After his music career faded, the 56-year-old rapper, born Robert Matthew Van Winkle, found a new calling: real estate investment. The 90s sensation offers five tips to succeed as as an investor.
At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.
Vanilla Ice is known to the world as a preeminent one-hit wonder, who remained a cultural figure long after his song — “Ice Ice Baby” — and the controversy it generated, faded from the dominant cultural milieu.
After his music career faded, the 56-year-old rapper, born Robert Matthew Van Winkle, found a new calling: real estate investment.
Van Winkle recently detailed how he built up a mini real estate empire and managed to elevate his net worth to $20 million decades after his single was charting in an appearance on the “Wild Ride” podcast of Jackass star Steve-O.
“I made millions for doing nothing!” Van Winkle told Steve-O during the appearance.
For those looking to follow a similar path the Iceman took, we’ve parsed a few key points from the interview to lay out Vanilla Ice’s investment strategy and philosophy.
1. Record a chart-topping song
You’ll need to start with some liquidity if you want to be a serious real estate investor, and a Billboard-topping certified gold single is a great way to get some pocket change and start scooping up houses. “Ice Ice Baby” sold an estimated 160 million-plus copies worldwide following its 1990 release — more than enough to buy a few houses.
“We were selling a million copies a day, easy,” Van Winkle told Steve-O.
2. Buy properties in a diverse range of markets
To hear Van Winkle tell it, he began his investment journey by buying up more houses than he could use “all over the country.” When he began to sell his properties off, he was surprised by how lucrative the sales were, he said on the podcast.
“They sold really quick and I made millions for doing nothing,” he said. “I didn’t even change the carpet.”
3. Develop a game plan and a specialty
Once Van Winkle caught the investing bug, he started increasing the number of homes he purchased and put more effort into renovating them. He also began to develop a game plan for the type of homes he purchased, and how he purchased them, telling Steve-O he prefers to buy properties off-market instead of from Multiple Listing Services and to buy distressed properties and tax liens, which he says gives him the chance to buy properties for “pennies on the dollar.”
4. Flex your construction and design muscles
The best investors are the ones who roll up to their properties in their own trucks with their own tools, and Vanilla Ice is no exception. Van Winkle told Steve-O his fascination in real estate was sparked when one of his homes was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and he decided to renovate it himself and sell it.
Van Winkle says he ended up going to design school and working as a general contractor for several years — skills that have undoubtedly given him a leg up in his career as a real estate investor.
“It’s fun swinging a hammer, man, and being one of the guys. Your workers look at you like you’re one of them,” Van Winkle told TheNew York Times in 2010
5. Build your brand through content
Even if he has shifted most of his efforts into real estate investment, Van Winkle is still an entertainer at heart. Cashing in on the popularity of real estate and renovation television shows, he turned his investment journey into a reality television show — The Vanilla Ice Project — on the DIY Network and it has run for nine seasons.
The show follows Van Winkle as he oversees his teams of contractors. The show has been so successful, that Van Winkle has launched a training course that aims to help others succeed in investing.
The median sale price for an existing home in the U.S. has grown to a whopping $419,300 — the highest since NAR began tracking the metric — following 11-consecutive months of price gains.
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Existing-home sales shouldered a modest drop in May while the median sale price climbed to a new all-time high, according to data released Friday by the National Association of Realtors.
Sales of existing homes slid 0.7 percent between April and May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.11 million, the third-consecutive month of decreasing sales, data shows. Transactions also fell 2.8 percent on an annual basis.
“Eventually, more inventory will help boost home sales and tame home price gains in the upcoming months,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement. “Increased housing supply spells good news for consumers who want to see more properties before making purchasing decisions.”
The median existing-home sale price grew 5.7 percent from May 2023 to a whopping $419,300 — the highest price recorded by NAR since it began tracking the metric in 1999 — following 11-straight months of price gains. The record-smashing price increase threatens to create further barriers to entry for aspiring home buyers already dealing with elevated mortgage rates, Yun suggested.
“Home prices reaching new highs are creating a wider divide between those owning properties and those who wish to be first-time buyers,” Yun said. “The mortgage payment for a typical home today is more than double that of homes purchased before 2020. Still, first-time buyers in the market understand the long-term benefits of owning.”
The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.87 percent as of June 20, according to Freddie Mac, a decrease from the 6.95 percent average recorded the prior week but up from 6.67 percent a year earlier.
While mortgage rates dipped modestly in May, sales dipped with them, illustrating how much of an issue affordability is to buyers according to Zillow Senior Economist Orphe Divounguy.
“The decrease in sales is a stark reminder that affordability is still a challenge,” Divounguy said, “even as month-to-month improvements in inventory and interest rates emerge.”
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Cassie Walker Johnson has been a broker with Windemere Real Estate in Seattle since 2005, practicing with her husband Jeremey Johnson for her entire career as a broker, other than a stint in property management after the 2008 recession.
Throughout her career, she’s become known as an expert in buyer agreements, and credits much of this to the systems she has in place to ensure deals go smoothly. She’ll be sharing tips on how to implement effective systems at the upcoming Inman Connect Las Vegas, and sharing the story of how her systems saved her business amidst a breast cancer diagnosis in 2021. Inman caught up with Walker Johnson ahead of her Connect appearance.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Inman: What’s it like being part of a husband-and-wife team?
Johnson: It’s interesting. There’s great days, there’s frustrating days, but frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Real Estate is actually kind of a lonely business, and being able to have a business partner, especially when they’re your spouse is a really great way to go because it’s only my husband I can turn to and say “you know what? I don’t want to work today,” and not give a reason. It’s definitely challenging in the way that we have to be very religious about having date nights where we’re not talking about work, and that’s very hard to do.
You’re known as an expert on buyer’s agreements. How did you earn that reputation?
Back in 2006 we had a friend — I’ll say “friend” in quotation marks — who we toured with for a good six months, like every weekend over a broad range of mileage and territory. But we were having fun. It was a friend. And then six months later she calls me up and she’s like “I bought a house,” and I’m like… “What?”
For various circumstances, she was able to cut a deal with a listing agent. It was a listing that hadn’t sold and they dropped the price and waived their compensation and all this kind of stuff, so it worked out for her.
Her dream house happened to be finally in her dream budget. Of course she’s going to do everything she can to get that home. But it fell on us to explain to her how we work and how we get paid. From that moment on was when we really started realizing the benefit of using a buyer agreement. But we weren’t using it religiously — we were using it here and there.
We would use it with someone who we thought maybe wouldn’t be as loyal to us as like, working with my sister or something. It was really in about 2017 as these various things kind of all came to fruition.
As we started using this tool, our business got stronger and our systems got stronger, and it really helped increase production. It really helped us weed out the not so serious buyers we might be wasting time on, and then it also helped us have this equity lens that we really were not paying attention to before. It came down to “Okay, why are we having some buyers sign this and others not?”And are we looking at a fair housing equity issue there?
And that’s when it just became our policy.
I started teaching about two years ago about our buyer system. Windermere came to me and said “Look, you seem to be using this with every single one of your buyers. You seem to have a system. Would you share it with others?” And that’s when I started teaching our eight-step process and the ease of incorporating this agreement into your day to day.
Could you share a bit about what you have planned for your Connect appearance?
I think the biggest thing that I’m excited to share is this process and the ease of it and helping agents and brokers understand that when you create systems, that’s when your success goes to the next level.
I’ll be sharing the story of how I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021 and that was, like every other real estate agent in the United States, a record breaking year and had we not had those systems in place, such as our eight-step process for both buyers and sellers, we would not have made it through. So I’ll be talking a little bit about the importance of these systems and my personal story of how it saved our business.
Construction starts on new housing units dropped 5.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,277,000 — 19.3 percent lower than levels in May 2023, according to U.S. Census data released Thursday.
At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.
Construction starts on new housing units dropped 5.5 percent between April and May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,277,000 — 19.3 percent lower than levels in May 2023, according to the data.
“With more homes being completed and no clear line of sight into the path of interest rates, builder confidence fell and many of them scaled back on starting new projects,” ZillowSenior Economist Orphe Divounguy said in a statement.
The slowdown in new building projects came during a point in the year when builders usually ramp up construction, which Divounguy attributed to caution from builders surrounding increased interest rates and the effect they have on housing demand.
“The slowdown in single-family housing starts could reflect a cautious outlook from builders largely due to higher-for-longer interest rates translating to easing housing demand during a time of year when acceleration is typically expected,” he said.
Housing units authorized by building permits in May were at at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,386,000 according to census data, 3.8 percent below their April levels and 9.5 percent lower than the permits recorded in May 2023.
Housing completions fell 8.4 percent between April and May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,514,000, or 1 percent higher than the May 2023 rate.
“Builders continue to add to the inventory count. In May, single-family home completions were still roughly 1% higher than a year ago. With more homes coming on the market and no equally large uptick in housing sales, total for-sale housing inventory is higher than it was a year ago.
CEO Dana Jones pushed back in a statement on Tuesday, saying RealPage isn’t responsible for an undersupply of rentals, increased demand for homes or inflationary pressures shaping the market.
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In the statement, RealPage CEO Dana Jones asserted that “false and misleading claims” have been reported regarding the company’s revenue management software and denied that the company is responsible for widespread rent increases.
“The time is now to address a number of false claims about RealPage’s revenue management software, and how rental housing providers operate when setting rent prices,” Jones said. “Housing affordability should be the real focus. RealPage is proud of the role our customers play in providing safe and affordable housing to millions of people. Despite the noise, we will continue to innovate with confidence and make sure our solutions continue to benefit residents and housing providers, alike.”
Numerous class-action lawsuits allege that landlords used RealPage’s Yardi software to coordinate a campaign to raise rents to unprecedented highs by using RealPage’s algorithms to share rental price data with other providers. The lawsuits allege that the price- and occupancy-sharing agreements amounted to a “cartel.”
The lawsuits also name several rental housing operators, some of whom have already settled, such as Pinnacle Property Management Services — one of the largest property managers in the United States — and Apartment Income REIT.
The same claims laid out by the lawsuits have reportedly inspired the Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation into RealPage, with reports indicating that the DOJ is looking into the possibility RealPage helped facilitate price fixing at some of the large rental properties whose owners use the software. The criminal investigation came after the DOJ filed a brief in support of the collective class action lawsuits against RealPage moving forward.
“Put simply, RealPage allegedly replaces independent competitive decision-making on prices, which often leads to lower prices for tenants, with a price-fixing combination that violates” antitrust law, the DOJ said in support of the renters’ case.
In its statement, RealPage pointed to housing affordability as the real problem and argued it should not be held responsible for the persistent undersupply of rental units, increased demand for rental housing, and inflationary pressures currently shaping the housing market.
It also asserted that RealPage customers set their own prices, have the discretion to accept or reject software price recommendations, are not punished for denying software recommended rents, and accept recommendations at widely varying rates that they claim are lower than has been reported.
In the statement, RealPage pointed out that its price recommendation software makes recommendations in both directions, up and down, and that it never recommends a customer withhold vacant units from the market. It claimed that customers using their software maintained a rental vacancy rate well below the national average, but did not provide a specific statistic.
“RealPage revenue management software offers prospective residents and housing providers more options and flexibility in lease terms, aids compliance with Fair Housing laws, does not use any personal or demographic data to generate rent price recommendations, and helps ensure that prospective residents have access to the best pricing available to everyone,” the statement reads.
Some of those claims ran contrary, however, to remarks made by RealPage executives at a 2021 conference, which were first reported by ProPublica in 2022.
“Never before have we seen these numbers,” Jay Parsons, then a vice president at RealPage, speaking about a recent 14.5 percent jump in apartment rent prices. Parsons then asked a colleague if their software had played a role, according to ProPublica.
“I think it’s driving it, quite honestly,” Andrew Bowen, another RealPage executive answered. “As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually.”
