The Home365 Podcast
The Home365 Podcast brings you behind the scenes of real estate investing, property management tech, and the entrepreneurs building the future of housing. Hosted by Daniel Shaked, each episode features deep conversations with operators, investors, and industry leaders.
June 30, 2025 | 54 min | Season 1, Episode 5
Episode 5 - Mark Brower
Property Management's $500K Problem: Why We're Competing with the S&P 500 (Not Other PMs)
Episode Overview
Host: Daniel Shaked (Home365)
Guest: Mark Brower, Owner of Arizona's Premier Property Management Firm
Duration: 54 minutes
Topic: Real estate investing, property management business transformation, and wealth building strategies
Key Topics Covered
- Property management vs. wealth management mindset
- Business model transformation in real estate
- Technology's impact on property management
- Investment alternatives and competitive landscape
- Owner psychology and education strategies
Complete Detailed Transcript
Introduction: Authentic Leadership in Property Management
Daniel Shaked: Welcome to Real Estate Investing Open Kimono by Home365. I'm Daniel Shaked here. We are discussing real estate's biggest traps with brutal honesty, no fluff, just raw truth to help you win. And today, get ready for Mark Brower, a brilliant thought leader and owner of Arizona's premier property management firm. This ultra marathon rock star, incredible human being - he is on fire helping good people do good things.
Mark Brower: Yes.
Daniel Shaked: I'm so happy to have you here. The first time I came across you was when I saw an interesting post, I think a short video that you posted about some crappy review you got and you took it so personally and you were discussing like how should I comment? How should I respond to this owner? And I'm like, this is the guy I want to meet. I want to talk to this person. He's like in pain. So emotionally codependent...
Mark Brower: This emotionally codependent, overly caretaker personality, I wanna meet this guy.
Personal Growth and Professional Authenticity
Mark Brower: Yeah, no, no. That's what we got to do, man. Just like show up and you know, it's, it's, you know, I don't know. Like early in my career, there was a, there was a sort of a wall between personal Mark and like the professional persona Mark. And I'm going to be honest, it's taking a long time to get familiar and sort of blend those two together. And I feel more comfortable than I ever have before. Cause the reality is we all have infinite worth self-worth and we all, if we're committed to
Mark Brower: This is what I've been thinking a lot about recently. If we're committed to love, honesty, and commitment to others, our attachment to those things immediately qualifies us for infinite intrinsic self-worth. We don't need to do anything to try to earn our self-worth. It's already there. And we can feel that. And everybody says, well, you should just feel that. You should just know that you're worthy of love.
Mark Brower: Easier said than done. It's been a long journey for me. I'm 47 years old and I feel like I'm for the first time in my life, I'm getting really close to the point where I don't have to perform for anybody. I don't have to, I don't have to earn, you know, through performance, my own self-worth. It's just there. And so now that, now that that anxiety is gone, you know, how do I show up in a way that's most useful to other people that, that,
Mark Brower: honors and loves other people as much as I honor and love myself. I've been listening to Brene Brown recently and others talk about boundaries, right? And so, so if we can, if we can honor and love other people the same that we honor and love ourselves, then we're in the right place to have the right kind of relationships and connections. We don't have to figure out how we're supposed to show up. We just show up and then we know we're enough. So.
The Core Problem: Property Management vs. Wealth Management
Daniel Shaked: I think that everything starts with the real estate investing as an alternative for gaining wealth as a store of value. And is it competitive in today's world versus other alternatives? And then if the answer is yes, and real estate investing is a great store of value, still attracts half, it's like $500 trillion of global wealth in it.
Daniel Shaked: "Because really one of the things I think we were aligned on is that we are not property managers. We are not managing properties. We are managing people's money. I believe that investors are choosing real estate for a bunch of reasons but eventually what they want, they want returns. They want their wealth to grow. That's their retirement plan. That's their college fund. That's their money for the future. And we as property managers are, I'm saying in general, focused fixing toilets and not managing people's monies."
The Real Competition: S&P 500
Mark Brower: Who is our biggest competitor? Do you know?
Daniel Shaked: "Exactly! Exactly! It's S&P 500! We have no other choice. If we can deliver 11% year over year of IRR, we are fucked."
The Mr. Cooper Case Study: Transformation Example
Mark Brower: Nation Star Mortgage, one of the country's largest loan servicers. Very similar characteristics to property management: mature industry, low profit margins, boring. These guys were sitting around thinking like, how do we go paperless to increase our bottom line? It was a commoditized super low margin service industry until Nation Star Mortgage rebranded as Mr. Cooper.
Mark Brower: They're taking an audience that's requisite that you engage with this company every month until you pay off your house. And they're saying like, what can we do to expand trust and opportunities and profitability with this client base? They started getting statements that would say things like: "You have $187,432 equity in this house. Which of these life events is coming up next for you? Kids going to college, marriage, important family vacation."
Technology's Inevitable Impact
Mark Brower: It won't be long, Daniel, before AI does most of the property management tasks for us. I would guess under 10 years tops, probably under five years, where most of the tasks are done by AI and they're done better than humans and they're standardized.
Home365's Revolutionary Model
Daniel Shaked: "Our average owner pays us $500. Because we sell something else. Our average owner pays us around $6,000 a year. Even more. Because we don't sell fixing the pipes. We sell profit protection vehicle. We sell financial results. We are focused on results."
Daniel Shaked: When you can guarantee someone a financial outcome, suddenly you completely change the business model. I'm not guaranteeing the outcome, but I have skin in the game. If the owner is not profitable, we are not profitable. We're losing money. And that's exactly the fund management mindset.
The Rent Guarantee Innovation
Daniel Shaked: 80% of the new owners that are joining Home365, around $7,200 every month of new owners, are coming in with vacant properties. Vacancy drives almost all of the decisions. Vacancy is the biggest enemy of the real estate investor, stresses them out like crazy.
Daniel Shaked: We are going to protect your income so that you know that we have zero incentive to make your property sit vacant. We're going to pay you a guaranteed rent while we are marketing and turning this property and making it rent ready. If the property sits vacant, we are paying your rent instead. Your income is protected.
Key Takeaways
- Mindset Shift Required: Property managers must evolve from "toilet fixers" to wealth managers
- Real Competition: The S&P 500 and other investment vehicles, not other property managers
- Technology Disruption: AI will automate most traditional PM tasks within 5-10 years
- Business Model Innovation: Guaranteed rent and profit-sharing models create better alignment
- Data-Driven Approach: Advanced underwriting and predictive analytics are essential
- Premium Positioning: Higher fees justified by guaranteed financial outcomes
Guest Information
Mark Brower is the owner of Arizona's premier property management firm and a thought leader in the real estate investing space. He advocates for transforming property management from a service business to a wealth management partnership.
Episode Keywords
Property management, real estate investing, S&P 500, wealth management, rent guarantee, business model innovation, AI automation, landlord education, investment returns, profit sharing, data analytics, underwriting algorithms
June 30, 2025 | 54 min | Season 1, Episode 4
Episode 4 - Nathan Payne
Wholesaling Real Estate Without the BS
Nathan Payne shares his unfiltered journey from knocking on doors to closing wholesale real estate deals—all without the fluff.
In this candid conversation, Nathan and Daniel explore the realities of real estate wholesaling, including how reverse wholesaling works, why marketing is non-negotiable, and what most online courses get completely wrong.
If you’ve ever wondered how to break into real estate without owning property, this one’s for you.
Episode Overview
Host: Daniel Shaked (Home365)
Guest: Nathan Payne, Real Estate Wholesaling Expert
Duration: 52 minutes
Topic: Real estate wholesaling strategies, reverse wholesaling, and the future of real estate technology
Key Topics Covered
- Traditional vs. reverse wholesaling methodologies
- Building sustainable lead generation systems
- Ethical sales processes in distressed property acquisition
- International cash buyer opportunities
- Technology's impact on real estate wholesaling
- Common misconceptions about wholesaling
- Market conditions and their impact on wholesaling
- AI and automation in real estate
- Secondary market opportunities for investors
- The future of real estate as a store of value
Complete Detailed Transcript
Introduction
Daniel Shaked: Welcome to Real Estate Investing Open Kimono by Home365. I'm Daniel Shaked and here we are discussing real estate's biggest traps with brutal honesty. No fluff, just raw truth to help you win. And today, get ready to supercharge your wholesaling strategy with one and the only, Nathan Payne, a true trailblazer who is shaking up the game.
Nathan Payne: Wow, man, honestly that I'm excited to chat with you like you're telling me you haven't talked to any wholesalers before. Is that what you're saying?
Nathan Payne: Who is Nathan Payne? That's what you want to know? Well, I'm 34 years old. I live in Canada now. I used to live in the United States. I lived in Utah. Well, the United States ruined my whole life. And now I live in Toronto, the Toronto area. And my main focus in life is God, family, and then help serving others.
Nathan's Journey from Mission to Door-to-Door to Real Estate
Nathan Payne: Yeah. So I got started in wholesaling because I didn't want a traditional job. I didn't want to work for anyone. So I'll take it back a little bit. I talk about this a lot, but, I went on, I went after I graduated high school, I went on a mission for my church. So I'm very like involved in, in the gospel and the church. And, basically I went on a mission for two years where I talked to people about God and Jesus Christ from 19 to 21 years old, went to Portland, Oregon.
Nathan Payne: They recruit them to go knock doors and sell door to door any, any product that you got alarm systems, got dish net, like satellite TV at the time, cell phones, what else? Pest control, you name it. They, they go to these people because they're like, Hey, you, you just for two years, we're talking to people. You're probably not scared to talk to people and you know how to knock doors and approach people.
The Gun Story
Nathan Payne: Yeah. Well, so let's, let's go for this, this one. We, I was knocking in Dallas, Texas in the area of Dallas, Texas, maybe 2013 and we were selling satellite TV dish network and direct TV. Now where you would sell the most accounts were like in very rural areas.
Nathan Payne: And I'm knocking and it's like eight or nine o'clock at night. We would go till like nine o'clock. and it's pitch black and I'm in this random town. Probably people don't know who, who we are or who I am. I'm knocking on this guy's door to sell him dish network and he opens the door and he has a gun and he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm all right. And I'm like, I'm here to sell you dish networks, sir.
Nathan Payne: leave right now. So that was probably one of the craziest experiences because I realized after the fact of having the gun on me, I was still trying to sell the dish, the dish network, but that was probably one of them.
Starting Real Estate
Nathan Payne: Yeah, we're working together. so what we did is we, I didn't know anything about real estate, didn't know what wholesaling was. All I knew from my experience was to talk to people, knock doors and just massively make, take action. That's it. That was like what I had learned in my life, but no real skill sets. I would say the skill set was sales, right? Cause you could communicate, but other than that, didn't really know who to target. So we just started knocking doors in neighborhoods.
The Power of Taking Action
Nathan Payne: Well, I would agree. I would agree because in the beginning, you don't know. Like we even talked about this, this podcast, right? It's like you, you, you're getting started and you have to take action, but you're obviously going to make mistakes that you're not going to take, make in the future, but you have to go through it. Even if you have a mentor, even if you have someone that can help you, you have to take the action to learn.
Nathan Payne: for a long enough time to get better. And that's what I've done. And when I coach people and they know what to do, they just aren't willing to do the amount of effort required. And that's why a lot of people don't see the success they want. They're just not willing to do what is required.
Understanding Wholesaling
Nathan Payne: Okay, so I'll kind of explain. Let me first start off explaining what wholesaling is. So wholesaling, all wholesaling is, is when you talk, when you're talking directly to a seller or an agent and you agree to buy a house for a certain price, right? So let's say you have a house and I agree to buy your house for $100,000 and the house fixed up, updated rehabbed is worth 250.
Nathan Payne: If you want it for 120, I'll sign it to you for 120 and then you can buy it for 120. You go buy it for 120. I get paid the difference at the closing at the title company. That's the whole sentiment.
International Cash Buyers
Daniel Shaked: Those are usually cash buyers. They don't have access to the mortgage system in the United States. There are a few options but it's not very accessible. They don't have the credit history so they're usually cash buyers. They're looking for great deals right now. For those types of people, what do you offer today?
Nathan Payne: I offer great deals. That's it. That's, that's what we do. Like our goal is to find a property that we can make money off of. And how do we do that? By getting a good deal. And we aren't willing to, or not we like wholesalers will take down deals sometimes if they want to fix it, flip it, keep it. But the business model is built off of finding distress, like properties or situations to help people solve problems and then making money off of not owning the assets.
The Psychology of Distressed Sales
Nathan Payne: "I did not take advantage. I did not steal. I'd say, Hey, I let you know, you should do something else. I'm only here to solve a problem. If you have a problem and they let me, reaffirm. Yes, this is a problem you can solve. If you can buy my house for this, I'll go with you. But large people don't know how to do that process very effectively."
Traditional vs. Reverse Wholesaling
Nathan Payne: They don't know. And the only way to really know is you get it so low that it's just anybody would buy it. But the chances of that happening is very, it doesn't happen very much. Like someone that's just willing to sell their house at 50% of what it's worth doesn't really happen. Where we make the money is if it's like at 70%, 80%, like there's a margin, but if you get a home run that happens once in a while, but it's not a business you can build your business on.
Nathan Payne: Reverse wholesaling is when you have a buyer, like let's say you're my buyer and you say, hey, this is my buy box, go find me something. And then I go, I start marketing in the specific area that you want. And then I find something and I say, hey, okay, this might be something that you want. Let me, before I lock it up, let me go say, hey, what would you pay for this before I, you know, get it under contract so I don't waste anybody's time?
Pre-Flipping Strategy
Nathan Payne: He's not exactly where I would tell him, yes, I'm going to buy it. Let me do a little bit of research to see who's buying here with data. I can just use data to say, this buyer bought this flip right down the street. I don't know them, but I'm going to call them. And before I tell this seller, I can pay this. I'm just going to call this buyer and see where he would need to be for it to be a deal for him.
Deal Timelines
Nathan Payne: Yeah, that's a great question. it really depends. Every seller depends. It's so difficult to say like how it can happen in three days. It can happen in two days. It can happen in six months or a year. I'm following up with this guy who's been in pro, his property has been in probate for three years and I'm still checking in on him.
Teaching Philosophy
Nathan Payne: That's right. So when I first started this business, it was extremely difficult for me. And I'm not an idiot. don't at least, I don't think I'm an idiot. It was difficult for me to figure out the business and do it efficiently and effectively because I was following the traditional wholesale model of make low offers.
Nathan Payne: Perfect client would be someone who has a marketing budget that is willing, because this game requires, it doesn't require that you have a marketing budget, but it makes it a lot easier if you're able to pay for leads. So it'd be someone that has at least like $1,000 a month that is able to generate leads through pay-per-click or some sort of lead generation that is interested in learning how to get into the business.
Common Misconceptions
Nathan Payne: That's a good question. It's difficult because a lot of people think you do not need money to get started in wholesaling, which is true. I've gotten a lot of deals without money, but I think the misconception is that you can create a really sustainable business without spending any money on marketing or lead gen or software. It's a business. You have to invest in it. You have to invest in yourself and in it.
Reality vs Dreams
Nathan Payne: No, there's vacancies, there's repairs, there's so many issues that happen. And the rental that I had, as soon as we filled it, there was a domestic dispute where they both went to jail. No one was there, couldn't pay. We had a victim, it was three or four months vacancies. Imagine owning 100 of those. If you don't have reserves, if you don't have capital, if you don't have a way to fix that stuff, you're gonna lose the house or you're in trouble.
Training Process
Nathan Payne: Well, when you work, I would say when you work with me, it's very clear on what you need to do. So what we do is when we get people started, we say, the first thing you need to do is they sit down with me one-on-one and we go over, I call it the life plan. Why are you doing this? What are the end goals? Because this is gonna get hard, so we have to remember why you're doing it.
Current Market Conditions
Nathan Payne: You know, it's as I do deals across the United States, you find out that every market, every condition, every market is different, right? Real estate is so hyper local. You can be in Richmond, Virginia, where people aren't really concerned about the market. And then you can be talking to someone in Houston where all the investors are like, hey, we're being very concerned.
Secondary Markets
Daniel Shaked: A lot of are not educated about various secondary markets. They know the branded names of the cities and eventually they have a Saturday dinner, Sunday dinner with their friends and they own a property in Las Vegas. Everyone knows Las Vegas. It's cool. I have a property in New York. What about those cities? The smaller ones where the cap rates are much better and their opportunities are much better.
Nathan Payne: Very interesting. a hundred percent. Like for example, in the Midwest, you're going to find better returns on your investments than you are in California, right? Or New York. But maybe they haven't heard of St. Louis, Missouri, or maybe they haven't heard of like Minneapolis or some of those other cities that aren't as popular.
AI and Future of Real Estate
Daniel Shaked: But it's not only foreign investors, also the other investors. mean, the vast majority of people that invest in properties actually live on both sides. New York, California, that's the vast majority. So those are also remote by nature. And by being remote, they are not very familiar with those markets.
Nathan Payne: What do I lose sleep about? You know, I'm not afraid. I think this will happen, but I don't think this, this is just more internally me. think people will start to have a difficult time knowing the difference between like reality, what's real and what's not real. With the way AI is, I don't, I think being able to tell the truth is going to be extremely difficult for people.
Nathan Payne: Yeah, do you think that real estate is going to still be one of the most important or the best stores of value of our wealth for the future in a world where basically, think about it, prices should be going down, robots are going to do our job? A lot of it. Productivity is going to skyrocket. Things should go down in terms of prices like...
Nathan Payne: Yeah. I have thought about that. I personally, think real estate is a good, you're always going to need something to eat and you're always going to need somewhere to sleep and live. think those are the things, I don't know how AI could replace that. Maybe they could replace like real estate agents. Honestly, I think real estate agents are the next to go because why do I need to talk, have an agent look at something when I can just do my own listing, can have something look over the paperwork for me, make sure it's good.
Industry Disruption
Nathan Payne: Like I'm telling you right now, real, I think real estate is going to be disrupted on like the process of buying and selling. Now you would like to think there's always going to be human element involved in someone talking to me and telling me about their problems. I don't know. It's, it's tough.
Nathan Payne: Yeah, yeah. Like I said, the real estate agent, it's more of a traditional, like, hey, this is what houses are worth. This is what people are offering. Go ahead. But when it comes to like cash buyers, I don't know if it's that cut and dry. It's not like a seller can just say, okay, what is everyone offering? Cause you, I mean, I guess you could do that too, but I don't know.
Final Thoughts
Nathan Payne: Yeah, it is. And it's honestly, it's difficult to know where every, every industry is going to be disrupted. Every, it doesn't matter what you do, it's going to be changed. So I guess the question is, are you going to be able to change? Are you going to be able to change with it? Because that's the one constant thing in life that you can, you know, is always going to be there is change. Nothing is going to stay the same.
Daniel Shaked: It was pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for coming over. It's interesting to learn about your business model. I'm 100% sure that our real estate investors, our clients will be interested in a solution like that. So we'll definitely need to touch base offline and see if we can do things together.
Nathan Payne: Yeah, and for anybody that if you've enjoyed listening to this and you want to learn more or reach out, I have a free Facebook group. It's called Real Estate Wholesaling. The Painless Way. That's what it's called. Real Estate Wholesaling and then the Painless Way. You don't have to put the painless Yeah, but that's, I give away free courses. I'm in the group. There's a lot of people interacting.
Daniel Shaked: Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Goodbye.
Key Takeaways
- Action Over Analysis: Success in wholesaling comes from taking massive action and being willing to fail forward
- Ethical Approach: Push sellers to explore all options first - only work with them if wholesaling is truly their best solution
- Pre-flipping Strategy: Research buyers before locking up deals to ensure you're not wasting time on bad deals
- International Opportunities: Cash buyers, especially international investors, represent a significant market opportunity
- Marketing Investment Required: Sustainable wholesaling businesses need marketing budgets - it's not truly a "no money down" business
- Speed of Response: Buyers need to act quickly (7-14 days max) due to short inspection periods
- Relationship Building: Success comes from building relationships with both sellers and buyers, not just finding deals
- Technology Impact: AI will disrupt traditional real estate processes, but human psychology in distressed sales remains important
- Market Hyper-locality: Real estate conditions vary dramatically even within the same city or region
- Secondary Market Education: Huge opportunity to educate international investors about profitable secondary markets
Guest Information
Nathan Payne is a real estate wholesaling expert based in Toronto who helps investors build sustainable, ethical wholesaling businesses. With a background in door-to-door sales and missionary work, Nathan brings a unique perspective on relationship building and taking action in business.
Connect with Nathan: Real Estate Wholesaling: The Painless Way (Facebook Group)
Episode Keywords
Real estate wholesaling, reverse wholesaling, pre-flipping, cash buyers, international investors, lead generation, ethical sales, distressed properties, assignment contracts, door-to-door sales, real estate education, property management, investment strategies, AI automation, secondary markets, market conditions, wholesaling misconceptions, business coaching, apprenticeship model