Ed Mathews: Greetings and salutations, Real Estate Undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews here at the Real Estate Underground Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today's a really cool episode because it's something that I know a lot of, um, experienced, uh, real estate investors are, are looking at and tackling.
Ed Mathews: Joining me today is, Dave Foster. And he is The 1031 Investor and somebody that I've been following and stalking on YouTube for quite some time. So Dave, welcome to the show and thank you for joining us.
Dave Foster: Hey, thanks. It's great to be here. You know, that's, that's kind of a dubious claim to fame to be The 1031 Investor.
Dave Foster: Yeah. You better listen. There's about a million other people doing these things. Right. Right. But I'll take it. That's okay.
Ed Mathews: Yeah, sure. Why not? So, you know, one of the things that, that I found interesting in, in kind of doing the background is your, is your story and how you got to where you are. So the folks that haven't discovered you online yet, you want to, want to just fill them in on your story and, and what you're all about?
Dave Foster: You know, it, it hit me the other day that my story is really a story of failure that I get to recount from everybody out there. So they can learn from my mistakes, right? So it's been fun to watch this last real estate cycle, uh, 'cause it's not my first one, but they're all very predictable and it's so fun to watch people catch the bug for real estate invest.
Ed Mathews: Right.
Dave Foster: We were no different back in the mid 90s. My wife and I had our first child and we said, Oh my gosh, throw the TV away. How do we find more time to spend with this little creature? Um, and so we, we wanted to get off the corporate train to maximize it. Time. How could we do that? Well, like so many people over the last 10 to 12 years, let's go into real estate.
Dave Foster: It'll be easy. They said, how hard could it be? You'll make a lot of money. And they said, so I went and I bought a duplex in Denver, Colorado, fixed it up, sold it, made a ton of money. I made enough money that I have my accountants that won't even have a lot of tax. And I paid 30, 000 in tax on that. Well, that just, that yeah.
Dave Foster: Definitely put a crimp in our goal of trying to get off the corporate train that quick. Where the impact of that is, Ed, is that also that if I would have had that $30, 000 and been able to use that for my benefit, that's $3, 000 a year, basically in return I was losing. That was 30 years ago. That's a hundred thousand dollars from one transaction.
Dave Foster: So there's my screw up is I paid the tax when I didn't have to. And part of my frustration with that is what led me to find 1031 exchanges. As an accountant, I'm kind of a nerd. I read the tax code and I discovered this thing and it had just gone through a lot of a huge lawsuit and was now going to be available to regular investors, I said, Oh my gosh, this is the answer because now we can take the money we make off real estate, plus the money we don't have to pay on tax, and then we get to use that to build more and make more money off it.
Dave Foster: Compounding interest. Yeah. So over the course of 10 years and a couple other tweaks to the transactions that we can talk about, we took that starboard portfolio. We moved it from Colorado to Connecticut to Florida, ended up buying a 53 foot sailboat with tax free dollars and sailed, raised four kids on a sailboat for 10 years off of the income of a fleet of vacation rentals purchased with tax free dollars.
Ed Mathews: Wow. Phenomenal. So where in Connecticut were you? Cause that's where I'm based.
Dave Foster: Okay. We were in Stanford.
Ed Mathews: Fancy part of the story. I live in the in the, uh,
Dave Foster: We were going to sail from there, but a year or two into it, we realized that the sun don't shine at Long Island sound. Don't get warm. We said, we're out of there.
Ed Mathews: Yeah. Good for you. Good for you. And, and so. You know, obviously you're an accountant and you are, you know, talented at what you do, you know, you could have done anything. So, you know, you could have owned franchises. You could have started your own business. You could have grown your firm, you know, whatever. But why, why real estate as, as your vehicle?
Dave Foster: Real estate, I think, has the greatest opportunities in flexible. You can be active, you can be passive. If you have a certain liking for a certain niche where you live, you can invest locally, or you can invest worldwide. The sky's the limit in terms of what you invest in, whether it's residential, commercial, or rural land.
Dave Foster: I grew up as a Kansas farm boy, and we assimilated over the decades, a farm that was made up of many homesteaded farmers. From back in the 1800s, and it was that the United States government realized the power to kickstart a nation's economy, not giving people land to build on and develop. So I think all along I've kind of had real estate in my blood, but the thing that I've realized over time is that there are really just two groups of people in the world throughout all of history who have always ruled the world. Always. The banks and landowners. And I'm too lazy to start a bank.
Ed Mathews: It's too hard too. It's really hard.
Dave Foster: Uh, I like its flexibility and I like that you can come in and you can go out and it works for you.
Ed Mathews: And so, you know, when you approach, a property, you know, knowing that you're an accountant, which means most likely you're fairly, system operated, in terms of the way you run your business.
Ed Mathews: You know, how do you from an operational perspective, you know, how do you take a deal from a broker or wholesaler? Are you talking to a property owner and deciding you want to invest in it all the way through the life cycle to the point where, you know, it's now operating at peak efficiency and you are deciding, is this a property I trade up from or is it a keeper?
Ed Mathews: And so I'm curious. Yeah. I'm curious how you do that. You know, your philosophy on that.
Dave Foster: So the last part you just said, how do we know when to get out? That's kind of part two of the equation, because we're never going to go into something that's not good at the beginning, but I think there's one big calculation that I see so many investors ignore.
Dave Foster: And it is, I think the most powerful calculation. But you've got to do when you're underwriting a property and that is the internal rate of return. And the reason why nobody knows it is because they don't understand it and I get it because it's weird out of count. But if you just think that when I buy a piece of investment property, I'm not just making the difference between my expenses. And the rent, there's so much more to it.
Dave Foster: And the internal rate of return calculates all of those different aspects. So, you know, we go on these forums and we talk to people and they say, I'm making a hundred dollars of cashflow every month and we go, well, let's make sure you're doing that. Are you accounting for vacancies?
Dave Foster: Are you creating funds for expenses? What's your cap ex? Exposure. Those kinds of things. To go into it. But then we'll also say they might take the other route and say, this is horrible. I say, how do you know? Well, because it's only a hundred bucks a month. How much of the loan are your tenants paying off every month?
Dave Foster: That's part of the internal rate of return. The amortization. What about depreciation benefits that you're getting as a tax write-off? So you're paying less tax because of that. And then of course, what about appreciation? Maybe not so much. What do you think is going to come? But how has your property appreciated?
Dave Foster: And so then where do you think it's going to go from there? So I love that four pronged approach of the return rate return. And that's how we got, and I think, you know, throughout my career, it's been ever so easy to generate more than 10 percent a year on what some would say are the worst deals because I take into it back all of those things.
Dave Foster: So when I go into a good deal, though, now part two comes up. Right? How do I know when it's time to leave? And this is where the 1031 exchange can really be valuable to you because it's going to let you leave that property but take the tax with you and the profit. And so I tell, I start with by just asking the big why.
Dave Foster: What's the big why? Why are you thinking to sell? I may have to put a new roof on this, right? Well, that's looming capital expense items. Because you're not going to get any more money for a brand new roof than you are for a 10 year old, but you're going to have come out of pocket for 20 or 30, 000. So why not do the 1031 exchange?
Dave Foster: You can sell a property that's got capex. Then we can go buy new construction, or you might feel that the property you've got has kind of peaked out appreciation. How many people in Los Angeles or in Palo Alto sold because things were starting to stagnate and break? You know where they went, they followed Elon to Austin.
Dave Foster: And they bought cheap Austin dirt. Well, what they did was, they went from an area of high appreciation that was stagnating, and they bought in areas of low appreciation where they could let the market take them up. Right. So, another thing, is there a market you see that's going to become, but isn't yet?
Dave Foster: There are the, if you've ever looked at the Smoky Mountains and vacation rentals, Gatlinburg, Somerville, those places are crazy right now. Ten years ago, you couldn't find anybody wanting to take them on. Mm hmm. So, it was a market. where everybody saw the potential, people started to see the potential, but it didn’t exist yet. So they sold where they could make money they bought in the market that was gonna be but wasn't yet.
Dave Foster: We all go through what I call the life cycle of a real estate investor. You and I are both in it so much younger than me, you’re probably in a different stated of that. But we all start out with more energy money, right? So what are we going to do? Well, we're going to try to buy things where we can force appreciation by swinging a hammer by doing the things that we know. But as we start to grow as an investor, you realize that, you know, I'm kind of starting to have more money than energy.
Dave Foster: So I'm going to use what I have and then hire what I don't. So instead of using my energy to build growth, I'm going to use my money to buy the right projects where I can hire appreciation. Right. Operational leverage. Energy, so we go from active to passive. Those are all the kinds of things that can go into the why.
Dave Foster: Yeah. But what I love is that we've been able to use the temperate one to find the why, satisfy the why, but save the tax.
Ed Mathews: Right on. So, so when you look at, a market, like, you know, I think you mentioned Gatlinburg. Um, which is West Virginia, if I'm not mistaken, right?
Dave Foster: Tennessee, but they'll also
Ed Mathews: Oh, Tennessee?Well, I'm a northerner, so anything below the It's all the same area. All one place, right? Due respect to the southerners who are listening right now. The, you know, I'm curious about, you know, it's all about pattern recognition for us, right? You know, where is the real estate in the cycle that we're currently invested in?
Ed Mathews: Like you were saying, is it starting to stagnate? Has it reached a maturity level? That makes sense to, you know, move on to another appreciating market. The thing that I'm always, you know, folks ask me and, and I'm always asking, you know, folks like you, what are the patterns? What are the things, the demographics, the data that you look at?
Ed Mathews: To decide that, you know, Tennessee is a place where you should move your money, you know, and you're going to take your Palo Alto money, sell out there and, and move it 1031 exchange. And I'm going to get into the 1031 exchange thing, um, momentarily, but the, you know, I'm, I'm really curious about how you evaluate, uh, a market and determine if it's on the outcome.
Dave Foster: That is a great question. I think it's different for different sectors of real estate. If you're into residential investing, single family, multifamily, that kind of thing, there's no better thing to look at. For the population, trending demographics, where are people moving, right? Because wherever they're moving, then you're going to need places to live.
Dave Foster: Bottom line, it could also be an event that is causing a temporary shortage. Uh, the Smokies are a great example. In 20, I want to say it's 14. There was a huge fire, destroyed 80 percent of the rental stock. One of his vacation rental towns. And I had people asking me, is it done? Is it never going to come back?
Dave Foster: What's going to happen? Well, the answer is when you've got a population within three or four hours of there, of multiple millions of property, it's not going to lose its attraction as a rental destination, but there's going to be more competition or less competition for you to deal with and trying to create rentals.
Dave Foster: So it's a great chance to go buy some, I hate to think of it as ambulance chasing, but let's face it. I've rehabbed a ton of hurricane houses in Florida where the hurricane damaged them. People lost hope. They took their settlements. They walked away. But I knew that the basics of Florida are always going to be there.
Dave Foster: There's going to be sunshine, palm trees, and people that want to come in.
Ed Mathews: Absolutely. That's why I love events like that. Yeah, so you're looking, you know, obviously, the population trends are really important. Um, the other thing that I always tend to look for is the jobs, right? Uh, because, you know, and it's a couple of different factors, right?
Ed Mathews: It's not only is it what's the unemployment rate look like, but also, job diversity. Like, is it, is it an army base? Employing 90 percent of the population, or is it 15 different major corporations that are employing, you know, eight to 10 to maybe 12 percent of the population individually. Right. And so if you leave Hewlett Packard, you can go work at General Electric for instance.
Ed Mathews: And so, you know, those are definitely things that I, that I look for, you know, and, and obviously it's the other, the other things are around, can the population afford the rents that we're projecting. Right. And so I live by the three X rule minimum. And, uh, you know, so if you're paying a thousand dollars a month in rent, you, as a resident of one of our buildings, you have to make $3, 000 a month to, to cover that expense.
Ed Mathews: We don't want to set people up to fail, right. Cause you know, 2024, maybe 2025. We're looking at some version of a recession, right? And so, recessions hit, people lose their jobs and, you know, you want to make sure that, you've got, you know, residents who are going to be solid and, and capable of weathering whatever storms come in our way.
Ed Mathews: All right. So 1031 exchanges. So I want you to walk me through the mechanics of it as if I'm a fifth grader. All right. Explain it to me. I, I, I've done one in my life and it was actually phenomenally successful, but, I know that it's still kind of a rare, it's a rare thing, particularly here in the Northeast, for whatever reason, I don't know a lot of investors who take advantage of them.
Ed Mathews: So, but they should. And so that's one of the reasons why I wanted to meet you today or have you on the show. So can you step us through the process that you take a property through when you decide, okay, it's time to trade up. What do you do?
Dave Foster: Sure. Well, the nice thing is that for you, the investor, you don't do anything different than you normally would.
Dave Foster: You answer the why question and you decide it's time to sell this property. So you're going to use all of your regular professionals. You'll hire whoever it is to fix the property up, get it ready. You'll hire a realtor to list it and market it. You'll get the property under contract and in the Northeast, it's going to go to a real estate attorney for closing of escrow.
Dave Foster: For most of the country, they use title companies, same difference. It's whoever's going to close escrow. Yeah. It is right at that point in time that you'll start to see the temporary. Because the IRS does not let you do it yourself. You have to use the services of unrelated third party called the qualified intermediary.
Dave Foster: They cannot do anything for you other than just the administration of the 1031 exchange. So I'm kind of like Switzerland. I'm everybody's buddy, because all I'm going to do is the 1031. So a realtor doesn't fear me. Title company attorney don't fear. We're just part of the process that's there, but we document a 1031 exchange on the settlement statements for both the sale and the purchase.
Dave Foster: And then we have to hold the proceeds. And that's the most critical thing that will destroy a 1031 exchange, right? Because the IRS says you cannot. Touch the money. If you touch it, you can't exchange your gun. So the 1031 starts with the closing of the sale. Now, all you've done is what you normally would have done.
Dave Foster: And then you signed a few more pieces of paper, but that starts the clock on identification period and your exchange period. From that date, you have 45 more days to identify your potential replacement. You have a total of 180 days. to close on that. But those first 45 are oh so critical because once day 45 passes, you can't change the list anymore.
Dave Foster: So if you negotiate on a property, you name it, and you can't get it under contract, but you're past day 45, I actually had a client this year who went back and negotiated on it. Three different purchases that he lost out on. Oh, okay. He paid the people who ended up getting them more money just for the right to buy them.
Ed Mathews: Yeah. You know, spend an extra 50 grand so you don't get whacked with 150 grand in taxes. Right. Yeah. Oof.
Dave Foster: I mean, that's a nasty, nasty day. Yeah. There's no way to make that day feel good. Yeah. But time, time tends to heal all.
Ed Mathews: So exactly. So keep going.
Dave Foster: Yeah. So. You find the property and once you get it under contract, I tell people, don't think of the identification period as a period to simply identify.
Dave Foster: Think of that as an, Oh my gosh, I've got to have my property under contract because that's how you're going to start to mitigate risk. Right. And as a matter of fact, a quick hack for everybody, you can be under contract for your new property before your old property closes.
Ed Mathews: So I've heard about this, that, you know, the, the, the advice I was given was exactly that is, you know, if you're going to execute a 1031, uh, you are highly advised to already have identified the property you want to buy before you sell.
Dave Foster: Yeah, I, of course, it's a little bit depends on what kind of market you're in. Sure. And I tell people, let the market speak to you and you tell me what's the hardest thing you're going to have to do. Do that first. So right now we're still in a seller's market and it's tough to find good properties. So do the hard thing first, go find your new property, get it under contract, then sell your old property.
Dave Foster: Man, it wasn't but two or three years ago where I had California sellers who would literally get their old property under contract before they even list, I mean their new property, under contract before they even list their old property. It would sell for a cash plus offer in two days and we'd close their purchase in a week.
Dave Foster: Well. The market's going to change when it becomes easier to buy than to sell. Take care of the hard thing first. Get your old property under contract, then start looking for your new property.
Ed Mathews: Makes sense.
Dave Foster: Either way, you're condensing the timeframes. And that has an added benefit of decreasing the amount of time you're without cash.
Ed Mathews: Because that clock is ticking. So one of the other things you said is actually a question I have around, the way you handle the transaction from a financial perspective. So when you, let's, I'm going to, I'm going to use a real world example. You have a building that has appreciated by half a million bucks over the course of, I don't know, let's say, 10 years and you go to sell that and so you're going to pocket just for mathematics simplicity that half a million dollars.
Ed Mathews: You would like to take that money and 1031 exchange some, not all. And I'm curious if that's possible. In other words, I have a four family and in here in Connecticut that I owe about 95, 000 on. I sell my big honkin 10 unit apartment [building for a million bucks. I make half a million dollars. I take a hundred grand and I pay off my, my existing four family.
Ed Mathews: And I take the other 400 grand and I 1031 exchange it. Can you do that?
Dave Foster: Beautiful example. So the reinvestment requirements are twofold. You must, if you want to defer all tax purchase, at least as much as your net sale, in your case, that would be a million. Uh, you do get a deduct closing costs of that kind of thing, right?
Dave Foster: And you're basically, you have to buy at least a million dollars in real estate. You have to also use all of the proceeds from a sale to do that. So as part of the sale, you pay off a hundred thousand dollars alone. You're left with. 900, 000 and the need to purchase at least a million dollars in real estate to do that.
Dave Foster: Now, you don't have to take out the same loan. You could simply add your own 100, 000. It doesn't matter. Okay. As long as you do those two things, you'll be for all tax. So before we get to the real cool thing, it's important to understand that you can allocate those proceeds any way you want. So you could take that 900, 000.
Dave Foster: You could turn that into two, I'm sorry, 100, 000. Yeah, 900, 000, you could turn that into three or four, 500, 000 duplexes using your proceeds right as long as you purchased at least as much as you sold, as long as you used all the proceeds. And one of the things that I'm counseling some of my investors to do now as a edge against recession and the nasty interest rates we've got right now, which by the way, you really weren't all that nasty,
Ed Mathews: but really not. I mean, historically they're right on par.
Dave Foster: Exactly. Is to say, take 700, 000 of that, go buy a property for cash, then take the other three, 200, 000 and use that as a down payment. So that at the end of the day, did you purchase at least a million? Yep. Did you use all 900, 000 in cash? Yep, but now you have one property free and clear.
Dave Foster: Right. It's that basically out of risk. All you gotta do is keep the lights on. Yeah. And the other property you use to make up that deficit and debt. So that can be a great little tool to do what I call diversify or expand your. Now, here's another thing that you could do, and this leads into your specific question.
Dave Foster: This was what we just talked about was in order to defer all tax. But if you've got a 500, 000 gain, let's say you're tired of debt. I just don't want it anymore. So instead of buying a million, I'm only going to buy 900, 000. Mm hmm. When you do that, you could use 900, 000 in cash, no debt. Oh, you will pay tax only on the difference between what you sold and what you purchased.
Dave Foster: So in your case, you have a 500, 000 total gain. So you would pay tax on that 100, 000 difference. You're still sheltering the tax on the other 400, 000. And in your case with depreciation and everything, that's between 80, 000 and 150, 000, but you're still sheltering, but you turned a property with some debt in debt.
Ed Mathews: Smart. That's, that's brilliant. Um, okay. So you, I heard you say, that there's a really cool thing that you want to talk about. So I'm going to add, let's go there next.
Dave Foster: Well, that was just a, we were talking about the recession of your portfolio, flipping and flexing, because remember that life cycle we talked about typically.
Dave Foster: The most common investor demographic that I run into is what I call the accidental investor, right? They had no intention of it, but they were two people in their careers who each owned a house and they got married. Voila, they're now investors. And a few years go by and they think, wow, that's been kind of nice getting that cashflow.
Dave Foster: Right. Why don't we sell that property to the 1031 exchange, but instead of buying one, we're going to buy two because when I buy two, I get twice the cash flow. Or in many cases, if I'm selling an expensive asset and buying two cheaper assets, I'll generate more dollars per square foot because I might be able to rent say on a hundred thousand dollar property for a thousand bucks a month, but a 200, 000 property.
Dave Foster: Only generates 1, 800. Well, why not sell the 200, 000, buy 200, 000, and up my cash flow by 400 a month. I dare you. So that's what I call diversifying.
Ed Mathews: Right on.
Dave Foster: As you start to get tired, you start to sell five properties at a time and use them to buy one more expensive property. One of the multifamilies like you're, like you're moving into.
Dave Foster: Sell two or three duplexes. Time it so you can combine them into a larger duplex. It's beautiful. And then you turn that into even more passive and things like Delaware statutory trusts, wholly managed rentals, triple net commercial properties, all these kinds of things that satisfy you where you're at the real estate cycle.
Ed Mathews: Very nice. So we are coming up on the clock here. So I want to get to a section that I affectionately call because I am a college basketball nut bar. I call it the final four. So there's four questions I'm going to ask you. And, they aren't that hard, but I'm always interested in how, you know, accomplished real estate executives and investors, uh, think about these things.
Dave Foster: So before you start those questions because you're a basketball guy, I'm going to give you the answers right now. Okay. They are the Final Four, K State, K State, K State, and who cares? What you got for me?
Ed Mathews: Uh, I would like to debate that because I'm a Villanova fan, but you know, they had a down season. So I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold on.
Ed Mathews: You guys had a run last year. So, all right. So, you know, obviously one of the things that we're always, that I'm always mindful of is that I've, I've been blessed with, uh, mentors and friends who have kind of thrown an arm around me and, and given me, you know, shown me the, uh, you know, the 19 ways I'm screwing up or, and more, most importantly, how to fix them.
Ed Mathews: And so, you know, I'm curious about your mentors, uh, your coaches, you know, the folks that, you've trusted over the years. You know, who gave you the best advice you ever got and what was it?
Dave Foster: From a strictly real estate perspective? Lemme throw a name out, recognizing Carlton Sheets.
Ed Mathews: First program I ever bought my entire life at three o'clock in the morning. Absolutely.
Dave Foster: What I loved about what Carlton taught was that he taught you to do the work and you to keep an eye you know remember originally it was always like invest within 15 minutes of your house right because nobody's going to watch your nest like you [00:24:00] will right now and remember Warren Buffett actually took that a step further by saying, everybody says, don't keep your eggs in one basket.
Dave Foster: I say, keep them in one basket and watch that basket very well. So Carlton was a great early influence. Uh, although, you know, sometimes you don't want to let people know that there was a guru in my life, but that's okay. I hired an accountant 35 years ago. His name's Andy. So he's affectionately known as Andy.
Dave Foster: Turbo Andy, and he has walked with me through every step of my real estate journey. I have an account, but I don't do my own taxes because I don't want to have a fool for a client. And Turbo Andy's best piece of advice, first year I hired him, he goes, Dave, I see what you're all doing, but you got to stop and start paying yourself first, deal with the rest later.
Ed Mathews: Good advice. It's something that, uh, frankly, I learned the hard way, pretty early on in my full-time career. And I'm, I'm glad some, you know, one of my mentors, Charles Dobbins, told me the same thing. And, uh, you know, it's, uh, thankfully I've now corrected that problem. So the other thing that, uh, that I'm always curious about is, you know, leaders, business leaders, civic leaders, whatever, they, you know, they tend to be readers, right.
Ed Mathews: And these days consuming information, you know, between podcasts and books and audible books and, you know, conferences and YouTube and all that. I'm curious, you know, who are the authors or creators that you're paying attention to these days and how are you, how do you consume information?
Dave Foster: I'm still a reader myself because I'm probably because I'm slow, but that's okay.
Dave Foster: I like to highlight things and come back to them.
Ed Mathews: You're an active reader.
Dave Foster: Yeah, it's so hard to listen to a podcast and scroll back up. So hi, I am a reader. I read the Proverbs once a month. There's 31 chapters in Proverbs. Most months there's 31 days. There is more business wisdom inside there than has ever been printed in the world of man.
Dave Foster: And I, it's, so I love this, the properties of this. Richard Marbury wrote what I think is the best primer on inflation and its impacts on business, business development, and real estate. And it's called Whatever Happened to Penny Candy and you'll like it because it's written in the fifth grade. So I understood it.
Dave Foster: And I mean, it's actually, it's just such an awesome three years on inflation followed up by The Clipper Ship Strategy again by Richard Marbury. Most people don't realize this, but vast fortunes were made during the clippership time. It only lasted less than two years. How could that much money have been generated in two years?
Dave Foster: And so it's the impact on incubation on being in the right spot at the right time and how to identify those developing opportunities. Massive stuff. The Richest Man in Babylon. Yeah. Excellent. It's a fun little book, but there's wisdom in that. And what I found, you're really speaking my language area. If I can put an encouragement out to your listeners, folks, nobody is teaching this stuff.
Dave Foster: To our children, right? So coming out of high school, they don't know how to write checks, let alone evaluate a business. And the most rewarding thing I've done this year is I've got a group of young men, all 17, and we get together weekly and I'm teaching them. How to do financial calculations. I'm teaching them what it means to be a businessman with ethics and more how to look after others first while looking out for yourself.
Dave Foster: And we're using The Richest Man in Babylon to teach them timeless principles about avoiding bad debt, knowing what you invest in, making sure that your residence is an investment, saving money for yourself. There's a whole generation of young people that need this. If you've got a way, find a way to teach to those kids.
Dave Foster: We'll benefit in our retirement. Instead of pulling the plug on us, it'll give us a few more years.
Ed Mathews: All these books will be in the show notes. So if, if folks, uh, cause I wasn't familiar with Richard Marbury, so I'm looking forward to putting him on my reading list. So let me ask you the third, third of the final four, if you had to do it all over again, What would you do differently?
Dave Foster: I actually answered this. He got a lot of kudos here today. Marry my wife soon.
Ed Mathews: Excellent. You're talking to a guy who dated his wife for eight years, but we were babies when we met.
Dave Foster: So, uh, you know, really the only thing purely from a business perspective. Yeah. I would have started buying real estate. Okay.
Dave Foster: It is a long game game. Yeah. Yeah.
Ed Mathews: I mean, I I'm 54 and I, I bought my first property when I was 41 and gosh, I wish I had started it when I was 21. So I so hard wholeheartedly agree with that Okay, and now the hardest of the final four questions. We're not talking about real estate. What else do you like to do for fun?
Dave Foster: Oh, I'm a sailor. I'm a fisherman and I am a road trip guy. Yeah, I will jump in my truck and I'll drive as a matter of fact, I drove from here in St. Petersburg to Colorado And I just thought, you know, I haven't seen Texas in a while. Let's go through there and lo and behold, somewhere outside San Antonio on my Spotify playlist, a song by the Doobie Brothers game on called China Grove.
Dave Foster: You know that song?
Ed Mathews: I do know that song. Yeah.
Dave Foster: Guess what? The first line is what? There's a sleepy little town down around San Antonio. Yep. I turned off the freeway and found it. Oh, that's what I like to do.
Ed Mathews: Oh, that's fun. That's fun. All right. Yeah, no, I'm a, uh, child of the seventies. My father was, is a huge, uh, record, uh, collector.
Ed Mathews: So had all the Doobie brothers and shoof. Yeah, I mean, the stack of, stack of vinyl in our house is taller than I am today. So, uh, and I'm six four, so it was a lot. All right. So, so Dave, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I've learned a lot and I really do appreciate you bringing your wisdom and your big honking brain to this, to the show and to our audience.
Ed Mathews: If people want to learn more about you or your business or, you know, anything else, um, related to your operation, um, you know, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Dave Foster: So early on, we recognized. Like you said, there's, this is such a little known thing, even though it's so powerful that we created our whole presence based on education, because I figure if I can educate people to see the power, I'm going to have to look for business, right?
Dave Foster: So we created an educational website called the 1031 investor. And if you go to the 1031investor.com, there's like a 40 part YouTube series. It breaks this down into different topics. We've got calculators. calendars where you can talk directly to us and bring your situation in there. And it's, it's a great site.
Dave Foster: So the 1031investor. com. And then I think your copy must still be in the mail, but it's coming. I promise.
Ed Mathews: I look forward to…
Dave Foster: I’ll make sure. Lifetime tax free wealth, the real estate investors guide to the 1031 exchange. I think I thought I was writing a how to manual. As it turns out, though, it's more about how to achieve your dream based on your situation than it is simply about how to do temporary life changes.
Dave Foster: And we bring a lot of case studies to bear, including our story, so that wherever you're at, you'll maybe get some inspiration on, if I just do this, I'll benefit.
Ed Mathews: Oh, that's fantastic and incredibly generous. And I can't wait to read your book. So, uh, Dave Foster, uh, thank you so much for your time today. Uh, the, uh, 1031 investor, I highly recommend you go to the website and check him out.
Ed Mathews: And, uh, by the way, uh, he's also on YouTube and I've been watching him for quite some time and I'm a whole lot smarter since I started watching his YouTube videos. So I suggest you go there as well. Uh, Dave, thanks again.
Dave Foster: Thank you. Great to be with you.