Episode 316 – Mackenzie Grate, The Machree Group, LLC

  Juggling two careers is never easy. For The Machree Group real estate agent Mackenzie Grate, being an educator by day and a real estate agent in her free time is a challenge. But her passion for helping other people settle into their first home, as well as the amount of support she gets around her, fuel her to keep moving forward. “Mack-of-all-trades” Mackenzie sits with Bill Risser in this episode to share her knowledge about real estate investing, interior design, and supporting you in becoming financially independent. Tune in and be inspired by Mackenzie’s story as she walks us through her real estate journey. --- Mackenzie Grate, The Machree Group, LLC Welcome to episode 316 of the show. Thank you so much for reading. Thank you so much for telling a friend. We are going to talk to the Rising Star of the Year and this was handed out by RateMyAgent as part of our Agent of the Year Awards in conjunction with Shelley Zavitz’s New Agent 365 coaching. Mackenzie Grate is great. She has been an investor, a renovator, a fix and flip, and a fix and hold person for years, but she got her real estate license during the pandemic. She has got an amazing story. I am excited to chat with her. Let’s get this thing started. Mackenzie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I am so excited. I think this will become an annual thing. I’m going to have the Rising Star from the RateMyAgent’s Agent of the Year Awards every year on the show. If you read my show, you know I like to get the backstory. I want to find out where people started and where they grew up. You live in Brooklyn, but you work in Kingston, which is way upstate from there. Is New York where you grew up? I have a pretty interesting upbringing. I was raised back and forth between two states. My father lived in Northern California in a small town called Modesto, and my mom lived in Indianapolis, Indiana. Every time I had off from school, I would fly to Indianapolis to visit my mother. I remember this was in the early ‘90s. At one point, there was even one direct flight from San Francisco to Indianapolis. Me and my sister knew the crew pretty well because they were always on the same flight. I have never been to Indianapolis, but I have been to Modesto. Modesto is a little town. It is the Northern tip and end of Central Valley in California. If anyone knows it, it is way up there. Modesto is not the most glamorous spot in California. Am I correct on that assessment? I always joke that it is the armpit of the state because of where it’s located. It is one of those places where it is very close to a lot of cool stuff. The location itself is not super awesome. There are tons of places to go to. It’s close to San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada. I did a lot of hiking and backpacking with my father growing up. If you are a skier, you want to get to Mammoth. You are right there instead of driving up from San Diego. You go to school there. Where was college for you? I wanted to get as far away from Modesto as possible. My friends say, looking back, that I had a bad case of senioritis. Believe it or not, I signed up for an acting school in New York because it was easy to get into and it was the furthest place from Modesto. At seventeen, I boarded a plane and came over here. My dad dropped me off, helped me get set up in a small little apartment, and then as soon as he hopped on the plane to go back to Modesto, I went down and unenrolled in college. I lived in these dorms for schools in the city that do not have their own dorms. I did not tell him at first. There is no need to disclose that information straight away to stress him, but come the second semester, they asked me for my classes and did not have a report to give them. They are like, “I am sorry, Mackenzie, but you can’t keep living here.” I had to go out and find a place. I did what everyone did back then, which was grab a copy of The Village Voice and look for the cheapest apartment. I found this studio that was tiny in Spanish Harlem. I dubbed it Spa-Ha at the time. I applied for it, and then that is when I had to tell my dad because, in New York, it is serious. You have to get a guarantor, and I did not have any money. I had to call them up and let them know what was up. At that point, we made a deal. He would co-sign on the apartment if I went back to school. I went to the community college, BMCC, for a couple of years and then I got a scholarship to finish up at NYU. I ask that question to everybody, “Where did you go to college?” You win with the best story. You are on your own in the Big Apple, and you are living your life. I can’t even imagine. What was your degree at NYU? [bctt tweet="When you work with people, make sure not to overpromise and under-deliver." username="billrisser"] That is a funny story too. To get the scholarship, there was a list of degrees you could choose from. I chose English Education because I was like, “How hard could that be?” Famous last words. I ended up getting a degree in Education and then going straight into the public city schools here teaching. That makes sense because somehow we’ve got to talk about the fact that you live in Brooklyn, but you work in the Catskills? For my real estate, I work in the Catskills. In Brooklyn, what is your job? In Brooklyn during the week, I am an Assistant Principal at a middle school in East New York. On weekends, how far away is your new job and where is that job? It is 90 miles North of the city. Kingston is the main area, but all of Ulster county, I serviced. That is real estate sales and then I have my own investment properties I work on up there too. You do own some properties up there. If anyone follows you on social, you are very thrifty but hip and cool, all at the same time. It is super fun. First of all, you were a teacher, and then you worked your way up into administration. Congratulations, that is amazing. Where do you get bit by the real estate bug and the fix and flip, and the important part is the investment part? I always knew that I wanted to get involved in real estate. I was not brave enough straight out of college because I was looking for steady work, that steady W-2 job. When you get a union job and those benefits, those are hard to walk away from. Being raised by a single dad, on the weekends, we would build fences and roof houses. I always had the bug for sure. I was fortunate enough to be able to buy my spot in Brooklyn years ago. As soon as I bought that, it changed my whole perspective. I was like, “This is doable.” There was a time when I thought I would never be able to afford anything, especially in New York. Once I bought that, I got the bug and I was like, “I want to buy more properties.” I started researching different areas that were not too far away that had a lower buy and price point. I googled the fastest growing job markets in New York state and two of them are way over by the Great Lakes. I was like, “That is a little far for me.” The third one was Kingston, New York. It had so much going on for it in terms of job growth, people moving up there, interesting culture, lots of city folks are moving up there starting businesses, and tons of art. It was exciting. I decided to start investing up there. That was in 2017. I bought that first property then I slowly bought a few more. During the pandemic, like everyone else, I started to reevaluate my life and see what I wanted to do. I said, “There is no other time in history. This is the time when I have extra time on my hands. Why don’t I get my license and see where it goes?” [caption id="attachment_4232" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Machree Group: Consider every new renovation that you haven't tackled before as a big teaching moment.[/caption]   I assume you have a place to live up there when you go up on the weekends. I do now. For a long time, each property that I would buy, I would crash in there as I was fixing it up and then I would rent it out. I had my little air mattress in the back of the Honda Fit and I would roll up, do a good day’s work, and crash on the air mattress. You said Honda Fit. I don’t think they make a smaller Honda than the Fit. Am I right? It is beautiful. I love her. Her name is Rhonda. She is...