In this episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy, Jordan sits down with Andrew Lucas of Deal Finders Club to unpack his journey from struggling landlord to full-time investor with 100+ rentals, a property management company, and a thriving investor community in Columbia, SC. Andrew shares the turning points that helped him professionalize his business, the pitfalls new investors should avoid, and why technology and good data matter only when you’ve earned the need for them. It’s a practical, inspiring look at how everyday investors can build real, sustainable momentum.

About Bobby Suarez

Andrew Lucas is a full-time real estate investor based in Columbia, South Carolina. Along with his wife Michelle, he has built a portfolio of 100+ rental units, launched a property management company, and actively flips houses. Through Deal Finders Club and the Lucas Group, Andrew now focuses on helping local investors avoid common mistakes, get their first deals done, and turn real estate into a real business.

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Deal Finders Club

Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. I’m your host, Jordan Samuel Fleming. And today on the episode, I’ve got Andrew Lucas from Deal Finders Club. Not only has Andrew had a phenomenally interesting career as an investor, and we get into that, as someone who started investing and built himself up to more than 100 units of rentals, he also built his own property management company to manage them.

But he’s also created the Deal Finders Club, which is a way for his local community to really get started in real estate. It’s a really fun conversation because not only has Andrew been there, done it, lived it as an investor, but he’s also taken that extra step of helping people realize their dream in real estate investment.

So we get to touch on a lot of those points. We dive into some of the mistakes he made and how he tries to get people to avoid them, not make them. And it’s just a really fun conversation. He clearly knows what he’s doing, he’s been there, he’s done it, and he really enjoys helping people on their journey.

I got a lot out of this. I learned a lot from Andrew, and I think you’re really going to get a lot out of this episode. So let’s dive right in.

Okay, I’m live here with Andrew Lucas from Deal Finders Club. Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Why don’t you introduce yourself to the listeners?

All right. I appreciate it, Jordan. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk with you today. I plan on learning something from you today, just so you know. But I am Andrew. I’m in Columbia, South Carolina. My wife and I have been full-time investors since 2018. We started very much by accident—well, on purpose by accident—in 2007. I purposely knew I wanted to invest in real estate, but I didn’t have any idea what I was doing and ended up with a couple houses that were not great. But we learned from some really smart people, got some coaches and mentors, got connected with some people, just like how we got connected, to figure out the business.

Now we own a property management company because we needed somebody to manage our 100-plus rentals. We flip houses. We have a real estate retail agency/brokerage type team. And then we teach people how to do exactly what we did. So that’s where we are with Deal Finders Club and the Lucas Group here in Columbia.

I mean, that hits a lot of different notes here. So I’m curious, as you say, about the property management realm. Before we move on to Deal Finders, the property management element is where I see a lot of people, once they get sort of 20 units under their belt, asking: should I do it myself, or should I go to a property management company?

Very rarely do I hear the story of “I’m just going to build my own property management company to deal with it all.” Can you tell me a little bit about that? Because that’s a very specific process. Property management is very process-driven, from tenants leasing to renewals to maintenance. How was that journey like?

Yeah. So I just had a conversation yesterday with our manager, and I told him, I said, “The reason you’re here is because I can’t follow those rules.” You have rules as a property manager. I’m not good at following those rules. One of them being property management rules, broker-in-charge, all that kind of stuff. I’m like, that’s not me. I’m the entrepreneur. Maybe I know the rules, but I don’t remember the rules, and I’m not great at following them. So I’m not the property manager.

However, when we first started, I used to manage hotels. That was my job. That’s what I went to school for. I was in hospitality. So, managing tenants is like the same thing, right? It’s just a guest that stays longer. Well, I kind of went with that for a while, but that quickly led to non-profitable real estate. Our rentals were not doing well. I was a people-pleaser. I was being hospitable by saying, “You can pay a little later. I’m not going to charge you this fee,” all the things that you do wrong.

So Michelle and I, we had four rental houses that weren’t doing well. That was just from buying and moving, buying and moving. We had those going pretty terribly. She was seven or eight months pregnant, we had two kids, and we were painting one of those rentals. It was a turn. We were painting it, lead-based, with that oil-based primer. The windows were open and she’s pregnant, and I’m like, “Yo, we’re doing this wrong, I think, honey.”

So we looked at each other and had a conversation: either we’re going to do this right, treat it like a business and do it correctly, or we’re selling these houses that aren’t doing anything for us and we’re just giving up on that. We’ll just go be like everybody else. We’ll work our jobs and that will be it. But we knew, inside, we were made for more than just doing the normal.

So we decided to learn, hire some coaches, some mentors, read some books that are behind me here—Rich Dad Poor Dad, you know, all those books—and figure out how to make a business out of it. One of the first things that I learned in those books is that I’m not a good property manager, and I’m not good with making sure it’s done right. I learned all the things I was doing wrong that could be potential legal trouble at the end of the day.

So we flipped a house, bought our next rental, which ended up being a five-unit. This is when we were deciding to make it a business. When we got those five, they had a property manager. Immediately I turned the other four over and never managed another one myself. That was around 2016. And here we are, just this year, finally. We’ve had over 100 units for the last four years or so, buying and selling, buying and selling, and we finally decided that we were basically paying the same price to other managers as it would be to bring someone in.

It was time to get someone focused on doing the business the way we want. When you hire a property manager, they have their own business, their own panels to look after, their own other clients. We wanted our properties to be somebody’s primary focus.

So we did that, and now that property management company is growing and bringing in their own clients. I still like to think we might be his primary focus, but now he has other clients to service. At least we are on the front end—we know the person, we know the people that he’s hiring. So our property management company is there to help other people, but they also have all of ours.

Yeah. It’s such an interesting thing. The property management element is such a specific thing. Based on states as well, there are very specific rules—eviction rules—and it is such a process-heavy area in a way that almost exceeds any of the real estate investment categories you can think of. Whether you’re doing a turnover, a lease renewal, or any of that, it is such a process-heavy bit that I think it’s a specific mindset that enjoys that as well.

It wouldn’t be me, for instance. I’d be sitting there going, “I don’t care,” and throw it across the room. Well, that’s what we tell the investors that we help get started in the Deal Finders Club. That’s the first thing I tell them. For some reason, property management is romanticized out there. I don’t know why. Like, “Oh, I’m just going to collect rent and rent these houses out. I’ll get all this cash flow.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s great, but you can’t be the property manager if you want to be an investor.”

You can’t also manage those properties because, like you said, the process, the legality, the systems that you have to follow, or you open yourself up to either not managing it well—so you’re not collecting as much rent as you should be, you’re not effectively managing your tenants—or you open yourself up to legal issues because you don’t follow all the rules that are set out there.

And we did. We ended up with one lawsuit where a sister of a tenant fell. It turns out that we didn’t hear about it for six months, of course. But what I learned is that even though I wasn’t a professional property manager, the fact that we were out there actively buying and flipping houses or buying rentals, they looked at us and they said—basically the attorneys are saying—“Hey, you may not be a professional, you don’t have a license, you’re not a professional property manager, but you’re acting like one with this volume. You’re out there investing.”

So even if you say, “Well, I’m not, I don’t have a license. I don’t know that. I didn’t know that,” if you get taken to court, they would say, “You should have known that.” At that point, we’d already been out of it for a while, and the case ended up being nothing for us. You can be sued for anything. But that was one of the things that opened our eyes. If you’re out there actually investing and doing this, doing a couple of houses a year, the court is going to look at you like you’re a professional and you should have known better. And I don’t want that. I don’t want that on me.

So if anybody’s listening: get a property manager. And get a good property manager, one that treats it like a business. I have found, over the years, that a good property manager will keep the value of your property really well and will really focus on that. I took your point about your background in hospitality—if you’re trained in hospitality, you’re trained to go beyond, to give even more. But a good property manager is going to make sure that your property’s value is maintained.

I think that’s a really critical bit, because if you don’t have someone in there, yes, you have an asset, but it’s an asset that’s possibly not going to be holding the value you want it to, if you don’t have someone really looking after it as an asset that matters.

Right, exactly. It’s got to be, from the hospitality world, knowing when to say when. Knowing that you’re providing safe, secure housing and you’re taking care of your tenants. If you take care of those tenants, the property value will go up and be better because you don’t miss months of rent. But there’s also a line that you draw and say, “We can’t go out and do everything for you. This is still your place. You still rent it. You still have to pay the rent and take care of the things you’re supposed to take care of,” right?

That was one of the things that I just wasn’t very good at. I didn’t have clear, defined lines and rules, and everything would just bleed. Everything would just be, “Oh, whatever this is, I’ll do that this time, or I’ll do that.” And that was not profitable at the end of the day.

So, yeah, most investors, I think, if you’re really, truly that entrepreneur/investor going out doing deals, you’re probably not the best property manager if you were honest with yourself.

Absolutely. Now let’s dig in a little to the Deal Finders Club. At what point did you decide that was the direction you wanted to go? What was the instigating factor there?

Yeah. So what happened was back in 2015–2016, when Michelle and I said that we’d like to do this as a business, we looked around at what was available. When I was in hospitality, I was the chairman of the board of the hotel association in our state, and I was on the governor’s council for emergency housing. I was connected into the hub of info. If I needed something, I could pick up the phone and call somebody and they could help.

There were a lot of benefits that came from those connections, whether monetary—we knew when good things were coming to town or if there were groups coming. We were connected with the people in charge of hiring people. If there’s a good candidate in town, we would know they’re looking. Just being in that hub was beneficial for mine and Michelle’s day job back then.

So we looked for that in real estate, and it wasn’t there in our community. It just was not there. There were some old-school RIAs where everybody comes once a month and they get sold all day, all night long. There’s no real community. There’s nothing really there to benefit each other. Everyone was just kind of there for themselves, and it wasn’t for us.

So in my hotel days—and don’t tell my old bosses this—but when I knew the writing was on the wall, that I was going to be leaving soon, we started having a lunchtime meetup and would say, “Hey, y’all come to the hotel. I’m going to buy a pizza, and we’re just going to have lunch and talk real estate.” That began that community.

Once I finally left the day job in 2018, we started a true event-style meetup. Every single month we had an event where I would teach or someone would come in and teach, and we created a community of investors. One big thing was to find more deals, to find good contractors, to find funding, all the pieces that come from getting to know other people that are doing the business.

Once we started that and it started going really well—a lot of attendees, a lot of connections being made—it wasn’t long, maybe a month or two from starting that, that people started asking us to show them how to invest: how we got from 4 to 34 rentals in two years and how we continued to flip houses and buy rental property and build our portfolio. We did not feel like we were qualified to teach it because we were still learning ourselves. I was being taught by our mentors.

But finally, a couple people convinced us. Freddy, who’s a good friend of ours and has a great business going now, took me to lunch at Chick-fil-A, and he’s like, “Look, just help me do this. Help me do that.” Finally, I relented and started helping him. From there, we learned how to help people get started, how to go through the growing pains that we did, and help people skip those lessons and go into the investing world with some guardrails.

We share the good, the bad, the ugly, and we help people connect with their lenders, with their contractors and all that. So we’re really getting people started in the business. We do a lot of events. We do a lot of outreach for the local community that’s totally free to get connected and start building the base of your business. But when people want more help, they come to us and we have a program, or we partner with them, or whatever that looks like.

It’s been great. For me, it’s been more rewarding to see our community of investors grow and be successful.

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…and really start to become—you know, I’ve always loved watching over the years—when you watch groups of people start and think they may want to. You’ve got the dream there, the knowledge and ability isn’t yet. And then you watch them transform from that to people who are getting to the point where they’re building a proper business. That doesn’t happen right away.

Most people, particularly in real estate, start as dreamers and are just looking for that first deal. Then you get to the point where you think, “Oh gosh, I’ve actually got a business here, because I’m doing enough volume and money. If I’m doing $1 million a year, this is a business. This is a business that needs to be well thought of and protected,” to then scaling even more.

One of the benefits of the real estate community in general is that there has been a focus on these communities, whether it’s Deal Finders Club or other masterminds that have a focus on getting people through that journey.

What do you think, just thinking about that journey from very beginning to—not the very top, because the top is a very small percentage of people—but getting to the point where you can make a professional go of it, which more people do… Where do you think the change is? Is it in volume or money or something else? Where do you think that changes, having seen so many people go through it? And where do you think some of the pitfalls are that stop people from getting to that professional bit?

Yeah. That’s a really good question, because I think when I say this, it will surprise a lot of people: you really don’t need high volume to become a professional in real estate. The reason is because the margins per deal can be so high. You can flip a house—do one house—and make as much as the average American makes in a year. And it can be done with one deal.

So just imagine doing three in a year. You do that while you’re still working your day job. That’s what our program has focused on the last two years. We started a partnership program, and we help people that are currently working a job—some have been laid off or just retired—but we show them how to flip three houses in a year while still living their life.

So this truly is an add-on. You’re not swinging hammers. We’re not going and doing demo, even though that’s sometimes fun. We’re not doing it ourselves because, as a business, you can’t do all that. If you just do three—and it doesn’t matter what market you’re in—if you’re in the South here, three deals might be a $100,000-a-year paycheck, which, if you add that on to what you’re already doing, is a game changer. It changes your life. And when I say three deals, that is so attainable.

So going from brand-new newbie who’s never done anything into professional mode… really, if you can do three, you start to look like a professional in the eyes of the lenders, and that opens up the floodgates. Once you have three under your belt, the lenders for hard money, private money, they will see you as a professional. They’ll say, “Oh, you’ve done this, you’re successful, I’ll lend you more money.” And then it’s just up and up.

Then it’s rinse, wash, repeat. Whether it’s BRRRR or another model, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Let me ask you—I would be remiss if I didn’t ask this, given this is the name of this podcast, That Real Estate Tech Guy. The reason I started the podcast is because I started it years ago, then let it lapse for a bit, and now I’ve restarted it, with tech and AI now in here. Technology is so embedded into the real estate investor process to let people scale.

So, when you think of your own journey as an investor, are there any mistakes that you made with technology that you could maybe stop someone else from making? Is there a big mistake you’ve made with real estate technology—and please don’t say smrtPhone—that you’d class as a technology mistake?

Yeah. I think the number one mistake that is so easy to make, because it’s small little cuts, small little expenses, is getting every piece of tech and paying for all these fees over and over again. It’s so easy to jump in and say, “Oh, this is the best, this is the best, this is the best, and you need this and you need that,” right?

Understanding—and again, you asked my mistakes, these are my mistakes—that they’re all going to be a little different, but what is the function that it’s going to serve? Get down to how it is actually going to serve you today, not tomorrow. The tech that you use should come in because you broke the last piece of tech.

One of my mentors says this—and I’m butchering the way he says it—but basically, you work with what you have now. So, very beginner, your first-time flipper and you don’t have a deal yet, you don’t need anything. You just need a spreadsheet or a piece of paper.

I’ve always said, do not invest in technology until you start spending money on marketing. My rule is: don’t invest until you start spending money on marketing.

Yeah. And the first piece of tech is something to help with marketing usually, or to catch the calls or to send the calls out. It’s going to be one of those. And so when that phone melts because you’ve got people calling it, and you’re like, “You know what? I could use another number. I don’t need everybody calling my cell phone. They should go here.” That’s when you invest in that tech.

And then that CRM comes in probably the same time. But it’s not the CRM, the Cadillac CRM that does everything and has space for ten employees. It’s the basic CRM that just helps you keep track. It’s a step up from the spreadsheet.

If you go in with that mode from the beginning, you won’t be overpaying. You won’t be getting lost in your tech, where you spend more time trying to figure it out or trying to be cute with the tech, and you’re not actually doing deals.

So that’s the biggest thing: don’t move on to the next, don’t get the new shiny thing, until you’ve broken the one before.

Well, I think that advice suits really well for my second question on this, which is usually: what’s the best advice you have on how to integrate technology into your business? I think you’ve just nailed that one as well.

But let’s look at that person who maybe has just started spending on marketing. So they’ve done one or two deals, they’ve gotten their kind of shakedown—because you have to learn, you’ve got to shake it down. And you’re starting to think, “Maybe I can do five or six deals. Maybe I can actually do a deal a month,” whatever.

In terms of technology, as you’ve scaled your business, what would be three technology types of products—CRM or whatever—that you would recommend when you start to think about scaling and actually building? What are three technology products that you’d recommend you start with?

Yeah. So I’ll try to be basic and not name any brand or anything like that. But we just kind of talked about the marketing. Whether you’re going to source your own lists or you’re going to do your own marketing—if you’re going to pull your own lists and leads, then you need a great data provider. Spend money on data if you’re going to do your own.

If you are going to outsource it, then let them do it. You don’t need to pay for data if someone else is pulling your list. That’s another thing that people do: “Oh, I got this data provider, but I don’t actually use the data.” So spend the money on data for good marketing.

And then, when it comes in—when the phone calls come in or you go out, depending on how you do your marketing—spend the money on the phone. smrtPhone—I’m not giving you a plug, but I’m giving you a plug—is having a good service that is reliable and that will make those connections. Those calls won’t get lost, they don’t go to some phantom box that you don’t know how to access. Having a good phone service is paramount, because you’re going to pay for the marketing, and if you don’t catch those phone calls or the calls that you’re making out don’t connect, you might as well just light dollar bills on fire.

And then the next piece that goes with that is the CRM. How are you going to keep up with those calls, the leads, the people, the contacts? Yes, we do get deals on the first contact. We do have people that call us and say, “I just want 20 grand,” and I’m like, “Okay, where are you? I’m coming to sign.” We get that, but it’s very rare.

So we have to keep up with them—keep up with their email, phone number, name, address, all that—because you have to follow up. That CRM has to keep track of them. It doesn’t have to follow up by itself. It doesn’t have to be an AI-generated bot. It just needs to tell you that it’s time to follow up.

And I think that’s such a great point because, to your point, the shiny key syndrome is very live in the real estate investment community. People follow that a lot. You hear people talk all the time about new leads over the importance of following up on the ones they’ve already got. We all know that, yes, there are those unicorns that happen—one call, great deal, closed—but that’s not all the time.

Usually you’re keeping track, you’re following up, you’re coming back. The amount of people who have won deals seven months later, eight months later, because they’ve kept that going… Buyers change, their motivation changes, their circumstances change. Without that follow-up, you miss so much. So I think your point is incredibly valid.

Yeah, absolutely. I also love your data point. It’s funny, I mentioned earlier that I just wrote a book. The first chapter in that book, which is ostensibly a book about the phone and how to use the phone as a real estate investor, is actually all about data, because bad data sets you at an absolute disadvantage. I think I say in the book, if you send your sales team out with bad data, you’re essentially sending them into the battlefield with one arm behind their back.

I think your point of data being critical—and something I always say—do not skimp on your data. If you just want to buy crap data, you are going to spend a lot of money and get crappy results.

Yeah, absolutely. And ask me how I know. We have proof. We have proof that bad data will turn your business on a dime. Our postcards, for example, went from a 1.5% answer rate to like a 0.5% because it was bad data. If the postcard doesn’t show up at the right place, you’re not getting a phone call.

We had an example of data that was going to people that had already sold. We got some crazy number—I don’t remember exactly, this was a year, year and a half ago—but everybody who was calling back was like, “Hey, we sold that house. We don’t own it anymore.” We looked and saw that all of these had just sold a couple of weeks ago. We were like, “This is not good. This is bad. This is bad data.” But it can eat your lunch. The amount of money, time, energy wasted on that…

It’s the fundamentals. People always look for the shiny, the sexy, the guaranteed this and all that. But ultimately, to your point, everything usually comes down to the fundamentals. Doing the fundamentals well means you can build a solid, sustainable business. I can’t think of a time when that’s not been true, across almost every bit. I’m in the software business and I can tell you that the fundamentals of how you build the business are not really any different. It all still works out that way.

Yeah, 100%. One of the fundamentals—and since we’re talking tech, this is the thing that gets in front of the number one fundamental, which is revenue. You need revenue. You need to make a sale or make a purchase. The number one thing I see, especially for beginners, getting in between them and revenue is tech, because they’re playing around with it. It’s so pretty. All this stuff looks so pretty online and it feels good. It feels like I’m moving, it feels like I’m doing something, because “Look, my new website, my spreadsheet, my graph looks good.” But there’s no revenue. So don’t let that be your trap.

Yeah, I actually had a conversation the other day with John Nolan. We were talking about, because we’re both technology providers, we’ve got big reporting centers. We were talking about paralysis that happens when people are focused on the pretty graphs as opposed to what the graphs are really about, which is the outliers—the identification of the problems—or conversely, the bits that are really working well so you want to dial those things up instead of just being like, “Look at all this.”

People get data paralysis sometimes: “I’m going to spend the week analyzing the data.” Really? Because you could be making calls and closing sales.

Yeah, 100%.

Well, Andrew, it’s been an absolute pleasure. First of all, it’s nice to finally meet you—this is the first time you and I’ve actually gotten the chance to meet—so it’s a pleasure to meet you. Now, before we close, how do people find you? Let everybody know how they can get in touch and find you.

Yeah. So the best way is our Facebook group. It’s really Deal Finders Club, the group. Just search that on Facebook. I am “the Andrew or Lucas” on socials, and you can find us there. I will even drop my phone number, because as you know, it’s a tech-enabled phone number, so it’s not going to blow up my cellphone. But if you want me, you can text me there. It’s (803) 216-5750. You can catch me in any of those places.

Well, I will make sure I put all of those into the show notes. Please do check out Andrew. He’s got a lot of valuable insight to give you. Andrew, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on today’s podcast.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to another amazing episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. Head over to thatrealestatetechguy.com to check out all episodes and get special discounts on tons of awesome real estate technology platforms.