Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast

There are some similarities between right now and 2008 when the liquidity was sucked out of Wall Street, but there are also some key differences. Rob Swanson and I have both navigated one crash before, and Rob’s spent a lot of time looking for patterns in previous market crashes. Getting back to real estate fundamentals is going to help you navigate this crazy market. Because the market’s been good for so long, some mediocre real estate investors have managed to look good. A great market makes everyone look good. Ask yourself the classic real estate question as you approach any deal, “How do I make money with this?”. Don’t buy without solid numbers to back up that deal. Make offers, make more offers, make lower offers, make better offers. Don’t stop making offers because of fear. Just adjust your offers. All of your old leads become new again as potential sellers start to feel the urge to sell-off. I’m seeing leads from 9 months ago calling me up again, ready to unload their properties, so I urge you to utilize your CRMs to follow up on all of your old leads. Instead of buying for equity, in a boom-bust market, Rob’s focused on stable markets and he explains why that is. But his idea of stable markets may differ from yours. He goes looking for neighborhoods that are about 50-80% tenant-occupied. These numbers are important because Rob is looking for a very specific kind of house in a very specific kind of neighborhood. You don’t need to be scared about where the market’s heading. There will continue to be opportunities all over, but you may need to get creative about financing, or creative about finding your deals. Use solid data from something like Freedom Soft and REI Simple to find and track your deals, and you will come out on top. What's Inside: —Fear creates the motivation that everyone’s been looking for. —In this environment, old leads start bubbling up and become hot, new leads again. —How Rob is marketing for more buyers right now, and why he buys in C and D neighborhoods. —Organize before automation, otherwise, you’re just organizing chaos. —There’s a lot of mattress money in small towns with motivated sellers, so don’t write those small towns off. —How Rob defines A, B, C, D, and War Zone neighborhoods, and why those definitions matter when looking for solid neighborhoods to invest in.

Every crisis comes with an equal amount of opportunity, and this is going to be really, really important in the coming weeks and months. First, I’m going to step back and help you do some big picture thinking by outlining some plans you need to put in place, and then I’m going to share where I think the housing market will go next, and how you can capitalize on the opportunity. By studying the Great Depression, I realized that there are some companies that did very well during and after the stock market crash, and I think that we can learn a lot from these companies about things we need to be doing right now. Things like carrying little debt, doubling down on marketing, and so on. Again, it’s important to recognize that opportunity when it comes knocking. Now is a time to create a safe space for your audience. What should that look like for your company? Well for one, you need to be a leader with positivity and optimism. As entrepreneurs, we are problem solvers, so what problems can you solve for your audience? How does this big picture thinking play into real estate? This is the absolute best time to get into real estate investing. Yes, you’re going to have to get as creative as H.E. double hockey sticks, but this is going to be like 2009, and I tell you why. I go through the real estate strategies that you’ll need to adapt to continue to meet and serve your customers. And don’t forget that now is not the time to shut down and ignore other investors. You absolutely want to be plugged into a great network right now. Community collaboration and masterminds are going to be the secret to massive success in the future. Global insights and support from other business leaders will be critical for your ability to survive and thrive right now. Don’t quit your masterminds! In this webinar, I cover all of the directions I can see real estate moving into as the economy enters a recession and the world grapples with the COVID-19. Remember, opportunity is knocking. Don’t let fear keep that door closed. What's Inside: —Wealth does not disappear; it transfers. —Why you should detach yourself from your own bias. —How to prepare for the WORST and the BEST case scenarios. —How can you find empathy for your customers? —Preparing for a buyer’s market will require a shift in your mindset. —It’s important to be educated in these two things: creative financing and fast cash strategies. —As wholesalers, sell to people what they want rather than what you have.

I like to think of myself as an ethical wholesaler, but there are a lot of guys out there who aren’t. States are getting smart to wholesaling methods that aren’t ethical and that rip off sellers, and that’s what we’re seeing with Oklahoma’s legislature. Because I don’t want you to worry, but I think that you should be cautious, I’m going to lay out some things you should keep an eye on going forward. Broke wholesalers are tying up properties all over the country. They hear that wholesaling is the fastest, easiest way to make money in real estate (and it is!), but they’re going about it the wrong way. And it’s giving wholesaling a bad name. They’re doing the daisy chain method of wholesaling and bumping up the prices of properties while stringing along a seller who just wants to sell their home before it’s foreclosed on. Number one, if you're going to be an ethical wholesaler, you have to have the means to actually close on the property. And number two, you have to have the intent to close on it yourself. And this is key. You can’t put stupid clauses in your contracts. I give some examples of stupid clauses that cause sellers to stop trusting you. So, listen, it’s normal for a state to want to protect its citizens from this kind of unscrupulous wholesaling. It happened in Illinois, and now wholesalers are required to have a real estate license. And while you might think this could be a terrible wrench in a wholesaler’s plans, for some of my wholesaler friends with real estate licenses, it’s just reduced their competition in Illinois, providing them with an edge over everyone else. These kinds of bills aren’t going to go away, so I share how you can prepare for them. What's Inside: —Daisy chain wholesaling deals are jacking up the prices for everyone. —Find an investor-friendly broker to work with. —What it means to be an ethical wholesaler. —Why states resort to these types of bills, and why it’s not always a bad thing. —New investors would benefit by partnering with local, ethical wholesalers. —My thoughts on the benefits of having your own real estate license.

Why would a vacant landowner be willing to sell their lot for so cheap? It’s like the treadmill analogy; because every time they look at the property, they’re reminded of all the things they thought they were going to do with it but never did. I get into the nitty-gritty details of buying, selling, and flipping vacant land with Dave VanSteenkiste from Mile High Rural Land. Land sellers are in a slightly unique niche compared to houses. They’re not often in a distressed situation and frequently own the land outright, especially if it’s been passed down from a parent. Sometimes they’re out-of-state owners, or they’ve just owned the land for years and years with plans to build something someday, but that someday never happened. As a result of their uniqueness, land offers aren’t based on comps like houses are. They’re based on what the rest of the land is currently selling for. Dave walks us through how to assess how much you should offer for a property, and he talks about which tools he uses to decide how much a property is really worth. Even though Dave’s been using direct mail marketing with a lot of success, he’s also turning to Facebook as a marketing tool. Because love it or hate it, Facebook isn’t going away anytime soon. He talks about how he uses VAs to run this part of his business, how to post so that you give people enough information, and why he’s stopped using Craigslist. We walk through some possible deals in Oklahoma together and Dave is generous with his knowledge. I’ve been letting my teenagers learn how to evaluate deals, make offers, and find properties to give them some real estate experience. Making a mistake on a land deal isn’t going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it can be a great way to learn about flipping and real estate. What's Inside: —Land deals can be had for as cheap as 20 cents on the dollar. —The classic marketing method Dave finds land sellers. —Which platforms, tools, and CRMs Dave uses to find and track land deals. —Little tricks Dave recommends for listing the property on Facebook marketplace —Dave and I walk through how to evaluate some land deals in real-time.

There are so many reasons that someone would opt for a lease option, but they just need someone to structure that deal for them. Even if you have no capital, you can still get into real estate by structuring these deals between sellers and tenant buyers. Lease options are one of the easiest and fastest ways to become an investor without holding a ton of mortgages. A lease option can be very attractive to a seller who doesn’t have a lot of equity in a home, and they need to sell it, but they can’t afford to even pay the Realtor commission. I am strongly, strongly opposed to those people that teach that you should put a tenant buyer in the house only if they can pay you the most money. Everybody should win in a lease option deal. There are three centers of profit on a lease option; cash now, cash flow, and cash later. This gives you the flexibility to create any deal that is attractive to the seller. You can afford to be flexible because you’re going to make money no matter how the deal is structured. 10-15% of homeowners right now have little to no equity right now, and some of them even have negative equity. As we move into a recession, I talk about why lease options will become more popular and easier for investors to do. This is a great thing, and not something to worry about. Because I really want you to understand how simple and easy this is, I break down a deal I might offer for a great house in Nashville, and how I would structure that offer. I show you what a sandwich lease offer, a lease offer, and a wholesaling lease offer look like. I really think that lease options are one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money in real estate, so I want to invite you to join my free webinar. I go into a lot more detail about lease options, including free calculators and spreadsheets for you to figure out what a win-win-win situation looks like for the houses that you find. What's Inside: —What exactly is a lease option? —The many benefits of a tenant-buyer, including their own sweat equity. —What’s attractive about a lease option to a seller? —Why would a tenant-buyer want a lease option? —Build a portfolio of homes with little to nothing down as an investor. —All of the many, many benefits of lease options to YOU.

If it feels like the sky is falling, I want to reassure you that what you really feel is opportunity knocking. As the market shifts under us and you can no longer count on appreciation, easy financing, or interest rates staying low, you can still find a way to make money. However, you’ll have to adapt to this new market. And those investors who can adapt to the changing market are going to be the ones who survive. You know the classic book Who Moved My Cheese? This moment is like that book. You’ve got to see where the cheese is moving. Now is the time when creative financing like lease options will help you when the market is starting to trend downwards like it’s currently doing. The market is moving to deals like: —Subject 2 —Owner financing —Land contracts —Contract for deeds —Lease options The beauty of these deals is you can offer the seller any terms they want as long as they’re willing to wait. But you don’t want to hang onto those contracts, and I talk about why that is. There are a lot of people freaking out right now because they have way too much debt and are heavily overleveraged. That’s the beauty of lease options: you can control property without owning property. Gavin talks about why you want to give your marketing and your business a good hard look right now if you’re the one freaking out. If this uncertainty is making you rethink your 9-5 job, Gavin and I share some ways that you can dig into real estate as a side hustle. And if you’re concerned that this will take up too much of your time, I have some ideas for how to automate this as a side hustle so that you can make money and still spend time with your family. What's Inside: —Why it’s better to make a quick nickel than a slow dime right now. —If you want to make money right now, you need to understand wholesaling and flipping contracts. —Why you have to change as the market changes. —I explain the three keys to success in this business; marketing, automation, and delegation. —We talk about how important reserves are during a downturn.

Whether you think that the coronavirus scare is an overreaction or not, there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty in the market right now. This is definitely the time to be nimble and to readjust your business plan. I’ve had some great success flipping rural land out in Oregon and Colorado, so in this podcast, I explore that idea some more to give you some ideas of how to zig when everyone else is zagging. More than just preppers are looking for vacant land. Hunters and outdoor enthusiasts are also looking for vacant rural lots. They might want the land to build a cabin someday, maybe shoot their guns, or drive their ATVs all over. But you know what? It’s a demand that’s come roaring back with this virus stuff. There are a lot of disadvantages to being stuck on one single kind of deal, and you’ve got to be nimble enough to pivot. If you’ve been offering 80 cents on the dollar for homes in Southern California, then what will you do if the cash buyers disappear. I talk about all of the different ways that real estate might be impacted by a downturn, and I give you some ideas of where you could pivot to next. For me personally, I’m going to spend some more time teaching about lease options and land investing. I think that education about different real estate deals is really vital as people maybe shift out of the stock market and into real estate. Networking, masterminds, and coaching are going to become even more important to you. Just getting out there and talking to different people is going to help you keep your ear to the ground to hear what’s coming next. Stop thinking of this as the end of the world. It’s not! It's an opportunity, and you need to be ready for it. What's Inside: —What kind of response rate I have for marketing on vacant lots. —The reasons that people want to buy a vacant lot can vary widely. —If you’re stuck on one aspect of this business, I offer a slew of places you can pivot to. —How coaching, networking, and masterminds will help you in the coming days. —Why you should consider lease options and other creative financing deals.

The U.S. is bracing for impact on the coronavirus, and the markets are all over the place. It seems like there’s a daily dose of fear along with every new piece of news, but I’m here to tell you that it’s all going to be okay. I quit my job in 2009 at the height of the recession, and it was honestly one of the best things that I’ve ever done. The absolute first thing you need to think about right now is how much debt you have. Are you overleveraged? Is that fix-and-flip going to sink you if you don’t get it sold right now? Are you relying on a refinance to fix your cash flow problems? Do you have multiple exit strategies if the next deal falls through or if you can’t get something sold? I’m going to predict that preppers and survivalists are going to be looking for great real estate deals, so I share a few ideas about how you could capitalize on that, and I promise more on this subject in the future. When I moved from wholesaling to traditional lease options, I found that it was a safer bet for me because I wasn’t really holding any assets. I explain how lease options can be a great safe harbor right now as everything is up in the air. Most importantly, don’t panic! This is a great time to learn about lease options or to adjust your real estate strategy. Step back, see where the market is going, and find a new way to make some money. What's Inside: —I offer some predictions for where the market is heading right now. —How debt will slow down your ability to pivot in real estate. —Why I moved from wholesaling to traditional lease options. —Why now is the best time to learn about lease options.

When you’re the boss, every month you’re an employee of the month. But if you’re really and truly honest with yourself, are you really working as hard as you could? Are you using the excuse of “hustling” to work through your family’s dinner because you’re really dragging yourself out of bed every day? If I’m going, to be honest, lately I’ve been wasting a lot of my time reading the news and catching up on stuff. Really, it’s not good for me. I’m not even watching things that feed my soul, but just a never-ending cycle of news from all of my favorite news networks. By the time dinner rolls around, I’m scrambling to play catch up with the rest of my day. I didn’t get started on time, so I couldn’t get everything done that I needed to. Instead of pausing to focus on my family, I have to work through dinner to finish all of my work. We forget those basic work principles sometimes as entrepreneurs. All of that “early to bed, early to rise” stuff goes out the window when we can write our own schedule. I mean, that’s why we want to be entrepreneurs in the first place! You don’t have to hustle your face off, but you do need to get out of bed already. Start your day early. Get your work done before dinner. Maybe even spend a little bit of time in the Good Book and feed your soul a little. If you want to make your family a priority, you’ll need to build your life around that schedule. Be the kind of employee who really deserves the employee of the month plaque, every single month. What's Inside: —We forget about those basic work principles sometimes as entrepreneurs. —Focus on what you can control, and it’s not the news. —Get up early and read good stuff. —Be careful what you feed into your mind. —Make time for your family and your kids.

If you come across a seller that absolutely has to sell because of a job transfer or divorce, but they don’t have any equity in their house, what kind of options do they really have? If they sold the house outright, they’d still have to bring some cash to the table to get rid of it, and they don’t want to be a long-distance landlord. There are a lot of different ways to make lease options work for you. Depending on how you structure the deal, you can get all of the benefits of owning an investment property without actually getting a loan or a mortgage. I explain the sandwich lease option, where you pay the seller’s mortgage for him and then rent his house out to a tenant buyer. It’s like cash now, cash flow, and cash later model. If there’s not only no cash flow, but no equity, what can you do then? That’s a great time to use an assignment deal, where the money you make is from the assignment fee the buyer pays you. Even when you find a seller that refuses to sell to you because they think you’re going to make too much money off of them, there’s still a way to make a little money. You can hire yourself out as a consultant to them, and teach them how to create their own lease option for their property. The beauty of all of these different kinds of lease options is this: you’re going to find a seller that’s stuck on the terms or the price. Either one is so important to them that they can’t see themselves to a deal. So you can put together all of these options, and give them some choices. They can pick one, and then BAM. You have a deal. If you’re interested in learning more about lease options, you should check out my webinar class. What's Inside: —How to structure a lease option deal when there’s no equity. —I talk about the different circumstances you might want to use a lease option. —What to do when the seller doesn’t want to budge on the price. —The three profit centers in a sandwich lease option deal. —How to make money on a deal when there’s no cash flow.

Some things stink pretty fast, like dirty diapers or overcooked broccoli. Leads, however, get better and better with age. If you want to truly be a real estate investor, you have to fully commit to chasing down your leads. If I gave you a bunch of marketing leads today, how many could you close? How many times would you call them? One of my favorite coaching clients told me that she was going to call her leads as many times as it took until they sold their house to her or to anyone else. It didn’t matter who they sold their house to; she was going to get a yes or a no out of them. Here’s a secret: There is no “no”. “No” really means “Not yet”. And she knew that! Your leads need to be followed upon. You need to follow up on your follow-ups. You should have a CRM full of notes about how many times you called and talked to your leads because it takes an average of 2-3 months to make that sale. I would say that it’s 65%, maybe even 95% of all of my sales that come from following up. It is going to be incredibly rare that you’re going to find someone willing to sell you their house for 60 cents on the dollar on your very first phone call. So if you’re going to be in this business, you have to give it a solid six months of your time, and you have to absolutely commit to following up on your leads. No lead is ever truly dead. Nurture your leads. Follow up on your leads. Don’t give up on them because old leads just get better with time. What's Inside: —Why persistence matters with leads. —Lessons learned from one of my best coaching clients. —How many touches you need to make on a lead. —How many months it may take for a lead to work for you.

If you remember visiting your grandparents in a senior living facility, you probably have a lot of the same ideas about it that Brandon Schwab did. On a trip to Florida, Brandon accidentally stumbled on a quietly successful part of senior living: boutique senior homes. He shares how he sold off every rental in his portfolio to move into boutique senior living homes, what his numbers are, and how he balances the ethical implications in this business. After realizing the huge amount of cash flow potential in smaller senior homes, Brandon set about finding the perfect home for his first investment property. He describes how he structured the deal, his average profit, and how he filled the house. Because he didn’t want to be the owner/operator, Brandon had to partner up with someone. He shares why he chose an RN, what he looked for when hiring one, and how many hours he has an employee on site. He also shares what that includes, and how much he can charge per client. The sweet spot for senior boutique homes are ranch homes, and he can usually fit 10-16 beds in a good-sized ranch home. By offering a caregiver ratio of 1:5, he does give up some of the profit, but he gives great care. And he still ends up with a profit margin of 38%. Instead of chasing dollars, he has pivoted and become a purpose-driven business. He shares how experiencing end-of-life care changed the mission of his business, and how it’s shaped his employees. If this idea intrigues you, Brandon’s actively looking for deals for 5,000+ square foot homes across the country. If you’ve got a deal for him, book a thirty-minute call with him on his website. What's Inside: —What kind of home you’re looking for to open a boutique senior living home. —Who you should partner with so that you’re not the owner/operator. —The limitations for 2 story homes, and commercial regulations for these homes. —The ethical considerations that Brandon’s had to think about. —How Brandon still uses lease options for financing senior homes. —Brandon breaks down his monthly numbers for us, holding nothing back.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about my tools, my systems, and my CRM because my students want to know if they can keep it simple, or if they need to track their leads like me. A lot of people are thinking, “I want to do deals, but all of this technology stuff is just overwhelming.” I’ve got the 1980 edition of Robert Allen’s book Nothing Down, which is over forty years old, and 98% of the stuff in this book is still relevant today. Because while there’s been a lot of changes in the technology side of real estate, the principles are still the same. I embrace change. I love it! But you don’t need all of this advanced technology stuff to get started. When I first started in real estate, I was tired of being on the computer all day at work, so I developed the “manila folder” system. Hot leads, cold leads, warm leads, these all got different follow ups, and I share how I tracked them, and why I did it this way. Some of you are technophobes. And some of you want the latest and greatest. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert at Podio. The only way you’re going to make money in this business is making offers and talking to sellers. If you show me an expert in Podio, I’ll show you a broke wholesaler. Because how do you make money in this business? Make offers, make offers, make offers. It wasn’t until I’d been wholesaling for 3 years that I moved over to the fancy technology. If you’re stuck with technology, use the manila file system. But whatever you choose, don’t get distracted or sidelined by CRMs or apps or whatever it is that someone’s selling. Get on the phone and make those offers. What's Inside: —I share my original, old school paper tracking method. —If you’re overwhelmed, use my manila folder system to help you out. —This one thing is the key to your business, no matter what tracking method you use. —Why a 1980 edition of a real estate book is still relevant today.

At about 60,000 postcards a month, Don Costa from the Flip Talk podcast has dialed in on a system that works for him. He holds nothing back today, sharing the tools he uses, the conversations that work with sellers, and how he’s organized his team. Following up on warm leads are where people are too often dropping the ball. 80% of Don’s January contracts were from following up. 80%! Some of his current follow up tools that are working are: —Ringless Voice Mail (RVM) —Cold calling databases —Emails and texts from a CRM —Personal phone calls I used to use those yellow legal pads to keep track of all of my leads when I first started out, but it was so hard to keep track of warm, cold, or hot leads. Don jumped right into using a couple of different CRMS, and he talks about the different advantages of some of them. He warns that you shouldn’t get caught up on the perfect business card, the perfect postcard, the perfect website, or the perfect business name. Just get started. Don’s detailed tracking system from his postcards helps him plug numbers into Slack and keep everyone on his team on the same page. He emphasizes that the key to the direct mail marketing channel is consistency, followed quickly by answering the phone live. There's an ebb and flow in the direct marketing world. Sometimes it works great, and then everyone else sees that and jumps into that marketing stream. Then it becomes the law of diminishing returns. He shares how he balances that trend in his own business. I’ve been seeing a lot more success with wholesaling in small-town markets, so Don shares his own experience with that too. He talks about how to find the seller’s pain points by asking questions, and why it’s important for the seller to name a price for their house first. What's Inside: —How Don structures his office following CA labor laws. —The tools Don uses to keep his team on the same page. —Don’s 5 step method he walks his leads through. —How to find a seller’s pain point. —Don’s tracking system for direct mail marketing. —CallRail versus SMARTPHONE, which one wins?

I love meeting with students and seeing how they’re making lease options work for them. And Ray Shurman from America 2nd Chance is proof that you don’t have to stick with just one way of doing business. He shares how he started with lease options and tenant buyers, and why he moved into fixer-upper lease options (FULO). Ray must be a quick study because he’s only been doing this 2 years. He shares how he structured his first deal with tenant buyers, and why he likes to keep the terms simple. He’s found that simple terms help everyone involved feel like they’re not being taken advantage of. One of the beauties of lease options is that you’re not limited to distressed properties. So Ray uses that to find solid deals that promise great ROI. He shares how he finds leads with expired FSBO listings. And this part was really cool to me; Ray’s doing something a little different with wholesaling. Instead of offering lease options to tenant buyers, or just buyers, he’s offering lease options to rehabbers. He finds rehabbers with a great reputation and partners with them. He calls these fixer-upper lease options (FULO), and they require a little different deal structuring. He talks about how he seasons the deal in a trust to fulfill FHA requirements and the benefits of partnering with a rehabber. Instead of getting cash right away, the FULO offers you cash a little bit down the road. And the beauty of this is, if the rehabbers don’t sell it on time, you’ve still got a beautiful house to sell. It’s a great win-win situation for everyone involved. What's Inside: —What a FULO is and how to use it. —How Ray finds deals and leads. —Why you don’t want to use a tenant-buyer in a FULO. —Why he puts the houses in a trust to season them.