Over 6 years of developing and building a owner finance real estate investment company. Starting from scratch he has figured out the best way to create and sell real estate notes. He currently "flips” 75+ houses and notes a year and are shooting for 100. He’s been in real estate for over 15 years and have done a little bit of every kind of investing. His passion is in the creation of real estate notes because it affects the most people. You are helping the seller by buying their house. Then the neighborhood by rehabbing it. The buyer by offering owner finance and the investor by creating a good quality real estate note.
Erik was on episode 27 where we talked about Finding and Working with the “Right” Contractors
Erik is on track to do 100 deals this year. Obviously, to do a 100 deals in a year, you’ve got to be good at marketing for motivated seller leads. While Erik does do direct mail to find motivated sellers, he also uses other methods.
Today we talk about those other methods. We focus today’s episode on using bandit signs. Disclaimer: Check with your local city offices to make sure it’s legal for you to put signs out. They are illegal in a lot of places.
He shares a great tip on getting 4x8 sheets of corrugated plastic that he cuts down into bandit signs that have odd shapes. These signs grab much more attention than printed signs. He then writes on them with giant markers.
This is the way to go to get maximum benefit out of bandit signs.
The next thing we talk about is using newspaper ads to generate motivated seller leads. While print newspapers are dying and don’t get the readership they used to, you can still get ads displayed in them and online as most have a website now.
The great thing about online newspaper classifieds is that you can now have your ad show to visitors that might not even go into the classified section of the newspaper. There are a lot of possibilities here and not a lot of competition.
We also talk about using Facebook to target the exact demographics of people investors normally buy from. This varies greatly by area and also by investor, so it’s more up to you to determine which demographics you should target.
Facebook is just another medium to have your message displayed in front of people that might need your services. Why not take advantage of the power of Facebook ads to generate motivated sellers leads for your real estate investing business?
Don was on episode 36. Be sure to visit the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/36 to download his Joint Venture Agreement.
Don Costa, is a married father of 3 kids. He has been in the real estate business for over 10 years. He started Knocking on doors and wholesaling properties, and then quickly moved to flipping houses. Currently his office is on track to do a 100 flips this year.
Don is a networking machine! He is on track to do more than 20 flips this year solely from his networking efforts. Crazy!
Networking as a real estate investor is one of the cheapest ways to generate leads and deals and is probably the least utilized method of all.
Don mentions that he feels networking to be the best way to use Other People’s Marketing. Many investors use Other People’s Money, but few use Other People’s Marketing.
He calls all the marketing from other investors in his area and quickly asks if the investor is a wholesaler or a cash buyer.
His conversation is then guided by whichever the investor mentions they are.
If they are a cash buyer, Don wants to find out if they’d be interested in lending on a deal or joint venturing and splitting profits.
If they are a real estate wholesaler, he wants to know how many deals they’ve done. If they haven’t done many deals, he invites them to his offer and provides coaching. This is awesome because he is building a relationship with a new wholesaler that could bring him deals for years to come.
He even offers to do deal analysis for wholesalers so they know they already have a buyer at a given price. This takes almost all the risk out of the deal for them…which is invaluable when you are new to this business.
In this episode, we do a little role playing to see exactly what Don says when he calls real estate investors. The insights are incredible.
Listen to the episode to get the tips that have helped Don Costa to generate over 20 flip deals this year alone.
Get show notes at http://flippingjunkie.com/47
Jim has been a real estate investor in Northern Illinois since 2007, He is also a licensed real estate agent (IL) and has been since 2005. He started out as an aggressive new agent helping investors buy and sell their rehab properties. Then he quickly realized he was on the wrong side of that transaction and that is when he decided to become a real estate investor myself. These days his primary focus as an investor is residential redevelopment (aka rehabbing). He primarily works in Chicago and its NW suburbs and had used his local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to get 75% of his rehab deals over the last 8 years. Since he got into the real estate business he has been involved in over 450 transactions.His company does 8-10 rehabs at any one time. Though Jim is an active investor he spends as much of his time as possible with his 4 year old twins, Liam & Claire, and his awesome wife who stays home with them. He told us "Everything changed when I had kids. Suddenly I looked at everything differently and literally changed almost everything in my life. I got healthy, quit drinking, lost 50lbs and have never looked back. Life is much more enjoyable on this side of your health".
Jim’s secret to getting great deals on the MLS starts with planting the right seeds with the real estate agents involved. Effective communication is absolutely necessary.
You have to convince the listing agent so that they will convince the seller that your offer is worth considering and ultimately worth accepting.
Jim has bought tons of houses where his offer wasn’t the highest but he convinced the agents that his was the best offer. To make his offers more appealing he does the following:
1. Waives the inspection
2. Informs the agent that other investors and potential buyers include inspections because they will likely renegotiate after the inspection.
3. If not a bank-owned property, he tells the listing agent to inform the seller that, when he through fixing up the house, most of his houses are sold to young families.
4. He puts up a strong earnest money deposit (around $5,000 for a house with an ARV between $400k and $500k).
5. He puts in for a 2 week closing.
Agents hardly ever know what a seller is going to be willing to take for their house. They all have assumptions and we know what assumptions do…
So, don’t ever rely on a listing agent telling you their client will never entertain a low offer. This is crap. They are obligated to submit all offers, so go ahead and submit yours and try to convince the agent of the real benefits of your offer (not just price).
Jim also mentioned that 90% of his MLS deals required follow up. He usually does this using hotsheets to automatically check for status changes for the listings.
If you want to win even more deals, it’s best to have a system in place to remind you to follow up just before typical price changes. There’s no way to guarantee when there will be a price change but you can set up reminders for yourself for each property very easily in REImobile so that you can set it and forget it.
The criteria for properties he makes offers on are usually based on location but also the presence of one of the following keywords:
estate sale, REO, bank-owned, motivated, needs work, original owner, handyman special, as-is, fixer
As a Wholesaler with just over 3 years of experience, Tom has had explosive growth. As head “Rhino” of the most successful Tribe of Wholesalers on the planet he has had the fortune of meeting true Go Givers and being a part of some of the best real estate deals in the industry.
When he’s not writing, podcasting or creating courses that force others to succeed, you’ll find him spending time with his wife and 4 children or vacationing in favorite spots like Key Largo, Hilton Head, Charleston and Savanah.
Currently he is writing his first book, working title “Wholesaling Real Estate Like A Rhino, A No BS No Fluff Step-By-Step Blueprint To Wholesale A House Right Now” is slated for release this fall.
In this episode, Tom shares his top 8 direct mail lists for motivated sellers as a real estate investor.
The best direct mail lists are:
1. Tax Delinquent List - criteria: 2 years behind, are still the homeowner
2. Code Violation List - no criteria
3. Equity List - Absentee Owner, Owner Occupied and Global (all) - criteria: over 45 years old owner, last sale date between 1990 and 3 years ago.
4. Inheritance List - USLeadList
5. Evictions - no criteria
6. Yard Sale/Garage Sale List - tenants sell before they move
7. Probate - Recommends getting course from Rick Ginn
8. Arrest Record List - list of people recently arrested
Tom shares lots of pearls of wisdom in this episode that pertain to investing in general. One of these nuggets is from Jack Bosch. He says that you will get 5 no’s before you get a yes when asking people at your local government offices for each of these lists.
The first, second, third, fourth, and even fifth person you talk will tell you the list doesn’t exist or that they cannot give it to you. The sixth person will say, ‘Here ya go!”
Tom also shares a great tip from his friend, Mark Evans: ‘Data not Drama’ He is referring to keeping track of your mailing campaigns and the results you are getting.
We make this super easy in REImobile with our Direct Mail Module. Check it out here: http://reimobile.com
Tom also talks about how ‘Money is in the Database’. You have to keep track of your leads and follow up! …this is also exactly the reason why we developed REImobile…
I’m telling you, you’ve got to check out the system.
Husband. Father to His Two Year old Son, Nolan!
He’s a graduate of Ball State University living with my beautiful and super supportive wife in Indianapolis, Indiana. Prior to becoming a real estate professional he worked as Healthcare Technology Education Consultant at Indiana University Health. He’s also a successful poker player with a few TV final tables…which I found super interesting.
He’s spent the past several years learning all that he could about real estate and applying it so that he could provide enough income to support his family.
The education has paid off and he’s now a full-time real estate investor in Indianapolis.
Ben started by following my Flipping Junkie blog and went on to take my wholesaling training course FreedomByFlipping (http://freedombyflipping.com).
He’s grown his business and has staff helping him already. During this episode, Ben shares how he doesn’t focus at all on what his letters say as he simply outsources them to Jerry Puckett who handles the list and mailing them for Ben.
During the conversation we make special note of the importance of credibility when marketing to motivated sellers through direct mail.
Ben mentions how important it is to be a member of the chamber of commerce, better business bureau and have other professional credibility and endorsements.
Testimonials are huge. Ben advises to get and show testimonials whenever possible.
He always has motivated sellers tell him they called him because of the testimonials and reviews they saw.
Doug was born in Colorado Springs, CO and raised in Carlsbad New Mexico. After high school he ventured west to the sunny coast of Southern California. It was there he met his beautiful bride Andrea, who happens to share his entrepreneurial spirit!
As newlyweds, they ventured back to Colorado and started Mountain High Concessions, a Kettle Corn vender for special events and sporting/concert venues. Mountain High Concessions became the first Kettle popcorn vender for the Denver Broncos at Mile High Stadium. They were itching to get back to So Cal and they sold the concessions company and got started in Real Estate!
16 years and 3 kids later, they are the proud owners of one of Southern California's largest wholesale real estate purchasing companies! They operate the business together along with our incredible team! Over the past decade he has worked as a California Certified Residential Appraiser from 2003-2010. Since 2008, he and Andrea have purchased and sold over 250 properties in Southern California and manage their in-house rental property portfolio.
In this episode, Doug shares with us how he started by sending out about 1,000 postcards each month that had the ‘Urgent Notice’ message on them to absentee owners. His response rate then was about 2% to 4%…which is incredible!
Too bad everyone else started doing it and now the response rates are much, much lower. Typical investor response rates on direct mail is around .5% (half a percent).
Doug is now mailing around 20,000 pieces PER MONTH! He’s definitely dialed in his message and list in order to be comfortable mailing that much.
Instead of post cards, Doug now mails letters that are more professional. They have his business name and logo on them. He also includes a picture of himself and his family.
I think this is where direct mail for real estate investors is headed. Too many people are mailing yellow letters that come across as “iffy”. If you get a letter in the mail from a complete stranger that says they want to buy your house and to call them…and that’s all…your BS meter is probably being pegged.
Doug uses propertyradar.com for his lists. They are only available for west coast states. He used to get his lists from listsource.com (where most investors still get their lists).
His criteria for his absentee owners list is:
House older than 20 years
Bought 4+ years ago
With more than 60% equity
Less than 3,000 sqft
Many investors have trouble figuring out what benefits to motivated sellers to list in their letters. Here are some we discussed in this episode:
We buy As-Is. Make no repairs.
Fast Cash so you can Sell Quickly
Sell without dealing with Tenants or Family Members
Pay No Commissions
Skip the Hassles
Have Confidence the Deal with Close
To come up with your own benefits, just put yourself in the shoes of motivated sellers. Consider why you would seller to investor rather than the conventional way of listing with a Realtor.
Be sure to check out the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/44 to download your free guide from Doug entitled, ’11 Tips to Working Successfully with your Spouse’
Danny Johnson is the host of the Flipping Junkie podcast and today he shares with us incredible tips for driving for dollars in a world where technology has made things so much easier.
In this episode, we discuss:
What driving for dollars is
When to drive for dollars
Where to drive for dollars
How to drive for dollars
What to do after you get the addresses
Common questions about driving for dollars
How to outsource driving for dollars
Check out the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/43 to download a pdf of all the points talked about in this episode so that you have a roadmap for driving for dollars more efficiently.
Justin Colby is the Co-Founder and President of The Science of Flipping, Omni Investment Group and Phoenix Wealth Builders. The Science of Flipping is a free Podcast on itunes, Omni and PWB are both professional real estate investment companies specializing in purchase, rehab, and flipping of distressed property in the Metro Phoenix Area.
In this episode, Justin shares his story of getting started and struggling through 9 months to get his first deal. He simply didn’t have any money to get started and had to door knock and do things that cost very little.
In starting out this way, Justin was forced to learn the most efficient ways to get deals. This continued as he began using direct mail to generate motivated seller leads.
He shares with us that he had just sent out 47,000 direct mail pieces. So he’s grown over the years but knows what it takes to get started with very little money.
An important fact that he shares is that most direct mail response rates are below 1%. This fact tends to be ignored by most investors just starting out with direct mail to motivated sellers.
They might send out 500 mail pieces and only get 3 calls. This is very disheartening if you aren’t prepared for it. This is the reason we figure more than 80 to 90% of investors discontinue or change their list after only mailing one time!
When starting to send direct mail, you want to send as many as you can afford to send at least 6 times. You’ve got to mail the same mailing list your postcards and/or letters at least 6 times. The reason is that studies have shown that, for direct mail in general, 80% of sales happen after 6 touches.
Don’t be the guy that mails once and quits. Also, don’t be the guy that mails 5 times and quits. They’re almost equivalent.
The guy/gal that mails 6 or 7 times will generate a very disproportionate amount of motivated sellers leads.
Regarding whether to use postcards or letters and first class versus bulk rate or metered, it all boils down to which will be cheaper so that you can mail more pieces. When on a budget, you should always defer to what will allow you to send more.
In this episode, Justin also shares with us what he says in his postcards and letters. This is super valuable information.
We also talk about the A/B test he performed that cost him $15,000 and didn’t show any measurable difference.
Listen to the show to find out what the test was so that you can benefit from his big expense and save some money for yourself.
Joe McCall has been investing since 2006 and has an excellent podcast called the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast that he does with Alex Joungblood. He’s doing deals in multiple markets across the us while traveling for months at a time in Europe and traveling the us in an RV. He’s been teaching and coaching investing since 2011.
In this episode, Joe goes into incredible detail on how he set up and runs his direct mail marketing for motivated sellers leads.
We talk about the lists that he targets and how to get them.
He even shares when he sends postcards and when he sends letters.
A funny story during the interview was when Joe realized that he had been sending a postcard for years that he got from FlippingJunkie.com and didn’t put two and two together until that moment.
Bonus: get that postcard here http://flippingjunkie.com/41
Joe focuses on absentee owner mailings using postcards. When there is a lot of competition, he focuses on high equity owner occupied houses.
He gets his list from Listsource.com using the following criteria:
Bought at least 10 years ago
At least 40% equity
At least 3 bedroom house
Owner at least 55 years old
Specific zip codes with lots of rehab activity
One way Joe finds the most sought after areas is Trulia heat maps. He targets a county and the heat map shows cheap, median and expensive houses. There is even a table of data that can be sorted to show the most popular areas.
During the conversation we shared some numbers for the typical marketing spend per deal for investors. The numbers vary between $1,000 and $3,000 per deal and go as high as $5,000 per deal for some very competitive areas.
Mailing intervals for probates should be about once per week for the first 6 weeks or so. Mailing intervals for other lists usually are spread out from 30 to 90 days in between mailings.
One recurring theme throughout the episode was the discussion of how most investors fail to answer their phones. If there is one thing you can do to eliminate 75% or more of your competition, it’s answering your phone or calling back a seller IMMEDIATELY. Take that to the bank.
Nick Baldo started investing in real estate in 2011 with a focus on flipping houses in the Buffalo, NY area. He has since expanded his business to focus on value-added rental investments. Nick created and manages the real estate educational site, Income Digs to help aspiring real estate investors get started. He has a focus on leveraging technology to create an investment business that is both efficient and scalable.
Overview of Strategy:
11 Actionable Tips for getting yourself out there and finding deals
“Bonus” - Even if it’s not a deal you find, a solid consolation prize is finding a private lender
Visit the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/40 to download Nick's 10 Tangible Tips to Find More Solid Rehab Deals
Lamar Cannon is a real estate investor who loves to travel the world. He set up his business to allow him to do deals no matter where he is on the globe. His strengths are strategy, marketing and a strong mentality. He enjoys experiencing new cultures, trying new foods, reading, writing poetry and playing basketball.
In today’s episode Lamar and I talk about how he goes about determining which part of a city to focus his marketing on. He’s been investing in a lot of different cities outside of his home city of Austin, TX.
Investing in other cities forced him to develop a data-driven system to determine where to focus his marketing.
As a wholesaler (but almost equally as important for rehabbers), he wanted to determine which zip codes have the most action.
What he does is goes to ListSource.com and generates a list based on the following criteria:
1. Entire City (and surround areas)
2. Single-Family Houses Only
3. Last Sale Date within last 6 months
4. 99-100% Equity (shows most likely was cash buyer)
5. Absentee Owners (most likely investors bought)
6. Companies Only (filter to filter down further to make sure getting investor buys)
This is how he gets the data he wants for free…
On the last page right before checkout, you can preview your data and filter it by zip code. All he’s really interested in is the count of the matching transactions so just the record count per zip code will tell him which zip codes have the most investor transactions.
How cool is that?
Another filter he uses from time to time to determine great areas for wholesaling is the foreclosure rate for the zip codes. The more foreclosures, the more likely it is that the area isn’t being served well by investors as the houses aren’t being bought before foreclosures are happening…LESS COMPETITION!
For someone like myself that does mostly rehabs, I wouldn’t focus as much on foreclosures, rather I’d include price ranges that are near the city’s media home value as that will be the where the biggest pool of buyers is.
All in all, we shared a lot of great info in this episode to help you determine where to focus your mailing and claim your target farm area.
Melissa and I generate all of our deals almost entirely from marketing to motivated sellers. When I got my first call from my motivated seller marketing I froze….
I actually threw the phone to her for her to answer! She fumbled through it but we learned a heck of a lot from that first call.
It takes time to build up confidence when talking to motivated sellers. These 15 questions that I cover in this podcast episode will help you trim the time to develop awesome motivated seller talking to skills.
It’s important to go into each phone call from a seller with these 4 goals in mind:
1. Determine if a deal is even remotely possible (focus on what is owed… not what their asking price is)
2. Determine how motivated they are
3. Build rapport
4. Schedule an appointment immediately
The 15 questions talked about the podcast episode are presented in the order they should be asked. There is a reason for their ordering.
The biggest focus is on building rapport and getting information about their situation that they wouldn’t give something that is just hitting them up with questions without being conversational.
Enjoy the episode and be sure to down the PDF checklist of the 15 questions to make sure you ask them in the correct order. You can download the checklist at http://flippingjunkie.com/38
Chris Jameson started investing in the San Antonio real estate market in 2011 and soon after entered the private financing market. He has facilitated over $60M in loans and acquired over 60 units for his personal portfolio.
In this episode, Chris and I talk about the ins and outs of hard money loans and how to work with hard money lenders.
One of the biggest benefits for new investors is that hard money lenders can help keep you out of trouble. They usually won’t lend if the deals isn’t likely to make you money.
There are some hard money lenders that Chris calls “Loan To Own”. These lenders are more interested in creating the loan with the intention of getting the house from you when you default on the loan… usually after it’s already partially or mostly rehabbed!
Check out the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/37 to download Chris’s hard money lender checklist, hard money lending exposed pdf, repair estimates guide and his contact information.
In this episode we answer all of the following questions and more.
What exactly is a hard money lender?
Why are they better than getting traditional financing?
What characterizes a “good” hard money lender?
What is typically required from a borrower for a loan?
What kinds of deals and/or how do you analyze whether you will lend on a given deal?
What is the process from start to finish for someone wanting to get a loan for the first time?
You guys loan throughout Texas right? For people outside of Texas, how would you suggest they find a “good” lender?
Do you have any interesting stories about deals or borrowers that you wouldn’t mind sharing?
Don Costa, is a married father of 3 incredible kids. He has been in the real estate business for over 10 years. He started Knocking on doors and wholesaling properties, and then quickly moved to flipping houses. He took some time off during the crash and jumped back in 2012. Currently our office is on track to do a 100 flips this year. He loves what he does and he loves helping others get into the business.
Don started flipping houses when he was unemployed. The unemployment check only covered his living expenses and so he had to find a way to find deals, get funding for them and to fix them so that he could sell them and profit.
He got a notice of default list and began going door to door to try to buy houses from the people about to face foreclosure.
To buy and fix up the houses, he worked out a deal with a money partner to joint venture. The money partner would put up the funds. He would find the deals and manage the fix up and they would split the profits 50/50.
Not all deals are 50/50, we discuss some of the other terms investors use and how those are determined. Basically, the more value you bring to the table for the joint venture, the more you should make out of the deal. If you are finding incredible deals, managing the rehabs and getting them sold, shouldn’t you be asking for a 60/40 split. Heck yes.
Don didn’t have money to make monthly payments to hard money and private money lenders. He didn’t have money to spend on rehabs before getting draws from lenders. He had to joint venture.
He still joint ventures to this day. The reason is that he always wants to do as many deals as he can. Joint venturing allows him to be able to do that.
Finding joint venture partners can be had by networking. You hear it all the time, but do you do it? That’s the real question.
Don recommends using a written agreement to make sure everybody is on the same page and understands the deal. You can click here to download the agreement he uses. (Please be sure to have an attorney review this before using it - the agreement is only provided for educational purposes)
He talks about some of the situations he’s encountered with different JVs. One wanted to know if paint from one job was going to another job if it wasn’t all used. You probably don’t want to have someone partnering with you that is concerned with such minute details.
Another thing to be careful of is partnering with someone that wants to give too much input on rehabs. You do not want to have too many chiefs trying to run things. Contractors won’t know who to listen to or to check in with about change orders, etc. You should control as much as you can.
Jason has been on the show now 3 times! It’s because he’s awesome and doing great things in his real estate investing business in Houston.
We have in on the show today to talk about finding and working with private lenders for your house flips.
Now, if you’re new to real estate investing, you probably want to start with working with a partner to fund the deal and split the profits or use hard money until you have a proven track record of several successful flips. This will make it easier to build relationships with private lenders.
In this episode we talk about:
What a private lender is
How they are different than hard money lenders
What criteria Jason uses to determine good lenders from ones he’d rather not work with
How to find these lenders during networking events
Jason really focuses on the “working” part of networking events. I think most investors in general just don’t fully appreciate the power of these events if worked properly.
When negotiating with lenders on terms, Jason likes to frame the argument by showing how he uses the lenders that give the best terms first and then moves up to more expensive ones afters he’s used all of the cheaper one’s money. So, they can ask for higher rates, but they won’t get their money out until the cheaper ones have theirs out first.
Jason also talks about his vanilla and chocolate options he gives private lenders. You’ll need to listen to the episode for that one though. :)
Learn how to flip houses through this free house flipping training course. Weekly podcast episodes show you how to get started and go from newbie to pro.
In this episode, I talk about what we've been doing with this series of podcast episodes that is meant to be a sort of weekly training that follows a specific path to take you from absolute beginner real estate investor to master pro house flipper extraordinaire.
APIA is an investor friendly insurance company owned and operated by Gloria Kelley in Castroville, TX. Gloria has over 42 years experience in the insurance industry and services a niche market-unoccupied, vacant, or "distressed" properties. She got her start providing insurance for large financial institution's Real Estate Owned (REO) portfolios and has been employed by various large insurance companies over the course of her career. She has experienced all types of claims in her ever-growing knowledge in the insurance world.
Gloria shared some great tips and gotchas that all real estate investors need to be aware of when it comes to insuring vacant houses. As investors, we have a lot going on and can sometimes make decisions without knowing all the facts.
I’m willing to bet that 90% of real estate investors don’t properly insure their investment properties.
In this episode we talk about the importance of understanding insurance policy vacancy clauses. This is a super important clause because it can basically allow insurance companies to deny claims.
Another important topic we cover is what happens when you under insure a property. I know most investors do this as well. It’s important to understand the ramifications when you don’t put a proper insured value on your vacant real estate investments.
They currently service investors all over the U.S. We build strong relationships with clients because of our customer service, competitive pricing, responsiveness, and flexibility to meet the unique demands of investors. They offer the investor the opportunity to pay insurance in arrears. This is especially important since you know investors are cash /cash flow focused. Most insurance providers require insurance 3 months in advance and you probably won't get a refund of the premium if you do not use it all. With them you pay for what you use after the fact-not beforehand.
Their policies is underwritten by Lloyd's of London.
Andy McFarland is a self-made real estate entrepreneur who started with nothing and currently makes seven figures a year in his real estate business.
After getting fired from his last W-2 job in 2004, Andy went into real estate full time and has never looked back. Andy currently focuses on wholesaling properties in three different states; Utah, New Mexico, and Indiana. In 2015 alone, Andy did over 150 deals.
Andy has been married for 10 years and currently resides in Farmington Utah with his beautiful wife and three amazing children. Andy enjoys being around family and friends and continuing to grow and learn every day. You can follow Andy on his real estate journey by going to his website: www.iloverealestatestories.com or on his YouTube channel by searching for I Love Real Estate Stories.
He was also with us on episode 19 where we discussed ‘how much do you really need to know before getting started flipping houses?’
In today’s episode we talk about how real estate wholesalers operate and how to become one of their VIP buyers.
There is a very common misconception that wholesalers don’t leave enough meat on the bone when they sell their deals. That can and does happen, but it’s not every deal and not every wholesaler.
We discuss how we’ve seen wholesalers put out great deals at crazy prices because they made assumptions that were invalid.
Andy gives an example of how he just bought a house from a wholesaler that thought the house would only work as a rental. Andy determined it would work as a flip and snatched the deal up and wholesaled it himself at a higher price.
Some key points to take away from this episode are as follows:
Andy wholesales a TON of deals every year and his insights on how to build a great buyers list and how he operates his business are priceless.
Mike Arch is a founder of Alamo Home Source and is partners with Erik Saengerhausen who joined us for episode 27. Mike has been flipping for many years and has flipped hundreds of houses. He currently focuses on creating and selling real estate notes.
On today’s episode, we talk about how to find the “right” real estate agents, attorney, title company/closer for your house flipping business.
This biggest take away from this episode is that taking the time to find the team members that care as much about your business as you do is paramount. There are agents out there that always work with a sense of urgency and are great for real estate investors because you cannot steal in slow motion (meaning not to steal, but to get the great deals :)).
We discussed the best way to find agents doing great things in the areas you are investing or want to flip in and how to approach them so that they know who you are and can send you great deals.
It might surprise you to know that many agents that list a lot of houses don’t necessarily want their name on a junker house so they’d prefer not to list it. If they know you are a ready and able buyer, they can let you know about those properties before they go on the market. It’s a true win, win.
We also discussed how to find the right escrow officer or closer at a title company to close your transactions. Find out what fees are negotiable as well as the tips that pros use to save themselves time and money.
We also discuss the right kind of attorney to find. Obviously, you’ll want a real estate focused attorney. We talk about how we both have spent too much money in the past because we didn’t know how to approach and talk with attorneys. Don’t make the same mistakes, listen to this episode and gain the advantage.
Robert Nickell is a national speaker, published author and one of the most successful real estate investors in the nation. Robert is known for his unique ability to teach, train, and run successful virtual businesses. Robert co-created Investor Virtual Assistant Services, LLC (IVAS) with the purpose of sharing his knowledge, experience and success with fellow investors around the world that are looking to take more control of their time while increasing productivity and reducing costs.
Are you a solopreneur? Most real estate investors are. We try to do everything ourselves and think that it’s very hard to find someone to care about each task as much as we do.
It’s what keeps us mediocre as real estate investors.
If you want to really kick butt as a house flipper and real estate investor, you simply need to learn how to delegate and have other people do the busy work.
If you don’t, you won’t make as much money and you won’t truly get the freedom you started doing this to get in the first place.
Virtual assistants are great for investors that cannot afford full-time in-house employees. I’m sure there are dozens of tasks you can think of that you’d rather never do again in your life. Those are tasks that you can have someone else do. And, guess what? They don’t need to be in the same city, state or even country as you.
Robert Nickell runs a very successful wholesaling business and uses almost entirely virtual assistants from the Philippines to do it! Sounds crazy, but it’s true.
He’s done so well with it that he’s started to train and provide these virtual assistants to real estate investors so that we can all benefit from their help.
Not sure where to go to find virtual assistants? Not sure what qualities to look for? Not sure how to streamline your processes and coordinate and make the most out of the virtual assistants’ time? Not sure how much you should be paying for virtual assistants?
We cover all of these questions in this episode. I learned a tremendous amount from Robert in this podcast episode and I’m sure you will to. Even if you’re not immediately considering needing help, it’s best to know that it exists so that when you start getting bogged down, you’ll know where to go and how to handle it.
To find out more about Robert’s virtual assistants service, visit MyRockstarVA.com
Brandon is a painter, extortionist, exorcist, and lover (not a fighter.) He' would also like everyone to know he is not a robot, despite claims to the contrary. Little known fact: He’s the VP of Growth and Communications here at BiggerPockets.com.
Brandon joined me on the Flipping Junkie podcast way back in episode 2 of the show. He’s very busy and I really appreciate him taking the time to be on the show again. I enjoy talking with Brandon and consider him a great friend.
On this episode, we cover over 22 actionable tips for beginner real estate investors. Even though we say these are tips for beginners, I think we can all say that even experiences house flippers do not do all of these things. If we all would work at putting these tips into action, we’d all make more money and have more free time.
The important thing to always remember is that this is a marathon, not an all out sprint. Do not try to go out and do all of these things this next week as you will burn yourself out and half-ass all of them. That’s just a waste of time.
Take your time. Pick 3 and commit to do them well.
My favorite actionable tips from the show are:
1. Eliminate 2 words from your vocabulary completely: ‘I Can’t’ and replace them with ‘How Can I?’
2. Write your first “yellow letter.” Simply get a yellow pad of paper and write, Dear Johnny Appleseed, I’m interested in buying your house at 123 Plum Orchard Rd. If you would consider selling, please call me at 222-2222. Very sincerely, Joe Investor. Yes, it’s really as simple as that. Drive for dollars and find a vacant house. Look up the owners address from your county’s tax assessor website. It’s very simple.
Matt Theriault, a fifth-generation California native, Desert Storm Veteran (US Marine Corps), has worked as a full-time real estate professional since 2003. After building a small real estate empire (100+ income units) with hardly using one dime of his own money or one point of his own credit, he discovered that he had a knack for simplifying the complicated, implementing systems and producing desirable results for both himself and his investor partners. His “knack” has manifested itself via consistently better-than-average market returns for both himself and his investor partners, a thriving online real estate investing academy (EpicProAcademy.com), as well as one of the more popular Real Estate Investing Podcasts (Epic Real Estate Investing) on iTunes.
On this episode we talk about how Matt got started. He had made a fortune with his own record label and then lost everything when Napster and everything in the music industry changed.
He ended up going from being a millionaire to bagging groceries at the grocery store.
But, he didn’t let that stop him from trying. He went on to become a real estate agent and working with investors. He wasn’t making much money, so he decided he was on the wrong side of the action.
He became a real estate investor right away and started doing tons of short sales back around 2008 when the real estate market was tanking.
In this episode, Matt makes it clear that you’ve got to see things from the agent’s perspective when you are trying to work with them. He shares the fact that almost all agents will immediately think you will want to submit hundreds of low-ball offers with almost no chance of getting any accepted or that you will want to have the list your properties with a severely reduced commission.
Prove them wrong on those counts and you’ll have someone happy to work with you.
In this episode, you’ll also learn how to find the agents you should be working with and how to filter out very quickly, the ones you shouldn’t be working with.
Erik Saengerhausen has been developing his owner financing real estate investment company for over 6 years. He and his business partner, Mike Arch, run Alamo Home Source. They buy houses, fix them up and sell them with owner financing. Then, they sell the notes to investors for incredible returns.
They currently flip more than 75 houses a year and are working up to 100 houses. That’s a lot of fixing up of houses! They know a thing or two about finding and working with the right contractors to be able to do that kind of volume consistently.
In this episode, we cover the definition of the “right” contractor for the typical real estate investor. We also talk about what negative aspects to look for when trying to find the “right” contractor.
Erik has a different model for paying contractors than I do. He has guys that he pays on a weekly basis rather than per job. I hire on a per job basis so that the contractor is paid per job rather than for the amount of hours worked.
That’s an important thing to keep in mind — there isn’t simply one correct way to work with contractors. There are lots of strategies for how to work with contractors and you should find the one that works best for you and your contractors.
Many times these discussions will focus on the point of view of the investor and not on what it means for the contractors. We discuss how important it is to make sure you see things from the contractor’s point of view as finding and keeping the right contractors working for you can mean the difference between success and failure in this business.
Marco Romero is a real estate investor and a licensed real estate agent. In this episode, we talk about the pros and cons of getting your real estate license. There is no cut and dry answer to this question as it's more about your specific situation and goals. We take an in-depth look at all possible scenarios so that you can make an informed decision on which way you want to go.
Justin Williams has grown a very successful real estate investing business that flips hundreds of houses every year. He does this all while having the time to teach other investors and help out in his community.
The reason he has all of this time is that he focused on creating a team that runs his business so he only has to focus on what he wants to do.
In this episode we talk about how Justin hired his first person to take over some of the tasks in his business and how she grew to run his entire operation. It’s a very interesting story that all of us investors who spend way too much time working on our business should pay close attention to.
Have you thought about bringing on people to do some of the day to day for you but worried that they might learn from you and go off on their own? Don’t do it! In this episode Justin explains the fallacy in that kind of thinking.
Enjoy the episode and be sure to subscribe on iTunes.