Relationships Win in Real Estate: Chuma Hicks-Reese on Referrals, Collaboration & Atlanta Investing

Chuma Hicks-Reese (00:00)

The goal is to fix them through AI. I’m gonna have a whole AI team of bots working for me doing things as well as my partner who’s gonna be managing that with me. But the goal is to

make my business move faster through artificial intelligence. If you’re not using artificial intelligence, if you’re not using it to organize your CRM through KW Command, if you’re not using it to help you lead generate, if you’re not helping, if you’re not using it—all these different things that you should be using AI for in your business—if you’re not, you’re gonna get left behind. And that is where I’m at right now.

Freddie Steen (02:07)

Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast brought to you by Real Estate Pros. You know who I am, I’m your host, Freddie. And today I’m joined again by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Chuma Hicks-Reese, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate asset class of Dream Builder. Chuma, I’m glad to have you here.

I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching capital raising, coaching, and scaling. Let’s dive in. So first off, Chuma, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus these days and what markets are you operating in?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (02:46)

Well, first let me just say I’m really grateful to be here. So thank you so much for having me, and I want to surprise everybody out there. To answer your question, the markets that I’m in right now… I’ve—I’ve definitely been working really hard, specializing in the custom build market. Not builder like, “I sell, they build a subdivision, and you have to buy their dream”—more like helping people understand we can sell you your dream,

right. So I’ve been working in that market, but I’ve also—work in the residential and commercial markets as well. And my objective is mostly to educate people and advise people, and not sell them on anything—more like educate them about the process, be their advisor, be their problem solver, ’cause it’s always a problem that shows up when someone’s telling you about what they want to do,

a property they want to acquire, something, and I have to be a strategist to help them understand how we can solve that problem before we can get into possibly me becoming a salesperson for them as a real estate agent. So that’s my objective, always to first and foremost empower people.

Freddie Steen (03:50)

Chuma, you talk about where you come from, and I think our real estate pros would be delighted to know that here as a podcast host, I’m somewhat familiar with your hometown of Brooklyn, New York. A stone’s—

Chuma Hicks-Reese (04:03)

A stone’s—

Freddie Steen (04:04)

throw from Marcy Projects. I used to hear my father, fiery preacher from Ohio, preach at Concord Baptist Church there in Brooklyn. Tell me this about

that legacy from Brooklyn to where you are now, what that New York state of mind, if you will, means to you. And then you brand yourself as the Real Estate Dream Builder. You know, also, what does that philosophy mean to you?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (04:28)

Okay. So, I’m in Georgia. I work in Atlanta markets. I’m—but I live in Fayetteville, Georgia. I work in those—in the Atlanta market and all the surrounding metro areas. But that’s via Brooklyn, via Bed-Stuy. I grew up in Bed-Stuy. So when you said Marcy Projects, I had to mention—give a shout-out to Bed-Stuy and Bedford-Stuyvesant. And what basically what happened to me when I was a kid, when I was about

eight years old… My uncle fell asleep in the house. I became passionate about real estate—I’m first generation, right? So I became passionate about real estate for other reasons due to something that happened to me. And then later on someone encouraged me—I’ll get into that in a minute—to be a real estate agent. But I’ve always been passionate about people having a great, a nice home. And that’s because my uncle, my father’s brother, he was a homeless

vet and he disappeared after war. He had PTSD. And one day my parents were shopping and they ran into him. This is years and years later, and they found him, and so they brought him home. And we lived in a two-family house, so they moved him into the garden apartment and we lived upstairs. He had some habits, and he fell asleep smoking a cigarette and the mattress caught on fire, the house caught fire. Needless to say, he didn’t survive, but we did.

That whole first floor was just pretty much destroyed, but the second floor was preserved. We moved back home. My father got paid the insurance money. My father—more he was more like somewhere in between a handyman and contracting. He wasn’t—he thought he was a lot more than he was. God bless him, I love my dad, but rest in peace. But he took the money, instead of hiring a contractor, he took the money and bought

sheetrock and paneling and drop ceilings, and he tried to do it himself. He didn’t finish. My mother unfortunately passed away when I was twenty from cancer, without her dream of being able to take over the whole house and live downstairs fulfilled. So now here I am, and now I’m 24 and I’m—I’m like telling my dad, “Listen, I’m tired of this first floor looking like this. I want to have my own apartment. Yo, like put me on the deed.”

So he does. I hire contractors to renovate it. I remember the whole scenario. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was green. I was taken for granted. They held me hostage. Like, they didn’t come when they said they were gonna come. It was a lot of drama. And eventually, we got it done, and I did get the house renovated, which I’m proud to say, but it went through a lot of stress and heartache and unnecessary time that was wasted. So—

Freddie Steen (06:53)

Why didn’t you quit at that moment, Chuma?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (07:44)

‘Cause I’m not a quitter. I don’t quit at all. I mean, anything I try to do, I try to stick with it and see it through. And that’s how I feel about what I’m doing now. So now I’m here, I’m in my fifties. I moved to Atlanta when I was thirty-five—I’m fifty-six now. But now I’m in my fifties and I’m trying these different careers, ’cause I spent twenty-seven years in the legal field as a legal secretary,

and I did some paralegal work, and there were times I did end up in the real estate practice group. I’ve worked in a lot of different practice groups, so I know real estate and contracts. I’ve been a—I came here, I’ve been a landlord, I’ve had a rooming house here in Atlanta, I even had a townhome, so I did property—my own property management. But I decided to try other things. Now there’s this vacuum cleaner called the Rainbow. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but you can only buy it

in in-home demonstrations—like think of it like those Kirby demonstrations. I was doing that, and there’s this real estate agent who was my team lead. Her name is Ty Barnes—I owe her everything. Ty Barnes kept telling me, “You would be a great real estate agent, you would be a great real estate agent.” I decided during COVID I wanted to sell my houses, my re—my investment properties, because now living in Fayetteville with my husband who gets all the credit for helping me

get through all of this, cause he let me quit my job at Apple and just focus on being a real estate agent and he just gave me money every month—but I’m going all over the place. But anyway, that’s another story. But she, when I say, “I want—I want to sell my house,” she said, “Well, that’s fine, but I’m gonna teach you how to do it in the process.” And she let me like watch her do the li—put input the listings into MLS, she let me negoti—listen to the negotiations over the phone.

If I was at any—if I was at the house when buyers showed up or they didn’t know I was the seller, but I was able to just get that hands-on mentoring before I even became a real estate agent, and I got the bug. It bit me, and I sent—I went to Raj. I said, “I want to quit this,” because I was also working at Apple doing remote tech support. And I said, “I want to quit and I want to be a real estate agent.” And he said, “Go ahead, boo.” And he gave me the money, he paid for the course,

I went to school, I became licensed, and here I am. And that is my testimony. So I’m just really passionate about helping people find homes, build homes, because I know what it’s like for your home to not be where you want it to be.

Freddie Steen (10:02)

Chuma, as a partner with Custom Dwelling, you help clients navigate custom builds from 300,000 up to 3 million. I mean, what is the biggest misconception people have about building a custom home in Metro Atlanta?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (10:16)

They think that it’s—they think that it costs tons and tons of money. They think that it’s really hard. And that misconception is not their fault, because if you don’t—if you don’t do it from the perspective of a project management Scrum place, then you’re gonna be all over the place like I was when I hired contractors to renovate my home in Brooklyn. So

Custom Dwelling, they are a full life cycle builder and a project management firm. It’s a turnkey company, right? They have the architect, the developer, the lender, the contractors. Everyone is there, and the builder and the chief strategic officer organizes all that. I not only do I bring business to the company, but I also

help navigate like ne—and that’s near the end of the build, certain things about the build that we’re supposed to design and organize for the buyer, right? But now I’m at—I’m expanding, right? It’s not just about that company anymore. I’m forming a new partnership with someone and we’re gonna start building relationships with different custom-built companies

so that we can be the premier Atlanta custom-build desk, interview people, buyers who want their properties built. And what we would do is based on their profile and what they desire, we will match them up with the correct builder. So I’m moving away from just the company you just mentioned,

and I’m starting something different. And also in connection to that partnership—I want to throw that out there—my partner, my upcoming partner, he is amazing. He’s a real estate agent as well. His weaknesses are my strengths and my weaknesses are his strengths. So

he’s—I’m an extrovert, I’m gregarious, I like to get out there and be in the world, lead generate, kiss babies, talk to people, just network. And I have a strong community. I—I’m—I have—I know so many people. I have different pockets of community that I’m I—that I’m part of that room, right? He is an ambivert. He’s not really just an extrovert or an introvert, he’s in the middle. And he likes to work on systems, he likes to

take—fix anything that’s bottlenecking a business. He’s into marketing, research. He’s very tech-savvy, he’s AI—we both are like very AI-friendly to conscious, and we work and we know how to work that. And so together it’s gonna create this amazing client-centric business, not just in the custom-built sense, but also

in the—in the—just real estate in general. You’re gonna get two agents for the price of one. That means everything is gonna move faster, there’s gonna be more business that’s coming at us, and we understand our roles, and we’re gonna support each other. And if we can support each other correctly, we can always support our clients and we’ll never—’cause now I can get away from, ’cause a lot of times we’re working day and night because we don’t wanna overpromise and underdeliver. And so I never turn away business, so

but at that point, you need assistance. And yeah, I do leverage transaction coordinators and things like that, but I think this is gonna be a game changer for my—for my business, and I’ll just say on behalf of him, our business. So stay tuned, that’s coming very soon.

Freddie Steen (13:30)

Well, thank you for the inside information. I love to break news. So watch out, Atlanta market, Chuma’s coming. Now, you have a reputation for turning expired listings into sold success stories. When a home has been sitting on the market without selling, what are the first three things do you audit to fix the strategy?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (13:51)

Well, the first thing that you have to do when you—the three things you audit… When you talk to the owner, you must always ask them, figure out what is—what happened, okay? Because usually you’re meeting somebody that’s upset.

They’re upset or they’re desperate, right, or both, to sell. And so you have to kind of—kind of buddy up with them and then try and be compassionate, and you have to find out what exactly happened. And then you also have to do your due diligence on the property. I tend to do some due diligence before I call the owner so that when I call them,

Freddie Steen (14:26)

Yes.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (14:27)

the trust…

Yes, I do my due diligence. I find out how many days was it on the market, what brokerage was it with. I look at the listing. Maybe the listing has problems with it, like the pictures maybe weren’t professional, or maybe the way the listing description was written, it wasn’t—it didn’t pull people in. So I look at those things. So that’s the first thing I audit, actually. Then I call the owner, and then

we have a conversation. And then sometimes they’re like really surprised that I know what I already know. I just want to get their perspective. It creates trust. It creates, “You must know what you’re doing.” And then from there, what I have to audit is: How is it possible

to turn this from an expired listing to a sold listing? So then I have to go back and look at the neighborhood and look at the market and look at what can I do differently that the other person did. Because if you do the same thing, you’re gonna have the same result, right? So you don’t want to do the same exact thing you did before. So I need to get into the owner’s head to find out what happened before so that I don’t replicate that, and then I have to come up with my own strategy

to make sure I’m not like something new, something bright, something shiny—not shiny in a sense like it’s a shiny object and it sounds appealing, no, shiny because it’s truly a—a shining, winning strategy that’s gonna help get your property sold and that it won’t have to be expired or withdrawn again.

Freddie Steen (15:53)

Love it. Chuma, you recently posted that you start evaluating an investment property by zip code, as you just said, and neighborhood indicators, rather than its layout or cosmetics. What specific growth indicators do you look for in Atlanta right now?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (16:12)

You always have to look at location, location, location, right? And you have to look at: Is this location part of an econ—the economy in Atlanta that’s gonna grow? Is it being gentrified? What type of people are moving into this neighborhood? What is the price point of the properties in that neighborhood,

and what type of people in terms of their occupations and how much money they make and things like that, who is in this neighborhood and that area. And then you have to look at: Are there new developments coming into this neighborhood? Is this really a growing neighborhood or is it just somewhere where it’s just houses and an existence? So you have to—you have to do some research about planning and zoning and what’s going on.

Like, so oftentimes when I’m talking to a client, a buyer client, about a neighborhood, I like to present already what I already know about the neighborhood. It’s not just about the house. So when I first started, ’cause I’m—I’ve spent, October, three years now I’ve been a real estate agent. But in my first year, it was always about the house, the house, the house. But then I wanna be an educator.

I need to be knowledgeable myself, not just about the house, but about where the house is. So to me, it’s really about location, location, what’s happening, how’s it growing, what’s the developments that are coming, and then you have to match it up with the profile of the client. Is this a family? Are the schools good in this area? Is this a single guy that’s looking to be in a setting where it’s very social and it’s very hip and groovy, and

it’s so many different… Is this a—is this a nurse who wants to be close to hospitals because she’s a traveling nurse and it’ll be easy? It’s just—you have to think, it’s just… And then the other thing you have in real estate, if you don’t get—you have to be a somewhat unofficial psychologist, ’cause this is an emotional journey. And you can kind of understand all the different personality types and the A’s, the B’s, the C’s, and Type A, and

you have to use—it’s like you have to just let them talk and figure out who they are. Because I’m a talker, so I had to learn to listen and then respond based on who they are and what I’m getting from them. And then once you become in alignment and they feel like you’re relatable, that’s just—it should be uphill from there.

Freddie Steen (18:30)

Chuma, would you agree that, especially in a market like Atlanta where the outside investor doesn’t know Jimmy Carter Boulevard from Buckhead, they don’t know Roswell from Fayetteville, they don’t know Fairburn from Villa Rica, would you say that’s one of your secret sauces, being boots on the ground in a market that’s white-hot even

because of the knowledge bank that’s in Atlanta in the university system with the AUC and other universities, but let me lift those out first. Would you say that that’s one of your superpowers, having boots-on-the-ground knowledge of neighborhoods?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (19:06)

Yeah, absolutely. But I don’t know everything, right? So the biggest superpower is relationships, relationships. So yes, I can go into AI and ask questions about this neighborhood, or I can do my own research, or I’m on—I’m more on the boots on the ground. I’m out there visiting all these neighborhoods. So I’m really good at proximity since I’ve lived out here, lived in Georgia for twenty-one years. So I know Geor—I know this area pretty well, all those areas that you just mentioned. However, I have—

I work at Keller Williams West Atlanta, I work with—that’s my brokerage. And all of us, we are a family of support. We support one another and we are not gatekeepers. I can call one of my partners that I know services one of those areas and they will give me the—they’ll give me the 411. So it’s really about connections, because nobody knows everything. I do get up in the morning and I try to look at market stats on the MLS and

so I can be educated about what’s going on, but it’s your relationships with people that get you in. And since we all wanna see each other win, it’s not competition, it’s collaboration. So I can pick up the phone, call one of my buddies, say, “Hey, I’m—I need to know this,” and they’ll share with me. It’s not about, “I’m not telling Chuma, because this is my area and I’m gonna…” No, it’s not like that. So it’s really about relationships, and I have some great, great relationships with people, great referral partners, too,

across the—across the country.

Freddie Steen (20:29)

Chuma, I love it. And what caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to leverage this expertise of yours that you’ve gleaned in multiple markets, with having multiple market knowledge while keeping your margins strong. I mean, it’s just not easy, especially in this climate. Chuma, what’s been the key to keeping that machine running smoothly?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (20:49)

Spirituality, understanding that what you think, what you feel, what you believe, that is what you attract. Okay? If you—and we have the power. There’s an infinite source within us through God, right? And we have the power to leverage that, and so that keeps it going. I just every day express gratitude. Like, I have this philosophy: I get up in the morning and I say,

“I’m so happy and grateful I’m a millionaire.” Now, and I say it, and I have longer affirmations in connection to that, right? But that’s the beginning of it. And the reason why I say that is because I planted this seed, right, in this soil. And I’ve been watering the soil, and now I have this plant. And the plant has grown. Now, that means it’s happening. I’m not saying, “I can’t wait to be a millionaire,” or “I hope…” No, I’m happy to be one because I already see the plant. But when the flowers bloom…

Just keep nurturing, keep watering, don’t give up. When them flowers bloom, that’s your millions. And then when you open that bank account, you check, you go and sign online and you can—you see those numbers in there, you go, “There’s my flowers.” So I feel like it’s happening, and so that is how I think. And let’s not forget, everybody needs a support system. I got a wonderful dude in my life, who came with three daughters and grandchildren, and they love me,

and I have—who has believed in me when I’m down and when I have my days when I’m, ’cause when I wanna cry and I’m thinking, “I feel so heavy today,” and I get uplifted. I have a tribe, a whole tribe of friends that I’ve known for decades. Some are new, some are not, some I’ve known forever, but they all see me, they see my light. And the few that don’t, or that have thrown me away because of

whatever it was, a misunderstanding or a threat of the light, whatever it was, because I’m always down to take accountability… There’s not that many of that happening in my life. I have more support and uplifting people in my life that believe in me. And Roger says it all the time. He says, “You always make a friend no matter where you go.” You just always make a friend, and that’s

been the story of my life always. And I’ve learned, honestly, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because there’s nothing comfortable about trying to be successful at a high level. My goal is not to be a, “so and so signed a house here and there.” I want to be a high-produced, top-producing, high-level real estate agent, because that creates legacy

behind me. I mean, we’re all a collective, right? It’s not about, “I’m getting these millions for me.” No, I want to invest it back in something so I can help other people, help people I love and the community, create jobs. One of my biggest dreams is to—I’m an animal lover. I have dogs and I love them, and my babies. And so like I’ve been rescuing stray dogs from New York, like me and my dad used to pull them in the house and put them in the basement and find them homes. And I, because New York used to be riddled with stray

dogs and cats when I was a child. Not—and maybe it still is, I don’t know, I’m not there, but I have this… I want to start my own animal rescue facility and I want to call it “Pets Need Real Estate Too.”

Freddie Steen (23:53)

Thanks.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (23:54)

You know what I’m saying? You know what I’m saying? So yeah. Yeah, I’m just passionate about other people, and that’s it—others, others.

Freddie Steen (24:01)

Well, Chuma, now every operator that I know has a moment where things got real, maybe a deal that went sideways or a time they had to pivot fast. Do you mind sharing one of those moments for you?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (24:13)

Yeah,

I had a moment, it was really bad, where I—it was a commercial deal. I helped—I was working with someone who wanted to… They wanted to open a car dealership. And had me searching all these places. We found one,

and I had already educated him on the process of what a buyer—when buying anything, the transaction, what the pro—the steps that goes through: making the offer, signing it, the contract, and earnest money, everything. So now we find—we find this beautiful—that we built this building that we want to make an offer on. He tells me, “Make the offer. Make the offer.” I make the offer, and I’m sending him the contract, he signs it.

And when you make an offer on a property, what comes with it is you have to put down good faith earnest money, right? Right. So

Freddie Steen (25:01)

The—

Chuma Hicks-Reese (25:02)

I educated him on that. Now, he lives in New York, right, but he’s trying to start this business down here. I bring this earnest money up. He’s like, “I’m not paying no earnest money till I see the property.” I was like, “Well, that’s not what we’re supposed to be doing.”

And we kind of go back and forth, but he is—he’s insistent. I called the selling agent. Selling agent says, “I’m gonna talk to my people,” and they did, and then they gave him the time, which was a week, to get down here and see the property, and he said he would pay the earnest money. He comes down, he sees the property, even though I sent him so many videos about it. He loves it. He says, “I’m ready to do it,” tells me he’s gonna pay the earnest money that day or whatever. The day goes by, no earnest money.

Call him the next day, he’s on the plane back in New York. “I’m doing it when I get to New York.” Gets to New York, no earnest money. I call him up. He said, “I did it at this small bank, and it takes 24 hours.” I knew that was a lie, because when we wire money, it does not take 24 hours, whether it’s a small bank or a large bank, it’s the bank—it’s the same wiring system. “And I’ll have the receipt for you tomorrow.” That’s it. So now the receipt—

there’s no receipt the next day. All of a sudden, he says to me when I—when I’m confronting him about it, and as nice as I can, he said, “You forced me to sign that contract.” I said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “You asked me to make an offer.” “Why couldn’t your offer just be my word? Now you have me stuck in this contract.” I said, “I explained to you that an offer is a contract.” “Well, why can’t I just show them proof of funds?” I said,

“These are not your friends. These are people we’re doing business with, they don’t know you. Showing proof of funds just means you have money, it doesn’t—you have to put this up.” “Well, I don’t want to lose my money.” I said, “I’ve explained to you more than once. I pointed out in the contract that you during this due diligence period,” which was 45 days, by the way, because in commercial, you get more time. “If you have all this time to do your due diligence on how you can open this car dealership, and you can—

you get your money back if you changed your mind, could be the forty-fourth day. You don’t even have to have a reason.” He didn’t believe it, even though it was in the contract. Closing attorney called him, tried to talk him into it, didn’t. Anyway, he’s saying I forced him and I said, “What? You lied to me about this earnest money when you paid it. You’re trying to pigeonhole me and blame me for something that I only did my job.” I said, “I’m firing you,” and I fired him. Because a lot of times people think

’cause you work for them… Meanwhile, you’re not getting like hourly funds, so you can’t get that time back when it’s gone, right? All the time I poured into that, I didn’t get paid for it, right. And they think you work for them and you want to do anything they tell you to do. No. And I had to fire him, and I had to—that was my pivot to fire him and to not continue to deal with him, because maybe the old—the Chuma that first got into real estate, who was green, might have tried to like

rectify it and find a new deal to work on with him. But I learned my value. And over time when I started realizing, I was like, “What? We no longer gonna put up with this BS. We are now going to always remember your value, know what you’re capable of. And if somebody don’t see the gift of that, then you fire them.”

Freddie Steen (28:10)

Right.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (28:10)

And that was it, and it felt really good.

Freddie Steen (28:12)

Well, Chuma, the pivot. That’s the kind of stuff that people don’t talk about enough and, honestly, it’s what separates the folks who just dabble to the ones who stay in the game long-term like you. Let me ask you this: What are you most focused on solving or scaling next? I mean, what’s the next real goal for Chuma?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (28:31)

The real goal is to create—to fix the bottlenecks in my business, because I don’t have enough time.

And the goal is to fix them through AI. I’m gonna have a whole AI team of bots working for me doing things, as well as my partner who’s gonna be managing that with me. But the goal is to

make my business move faster through artificial intelligence. If you’re not using artificial intelligence, if you’re not using it to organize your CRM through KW Command, if you’re not using it to help you lead generate, if you’re not helping—if you’re not using it, all these different—I can—I can have a list, all these different things that you should be using AI for in your business. If you’re not, you’re gonna get left behind. And that is where I’m at right now. I’m actually,

at this time, it’s from noon to two,

I’m in a—or noon to one, so I’m gonna be in a five-day AI boot camp with somebody from Keller Williams West Atlanta. Keller Williams West Atlanta set this up for us to be able to take advantage of, and it’s for five days because they want us to win. And so we’re going—I’m gonna be in this boot camp where I’m gonna—and I’m gonna be—what they do is they ask you, “What is your number one bottleneck? Can we solve that problem?”

And then she’s gonna show us how to integrate AI into our systems so that we can solve it. So that’s where I’m at.

Freddie Steen (29:52)

Chuma, if you can only pick one neighborhood in the 404 area code that represents the future of Atlanta, where are we going?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (30:01)

Ooh, there’s a few of them. I’m so in love with Southwest Atlanta. Southwest

Freddie Steen (30:05)

Hmm.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (30:06)

Atlanta is so—

character, the character of the homes in Southwest Atlanta. People are sleeping on that, and I see that—I see that neighborhood just growing and growing and growing. There’s a lot of investor-purchased homes there that are being totally renovated, but they’re keeping—they’re keeping that character, that front porch.

The homes where you have the balcony on the top level where you come out your master bedroom on the balcony, and then you—and then you come and have porch on the bottom level, and there’s a lot of that in Southwest Atlanta. And I just think that neighborhood is truly on the come up. And I have some properties out there—I have one rental out there that I’m trying to get rented right now, I—I have another property out there I got rented, and then another property I’m about to sell out there soon. But all those,

I got those all through investors. So it’s—that is like, it’s growing in such a way, but it’s also preserving history of Atlanta in that way. So yeah, I—that’s the neighborhood I would pick. I live well out here in Fayetteville on the lake, but I would love to have a house out there, I wouldn’t lie.

Freddie Steen (31:12)

Chuma, that’s big. That’s big, especially when you’ve already got this rich history of your white-glove service and also your coaching platform. The next move can either compound things or create chaos, depending on how you play it. Now, Chuma, look, I know a lot of people listening are either earlier in their journey or looking to level up, and I think they’d benefit from hearing this:

Chuma Hicks-Reese (31:35)

Right.

Freddie Steen (31:35)

When it comes to building relationships

and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (31:43)

Seeing—seeing the joy, the smiles, gratification that others feel when you share your authenticity, like when you’re just yourself, just being—I’m just being me, and we connect, and then we—all of a sudden, we’re creating magic. I have every story, every—everything that’s been happening to me,

it’s all through connecting. It’s not me chasing something down. One thing I didn’t mention: I’m also a business broker. I help people buy and sell businesses through a company called Transworld—Transworld Business Advisors. And I’m one of the associate vice presidents, and I just started June first. And I already have like a restaurant and a grocery store that I’m trying to—listed, I’m trying to sell. But through one of those listings, I mean, this is my example, person—

per the person with the restaurant comes out and shares with me, “I wanna—me and my godbrother wanna do a fix-and-flip business, and we’d like to pull you into that.” I mean, that’s what I mean. Like, it’s the re—it’s the relationships, it’s what—it’s what this leads to this, to this, to this. I never thought that would happen, and that always happens for me. It’s being open to the process, the frequency. Like, you—we all have like this frequency

connected to the higher source, right, to our Creator. And you have to be open, and listen, I’m gonna be honest, I survived… I don’t—like a lot of people, they get up and they say, “Heck, I’m an addict, I’m an addict.” It’s forever, “they’re an addict.” No, I feel like I was an addict. I used to have a crystal meth problem, and I s—and I survived that. And once I realized, I…

Freddie Steen (33:14)

Okay.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (33:15)

appreciate that. And the reason why I can speak about the frequency, because I know what it feels like

to be high as a kite, and ain’t no—only frequency you’re getting is when the TV’s gonna—you gotta fix the antenna. My antenna was down, you know what I’m saying? But now that I’m—that’s way behind me, man, the antenna, the frequency, the signal that I’ve—that I’m getting, so much is being drawn to me. There’s so many channels that’s being flipped in my life that’s taking me to all these different places. That’s it.

When you are connected, that’s when everything else just falls into place.

Freddie Steen (33:49)

Before we wrap, can we talk about the intersection of real estate and business brokerage? I mean, you wear multiple hats, including working as a business broker with Transworld Business Advisors. Where do the worlds of small business acquisitions and commercial real estate intersect for Atlanta entrepreneurs?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (34:08)

That’s easy to answer. So, in business, when we sell a business, it usually has nothing… Real estate and selling real estate and selling a business can be two separate things or—and it can be one thing. So how it’s two separate things is you’re selling a business, most people lease a property. So when you sell a business, all you’re doing—it has nothing to do with real estate. You’re just selling that business to somebody else, and that means all the paperwork, the ownership of the business,

the best practices, everything about the business you’re selling, except the building, right? But every now and then somebody comes along, and they just have this business, but they also own the property, and they want to sell all of it. So then it intersects. Now you’re doing—not only are you doing a business brokerage deal, but now you’re doing a commercial real estate deal, and that’s when the two come together and that’s when they intersect.

Freddie Steen (35:00)

So Chuma, for your real estate clients who are looking to build multi-generational wealth, how do you see the relationship between acquiring real estate assets and owning a turnkey business?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (35:13)

Well, it could be—that’s a really good question, you got me there. Yeah, yeah. How do I see that?

Some people are—you can either be conservative and just own a home—

Freddie Steen (35:23)

Asset—

Chuma Hicks-Reese (35:24)

asset, or you can take money from that asset and buy investment properties, and turn—flip that, and turn them into a business and be a landlord. Or you can—not just be a landlord, you can just sell those, and that’s your business, yeah. Well, you can start a business at a property that you want to buy.

Like for example, I’m talking about starting an animal rescue facility, but I don’t want to lease the property, I’m gonna buy that thing, you know what I’m saying? So yeah. So, but I always try to encourage people, if you’re gonna build—there’s a difference between “I make money and it’s just going” or “I’m building wealth and the money’s working for me,” right? And so

one of—one of my strategies I try to tell my clients is to—is to buy property through a subject-to deal. I don’t know if you’re familiar with what that is.

Freddie Steen (36:10)

Please, please explain. This is what we’ve been waiting for.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (36:14)

So give you a good example. So subject-to is when somebody—an investor is buying a property, and it—they get their name on the deed, but the owner—it—the mortgage stays in the owner’s name. And let me give you a scenario. Say like you have a property that’s worth three hundred thousand, but you fall behind

three or four payments—let’s say three payments, right? So, and your mortgage payment is two thousand dollars. So now you’re behind six thousand dollars. You’re in pre-foreclosure, you’re stressed out, you try to get—you try to refinance, you try to get a loan modification, you try to get a loan, you try to ask family for money, you try to sell the house. Nothing happened, nothing works. You done throwing your hands up, you’re gonna give up, you’re gonna walk away from the property, you’re gonna jag up your credit, you’re gonna have this foreclosure on your record, right? And all of a sudden,

here comes this investor, Chuma the investor, right? And I’ve come to the dream—

Freddie Steen (37:05)

Dream Builder.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (37:07)

builder. And I forgot to answer your question about the Dream Builder earlier, I’m gonna go back to that. So the dr—so you—I come along, I say, “Hey, I will catch you up on your mortgage. I’ll give you the six G’s and pay it off, subject to you put me—we put my name on that deed, you take your name off the deed.”

And you—and you leave my name on the mortgage, provided that I give you, let’s say, whatever amount we agree upon, ten thousand dollars to walk away. So now you get to pocket ten G’s instead of nothing to walk away, your mortgage gets caught up, so now your credit stays stellar or whatever it is, or we get it back to being stellar. And I get to own a property for sixteen thousand dollars that

is really worth three hundred thousand, and it may come with about sixty thousand dollars or whatever worth of equity in it depending on how long it is. And it only makes sense to do it if the interest rate is low on that. So say like if it—we in a—we in a time where interest rates are seven percent, say like the interest rate is three percent, then it makes a lot of sense because now I’m gonna have a cheaper mortgage. And what I’m gonna do, gonna give you a lien on the property so that in the event

I default, right, you get your property back. So it’s a win-win situation. But I’m not gonna default, because I’m gonna put a housing voucher person up in there, a Section 8 person, and my mortgage—that mortgage is gonna get paid. And I’m gonna acquire this property, instead of buying it at market price, I’m gonna acquire it through that. That’s my strat—that’s how I try to teach people what they should do.

Freddie Steen (38:36)

Chuma, with the Atlanta housing market experiencing rapid shifts, how are you advising sellers to price and position their properties to get them successfully to the closing table?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (38:48)

I think I mentioned earlier that when we’re talking that Zillow sometimes could be my—not my best friend, because Zillow has these fantasy values on there, because it’s the robot, and let’s face it, robot can’t determine everything properly, but a human can. So what I tell my—when I meet sellers and they—I tell them we’re in a buyer’s market, right? Buyers have the power.

So what’s more important to you, what do you want? Do you want your property to sell fast, you want to get it off, or do you want to spend, or you’re trying to make this huge profit? Depending on their answer, I’ll say, “Well, if you’re trying to get this profit, this is not the right market for that.”

The market right now says—dictates everything. And so we have to price it at least five thousand dollars under market value, okay, okay, to—to make it competitive. Some people go for it, some people give you a problem, a pushback. “Well, Zillow says my appraiser did this.” All right, well, guess what? That’s fine, but that market value dictates everything. So then you have to do what they want,

and then they feel the pain. And once they feel the pain, then they come back and they say, “Okay, let’s do a price reduction,” when I check in after ten—for ten to fourteen days about a price reduction. Some of them don’t want to do it, some of them do. But the ones that follow my lead, we sell. The ones that don’t, we sit there, eventually we sell, but now because it sat on the market for so long, now it looks stale. And so the buyers capitalize over that.

They’re gonna look—they’re gonna make a lowball offer and they’re gonna tell you gotta pay closing costs or part of it, and then before it, and then they try to blame me, but I put everything in writing. “No, no, no, I told you this.” And I—everything is in email. I, “Nope, read the email. I verbally told you and I put it in the email.” I said, “I’m telling you.” And so yeah, that’s what I do. I try to say, “We’re in the buyer’s market, we need to price competitively. Other than that, there’s a chance we’re taking a huge risk that I don’t want you to experience.”

Freddie Steen (40:47)

Well, Chuma, I mean, you cannot fake that. Relationships—

Chuma Hicks-Reese (40:50)

Relationships.

Freddie Steen (40:51)

are everything in this space. Alright, before we wrap, for those who may be in Brooklyn like my cousin DJ Naturally, or in Atlanta like my cousin Taylor to the stars, Carl Ulysses, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate a lot more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach Chuma

and be a part of the Team 80 VIP list?

Chuma Hicks-Reese (41:56)

Okay, I’m gonna answer that and just real quick because you asked me—somebody answered before. That story I told you about the homes and building and all that, that’s kind of where the Dream Builder thing came from. And the other thing is I took this life—this life coaching course called The Dream Builder. Someone actually gave it to me for free, his name is Wayne, and that helped change my life as well. So I just aired that all up, but it kind of went with my testimony. So that’s how

I wanna help people build their dreams through real estate, so that’s where it came from. To answer your question, I’m approachable, man. All you gotta do is call me

at 404-277-1429. My email is 80—like the number 80. 80chuma@gmail.com.

Freddie Steen (42:40)

Easy peasy.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (42:42)

So I love to talk to people, you just gotta call me and I’ll take your information. I have all kinds of links where you click on this and you can get on my list and all that, and that’s easy to find, but—and it’s on all my social media. I have a Linktree.

And I want you to send me your number when you get off of here, as I wanna send you things and stay in touch with you. But again, just call me. I even tell people, don’t DM me, call me. Like, it’s easy to miss DMs, right? You working so much and we have all these platforms—we got TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, all… And I’ll be getting DMs everywhere and I don’t—and I can’t always get to all of them in the timely fashion I want. But that phone—

you send me a text or you call me, you gonna get me ASAP, you know what I’m saying? Or, that day, like we leave a message, whatever I’m doing, but if I’m not doing it, I just pick up. I answer spam calls and I try to talk them into buying a house. I go, “I’m calling you about this Medicare, such and such and such.” I say, “I’m happy to listen to what you want me to do with Medicare, but I wanna first wanna know,

are you interested in maybe buying or selling a house?” Because your—just like your time matters, mine does too, you know what I’m saying? I just pivot, I flip the pitch.

Freddie Steen (43:51)

Chuma, that’s perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing it the right way. So thanks again for being here.

Chuma Hicks-Reese (44:02)

Thank you so much, I appreciate it. And you better text me or call me, I told you. I’m talking about you, not people—the people, too, but I’m talking about you, Fred. You have—I want to hear from you, so I want to send you my Linktree and some other stuff, I want to stay in touch with you.

Freddie Steen (44:16)

Well, for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Chuma Hicks-Reese who are out there building real businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.