Author Archive

What Comes First – “Finding the Deal” or “Finding the Buyer”?

Posted on January 6, 2015 by

When it comes to Wholesaling properties, I see the question asked frequently: “Where should I start? Marketing for Motivated Sellers? Or Marketing for Cash Buyers?”

We are somewhat biased when it comes to this subject, because in most of the materials we went through when we were first getting started out all said to start with Marketing for Motivated Sellers. The theory is that if you find a Hot Deal, meaning a property under contract that is WAY below market value, if you have that then the Cash Buyers will find you. So just get out there and go find a Hot Deal and the Cash Buyers will come to you. On a side note, same principle applies when it comes to finding Private Money. If you find the Hot Deal, the Money will find you. Not, go find a Private Lender then go look for a Hot Deal. I always like to have the Ace up my sleeve – when you have the Hot Deal, you have control.

I am somewhat intrigued by the theory of building your Cash Buyers List first though. The theory with that one is that if you go out and build a big buyers list, then you can just wholesale other Wholesalers deals. So you have lined up “Buyer Bob” and he wants to spend $100K this week on some cheapo rental houses, but you have nothing under contract. You don’t tell him you have nothing, you say “let me check with my people”, then you call your Wholesaler buddies and see if you can Joint Venture on some deals that they have under contract and split the profits. I can see this as a viable strategy. Read More→

Outsourcing Your Wholesaling

Posted on December 5, 2014 by

Are you doing absolutely everything in your Wholesaling business? Are you driving for dollars, writing your own letters, stuffing your own envelopes, building your own websites, creating your own flyers, taking the calls from sellers, inspecting the properties, getting them under contract, then posting the properties online, pitching them at meetings, showing the properties to investors, etc? Whew – that’s a lot of stuff eh??

Well if you are doing absolutely everything on your own, it’s time to stop! There is help out there. And yes – there is a balancing act: “do I do it myself” or “do I pay someone else to do it”??? Naturally there are some things you will want to do on your own – mainly talking with motivated sellers, making offers, and then getting the deal sold to other investors. So how can you get to where those are the ONLY things you have to do? There’s a lot of other stuff right?

MARKETING

Well the marketing is obviously important – probably the most important thing. There are services out there that can do your marketing for you. Namely letter writing services like www.YellowLetter.com and companies like that. They will create either Yellow Letters or Postcards to send out and they will mail it for you. You just need to provide the list. I believe you can buy lists from them as well. And there are plenty of other list providers out there – do your research. So if you get a list and send it to YellowLetters.com now that part of your marketing is done. Sit back and wait for the phone to start ringing. Read More→

Using Internet Marketing to Flip Houses

Posted on November 11, 2014 by

As I’ve said and many other successful wholesalers will always tell you is that “Marketing” is the life blood of your business. “Marketing” is the process of getting leads as well as getting your houses sold, which is how we make money right? And I’d say there are (3) main goals associated with your Marketing:

  • Finding Motivated Sellers
  • Finding Cash Buyers/Investors or Retail Buyers (building your buyers list)
  • Marketing to get a house SOLD

There are many different forms of marketing that we teach and that we use – including but not limited to: direct mail (letters and post cards), bandit signs, posting ads online and in newspapers, websites, flyers, business cards, telemarketing, door knocking, door hangers, social media, etc. YES – that was a lot, and you’re using ALL of them, right?

It wouldn’t hurt to try all of them at some point to see which one works best for you – depending on your personality and your resources (time and/or money). In other words, if you have NO money – telemarketing and door knocking take very little money up front. If you have LOTS of money – big direct mail campaigns might be good for you. I could go in depth on each method, but I’m going to focus on Internet Marketing for the remainder of this article – which encompasses a few of the methods mentioned above. Read More→

Should I Start Out Wholesaling as a Real Estate Investor?

Posted on October 7, 2014 by

Many people present wholesaling as a great way to gain capital for investing in real estate. One of the toughest things about getting started investing in real estate is saving enough money to invest. There are ways to invest with little money down, but you are still going to need some money to buy properties. Wholesaling may be a way to get started investing in real estate without much money. Wholesaling may not make you super rich, but it will teach you a lot about real estate investing and I think is a great place to start. For one, because that’s how I started, and two, I’m still doing it.

What is wholesaling real estate?

Wholesaling real estate involves an investor (“wholesaler”) buying a property or getting a property under contract and then selling the house or assigning the contract as quickly as possible. The investor may wholesale the property to another investor who will then fix up the property and rent it or flip it. The key to a successful wholesale deal is finding properties cheap enough where there is still room for a profit for the end buyer.

How can you find properties to wholesale?

I think a wholesaler’s biggest opportunity is to find off market properties. I call it the “Direct to Seller” method (no banks, no Realtors). Off market properties are houses that are not listed for sale, but are still for sale. The owners may be too far away, too busy, or too beat down to list the homes. The owners still want to sell the home, they just need the right person to find them and make an offer. Read More→

How to Close 10 Wholesale Deals in 1 Day

Posted on September 8, 2014 by

It’s pretty easy actually. Get (“contract”) (10) unwanted houses from a seller at a great price and turn around and wholesale all (10) to a cash buyer. Boom – easy right? We’ll of course it’s never THAT easy. What if it was your 1st deal ever? That would be scary. What if it was your 6th thru 15th deal? That was my scenario. But I did it. And you can do it too – because I knew practically nothing when I did it – had done 5 deals at that point. So how is it possible?

Well it was around November timeframe (2012) and we had just done our very 1st Wholesale deal a few weeks prior. Our 2nd deal was with a guy who had (13) or so rental properties down in the “South Side” of St Pete, which is a very rough side of town for the most part and you can get houses pretty cheap. We had done a lot of “driving for dollars” in the South Side and found a house and sent a letter to the owner and they called us off of our letter. I think he said he would sell the house for $20K, so I went and looked at it. It was terrible! Terrible, terrible house! Old, rickety, wood frame, termite infested, tiny house in the rough side of town. So I offered $11K and we finally settled on $13K I believe. I wrote up the contract and would close in a few weeks. He also mentioned he had (12) more houses and he’d be interested in selling them all – but he’d let me know about those after we closed on this one. Read More→

Make Money with Other Wholesalers

Posted on August 7, 2014 by

Do you think that the other wholesalers in your town are your competition? Not if you position yourself as a useful ally. Other wholesalers can be wonderful resources to help you grow your wholesaling business. So what do I mean by positioning yourself as a useful ally?

First of all, be useful. Bring value. In wholesaling you are either providing the Deal (the property at a great price) or you are providing the Buyer. Or both. If you have one but not the other, you may want to consider teaming up with another wholesaler.

Example #1: You have a friend of a friend (Billy Buyer) who has just inherited $100K and wants to buy a fix and flip property at a wholesale price. You have heard of wholesaling, but haven’t really done any deals yet, and haven’t been doing any marketing – so obviously you have no deals that are your own. You have another friend (Harry Wholesaler) who has started marketing for wholesale deals, and has found a sweet deal – way under market value ($55K) that would work great as a fix and flip and meets Billy Buyer’s criteria. But Harry Wholesaler has no buyers. So you step in and put Harry’s deal under contract with an assignment (for $60K total). Then you go ahead and assign that deal to Billy for a FEE (for $65K total). $65K is still a great deal for Billy Buyer and you and Harry make $5K each for putting together the deal. Read More→

Don’t Suck at Estimating Repairs

Posted on July 7, 2014 by

As a Wholesaler and an Investor, my pet peeve and the pet peeve of almost all cash buyers I talk to is when they get a lead from a Wholesaler and the “repair estimations” are WAY off! You can probably relate. If you are doing this, you are killing your reputation as a legitimate Wholesaler. And your reputation is everything in this business.

This can also apply to when you are co-wholesaling or joint venturing on another Wholesaler’s deal as well. You don’t want to advertise or re-market a property when they are totally off on their repair estimate. Because then you get a bad name because you took their word for it. Time to get a bit more thorough and bit more professional guys (and gals).

An accurate repair estimate is critical in making decisions on real estate deals – especially Wholesale deals. Of course smart investors are going to do their own due diligence anyway, but you don’t want to waste people’s time by claiming a house only needs $5K in work, when it really needs $15K in work. It’s best to over-estimate repairs as opposed to under-estimating repairs when relaying that information to your buyers.

And YES – there are two types of repair estimates – the “Rent Ready” estimate – or the “Full Rehab to Retail Flip” estimate. Because we are either selling to Landlords – who may only need to get the place “Rent Ready”. Or we’re selling to Fix n Flippers – who need to get the place sparkling brand new so they can resell for top dollar. If you know the place is just going to be a rental (for me that’s $60K and under ARV) – then you can probably get away with just knowing the “Rent Ready” estimate. Read More→

Better Get Into Real Estate Investing ASAP

Posted on June 9, 2014 by

So in the spirit of John Schaub who spoke at Tampa REIA last month and his message – to “build wealth one house at a time” – it is now my new mission to do just that. After 70+ wholesale flips in the last year and a half, I’m now fully comfortable with the fact that it’s time to get into “Buy and Hold” investing. I know, I know – it’s sooooo NOT sexy. True, but after hanging out with Larry Harbolt and Pete Fortunato and other “buy and hold” investors over the last 2 years, I finally see the light.

Now don’t get me wrong, I will probably always wholesale houses here and there, and today it’s still our Bread and Butter that pays the bills, but it’s time to build that cash flowing rental portfolio. This is for our future nest egg, our retirement, our passive income that will pay our bills for the rest of our lives. Any future excess money we make will go into rental properties (for the foreseeable future). Crazy huh?

Have I lost my mind? What has changed? When I first started out in real estate I really didn’t want to get into rental real estate. It just didn’t appeal to me. I figured we could make our money doing Wholesale Flips, Fix & Flips, and Lease Option flips. Well we can still keep doing that, but it’s time to put any excess money into rental real estate – or into private lending. Read More→

The DO NOTS of Wholesaling

Posted on May 6, 2014 by

When getting started in real estate investing and especially Wholesaling, usually everyone is focused on what they need to do. And that is pretty obvious – get educated, put out marketing, talk to sellers and buyers, make offers, negotiate, and close deals. We usually know what we NEED to do. Whether we do it or not is a whole separate issue/article. So let’s set that aside for the moment and what I want to talk about now is what NOT to do when Wholesaling.

I will call these the DON’Ts of Wholesaling.

  1. Don’t get hung up on the small stuff: I know a lot of people over analyze the situation and think that they need to create the perfect business entity before they get started; LLC or Incorporate?; What’s my cool business name going to be?; I need to design a cool logo for my company; I need to get cool looking business cards before I go to any networking events; I need to get my website up before I send any mailers; ETC. This could slow somebody down for months. The point is, get your marketing out 1st, get calls 1st, make offers 1st, get a deal 1st. Then worry about this small stuff.
  2. Don’t sign up for ALL of the “Guru’s” courses out there: I know everyone is looking for that Silver Bullet of an idea that is going to get them over the hump and make everything Easy as Pie. But what happens is you start getting too many ideas and techniques in your head and you get the “Shiny Object Syndrome” where you bounce around from technique to technique or are just stuck in Learning Mode or ‘Paralysis by Analysis’ – and you never really get started in full force. Pick a way to do it (there’s not that many) – and just do it. And stay focused. There’s always a new course around the corner. Ignore it. Put your blinders on and keep plugging along. Read More→

Be A Pro

Posted on April 8, 2014 by

I know when folks are getting started in real estate investing it’s easy to treat it like it’s a hobby.  And it might be for some – especially if you have another career and investing is a side business.  But with Wholesaling, you need to treat it like a job and a business, because it is. 

Buying rental real estate is a great way to earn passive income and we should all strive to earn as much passive income as possible in our lives.  But there is nothing passive about Wholesaling.  It’s work and that work needs to be taken seriously.  That’s why you need to be a “Pro” when it comes to your Wholesaling business, or else it probably won’t work out for you.

A “Pro” or Professional does the work and takes it seriously.  And more than likely a “Pro” is consumed by striving to be successful.  To use a football analogy, think about Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, those guys are “Pros”.  They are consumed by winning and being the best.  They wake up and eat, drink, and sleep football.  They game plan meticulously with their coaches and teammates.  They watch game film.  They practice their plays, over and over and over.  They are focused on learning and getting better.  They are role models and leaders for their teammates because they are usually the hardest working guys on the team.  They put in the time it takes to be a “Pro”.  Would you agree?  Hopefully you know who Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are. Read More→

Begin With The End In Mind

Posted on March 10, 2014 by

As a beginning real estate investor, what is it that we are getting into real estate investing for? Have you figured out what that is yet? Is it because you just love real estate? You love it so much that you would do it for free right? Probably not, but it is a means to an end and for many people including myself. We see it as a quicker, more effective, and more realistic means to an end than other options (ex: our traditional 9 to 5). But when you say means to and “end”, what is that “end”? Is that a clearly defined destination for you?

Is it retirement? If so, what does retirement look like for you?

Is it financial freedom? If so, what does financial freedom look like for you?

Is it a net worth of a certain amount of money?

Is it a passive income of a certain amount of money each month?

Is it a house on the water, a big boat, lots of nice cars, lots of vacations?

Is it simply Time Freedom – being able to do whatever you want with your time, because your bills are paid, and everything else is taken care of?

Is it a combination of most of the things I’ve listed above? Read More→

Money Loves Speed

Posted on February 10, 2014 by

Did the title of the article get your attention? I thought so. Money does love speed. Money in general loves speed. That means getting off your “you know what” and putting in to action whatever it is that needs to be done in your business (and in life). And the faster you do it, the more likely you are to be rewarded for it, financially. This will be one of my resolutions for this year – act with more Speed.

Let’s face it. You’re not getting any younger, the clock is always ticking. And, the sooner you realize the inherent value of speed, I promise you this; the more seriously you take your goals, the more urgency you will build into your daily habits.

Ever watched a commercial for some gadget or concept that you had thought of in the past and said “hey – that was my idea”? It may have been your idea and you should have acted on it. Instead, somebody else did and now they are billionaires. (Yep – I thought of Facebook too, but Mark Zuckerberg beat me to it).

But I’m not talking about just ideas. In general, things tend to work out better when you act on it faster. I don’t recall ever succeeding at something because I got there last.

Naturally, I’m going to relate this concept to Real Estate Investing, where Speed = Money. Because Money loves Speed. Read More→

Pick An Area To Focus On And Focus On It!

Posted on January 4, 2014 by

Happy New Year!! You may be reading this in early January even though I am writing this in December so I figured I’d throw that out. Hope you had a great Christmas season as well. It’s always my favorite time of the year. Our December one year ago I think was still our best month Wholesaling. We did 12 deals – which was insane. Don’t let up in the holiday season – it can be a good time to get deals.

So this month I want to talk about Focus. Real Estate investing in general has got to be the most distracting business out there. I’ve never been in a business where you can be going in 10 different directions. Using 10 different exit strategies and 10 different marketing techniques. I am/was one of those people. I thought I could be a “wholesaler/lease option/seller finance/subject to/fix and flip/short sale/REO/vacant land/note trader” Real Estate Investor. Now I still think I “can” be this, it will take time. I think there are some bad asses out there that are this Investor, but they are 10-20 years into the business. Don’t try to be an expert in 10 different types of deals right out of the gate. Perfect one – which means you are consistently making money from it – THEN move on to the next strategy. Then have 2 strategies going for a while until both are making money – THEN add a 3rd. And so on. Read More→

The Most Cost Effective Way to Find Deals

Posted on December 6, 2013 by

Alright – Winter Time!  Time to hunker down and do some deals before Christmas.  You want to give out good gifts this year right?  Well get to it then!  It’s cooler out so you will be less tempted by the beach and the pool and can focus on your marketing and getting the phone to ring.

So as I am writing this article in early November, I’m thinking about the deals we did in October.  It was actually one of our best months (after a bunch of slow months).  We did (9) deals in October.  Yeah – that seems like a lot.  And they were some of the easiest deals we have ever done – and the way we found and executed the deals was about the most cost effective way you can get them.  We spent zero marketing dollars – directly – on getting these deals.  How is that possible you ask?  Well let me explain.

Networking.  The (9) deals were all accomplished just through networking.  I found the sellers of the properties and buyers for those properties just through networking.  No direct mail, no fancy websites, no bandit signs, no door knocking.  Over the past year and a half or so we have been out there in the real estate investing game and doing marketing, meeting buyers and sellers, meeting other investors, meeting other real estate professionals – whether its Realtors, Title Agents, Contractors, Property Management, etc.  We get out of the house a lot and do a lot of networking and do our best to build relationships. Read More→

Create Your Own Luck in Real Estate Investing

Posted on November 6, 2013 by

Howdy! As I am writing this in early October, I’m celebrating my one year anniversary of quitting my job as well as our 50th deal, as we closed deals 48, 49, and 50 last week. We are also a couple of weeks away from our one year anniversary of our 1st deal back in late October 2012. So as I reflect back on these milestones and the last year, I wonder how to attribute our early success. Was it luck?

Sure, you can call it luck. I’m fine with that. So let’s talk about how to get lucky. But first, let me tell you a quick story about our 1st few deals. We started researching real estate investing and wholesaling real estate last spring (2012). We started reading some books, reading real estate investing blogs, and listening to podcasts. That summer we finally got into the game and started doing some marketing – bandit signs, driving for dollars, and yellow letters. We started going to REIA (Real Estate Investors Association) meetings religiously. The 1st few deals we put under contract went nowhere for various reasons – bad title, priced too high/won’t sell, seller backs out – we learned a lot. We also started to get very discouraged and nervous about this working out. Bad luck right?

Then in October of 2012 we finally did our first deal ($5K) and we realized that this stuff really works and is for real and obviously gave us a massive confidence boost. In November we did (2) more deals – small deals – but we were gaining some momentum and learning along the way. With one of those deals, the seller told us they had (12) more properties they wanted to sell. So I went ahead and said we would take all of them for a good deal and wrote up a purchase contract for all (12) – $275K – and we had to close within a few weeks. Crazy huh? Crazier yet was that the next week we got (2) more deals under contract that had to close within a few weeks (before Christmas). We had done (3) deals in our entire lives and now we had (14) deals that we had to close on. Would you consider that lucky or just us being freaking nuts? Well let’s find out what happens next. Read More→

How to Talk to Sellers and Buyers If You’re Just Getting Started in Real Estate

Posted on October 9, 2013 by

OK! So you have decided you want to get into real estate investing and you have gone to some real estate seminars and classes and read some books. Great! You have learned that the next step is to put out some marketing to get leads coming in, like people that want to sell their house, and hopefully at a discount. So you have started doing one or more of the following:

  1. Mailing letters to home owners that say you want to buy their house
  2. Put out bandit signs on the side of the road that say something like “We Buy Houses”
  3. Have set up a website or websites that people find when they search “We Buy Houses” or other various search terms (“Sell my house fast”, “Sell your house fast”, etc).
  4. Have put an ad in the newspaper or Craigslist that says “We Buy Houses”, “Fast Cash for your home in as little as 3 Days”
  5. Have put out flyers around town with similar messages as the above.
  6. Or one of the other (96) marketing strategies that Dustin teaches us.

And then what happens? The calls start to come in. YEAY LEADS! Read More→

CASH or CASH FLOW???

Posted on August 6, 2013 by

Hope everyone is doing well and out there putting out their marketing, getting leads, and doing deals.  You can’t make much money in real estate if you aren’t doing deals, right?  Real estate “Deals” can come in many forms.  You can have a wholesale flip, where you are basically flipping the contract for a fee or doing a double closing.  You might be closing on a house yourself that you intend to fix up and resell (fix n flip).  When you resell that house, which would be considered a deal, and that is when you get paid (my favorite part).  You might have just bought a house from the bank or a wholesaler that you intend to put a renter in.  You may have just stroked a deal with a home owner to “owner finance” their house and you intend to rent it out.  Or, you were able to negotiate a lease option with a home owner with a nice low down payment and monthly payment, and you can turn around and lease option that to somebody else for a higher down payment and higher monthly payment – very nice!

Gotta love Real Estate – so many ways to make money!!  But we’re not in it for the money are we?  Yeah – we are.  Ha! Read More→

Real Estate Investor Daily Success Activities

Posted on July 5, 2013 by

My article this month WAS going to be about “A Day in the Life of a Full Time Wholesaler”, but after thinking out the article in my head it came down to productivity, focus, goals, and time management – which are all interrelated.  I also thought that these things can be applied to any area of real estate investing, not just Wholesaling. 

No matter if you are full time or part time, you still need to be very cognizant of what activities are getting your closer to your goals – whether it’s doing wholesale deals or any type or real estate investing (finding seller finance deals, finding good buy and holds, finding good fix n flips, finding buyers, finding private lenders, building your team, etc).

This article will be more focused on the “Daily Success Activities” of a Wholesaler, but can be applied to most types of real estate investing (plus I think everyone should be doing some wholesaling in their RE business).  So like I said, no matter if you are full-time or part-time in real estate investing, you need to have goals, and you need to focus on the activities that will move you closer to those goals.  As a wholesaler, your goals are typically to close deals (flip houses and/or contracts for cash).  You determine how many deals you want to have done by the end of the year or how much money you want to have made from this.  That’s an example of a goal you could have – now how do we get there? Read More→

Wholesale Houses around your 9 to 5 JOB

Posted on June 10, 2013 by

We get the question quite often about how you can start a real estate wholesaling business when you already have a 9 to 5 JOB – or any JOB for that matter. Naturally one of the biggest excuses people have about NOT getting into real estate is that they don’t have the time. Most people do have jobs and then they also have family duties to take care of on top of that.

But the fact of the matter is that we as people don’t really want to break out of our comfort zones or work more or work harder if we don’t have to. We might be OK with our normal routine of get up, get ready for work, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed – do it all over again the next day. Weekends are for relaxing and house chores. That’s the routine we’ve always had and we are getting by. Maybe we are getting by, but are we getting what we want out of life, and are we on the road to financial freedom? Probably not. So we may need to change some things. Read More→

What Comes 1st, Finding the Cash or Finding the Deal?

Posted on May 6, 2013 by

When it comes to Wholesaling properties, I see the question asked frequently:  “Where should I start?  Marketing for Motivated Sellers?  Or Marketing for Cash Buyers?”

We are somewhat biased when it comes to this subject, because in most of the materials we went thru when we were first getting started out all said to start with Marketing for Motivated Sellers.  The theory is that if you find a Hot Deal, meaning a property under contract that is WAY below market value, if you have that then the Cash Buyers will find you.  So just get out there and go find a Hot Deal and the Cash Buyers will come to you.  On a side note, same principle applies when it comes to finding Private Money.  If you find the Hot Deal, the Money will find you.  Not, go find a Private Lender then go look for a Hot Deal.  I always like to have the Ace up my sleeve – when you have the Hot Deal, you have control.

I am somewhat intrigued by the theory of building your Cash Buyers List first though.  The theory with that one is that if you go out and build a big buyers list, then you can just wholesale other Wholesalers deals.  So you  have lined up “Buyer Bob” and he wants to spend $100K this week on some cheapo rental houses, but you have nothing under contract.  You don’t tell him you have nothing, you say “let me check with my people”, then you call your Wholesaler buddies and see if you can Joint Venture on some deals that they have under contract and split the profits.  I can see this as a viable strategy now (since I have now done it – haha!). Read More→

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