple things. So, first is the VA loan is a veterans benefit program. So, unlike other loan programs, and this is something that was told by me by uh an underwriter, manager, chief credit officer guy that I really respect, is that uh other loan programs, somebody's always trying to get something out of it, right? But with the VA loan, it is a veterans benefit program where we are looking at how do we best serve this veteran. That's one. Uh that's the spirit of the guidelines, so to say. The second thing is it's designed to be a first-time home buyer program, not uh let's make a real estate portfolio. Like you can do that, and this is the best tool for it, but the VA does have some restrictions on it where, you know, we need to save this benefit for uh Lance Corporal Schmuck Telly and first lieutenant, et cetera, et cetera, so that they are, you know, we're able to use this benefit for them, not just build people huge real estate portfolios. So that's kind of why they try to cap it off after you're using it the second time if you still own the property. I I don't know if that answered the question all the way.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah, yeah. It was just that was right once again, one of the things that we learned. And and it was a natural progression. I mean, that was on our third property where it was like, hey, if you do this, because we ran into exactly what you just said about your other gal, where um we had a very tight budget. And if we were gonna go over that, we were gonna have to bring a down payment because we had fully capped on the uh entitlement, and that that would have been our third full VA loan. So we very quickly realized that we could get creative and and swap it out. Um, so yeah, but I and that was all just by buying our primary residence, like as we PCS'd. So um I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

If you get if you get to that point where you're running into that problem, you're doing something right.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Well, thank you. I'll take that as good job.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Most people, 99% of people don't even get that far. That is that is really cool that you you guys ran into that situation. That's a good problem to have. Um, so let's talk about like how much money can you really make with this? Because we talked about earlier, like, dude, can I make a lot of money if I'm only cash flowing 141 bucks right out the gate? So, first off, if you buy a house every three years, you could have seven homes, six to seven homes in 20 years. Those are gonna appreciate. We've already seen that, and a lot of people were bummed out that they weren't making as much money or that they didn't buy in before the big boom uh and interest rates dropped. But if you would have, man, you would be sitting on a lot of cash. And so if each house appreciates at 5%, you could be sitting on over$2 million in equity. So you start off with$100 to$150 uh dollars per month per property, and this could turn into, you know, an extra$300 uh by the time you're um by the time you're on to your third, fourth, fifth property. Uh the rents are gonna increase. And at the end, it is conservative that if you do this for 20 years, you could be cash flowing 4,500 bucks, and you're gonna have a bunch of different equity or a lot of equity. So you're gonna be doing pretty well. And then we can talk about cash out refinances, buying a commercial building. You're gonna be doing good.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah. And I I just want to point out like even bare men, right? Let's just say like the very simple fact$4,500 a month. My husband is a W-2 19 years in service, and this is about half of his pay a month, right? So if he were to retire, that would be about what he's making in retirement pay. So let's just say you're getting$4,500 in retirement, right? Probably a little bit of disability, and then$4,500 in cash flow, you have options, right? Like that literally replaces your salary in those three pieces. So do you have to go hop into another career? I don't know. You got choices, right? Like you don't necessarily have to just jump and go. And I think that that's like such a beautiful thing. And honestly, deserved, right? Like, I think if you are young and you've already done a 20-year career, and honestly, it's not an easy career, right? Like you guys get tossed around a lot, um, and there's a lot of hardships and up and down. Like, this is such a beautiful way to say, like, sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor for a minute, right? You know, go find something fun that you actually enjoy that's gonna bring life back to you and your community, not another nine to five that's making$250,000 a year just because I've got to keep my head above water.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

So that is beautifully said. I'm not gonna add anything to that. Uh so we talked about this a little bit more, just kind of foot stomping. Is uh there is a certain type of house, depending on what your paying grade is. And don't let starting late discourage you. If you're an E6 and you haven't bought a house yet, get in the game. Because if you can afford to buy, don't wait for rates, right? We were just talking about this with oh man, how is a war gonna affect rates? How is it gonna affect purchasing a home? If you can afford a home, buy a house. Buy a house, get into the game, or else you're gonna be that person who's looking back, oh, back in two years ago I could have bought that house for five dollars and a ham sandwich, and now it's a million dollars, right? American real estate is the safest investment out there, it's just gonna keep getting more expensive. And this is, you know, I got some thoughts on a great realtor, but I actually want to turn this over to Brittany. What are the pros and cons of choosing the right realtor, not choosing the right realtor?

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah, I I have um two big thoughts. And honestly, for most people, they would probably be annoying at first. Um, but then when you have it in your pocket, you're like, okay, this totally makes sense. Um, my first thought is that you need a realtor that is gonna be education heavy up front, and that's the annoying part. Like when I talk to buyers, we have about a two-hour buyer consultation where I am legitimately talking you through the process, all the documents and forms that you're gonna see, why everything matters. And I tell them, like, hey, I don't expect you to take this in like a sponge, but the purpose of doing that is so that you are comfortable when we actually have to execute. When I say something, you're gonna say, okay, I remember Britney said that before. It's gonna like re-trigger that, and you're not gonna feel like you're getting forced into something. So you need someone that's gonna be transparent and also educate you up front so that way you can make really good, solid decisions. And the second part is we need to work backwards, right? So when I say, you know, Sergeant Fry, how long are you gonna live in this house? What's your plan for it? Are you gonna sell it in four years? Are you gonna try to rent it out? And you're gonna look at me and say, I haven't got past tomorrow, right? Like what I have for lunch yesterday. Cool, but you honestly need to have a plan because that is how we're statute about this, right? Because if you tell me, well, you know, I've already been here for two and a half years and I don't plan on being here past four, then we need to know are we purchasing a house that one you could sell, or are you absolutely planning on renting it out and we need to purchase a house that is rentable, right? Like that you can clear the mortgage, exactly what you were just talking about. So I think if you don't have an agent that is strategizing with you about that and you are in the military, then that is not the agent for you, right? If we do not have your future in mind, we have no business helping you right now. That's not just a transaction, right? This is like your finances that we're playing with. And if we don't have a plan A and a plan B for you that we know we can execute confidently, then I haven't done my job well.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Unless you're about it.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

So I think those are like the top two things that you can look for in an agent, you know, is the transparency and education up front, no gatekeeping, and then also the end in mind, right? And someone that wants to tell you how to go forward, someone that wants you to be successful, even if, like you said earlier, it's not the information you want to hear. Even if I tell you, hey man, we need to go look at a townhome, not a four-bedroom, two and a half bath, two thousand plus square foot house. You know, but if that means you're going to be able to clear the property in two years or you're going to be able to rent it out and it is going to the cash flow on its own, then you're going to thank me in two to four years instead of being upset coming back to me saying now I'm upside down in a house that I can't get out of.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

And it's so it's so there's a few things that come out. So the first thing that comes to mind, I'm just uh before I was a loan officer, I'd like, why do I even get a real estate agent? That's money that I could just keep, you know. Why would I do this? Now, after doing several transactions, I'm such an advocate for real estate agents because I've personally felt the pain that Brittany is talking about. And just with my first house I purchased, I purchased a townhouse. I purchased a townhouse and I even got a great interest rate. I'm at 2% of that interest rate. And right now, somebody else is renting out the house, and a hundred bucks a month is how much I make barely. But say that something breaks, right? You know, then you have that expense. And I'm like, it doesn't make sense. And also, too, when we talk about appreciation, you know that a single family house appreciates five to six percent. How much does a townhouse appreciate? I'll tell you, mine is worth less than what I bought it for in 2022. So I wish that I would have learned this lesson up front, and that's what I try to encourage all my um clients with is get with a great real estate agent because you're gonna pay that price either up front or at the end if you don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Yeah, yeah. So, and also just a little um reprieve. You are you are not a lone soldier there, friend. Um, and if you can hold your property for five to 10 years, right, the cycle will repeat. So you are not at a loss, just because it feels like it at the moment, that house is going to appreciate still in the future, and you will definitely come out on top. And I think that that's also a good point to make. If um probably not with your first property, but I'll tell you once you have two or more properties, you have a little bit of leverage. So, for instance, when we refinanced one of our properties, we refinanced it so that we were barely gonna break even, like we may still have been in the negative. However, we have all of our properties in one account. So as long as the cumulative was gonna cash flow, then we were okay doing that because it was gonna build our equity faster on that particular yeah, that's another so Brittany is a black belt with red stripes, people.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

You need to definitely be talking to her about if you're planning the house hack, these are just great things that you're bringing up. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Yeah. So, anyways, take it away.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Yeah, no worries. Um, okay, so building your team. You know, if I'm dealing with a Britney, then I'm gonna say get your real estate agent first, right? Then the next thing is Britney's gonna tell you, hey, who's a great loan officer for you to work with? And then the next one is a property manager. And then you want to have a certified tax professional who can help you get all those different deductions depending on who you talk with. Uh, I love getting clients before they talk to a real estate agent because I'll refer them to a Britney, I'll refer them to another great agent in their locale. But those are your top two. They're gonna know who is good, who's who in the zoo, who's gonna set you up with your goals. And this is the team that I would do if you know I'm setting out on this journey. And, you know, let's just talk a little bit more about you know our final little checklist, right? So we we want to buy modestly, plan early, document everything. We want to understand the second and third purchase. So if you're using the VA for two and you're planning to use it for the third, like Britney, like understand what those holdbacks might be if you still own uh those two properties, uh, and just be prepared to keep lily padding and skyrocket it up. And that's my uh checklist. What do you got, Brittany? What are your part and rounds?

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that this is where continuity can be still helpful. Um, all too often you talked about that core team, and sometimes we feel like every time we move or shift, we have to recreate, we have to get find new people. And that is not necessarily the case, right? I may only be licensed in three states. However, you are licensed in how many states?

SPEAKER_01 37:44

31 in county.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Okay. So there's a pretty good chance that even if you were the loan officer on the first one, that you could be the loan officer on that second and third. Do you think they have a better chance of being successful if they come back to you and you already know their story and are familiar with what their plan is and what they're trying to accomplish?

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

So, and I think also, you know, like that's I I find that that piece tends to be extremely hard for military folks. And I don't maybe you can speak on this, but I have my own thoughts that you guys are so used to being dumped everywhere you go, right? You deploy, you get off of a plane, you show up, and you're under a new command. You go to a new base, nobody from your first base is helping you get to that next base. You show up, maybe you've got somebody that's a liaison, like helping you out get situated. Most of the time that doesn't happen. You're going to the soldier support center and saying, Hey, I'm new here. What do I do next? Right. And there's no cohesiveness. There's nobody that carries through your career the whole time and is beside you. So why would you think that anybody in life would be any different? That is all you know. And this is such a hard concept. But this core team, this is the difference, right? We can stay with you for the generation. And even if I cannot help you somewhere else, exactly what you said, right? I have my black belts in my pocket too, that I would prefer for you to go to if you're going out to Colorado or Texas, you know, or somewhere else in the country that thinks like I do and will support everything that I've already taught you and said to you, right? So I just think that this is such a huge piece where I hope that I can impress upon military folks that it is okay to lean on us for the duration. You can always call me again, even if it has nothing to do with me, I will find the right person for you. And I absolutely love the opportunity to be that conduit. Um, between agents and clients alike. I have tons of agents that call me just because they need someone that's not even in my area, but they're like, you know, you probably have a better chance of having someone than I do. And I think that's amazing. Um, and I think if we could realize that these core four people are here to protect us and that we can lean on them, then it would really support the overall outcome, but especially the loan officer piece, right? Like I tell people when they're working with me, I need you to trust me and know that I've got your back and that I'm your trusted advisor. But even more so than me, you have to feel comfortable with your loan officer because I don't go digging into all of your dirty secrets, right? Like I'm not opening old closet doors. Um you have to. So like it's just a checkbox, you know. The underwriter says, um, you have two different last names. We need a little bit of an explanation. Or all of a sudden there's a kid on your taxes one year and not the other year. What's going on with that? And that stuff triggers people greatly. So I think, like, you know, if you've got someone on your side that you trust and that you're, you know, you can just be real with and know, like, hey, Dallas knows my story. He knows that I was young and dumb and I bought a car for 25% interest and I had to pay it off, you know, and that I've rebuilt my credit, but he already knows that and he already knows how to work forward with me, then you don't have to feel like you're re-explaining your life again. You don't have to feel like you are reliving that mistake. Like it's just moving forward. And and then you have this awesome person that's supporting you behind it every step of the way.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Man, that is that is so great. And the immediate thing that comes to mind is I just had a customer who bought their third house and or got their third loan in 18 months, uh, just closed last month. And before then, they were over 50 years old, never owned a house, and they just needed that that rocket fuel there. So the question I got for you, Brittany, is how do other people get in touch with you? And you know, if we could just leave somebody with the last thing and they're like, I don't know if I should reach out to Britney. I don't know if I want to bug her. I might not even be in one of her states. Like, what are you telling people? How do they contact you?

SPEAKER_02 41:47

Yeah. So first things first, you're never bugging me. Um, you will find very quickly that I am an open book. I actually probably say way more than I probably should ever. Um it's a superpower and occurs all at the same time. Um, so always reach out to me. If you have a question and I'm not the right person, then I will find the right person for you. But you can find me at homeswithbritney.com or be for our realtor on Instagram. Um I'm on all social suites, but those are the two that I'm most predominantly on. Homes with Britney is the easiest way. That's in my email, that's in my website. Uh yeah. And also, if you're on the agent side and you're just curious or want to rack my brain, Elevate Freedom Training is my agent platform where literally like I care about the stuff so much that I want other agents, I want to duplicate me. I know that I'm not perfect, but I really feel that if there's other agents that live and breathe this way and support our military folks, that we are gonna make a huge difference in such an important community. So I appreciate you um letting me wrap your brain and give more education to all of these people that deserve to have different avenues of building generational wealth while they're serving our country.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

Man, now thank you so much for having me. Pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

How are we getting a hold of you, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Uh, text me. You can look me up, Dallas Fry Loan Officer. That's with an E, not like a French fry. Uh, I'm on Instagram, Facebook, you name it, and then vet the number two, vet v alone.com. That's my website. So uh text me and then we'll get you set up.

SPEAKER_02 43:21

Awesome. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Thanks, Brittany.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Hey, I just wanted to say thank you for being here and listening in on this episode of Closing Chapters with me. I truly enjoy putting this content together, and I hope that you enjoy it too. If so, could you like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you know that will enjoy it just as much as you did? Thank you so much.