3 Examples of Wholesale Real Estate Deals

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1 3 Examples of Wholesale Real Estate Deals Cash Flow for Life August 2015

2 3 Examples of Wholesale Real Estate Deals Dear Reader, This is part two to last month s Cash Flow for Life Letter. If you haven t read July s, please take the time to do so now. The biggest difference between an average real estate investor and a great one is that a great one markets for leads. Average investors try to find deals, usually through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), Craigslist, and local realtors. In order to increase your profits, we suggest becoming a great real estate investor and wholesaler, marketing for distressed sellers, and then providing a solution. Here are 3 Real-life Examples of How You can Become a Wholesale Property Solutions Provider With any business, you need to provide solutions and offer up a value to someone else always keep this in mind when approaching any new venture. Your target leads are people who are considered distressed sellers. A distressed seller does not necessarily mean financially distressed. Below are some examples of why a property owner could be in need of a quick sale, for less than market value. Divorce Job Transfer Death Probate Tired Landlord Multi-Unit (Difficult to Sell) Lower-Income Area Foreclosure Property Condition Long-Term Vacancy In Need of Serious Repair (Unlivable) Government Fines Property Tax Increase Lawsuit My own personal experience has dealt mostly with divorce and serious repair. 2

3 Example #1 With divorce, it can be nasty, but ultimately, you are the investor that is here to make the house go away for the couple. In fact, in my most recent deal, the husband already had a girlfriend, which made him a HIGH- LY-motivated seller. Every time the house came up, his previous marriage was thrown in the face of his new in love girlfriend, who happened to also hate his ex-wife. For the husband who owned the property, he was distressed because this property was causing conflict in his current intimate relationship. On the flip side, the ex-wife hated the husband, so the house was a real problem because it meant having interaction with him. After sitting on the market for 4 months with a realtor, they received an advertisement from myself, offering to buy the home in 3 days. Now, don t worry; you don t need a single penny to wholesale a property. All you need is a solution for a distressed seller and a real opportunity for a buyer either yourself or another investor. In the case of this recent divorce, I simply offered up a 3-day close for a 35% reduction in their recent listing price. They had been asking $275,000 for the property, and I knew I could sell it easily for $250,000. I offered to cure this problem in 72 hours, before the next weekend, for $179,000. This was with no repairs, no monthlong escrow, and it was no longer a problem house. 3

4 They happily took the deal. Now let s say I didn t have the $179,000 to put up for this deal. It s still a great deal, right? This is where wholesaling comes in. Just as I would have taken that deal in a minute, there are tens of thousands of others who would do the same. I could have locked up the sales agreement and made the contract assignable, meaning the purchase agreement can be transferred. Instead of going through with the transaction, we have the option to sell our deal to another investor for a finder s fee. Most wholesale deals fall in the range of $2,500 to $5,000 per contract. This option allows you to increase your volume of business. Instead of doing 1 to 3 deals a year by yourself, you can do fifty deals a year or more. All you are doing is providing solutions to both distressed sellers and buyers looking for off market properties. Wholesaling requires no money and no credit, because all you are is the middle man. Cash buyers, like distressed sellers, can be found through marketing. The easiest way is Craigslist. However, if you want to take your business to the next level, you can also do a direct mail campaign, with the help of your local title office. Your local title office will be able to pull a public list of all cash buyers and non-owner occupied real estate transactions. Ask for the past 90 days, so you know the investor is still in the market for your zip code. Ideally, I would just focus on cash buyers. To fine-tune your leads, run a search for cash buyers who bought in the last 90 days and own more than one property in the state. This way you don t accidentally market to a cash-buying home owner you re only looking for investors. You can market for these buyers quickly over the Internet if you already have a deal locked up, or you can start building a list of cash buyers prior to finding or marketing to distressed sellers. A 3-day close is not normal, by the way. It is something I have chosen to do in order to add some endorphin to my offers. Imagine being distressed and the offer has a 30-day close. Now imagine a 15-day close a 10-day close and now a 3-day close. The 3-day close is powerful, but if it s a good offer and provides a solution to their problem, a 30-day close will work too. ***Contracts*** Don t fear contracts. In fact, I suggest you make your own purchase offers. Keep them simple: use an Office Depot one and then make your offers with an addendum, which clearly states that the contract can be transferred or assigned. Give yourself some time for due diligence and access to the property for pictures, and then start marketing the property to your list of buyers or new buyers on Craigslist. If you have a website, great. If not, then just create a Facebook page for your properties, somewhere you can upload pictures, video, and the details for investors looking to buy. 4

5 Example #2 You found a seller, but the deal won t work. So you ve done everything we have suggested. You ve marketed for distressed sellers and created a list of cash buyers. Your phone rang and you have a hot lead. But then your offer comes in, and the numbers that work for you don t work for the seller. You can try to make another offer, which I suggest you do if the numbers can work, of course. But what you don t want to do is to say your goodbyes to a perfectly good distressed seller. You can still help them, and get paid to do it. Your lead trusts you, and has now probably spent some time on the phone with you, reviewed your offer, and discussed their options with you. If a win-win solution just won t work, here is how you can still make money wholesaling. 5

6 As a trusted solutions provider, you re now going to connect with several of the top realtors in the area. Notice I said top realtors, and not your friend who does it part-time or just passed their real estate exam. We are looking for at least a decade-long veteran. We want someone who was doing real estate before the 2008 crisis, and climbed their way back to being the top agent for their region. Introduce yourself, and let them know you market for leads heavily, and in some cases, your leads are not closable, since you are looking for discounted transactions. When a deal isn t able to happen, propose to the realtor that you would like to sell the lead to them, with a zero up-front cost. The agreement you make with the realtor is a marketing fee tied to their commission a marketing fee that always comes out to about 25%. Realtors are not allowed to pay you a commission, and referral fees in most states have very small caps. I want to be clear: you are charging for a marketing fee. Once these relationships are established, you can then offer up a new alternative to a distressed seller who just declined your purchase offer. The conversation will go something like this: Well, I am sorry I won t be able to personally help you, but at least now you have ruled out this option. The investor route won t work for you, but how about calling up the best realtor in your area, who can probably get the home sold faster than anyone I know. Knowing that you are in the industry, it is likely this seller will take your recommendation and try and sell the house with one of your realtors, who will still help you earn a few thousand dollars for your time. It is important, critical, that you find a great realtor. Please, do not send your sellers to a realtor who won t get the job done. You are in a trusted position, on a very important matter to this person. It is a matter of integrity to make sure when you say that you can connect them with the best realtor in their area, that you are telling the truth. It s a win-win, too, because a great realtor will sell the house, the distressed seller will have their problem solved, and you will receive your marketing fee. Remember, if you want your business and profits to be exceptional, you MUST focus on delivering the best possible value to your clients. In a few months or years, when your previous client is talking with a friend who s facing foreclosure, divorce, or some other immediate problem, they are going to refer them to you, because you treated them right and solved their problem, just as you advertised. 6

7 Example #3 Ideal for buyers with some cash and bad credit. In order to do deals in volume, you ll want to include this example as a centerpiece. It will open up your buyer pool to non-cash investors. You will be able to offer up deals you ve locked up to landlords, first-time home buyers, and current homeowners who need to move out of their own home quickly but don t want to rent. The deal I want to walk you through is something I did this year in order to flip a property. However, as a wholesaler, you could have just as easily sold it to anyone, including another investor or a wholesaler. In March, I came across a distressed seller. He owned a home from a previous marriage, which still had his ex-wife s name on title, even though he was already remarried. He also had his current wife s parents residing in the home as his tenants, who, according to him, weren t the best of tenants. His problems didn t end there, though. The foundation of the home had a clear crack in the slab the house was literally splitting apart. There was what looked like a fault line that ran from the floor all the way up to the ceiling on the second level. The driveway was about 8 inches from the garage door that s how much this house was moving. Something you should know about homes with foundation problems is that no bank in the world will loan money using this house as collateral at least not conventionally. This means that outside of a specialty investor looking for problems, this seller was in a really bad situation. Not wanting to write a large check at the time since I had many other deals in transaction, I asked the seller what his current mortgage was. He told me that he had a mortgage note of $160,000, with a payment of about $1,500 a month, which included taxes and insurance. I then asked him what he ultimately wants how much cash he wants up-front for me to take on the responsibility of this problem house. Notice I never make this about sales price. The solution to his problem has a cost, but it s not retail, so why even discuss the all-in sales price? Focus on how much cash the seller needs in their pocket when they hand you the keys. 7

8 The seller told me that he would gladly walk away for $20,000. I told him great, that s fine, but here is my problem: I can t get a loan for this house, and I don t want to write a check for $180,000 ($150,000 mortgage note + $20,000 to seller). So here is what I propose: I will give you the $20,000, but I am going to assume your mortgage. The property will legally be in my name, but the mortgage will remain in yours. Now, I know you don t want this forever, so I will set up a balloon payment for 24 months. But to be perfectly honest with you, I am going to fix this foundation and sell the house, so in reality, this mortgage will be free and clear in a matter of 6 months or less. However, in case things don t go according to plan, I want the 2-year balloon as a padding. The seller agreed, and the only further request I had was for the property to be vacant when I took ownership. We entered into this agreement in early March, with a 60-day transaction, in order to give him time for his in-laws to move. Once the transaction was opened, I had 10 days for due diligence. After having a few contractors review the property, here is what my fix-up costs looked like: $3,800 Foundation Repair $5,000 Paint $6,000 Flooring $2,800 Concrete $600 Drywall $400 Maids $50 Landscape As a wholesaler, from here you have several options: 1. Partner with someone to fix and flip this property 2. Assign the contract to another investor or home buyer for a fee 3. Fix the property and sell it or rent it out In my case, I closed on the transaction, repaired it, and then listed it in the MLS and sold it for $249,000 about 3 months after we closed. However, I also offered it up as a seller-financed deal, because I could have just as easily taken $80,000 in cash and sold the property to someone with bad credit, who had the money for a down payment, but couldn t get a conventional loan. I simply would have been cashed out, transferred ownership, and then the new owner would have taken over the terms of the assumable mortgage. As a wholesaler, your options and strategies to make money are infinite it s just a matter of finding the win-win solution for all parties. Summary: Using wholesale solutions to help distressed sellers can be used as a strategy to help you generate a steady flow of cash flow, or can be used as a way to help you build wealth in large chunks, by buying up the most profitable deals on the market. The Key is To Start Next month, we will cover the step-by-step guide on exactly what you will need to do in order to start your own wholesale company, but we will expand this opportunity into other assets that you can easily get involved in with virtually no startup costs. Best Regards, Daniel Ameduri 8

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