Welcome everyone. I am so glad you are here for our noon central masterclass. What is your real estate investing plan for 2026? I'm Dr. Elaine Stogeber. I'm excited to host you today and jam-pack as much value as I can so that you leave this session with a lot more clarity about how to proceed in your real estate investing decision and how to have a plan that feels aligned for you. I am a big believer, I always have been, that real estate should support your real life. You don't want to go into real estate investing and do things that detract from your real life. If you're not interested in creating a second job, you may not want to do active investing. If you can't stand the thought of a maintenance ticket or dealing with a resident, you may not want to self-manage. If you don't want to deal with a certain amount of risk, that may help you determine what types of investments you choose to do or not to do. Real estate and real life go so closely together. And then the opposite is true as well: that because we're practicing such big decision making in real estate, we're having to analyze complex data, we're having to make moves, we're often having to do things that are new to us or maybe even a little bit scary. We're talking about money, which brings up a lot of feelings for people. I genuinely believe that making decisions in real estate enhances your real life because you're then able to carry over that decision-making capacity. So today we are talking about real estate, real life, how to bring together these two very important concepts, and then giving you some clarity so that you have a plan that's customized to you. Welcome, welcome, welcome to everyone who is joining us live or catching this on the replay. Hi, Carl, hi Kula. Thanks for saying hello, Jenny, Daniel, Arun, Louise, so many names I recognize and names that are new to us. So whether you're an old friend or new, welcome to today's masterclass. Rachel, my director of communications, is here in the chat. She will answer any questions that are coming up. Many of you know and love Rachel. And for those of you that are new, Rachel is my right-hand woman. She helps me with all things in terms of getting our webinars ready, making sure the recordings and the emails go out, communicating with people, answering questions. And so she is here for you while I take care of our live presentation. We're gonna go ahead and jump right into the presentation. Rachel will share for you the real estate investing decision guide PDF. She'll pop that into the chat here, or if you're listening to this in the replay, you'll be able to click on the link to grab that. You don't need to have that up right this second, but we will go over it a little bit later in the presentation. And it's a great resource for you to take away so that you can take notes on it, go through it at a later time, go through it with whoever is important in your life. And it's a tool that you'll come back to over and over and over. It's not a one-and-done type of tool, and you'll see what I mean as we get into that. Let's go ahead and get started with our presentation today. What is your real estate investing plan for 2026 real estate real life? As I mentioned, I'm Dr. Elaine Stageberg. Our usual disclaimer, you can consider today's session to be for education and informational purposes only. Neither myself or Black Swan Real Estate or any of our related entities give investing advice. Everything in investing does have risk, including the potential for partial or full loss of capital. You may hear me mention some of the offerings that we have available at Black Swan. Those are available to accredited investors only. Before you make any investment decision with anyone, make sure you're consulting your trusted advisors, such as your attorneys, CPAs, reading the full documentation. That's our usual disclaimer. Let's jump into the fun stuff. The first thing we want to do with anything in our lives, real estate, real life, related to money, not related to money, is we always want to start with the end in mind. This concept comes from the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey, who has had a huge influence on my way of thinking over the past many decades. We always want to start with the end in mind. And you're going to see that modeled again later when we pull out the real estate investing decision tree. So, in terms of what we're covering today, I want to equip you with a very clear framework. The real estate investing decision tree is literally a tree. It's a series of if-then questions and scenarios that you can walk through that starts from the outcome. But what is the outcome of what we're covering here today in this hour together? That is the concept that most people do not have a real estate problem. There are innumerable real estate investing options out there. Anyone listening on this call could literally make a real estate investing decision by the time you're done with the call. It's not a lack of options, it's a decision problem. There are too many options out there. There are too many opinions out there. People can get stuck in analysis paralysis. People can go into shiny object syndrome or squirrel syndrome. People can second guess themselves because they don't have enough clarity. They might feel really committed to say, launching a short-term rental, self-managing it, doing so for the short-term rental loophole tax advantages. And then a friend over here, a well-meaning friend, says, I'm going to do this passive investment. And then they go all into a spiral of, Am I making the best decision? Should I also be doing passive investing? Should I ditch my short-term rental plan? And my hope for you is that by the end of this time together, we have really diminished any fears you may have around making the wrong move because you'll see that real estate should be personalized to your real life. Let me say that again. Real estate should be personalized to your real life. What's right for one person may or may not be right for another person. What's right for you right now may or may not be right for you next quarter, next year, next decade. And so when we start with the end in mind, you're then able to move backwards to the decision that you make at the time that you're making your real estate investing decision so that it best supports the outcome that you're looking for. And these are some of the challenges that people have: too many options, too many opinions, not enough clarity, fear of making the wrong move, and not making decisions that are personalized to your real life. And my plan for our time here together is that we provide you with considerable clarity on each of these concerns that come up for people. By way of introduction, because lots of you are new to us, there's many names here that I don't recognize today. So welcome. I'm Dr. Elaine Stoggeberg. I'm often accompanied by my husband, Nick Stockeberg. He and I together founded and have operated Black Swan Real Estate for the last 15 years, and also our sister property management company, Black Swan Living. Here's some pictures here of us together and our family. We've been married for 15 years. We started investing as soon as we got married. We have five, almost six children. I'll be having our sixth child early this spring. And we have built our real estate portfolio while building our real life. We started investing even before I started medical school, have invested across two different states that we've lived in, have had all of our children since we started investing. And then all of the bumps and bruises and ups and downs and funds and challenges that come from 15 years of living, not just our own lives, but the economy, the cycles, geopolitical things. And that is the context that I bring into offering this framework to all of you that I've taken 15 years of real estate investing experience all the way back to our very first single-family home. We've done single-family homes, we've actively managed them. We have a property management company. We've done short-term, we've done long-term, we've done local investing, we've done remote investing, we've done single-family homes, we've done$40 million, 288-unit communities. We've done almost the entire spectrum of everything that we'll discuss today. And so I speak from lived experience, this concept that I'm going to present to you of for this dollar in this moment. And that's going to make sense as we open the real estate investing decision tree in a couple of slides here. But as we go through that framework, I'm speaking to you from real experience that even in my own real estate journey in real life, it's not as though I've just done the same thing over and over and over and over again for 15 years. I am a big believer in becoming an expert and having market dominance and getting some muscle memory, but I'm also a believer in flexing as your life changes, as the market changes. And that comes from lived experience in my real estate portfolio. A couple of stats for the real estate portfolio for those of you who are new to us. We have about 450 million of assets under management through Black Swan Real Estate and our sister property management company, Black Swan Living. We've done that through working with passive investors. We've raised about 115 million of capital from over 700 passive investors, many of whom are physicians like myself, and many of whom are not. The offering that we have available right now is called the Secure Freedom Fund. We won't necessarily be talking much about that today, but if you're looking for a passive investment, I'd encourage you to take a look at securefreedomfund.com and see what we have going on in terms of what we're offering. We also have a real estate sales team. We've done about a quarter of a billion of real estate sales representing homeowners, investors, and again, spanning that whole spectrum from single-family homes to large multifamily communities. We've done some ground-up construction, about 50 million. And then as I mentioned, we've been married for 15 years. We have five children, and I trained as a psychiatrist. And I think it's that training in psychiatry. So that training in psychiatry was happening at the same time that I was building our real estate portfolio, at the same time that I was building our marriage and our adult life and our family. And bringing all of that together is really what I'm trying to capture in this presentation today, so that you leave with a clear framework of how you too can have what you want in your real life and what you want in your real estate portfolio in a way that's synergistic, that supports both sides of that coin, and one is not detracting from the other. Let's take a look at the economic clock. So if you're listening podcast style or you're away from your computer right now, this would be a great time to just pop your eye on this slide. I'm gonna go over it verbally, but it can be really helpful to see it as well. The idea of the economic clock is core to investing. You can see that in summer there's rising real estate prices. Things are good in summer. The period through, say, 2021 and 2022 was a summer period. And then after that, the economy moves into rising interest rates. That's the role of the Federal Reserve of central banks to modulate inflation and job growth by lowering and raising interest rates. So after prices go up, after there's inflation, the next step is rising interest rates. And then that leads to a fall period where there's falling commodity prices, tighter money. That's what we've seen over the last couple of years, through say late 2022 when interest rates started going up, certainly through 2023. And then there's winter. That's the experience of falling real estate prices, of more concern in the economy, capital might be lost, deals really struggle. That's what the real estate economy has been in through, say late 2023, 2024, 2025. And then we're merging into spring. So interest rates came down a few notches over the last several Federal Reserve meetings, starting to see some movement in some markets, starting to see buyers coming back into the market. And then we'll go back into that summer period, likely through 2026 and into 2027. None of this is exactly guaranteed to move in lockstep. There's so many other factors that go into this in terms of geopolitical stability or instability, energy prices, what's going on in current events, what's going on in the common consciousness, not just in our country, but in the entire global economy. But in general, the economy follows very predictable overall cycles. And understanding this economic clock really helps you to get some sense of what's happening in the market, and then how would you make decisions based on that and align the decisions that you make with what's happening in the market. And then it goes a step further that what's happening in your specific market might be very different than what's happening in a market in a different state. So, for example, in the Midwest, rental rates have stayed very strong over the last several years, whereas in the Sun Belt, because there's been a lot of supply, rental rates have declined. And then also what's happening in micro markets. So how, say, single-family homes behave is a little bit different than how multifamily behaves. They're cousins to each other, but they're not twins. So they behave similarly, but not exactly the same. And this kind of gives you an overall framework to work with as you're thinking about what's happening in the real estate market. And then we're going to layer on what's happening in your real life and work through that real estate investing decision tree so that you have clarity for that phrase that we're going to say over and over and over again for this dollar in this moment. Here are some things that I might offer to you in terms of strategy. Again, this isn't investment advice, but this is my interpretation of what's happening in the real estate market and what's guiding my decision making at Black Swan. I believe that spring is right around the corner. We have been in late winter for probably six plus months. Interest rates have nudged down just a little bit. The Federal Reserve was signaling that there would be more interest rate decline in 2026. That's a little up in the air now because of what's happening in the Middle East. But nevertheless, more buyers are interested in acquiring real estate. Markets are seeing a little more movement than in the last couple of years. There's opportunity in the market, and there's also uncertainty. And those two things to some extent are just always true, right? Even in say summer, when there's tons of opportunity around, there's some uncertainty of should I be so competitive in my offers here? And if there's 20 offers at the table, how aggressive should I be? So there's always opportunity and uncertainty kind of hand in hand, they're levers with each other, that sometimes there's more opportunity and less uncertainty, and other times there's more uncertainty and fewer opportunities. But the two always coexist. And spring is a time where we see that there's escalating amounts of opportunity and declining amounts of uncertainty as it becomes more obvious that the market is moving into summer. A core principle, no matter the season, no matter what's happening in the market or in your real life, is don't go what's called pencils down. That means that someone might be tempted to say, I don't have time right now, or I'm worried about the economy, or I'm worried about the market, so I'm just gonna stop looking at deals. And the problem there is then you lose your touch, right? You lose your understanding of the market. And it can take a long time to get yourself back up to speed. And you may even then accidentally make a decision that's not based on the best data because you have a gap in your knowledge, right? You may be making a decision based on data that's say three, six, or 12 months old because you've been pencils down for a while. So strong encouragement to not go pencils down. You want to continue to look at opportunities. By working through the real estate investing decision tree, you'll have some clarity of the types of opportunities that you want to hone in on. You don't need to look at every market and every asset class and every investment opportunity that's out there. You want to hone in on the certain type of overall investment that's most gonna support your real life for this dollar in this moment, but continue to stay active cognitively in the market, talking with people, talking to fellow investors, coming to educational sessions like this, attending conferences, being very engaged, so that when you see an opportunity, you know that it's a real opportunity because you've stayed very fresh with your knowledge. And then remember that what works for one investor may or may not work for another investor. And also what works for you in one moment of your life may or may not work for you at a different moment of your life. And then the old adage, of course, holds true that time in the market beats timing the market. Time in the market beats timing the market. Time and time again, whether we're talking about real estate or even something as simple as stocks and bonds, those that believe they can time the market and kind of enter and exit the market based on what's happening in the overall economy generally do much worse than those who stay in the market over a long period of time, keep their head clear, keep themselves level-headed, manage any sort of uncertainty that they have that's coming up, and stay time in the market. So that's a big central theme that you'll hear from me and from many others. Let's talk just a little bit about what we're doing in the market. Again, this isn't investment advice. I just want to give you some sense of how I'm interpreting for Black Swan what it means for this dollar in this moment. And then we're gonna jump into personalizing this to your specific experience, to your real life by bringing out the real estate investing decision tree. So, what are we doing? Because we believe that it's spring, we are growing. In 2025, we raised$35 million of capital in the Secure Freedom Fund and placed that into about$100 million of acquisitions. We've been greedy where others are fearful. That's a quote that comes from Warren Buffett. Be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy. So it's spring right now, in my belief, and yet that's a time when people can feel some uncertainty. And you can think of uncertainty as fear, as two very, very, very similar feelings. And that might be a nudge from you, right? From Warren himself, to say, hmm, maybe that's a time to be active in the market. And we'll go through the real estate investing decision tree and you can see what type of investments might be most interesting for you. What we've been doing is buying more multifamily than ever. So we've had about$100 million of acquisitions in 2025. We have two acquisitions lined up already for this year. Nick is actually touring three additional acquisitions today, which is why he's not joining us live, but he gives everyone his regard. But that's that speaks to how active we are in the market right now over the last year and what we're planning for 2026. If you haven't already grabbed the real estate investing decision tree from either the Zoom chat if you're here with us live, or from the link if you're listening to this on the replay, go ahead and grab that now. I'm gonna go over it verbally so you don't have to have it visually in front of you, but it can be really helpful. And I also encourage you to save it, add it to your files, print it, make this a working document that you use to decide what's next for you in 2026, but that you also keep stored away because what comes up for you in 2027 may be completely different. What comes up for you five years from now may be completely different. And I want you to have this framework that you can go back to it. And instead of feeling like your thoughts are all jumbled up, or again, you're in analysis paralysis, or squirrel syndrome, or shiny object syndrome, or feeling like you're ready to make a decision, but then you see someone else making a different decision, right? These are all things that I've seen dozens of investors experience. I talk with investors almost every single day on the phone, email with our current investors at conferences, at our own conference that we host, real estate real life here in Rochester. These are the patterns that I see. And so I created the real estate investing decision tree a couple of years ago to help people have a nice, clear container to walk through basically if-then statements, first focusing on the outcome. Remember, we first start with the end in mind, and then ending with a clear kind of throwing a dart, and you're hitting the bullseye that works best for your life. Here are the grounding core high-quality questions. This is on the first couple of pages of the real estate investing decision tree. If you're here with us live listening to the replay, if you're able to grab a pen and paper and write some things down, that's how you'll get the most out of our time here together. If you're at a place where you're driving or focusing on something else, at least go through these exercises mentally and then go back to the PDF at a time when you have a little more focus and can answer these four quick questions. I believe these are the four most important questions when anyone is making a real estate investing decision. And I really believe that we can distill it down to be that simple. Four questions. Four questions captures all of the variables, all of the feelings, all of the what-ifs, or yeah buts, or how do I incorporate this? So what are these four questions? The first one, how many dollars do I have to invest right now? You might have a very clear number, you might have that liquidity in your bank account, you might have a range. That is the first question to ask yourself. How many dollars do I have to invest right now? Write that number down, write that range down. That helps you decide. If you're considering, say, a passive investment and the minimum investment is$200,000 and you have$50,000, you can cross that investment off the list at least for right now. You might choose to save for that investment in the future. But that's a core thing to think about. If you're trying to acquire a piece of property, maybe a single family home, maybe you want to long-term rent it or short-term rent it, it's$500,000. You need 20% for the down payment, you need$100,000, you have$200,000 available to invest. Well, good. You can check the box that you have enough dollars to invest in that particular investment. So how many dollars do I have to invest right now? Next question is how much time do I have to invest right now? How much time do I have to invest? Active investing is gonna take a lot more time than passive investing. Under the overarching umbrella of active investing, actively self-managing is gonna take more time than third-party management. Doing a renovation is gonna take more time than buying something and simply getting it to rent, whether that's long-term or short term. So thinking about how much time do you have to invest? Your capital and your time together are the two most important ingredients and what you overall have to invest to create the outcome that you're looking for. So, how many dollars do I have to invest right now, and how much time do I have to invest right now? The next most important question, this is probably the most important question. In some ways, this goes up toward the top, is what is my desired impact? What is the outcome I am seeking? Examples might include maximizing cash flow, building lifetime wealth. Sometimes those two are a little opposite of each other. One is not better than the other. It's just what do you want in your real life at this moment? Generating tax advantages often ends up on people's lists. And remember that for each option, there's no this is right. It's more there will be trade-offs amongst those outcomes. And it really matters what's most important to you. So let's give a couple really simple, kind of stereotypical examples. If someone is, say, younger in their earning career, maybe they don't have a lot of expenses or dependence yet, and they are thinking of an investment, they may consider an investment that's maybe a smaller amount of money, because maybe that's all they've saved up so far. Maybe they have a lot of time to invest. They might be thinking, I want to buy a home in my own neighborhood and do some sweat equity renovations myself. And I'm mostly focused on building lifetime wealth. I'm still working, I don't have a lot of expenses. So I can sacrifice maybe some short-term cash flow in exchange for the highest amount of forced appreciation or market appreciation over a long-term hold. One kind of stereotypical example we might work through. Kind of conversely, we might think of someone who's a little later in their earning career. Maybe they're starting to think about cutting back or leaving work altogether. Maybe their expenses are a little bit higher. They're starting to think about how they want to replace their active income so that they can go into that semi or full retirement. And they're maybe a little more risk-averse. As they get a little older, they realize they don't have as many years to weather the economic cycles and ups and downs. So they may have more dollars to invest because they've saved up over the years. Maybe their net worth and their liquidity is higher. They maybe have less time to invest, even if they have more free time, maybe they're cutting back at work. They don't want to spend time actively managing a real estate portfolio. They want to make some key informed decisions and then let other people do the heavy lifting. And their outcome may be maximizing cash flow because they're looking for a way to supplement cash into their bank account so that they can cut back at work. And tax advantages may be more important to them because their overall income is higher. So they want to minimize that tax burden as much as possible. Those are two kind of very different personas, and you can even see how it could be the same person, right? It could be the exact same person, but across their lifespan. And then you fit in somewhere in that spectrum and you ebb and flow based on how many dollars you have, how much time you have, and what your desired impact. You start with the end in mind. What is the outcome that you are seeking? And then a really important question that we always have to go back to is how would this particular investment impact my financial plan, but also my freedom and legacy? I believe that the whole point of real estate investing is to support the lives that we want to create. If real estate investing causes someone a bunch of headaches and stomach aches and lost sleep, and they're spending way more time on it than they intend to, and they feel like they have less freedom, not more, then it hasn't supported their freedom and legacy. Maybe it's really working financially, but it's really causing a big ding in their life. Any particular investment that you're thinking about entering into should support not just your financial plan, but also your freedom and legacy. And that leads us to this really critical concept. If you remember one thing from our time here together, remember this phrase. I believe that this phrase exponentially increases the amount of clarity that any investor listening, no matter what your life circumstances, exponentially will increase your clarity for any real estate investing decision that you're making and really any type of investing, stocks, bonds, business, private equity, real estate, investing in your neighbor's lemonade stand, you name it. And that is the phrase for this dollar in this moment, for this dollar in this moment, that kind of captures those four questions that we just went over. How much money do you have? How much time do you have? What is your desired impact and outcome? And how does this fit your financial plan, your freedom, and your legacy? For this dollar in this moment, what is it that you want? For this dollar in this moment. Let's hop into the real estate investing decision tree. Let me go ahead and pull that link up here. Bring that over to my screen where I'm sharing. Hopefully, you guys can see that here. And again, if you're listening to the replay, you'll be able to pull up that link and look at this document yourself. So this is just a quick, simple document, just 10 pages that you can use to guide your decision making. There on page two, you see the concepts that I've taught in our presentation here today, so that you have those, whether you're doing it right now or you're pulling out this real estate investing decision tree years from now as you're making another round of decisions. Remembering that there's no such thing as a perfect investment. What's perfect for you might be horrible for someone else, and vice versa. Perfection is the enemy of done, and complexity is the enemy of execution. That's the whole reason why I created this guide in the first place. There's no such thing as a be-all end-all decision. That's something I've seen time and time again, talking with hundreds of investors, is investors almost feel like they need to kind of join a team. Like, I need to be a passive investor who focuses on cash flow, and I can't look at any other investments. Or if I choose to then say do a short-term rental, it's like I've somehow like previously made a mistake, or I there's sort of this like drumbeat that people will sometimes feel of like, I have to declare myself. I do long-term residential real estate with remote investing with third-party management, and I can't think of anything else. And I'm here to offer you that that is not true. You can change your mind in the future because how much money you have, how much time you have, and the desired impact can change as your real life changes. The timeless principles form the core of your investment thesis. And then from there you make your specific investment decisions. And truly, if you focus on the creation of real value, if you use the creation of real value as a guiding light, chances are good that you will make a good real estate investing decision. Of course, all investing has risk. But if you understand, yes, I am creating a living unit for a family, yes, I am creating a hospitality experience for a family. Yes, I am contributing to a fund or a syndication that acquires and renovates multifamily housing to provide living units in a community. You can see how even someone in elementary school would have some sense of the real value that's created in the economy there. If you focus on the creation of real value, you will likely make a good decision. And then we have that key phrase for this dollar in this moment, and then time in the market, not timing the market. There's our four high-quality questions so that you have a copy of those indefinitely. And then let's jump into the actual decision tree itself. So for this dollar in this moment, the number one decision that you need to make that really starts the top of the tree is do you want to make an active investment or do you want to make a passive investment? And in this first page, this is less of the decision tree of the questions that you'll need to answer for each of the types of investments. But rather, this is exploring the pros and the cons of each of those types of investments. In my own real estate investing journey, I've done lots of active, I've done lots of passive, I've coached investors through active, I've coach investors through passive. When you're making this decision, kind of your number one question would be that second question in the four high-quality questions, which is how much time do you have to invest? If you're thinking, I want to spend the least amount of time possible on real estate, you're probably gonna lean toward passive. If you're thinking, yeah, I really want to get my hands dirty and have a hobby and build a second skill set and maybe get the kids involved and start thinking about passing down generational wealth, not just in terms of dollars, but work ethic, you may lean more toward active. So some of the pros of active investing are more control, more decision-making ability, takes more time, particularly at first. You have the ability to decide when you buy, when you finance, when you liquidate. I say theoretically higher returns, and I put a question mark on that, and you'll see that that's also over under the passive section. And the reason I have a question there is it really just comes down to the ultimate decision making. I've seen investors do active investing really well and have much higher returns than they might be able to achieve with passive investing. And then conversely, I've seen investors do active investing and make some poor decisions, maybe over-renovate or get tangled up with an unethical contractor that delays the project and expenses go crazy, or not quite know you know all of the fair housing laws or local landlord tenant laws, those sorts of things, and run into some real trouble and then end up with much lower returns than if their dollars had been professionally managed by a general partner. Active investing gives you the opportunity for potential tax advantages such as real estate professional status or the short-term rental loophole. You develop a skill set and you might enjoy active investing because of love of the game or ego or pride, and not in the negative sense of those words, but in the positive sense of being able to point at a property and say, I own that, I've made it better, I'm managing it, I love that property, I love taking care of the people in it. So, from the positive sense of those concepts are ego or and pride. And then some of the downsides of active investing is that it is absolutely more work. And then within active investing, there's another set of decisions, and that's in a later page we're gonna go over. And that's are you the active property manager, or are you hiring a third-party property manager? And those two situations are very different from each other in terms of the amount of time that you would invest into actively managing. You have more decisions to make, you're responsible for the lending, you are ultimately liable. Theoretically, you may have fewer advantages or experience than someone who is a professional general partner and has been investing for a long time. We mentioned the tax advantages. We keep going back to this concept of time because that's the big differentiator between active or passive investing. And then you ultimately have ultimate responsibility for an actively managed investment. Let's take a look at the passive side. Some of the benefits of passive is you have much less control. The main decision that you have to make is whether or not you invest. You need to get to know that general partner, the market, that specific investment offering that they have available, do your due diligence, read all the paperwork. That can take some time, particularly if you're investing with a new general partner or a new market for the first time. But then after you've made that big decision, maybe you dedicate four, six, eight hours to that, then after that you have very few decisions to make and it takes very little time after you invest. You're not responsible for lending. There's extremely limited liability. We've already talked about the potential pros and cons and differences between return profile with active and passive. Generally, you still benefit from depreciation. I said usually, because sometimes a passive investment might be set up as a lending investment, in which case that would be taxed on a 1099, and so it wouldn't benefit from depreciation. You do develop a skill set. It's just a different skill set. You develop a skill set of analyzing presentations, asking high-quality questions, interviewing a general partner, doing due diligence, reviewing paperwork, reviewing options with your attorney, your CPA, your spouse, whoever is important to you. So a different skill set than, say, renovation or maintenance or placing a resident in a property, but it is still a very valuable skill set, nevertheless. And then you benefit from the experience, the expertise, the connections, and the scale of the general partner that you place your capital with. So that captures the concept of who, not how. Really powerful concept by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. Highly recommend you take a read of that book if you haven't heard of that yet. The idea that to accomplish what we want in life, we often need to focus on a who, not a how. So active investing absolutely involves who's. You're gonna have a real estate agent, a lender, some contractors or handy people that are helping you with things. You may or not may or may not have a property manager. But passive investing is really about the who. You are placing your capital and your trust with a general partner, and then from there, they're the ones making all of those day-to-day management decisions. In a passive investment, you do have less control. You don't control many of the aspects of the timeline depending on the type of investment. There may be some inefficiencies or administrative burden. There may be some fees or splits to compensate the general partner for the time and the expertise and the value that they bring to the transaction. And then you may not be able to claim reps or short-term rental loophole. And I said there's some minor exceptions there. I'm not a tax advisor. Speak with your own CPAs. One thing I have seen some investors do is have an actively managed portfolio where they're earning all of the hours legitimately for real estate professional status through renovating and actively managing a local portfolio, local to their own hometown. And then they're also doing some passive investing. And because of the grouping election, they're able to take the passive losses from their passive investing and convert that into an active loss with real estate professional status. That's beyond the scope of what we're here to talk about today with the real estate investing decision tree, but it's something for you to think about and talk to your own tax advisors if that's interesting to you. And then we go down to the step-by-step plan. So we're still capturing that core question for this dollar in this moment, and we're still at the top of the decision tree looking at active versus passive. Let's do active first. All of the decisions that you would need to make under active investing are things like identifying a market, identifying a real estate agent, identifying a lender, getting pre-approved for debt, identifying target property characteristics, identifying a property manager, identifying a renovation team, analyzing deals, both qualitative and quantitative. And then you can see on from there. Writing offers, getting under contract, due diligence. You can take a look at the PDF. That may feel overwhelming, but what I'm offering to you here in the real estate investing decision tree is up at the top, you're starting with for this dollar in this moment. You're getting a lay of the land of for the pros and cons of active versus passive. Hopefully, you're starting to see how the same person might choose an active investment one year. Maybe they have a little more free time on their hands, they have the desire to be actively involved, maybe you know, take care of some renovations themselves. And then the next year, maybe they're feeling busier at work or a new baby comes along or they're planning an extended vacation, and they might choose passive in that year. So you're getting some sense of that. And then under active, you have a really comprehensive checklist here. Now, each of these bullet points is a you know large activity unto itself, but you have a sense of you can take this list, transfer it to a notebook or a Google Doc, and work through that list. And that is your step A to step Z plan for active investing. So you don't have to kind of wonder like, well, how do I even start? Or what do I do next? How does all of this work? This is your step-by-step process you work through for active investing. For passive investing, the number one question to ask is are you an accredited investor? Passive investments are generally split between what is called a Reg D 506B, which means it's available to non-accredited investors, but it can't be publicly marketed. So it needs to be marketed to say like friends or family, people that you have a close relationship with. 506Cs, on the other hand, are available to accredited investors only, and they can be publicly marketed. So for example, every passive investment that we've offered at Black Swan Real Estate are 506 C's, which is why we're able to do webinars and go to conferences and share about them, but they're only available to accredited investors. And then your step-by-step process for passive investing is learning the terminology, learning your investment metrics, exploring general partner options, ask for referrals, research their website, subscribe to their newsletters, go to their presentations, have a personal interview of them, ask questions of them, identify a few potential general partners to work with as a result of that due diligence process, watch for when they have an open investment opportunity, then get to know that specific investment opportunity. Even inside of, say, Black Swan Real Estate, we've had some investments that are very equity and wealth focused, and we've had some investments that are very cash flow focused. And how you decide to invest would be based on what your ultimate goal is, going back to those four high-quality questions. So you would look at that general partner, the market, the specific assets, the debt plan, the business plan, and then ultimately the alignment with your own financial goals. A specific investment can be absolutely amazing. Check all the boxes, conservative underwriting, taking managing risk as much as possible, really strong projected return profile. But if it's not the right fit for your financial plan, it may not make sense for you. Maybe you refer a friend or connect someone. Else to it, but it may not make sense for you, and that's absolutely okay. Watch the presentation, read the legal documentation, the private placement memorandum, the PPM, and the operating agreement, the OA, ask questions, and then ultimately when you have completed your due diligence and you feel ready to make a decision, you sign your documents, you send in your capital, and then from there you enjoy and you repeat. With passive investing, you can run through that list a small number of times and then continue to reinvest with that general partner in that market with similar types of investments. Of course, you always need to analyze each investment as a separate consideration, but there is more a bit of repeatability inside of passive investing. With active investing, it is a little more like restarting each time you acquire a new property because every property is a little bit different from each other. You might think of passive investments are more like brothers and sisters of each other, and active investments are more like cousins or friends of each other. So there's a little more variability on the active investing side. And then next up, we're considering if you choose to go the route of active investing for this dollar in this moment. So you've decided to do active investing, then you need to decide will you use a third-party property manager or will you self-manage? The decision-making process for passive investing is much smaller. It's all captured on the page above. The rest of the pages continue to explore the various bifurcations that you can explore in active investing. So if you're choosing active investing, do you want a property manager or do you want to self-manage? Property manager is generally easier. You're benefiting from their time and experience and team, generally less time intensive. You pay a fee for that property management. Sometimes there's fewer tax advantages in terms of claiming real estate professional status or the short-term rental loophole. It may be very helpful with scale. You'd want to multiple interview multiple options, and you may have trouble finding someone up to your desired quality. If I'd had to say one thing that comes up time and time again with folks who are actively managing with a third-party property manager, it's a general sense that the good ones are out there, don't get me wrong, but often there's a sense of the property manager doesn't quite care for your property or your dollars exactly the way that you would. And so there can be a bit of a struggle finding a good fit. But then once you find a good property manager, they are worth their weight in gold. Hang on to them. Maybe you consider investing more in markets where they can manage your property. Many people choose to do self-management, even if they're well-paid professionals, because there can be some tax advantages from self-management through either real estate professional status or the short-term rental loophole. It's a fairly steep learning curve. You are building your own expertise, experience, and market knowledge. It's much more time-intensive, particularly at first. And the first couple of years of self-management of an active property is much like the first couple of years of having a human baby. Lots and lots of learning, figuring it out, sleepless nights, making big decisions, minor emergencies come up. But then I will say from time and time again, with my own investing experience and with others, after that first couple of years, things kind of settle in, your property settles, you have a lot more experience, and then that time that is dedicated to that investment often goes down. Self-management saves you a fee at the expense of your time, which is why the question number one and question number two are how much money do you have to invest, and then how much time do you have to invest? There's some tax advantages, may or may not be helpful with scale. There's the potential for vertical integration, which is things like you're bringing those tasks in-house. That can be very helpful with scale. And then you're developing a very particular skill set. The next thing to think of as you're deciding your investment options is do you want long-term or short-term rentals? The big decision here is driven by the return profile that you're seeking. And then for many people, it's the tax advantages that they're seeking. Long-term provides stable housing for individuals and families, usually six to 12 months, maybe even longer. Typically unfurnished, resident pays the utilities, less vacancy, less turnover, often less income per month. But the trade-off is that it's more stable. You can think of long-term as a little closer to set it and forget it. There's really no true set it and forget it in active investing. If you want something like that, you would want to choose passive investing, going further up to the top of the investment decision tree. But within active investing, it is a little more stable. And then long-term investing falls under the bucket of real estate investor, real estate professional status. Many people choose to do short-term rentals because that would qualify someone for the short-term rental tax loophole. That's outside of the scope of what we have time here for today. But I would say that's the number one reason that people might choose to do short-term rentals. And what they may choose to do is acquire a property that could be either short-term rented or long-term rented, run it as a short-term rental for one tax year, qualify for the tax loophole, harvest the tax benefits, and then in subsequent years potentially convert it to a long-term rental and maybe even convert it to a long-term rental with a third-party property manager. So even within that one example, you can see how the outcomes that investor is looking for determines the investment decisions that they make, and they can have a multi-year plan to meet their various real life needs as they hold that investment. Short-term rentals are for vacation, work travels, maybe longer midterm stays in markets. Do note that for the tax benefits, a short-term rental is classified as an average length of stay of seven days or less. Typically furnished, the owner takes care of the utilities, much more of a 24-7 operation. Short-term rentals is essentially you are running a hotel, you are running a hospitality operation. So there's more vacancy, there's more turnover, there's costs in terms of paper products, cleaning, replenishing items, cleaning and handling furniture and those types of things that might have some wear and tear. And then in exchange for that, you're generally earning more monthly income, more cash flow. And in many markets, you may find that operating a single family home as a short-term rental is the best way to get the cash flow that you might be looking for. You can work with a short-term rental property manager, or you can choose to self-manage. And then it's relatively easy to qualify for the short-term rental tax loophole, which is 100 years of active management, 100 hours of active management per year, and then more than anyone else. So more than your cleaners or your maintenance folks or a property manager. That kind of summarizes the real estate investing decision tree. And something that is as complex as what should I invest in? How do I make sense of all of the opportunities that are out there can be distilled down into just a few pieces of paper, into just a couple of dozens of questions that really goes back to just four main core questions, a couple of if-then statements, a couple of things to consider in terms of pros and cons, a bulleted decision-making process for either active or passive. You're seeing right within that active is more time-intensive. That's why there's more pages dedicated to active, because there are so many more decisions for you to make. But all of that is captured in a pretty concise document, the real estate investing decision tree. And my hope is that that gives you a sense of calm. When our nervous system is calm and feels a sense of clarity, that's when we're able to have our best decision making. No matter if we're making a decision for our personal health, our lives, our investing, our real estate investing, clarity leads to better decision making. And my hope is that the real estate investing decision tree gives you a considerable amount of clarity, gives you a framework to hold on to. Now, each of those bullet points can be many paragraphs or days of thinking and researching, but at least you have a step-by-step process to work through rather than just grasping in the dark and wondering, how do I even compare these different options or what could my next step possibly be? One of the things that I want to teach that's a core concept is the idea of finding your asymmetric advantage. That trumps market conditions. Find your asymmetric advantage. You can even think of this almost as the fifth high quality question. So the first one is how much money do I have to invest? How much time do I have to invest? What is my desired outcome? And then how does this investment decision fit into my financial plan, my freedom and legacy? The fifth high quality question would be: what is my asymmetric advantage? So what does that mean? That means that real estate is hyper-local. The season is the same, but your climate may be different. What's happening in the Midwest is very different than what's happening in the Sunbelt is very different than what's happening in, say, Texas or Florida. So you want to have some general understanding of the overall real estate market, but also have a more niched-down understanding of the market that you specifically are considering investing in. The riches are always in the niches. That's true across all business, all asset classes, all investing. And fortunes are made by fixing market inefficiencies. That goes back to that concept of what is the real value that you are creating with the money and the time that you're investing that fixes a market efficiency, that solves a problem for an end consumer. Real estate is a very inefficient market. That's part of the reason that it's such a lucrative market and tends to be a really stable investment, no matter the economic cycle. And then most importantly, opportunity cost is always our greatest cost. This is true in real estate. This is true in real life. When we hold back or we stumble on making a decision, or we get stuck in analysis paralysis, and we say, wait a year to make a decision, it's not just that we've lost that year of growth in terms of experience, expertise, knowledge, practice making a decision, the financial outcomes that come from that decision. It's that we lose the compounding curve of who that decision helps us to become 10 plus years from now. That we see that reflected both financially, but more importantly, we see that reflected in the growth trajectory of becoming a more skilled, more confident investor. Opportunity cost is always your greatest cost. Who will you be 10 years from now because of what you did this year? I want you to have clarity. I want you to make some type of real estate investing decision in 2026, and you can use this real estate investing decision tree to guide that. Solve a hard problem, add massive action, take add massive value, and take immediate action. I hope you got a lot of benefit out of our time here today. I would like to warmly welcome you to Real Estate Real Life 2026. This is our annual conference that we at Black Swan Real Estate host. This will be our fifth year, and you guys, this event is locked in. We have honed the curriculum over many years, and it captures creating a real estate investing plan for your real life. If you liked a little bit about what we talked about here today, imagine that over an entire weekend. This year it's September 17th through the 20th, plus our optional VIP day on September 21st. You can learn all about the event and get your tickets at rerl2026.com. We'll have that linked here in the Zoom chat and then also in the replay and the show notes. I am a big believer that real estate should support your real life and that your real life should be enhanced by your real estate investment. Comes from my role as a psychiatrist, comes from my life experience of building this portfolio fresh in the start of my marriage. Our very first investment was immediately after we got married, while I'm having my children, while I'm building everything in the last 15 years of my life. And those are the lessons that we love to pass on to the people who come to real estate real life. We have a code for you today. This will be good for the next several days, code GAMEPLAN that will save you$500 off of our general admission or our VIP ticket. So you can register at rerl2026.com. And with that code GAMEPLAN, it would take$500 off of your ticket investment for general admission or VIP. Let me tell you a little bit about what we cover in real estate real life. At real estate real life, we have a wide mix of investors. We have people who have never done a real estate investment and are considering investing. We have people who are DECA millionaires and have millions of dollars invested in all types of investment asset classes with inside of the real estate general category. We have people who have invested with Black Swan. We have non-investors. It's really about building your real estate plan in a way that supports your real life. This year we have three amazing speakers who are going to speak to their own real estate real life journey and how they've built their investment portfolio in a way that supports their own lives. And these three individuals are completely different from each other. And you will see your story reflected in them. We have the sessions that we call secure your freedom that are very real estate investing focused, very math-focused, decision focused. You'll leave those sessions knowing a clear plan for your next real estate investing decision. Those are the secure your freedom sessions. And then we also have the launcher legacy sessions. Those are focused more on leadership, mindset, visioning, goal setting, what it is that you really want. One of the things that's really unique about real estate real life compared to other conferences that you might experience is that we do real behind-the-scenes property tours. We take you in a bus to the Black Swan portfolio and you get to see, touch, and feel actual investments. That is so beneficial. I'm sure you've had an experience, whether it's in medicine or another area of your life, where you can only learn so much from the books. You can only learn so much from the conference, from the lectures, from taking notes. When you put your hands on something, when you walk through something, when you see something with your own eyes, and you get the opportunity to ask questions, that's where things click and can help guide the investment decisions that you make for years to come. We have a breath work session, which is a great way to tap into your subconscious mind, really tap into your nervous system, get into a calm place to really explore what is it that you really want. We have some amazing networking opportunities. The folks who come to real estate real life are incredibly high caliber. I am always stunned and quite transparently, I always have a little bit of imposter syndrome of I can't believe these people come here because they're just such amazing people, both in terms of who they are as people and the amazing things that they're creating in their life, and then also what they're doing in their finances and their real estate, and they share with each other and they support each other. And I've seen real meaningful friendships created just in this quick weekend together. You'll also get lifetime access to the session recording, so you'll be able to review everything after the live experience is over. This is our first year that we are approved for category one CME credits, so you'll be eligible for eight hours through our partnership with Pinnacle. And then if you choose to stay for our VIP day, there's a VIP dinner and a whole bonus day on Monday, September 21st that's included. You'll fly in on Thursday, September 17th. Join us that evening for the welcome reception. On Friday, September 18th, we'll be out in the field doing property tours. There's something about these property tours that are amazing. Some people like salivate even just thinking about them, and they're so excited, and they know that it's a super unique aspect that's typically not offered at any other conference. Other people aren't so sure. They're like, I don't know if I want to go look at apartment buildings all day. And yet I'll tell you time and time again that the feedback unanimously is I got so much value out of that was so different than anything I've experienced. I understand real estate investing in a completely different way than I ever have before. We love showing off the portfolio. We love giving you tangible examples of remember how we talked about this in the conference? Here it is in real life. See how it makes sense when you actually see it. And we bring all of our virtual attendees along with a big camera setup and multi-views and everything. So even if you're not able to join us live, you're fully immersed in those property tours as well. On Saturday, September 19th, we have our general sessions where we go over the secure your freedom and the launch your legacy sessions, and then we have that really wonderful breath work experience that night. You don't have to know anything about breath work, never have to have experienced it before. I personally guide everyone through it. And much like the property tours, it's one of those things where people might say, I wasn't so sure about that beforehand. And then afterwards, they say, That made the whole conference worth it. That was such a life-changing experience. I was so able to tap into what I really want, and now I have crystal clarity about how to proceed. On Sunday, we're back in the ballroom with our general sessions. We'll have our speakers from various walks of life, very different investing experience, life experiences, and you will see your stories reflected in them. So I'm excited for you to come and learn from Nick and I and from the Black Swan team, and then also from the amazing lineup of speakers that we are putting together. If you choose to join us for the optional VIP experience, you'll join us in our personal home for a VIP dinner on Sunday evening. And then we'll be together all day on Monday, September 21st for a VIP-focused day of content and exercises. That one's a smaller group, more intimate, much more hands-on. The whole conference is absolutely amazing. And if you choose to join us for VIP day, that really puts a bow on top of the experience. We have three ticket options. So our first option is the virtual experience. That's priced at just$199. You don't have to worry about travel or time away from home. You join us right live during the conference. We have you along for the property tours. We can see you live. You can see us live on stage. We can interact with you. You can participate in the chat, you can ask a question on the microphone, and the room can hear you. It is truly as though you are right there. It's not just passively watching a Zoom experience. And you do get access to the recordings. And then all three of our ticket options are eligible for the eight hours of category one CME. Then we have our general admission option. That one is$14.99. You'll get the full live experience that I just went over with that schedule. Also get the recordings and CME. And then if you choose to join us for the VIP experience, you get that extra day and the VIP dinner on Monday, September 21st. If you use the code GAMEPLAN at rerl.2026.com, you can take$500 off of either general admission or the VIP experience. And then again, just mentioning our eight hours of category one CME. We've worked for several years to get this approval for CME, and we're so excited to be able to offer it so that you can come and work on your finances, work on your real estate plan, be with investors. No matter if you have zero investments or a super large portfolio, you'll make momentum and progress on your investing, but you'll also do so on your real life and what you really want and who you really are and your vision for yourself and your values and your family and what's really meaningful for you. And while doing so, be able to get CME, potentially get reimbursement from your employer. All of that is jointly accredited through our partnership with Pinnacle. Our team would absolutely love to have you for real estate real life. I hope that you got a tremendous amount of value out of today's session. I hope you take the real estate investing decision tree, keep that in your files, work through it, make it a living document that you interact with that guides you, not just for your next real estate investing decision, but for all of your investments to come as your real life changes, as your answer to those first four high-quality questions changes and flexes over time. And if you want a big dose of this over a full weekend, either joining us in person or virtually, but you're right there alongside us live, have access to all of the recordings to be able to replay them and study them afterwards. Would love, love, love to have you for real estate real life. It's always been an amazing time. It is truly my favorite time of the year. This year is even more special because it's our fifth year of hosting the conference, and we have just honed this thing in and really deliver to our attendees an experience that's. Unlike anything else they've experienced that really moves the needle in your real life. Everything's there at the website. We'll have that there in the replay and in the show notes, rerl2026.com. You can use that code GAMEPLAN for 500 off. We're a little bit past the top of the hour, so thank you so much for those of you joining us live or catching the replay. I appreciate your time and attention today. I hope that this was valuable for you. As always, if Rachel or Nick and I can be of service to you of any way, if you have any questions, you need anything, you know how to reach us. We love being in a relationship with you, and we would love to host you for real estate real life this year. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. For those that celebrate, happy Easter this weekend. Take care.