OPM Mastery

The Zillow Group has become a massive website with over 130,000 million consumers visiting a month. Zillow has become the most popular real estate website in the world, and many people wonder how Zillow will affect the real estate industry. I have spoken with many agents who think Zillow is trying to replace real estate agents. Others feel Zillow will start their own real estate brokerage in an effort to monopolize the industry. Today on the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast, I discuss these issues and much more with Jay Thompson, who is the Director of industry outreach at the Zillow Group. Jay has an extensive real estate background and even owned his own real estate brokerage at one point.

 

The Zillow Group has become a massive website with over 130,000 million consumers visiting a month. Zillow has become the most popular real estate website in the world, and many people wonder how Zillow will affect the real estate industry. I have spoken with many agents who think Zillow is trying to replace real estate agents. Others feel Zillow will start their own real estate brokerage in an effort to monopolize the industry. Today on the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast, I discuss these issues and much more with Jay Thompson, who is the Director of industry outreach at

Trevor Mauch started investing in real estate when he was 21 years old by purchasing a four-plex. Trevor has continued to invest in real estate, but admits real estate is not his main business. He runs a software/internet company that helps investors build websites to find motivated sellers. Trevor started his business after using online marketing to successfully buy houses himself, other investors saw what he was doing, and they wanted him to build them a website. Trevor started a company (oncarrot.com) to help investors and agents build websites to generate leads. Make sure you listen to everything Trevor has to say on this episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast.

 

Trevor Mauch started investing in real estate when he was 21 years old by purchasing a four-plex. Trevor has continued to invest in real estate, but admits real estate is not his main business. He runs a software/internet company that helps investors build websites to find motivated sellers. Trevor started his business after using online marketing to successfully buy houses himself, other investors saw what he was doing, and they wanted him to build them a website. Trevor started a company (oncarrot.com) to help investors and agents build websites to generate leads. Make sure you listen to everything Trevor has

I created Invest Four More in March of 2013. I had no idea how to blog, how to write, or what my goal was with the site. Over the last three years the blog has grown, I have learned how to write better, and a few people seem to like what I have to say. Besides being a blog, I have created many tools for real estate agents and real estate investors. We have also changed the look of the site, the hosting companies and the usability over the years. My goal has been to try to help as many

I created Invest Four More in March of 2013. I had no idea how to blog, how to write, or what my goal was with the site. Over the last three years the blog has grown, I have learned how to write better, and a few people seem to like what I have to say. Besides being a blog, I have created many tools for real estate agents and real estate investors. We have also changed the look of the site, the hosting companies and the usability over the years. My goal has been to try to help as many people as I can learn how awesome real estate is, and how to make money with it. On this episode of the Invest Four More Podcast, I will walk you through all the features of the web site. I will also go over some of my coaching programs if you are interested in getting more help from me.

What are some of the key pages on Invest Four More?

I have created many blog posts and pages to help people navigate through the site. Blog posts are articles I write about the many different facets of real estate. Pages are static parts of the website like the home page, about page, or resources page. I write about two articles a week and have over 400 articles on the site! The resources page is the best place to go to see all the different article categories and my top articles. I also list write ups on every one of my rentals properties on my resources page.

Another great way to find anything on the site is the search box. We added a search box at the top of the home page and blog posts. You can type in anything to that search box and it will only search my site. If there is a word in the title of one of my articles or pages, the search box will find it.

The home page is the front page of the site. Here you will find a place to join my email list. When you join my email list you get a free 64 page eBook on real estate investing. All you have to do is enter your email address and name. I do not share or sell email addresses to anyone. I have had people ask me about buying emails and that is something I will never do. I also do not promote a bunch of other real estate guru programs non-stop like some other email lists do. My email list does this:

• Tells stories about how I got started
• Sends you to some of the most important articles and videos I have created
• Walks you through the steps to learn to flip or buy rentals
• Offers discounts on some of my coaching programs
• Sends you an email every time I post a new article

Real estate agents do not feel left out! I have a separate email list I created for agents. I also created a separate free eBook for agents as well. You can sign up for the agent email list on any of my real estate agent articles like this one:

How much money do real estate agents make?

What are some of the free tools I have for real estate investors?

Besides the articles I have written and coaching products I created, I have many free tools. Two of those free tools are the cash flow and cash on cash calculator. If you have not seen these calculators recently, we completely revamped them to make them easier to use and look better too.

Cash Flow Calculator

Cash on Cash Calculator

I am also working on more in-depth rental property and fix and flip calculators as well.

What coaching programs do I offer?

I have a lot of people asking me to be their mentor or teach them how to invest. I would love to be able to help everyone, but I am still an active agent and investor. In order to help more people and leverage my time, I created various coaching programs. I have video training programs that are less than $20 and high level coaching programs that come with email coaching from me as well as bi-weekly coaching calls. On top of the coaching I have written multiple books. You can find all of my books and coaching programs on my resources page. Below are some of my most popular books (available in paperback) and coaching programs.

• Build a Rental Property Empire: The no-nonsense book on finding deals, financing the right way, and managing wisely. This book is on sale at Amazon now! Amazon runs their own sales that I do not control and I have no idea how long the sale will last. In the past it has only been a couple of days. Amazon has the paperback version for $11.99, instead of $15.99.  
• Fix and Flip Your Way to Financial Freedom. Amazon also has this book on sale for $9.99, instead of $11.99. Again I don't know how long the sale will last. They run sales on books that are doing well and both of these sales started this week.
• The Complete Blueprint for Successful Real Estate Investing: This is a coaching program I put together to help real estate investors. It is focused on rentals, but also touches on flipping. The program comes with bi-weekly calls, email coaching, CD's, video modules and much more. If you are interested, I sometimes have discounts available. Email me: [email protected]
• The Six Figure Real Estate Agent Success System: This program comes with coaching calls, email coaching, video modules, and CD's as well. This program is designed to help real estate agents build an awesome business.
• Fix and Flip Video Training. This program is a video training course on how to build a flipping business. Over three hours of videos were created just for this course as well as many other resources. I just launched this program and the coupon code flip20 still works this week. (I had some hiccups when I launched this  and many people could not access the shop page to buy, it is now fixed).

What about the Invest Four More Podcast?

Hopefully you are listening to the podcasts and not just reading these write-ups! There is a lot more great information on the shows. I go through many more features on the site on this episode and I interview a lot of great guests. If you want to help me out, leave a review with iTunes for the Podcast or on Amazon for my books. Those reviews let me know that I am helping people and to keep working hard!

LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW FOR US OVER ON ITUNES

Transcript

EPISODE 49

 

[INTRODUCTION]

 

[0:00:14.0] MF: Welcome to the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast. My name is Mark Ferguson and I am your host. I am a house flipper, I flip 10 to 15 houses a year, I own 13 rental properties with a goal to buy 100 by 2023. I’m also a real estate agent. I’ve been licensed since ’01, I run a team of nine and we sell close to 200 houses a year.

 

So on this show, we’d like to interview house flippers, landlords and the best real estate agents in the business. So stay tuned for some great shows, if you want more information on my rentals, on the numbers, on how I buy properties, check out InvestFourMore.com.

 

[EPISODE]

 

[00:00:58.9] MF: Hey everyone, Mark Ferguson here with Invest Four More. Welcome to another episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast. On today’s show, I’m going to be talking about some very important things, how to navigate Invest Four More, all the different things I have to offer on the site, my products, the best way to contact me, videos.

 

I just want to go through and make sure that everybody knows all the resources we offer on the site because there’s a ton of stuff I do, a ton of stuff we do on the back end that I think a lot of people miss and don’t realize we actually help people with. So a few of the things that I’m going to cover are how to navigate the site itself, find articles, the podcast, the shop, what products we offer, what personal coaching products I have, how to contact me.

 

E-mail is the best way but there’s also Facebook, we have a forum, there’s Twitter, my videos. I’ve got tons of videos on YouTube; advice videos, before and after videos of my flips, of my rentals, videos of my car and then I’ve got calculators on the site as well. So I’m going to try to go through all of that, give everyone kind of a bird’s eye view of the site, how to use it, how to get the most information they can and if you want help from me, the best way to do that as well.

 

So I hope this episode helps you out, helps you get more out of the site and makes the time that I spend on the site more valuable to you because I do spend a lot of time on Invest Four More. It’s taken over quite a bit of my life. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty giant site right now. So I’m going to start at the very beginning, the home page of Invest Four More.

 

So if you just go to investfourmore.com, you’ll be brought to our homepage and you’ll see a sign up, “Become financial free into real estate. Join 22,000 other real estate entrepreneurs”, that number is actually 26,000 now. I need to update that, but that’s how many people are on my e-mail list. So if you sign up here, you get a free book that is 64 pages long.

 

This is not a little tiny three page newsletter. This is a good sized book with a ton of information. You get it for free as soon as you sign up then you get on our e-mail list which sends all kinds of great information, great articles that walks you through investing in rentals, flipping, financing, all of that. So it’s not just a big sales pitch.

 

I don’t promote every other real estate investor’s program out there like some other people will. There’s very few programs I promote and you might get one e-mail that mentions one of those programs. It’s not going to be 10 different e-mails and 10 different days trying to get you to their seminar or anything like that. So I try to be very upfront, very forward on how I run my business and site, and I’m not about just trying to send people to other real estate gurus. That’s not what I’m here for.

 

So you’ve got that there. If you sign up for the free book, you’ll get that right away. You can see where I’ve been featured on. We need to update that as well. I was recently featured in Time, which was awesome and Forbes. So there are two articles that featured me in those but I’ve been on Zillow a few times, Realtor.com a few times, Realtor Mag ran a series of articles on goal setting on me last year. I think I had four different articles with them.

 

LinkedIn Pulse featured me a couple of times, The Huffington Post and Trulia. Many other places that I’ve been mentioned in or been featured in. So that’s been really awesome. I actually had a photoshoot a couple of weeks ago for an article that’s coming up, the Associated Press drove down from Denver to do a photoshoot for me, which is about an hour away and I’m going to be on an article on the housing market.

 

I’m not sure where it’s going to be yet but Associated Press wrote it, a very nice reporter from New York so we’ll see when that comes out and where it will be. I am pretty excited about that and then of course, you scroll on down, you can see a little bit about me, my car. I started out as a real estate agent, kind of a reluctant agent to get into the business, I got into investing of course, the REO world.

 

We’ve got a “get started” page. It shows people some of the best articles and you scroll down, you’ll see some of my quick start programs. Those are video training courses on becoming a real estate agent or getting into rental properties. So I’ll talk more about that later and again, at the bottom download my free guide again.

 

So that’s the homepage and then if you go back to the top, you will see in blue our menu. So we’ve got home, about, blog, resources, podcast, forum, calculators, shop. So if you go to the about page, that talks about me, more of my story. I won’t spend a lot of time there. That’s pretty easy to go to and read about. If you go to the blog that takes you to all the articles I’ve written.

 

So it will give them to you in the order they’ve been written. So you can see on the fix and flip video training course, it was my last article that I wrote yesterday, we had one come out on Friday, one on last Wednesday, one on last Monday, the podcasts are on there so all of these I write myself unless it’s very clear that it’s provided by another company or a guest post but I have very few of those.

 

I don’t have ghost writers, I don’t have someone else to write them for me and I look them over. I write them from start to finish and then depending on how much time I have, I try to send it to an editor to have them look at over real quick to fix my typos and then I get it published. A lot of times I am writing on the seat of my pants so I write these articles right before I publish them. So if you’re curious how they work.

 

But yeah if you click on one of these articles, they will take you to the full article and you can read through it. It has all the information on there and have some videos and some of the articles, get to the bottom of the article and it’s got related post on, some other similar articles that might be close to this one. If you look at the right side of the page, you’ll see a side bar, it is what it’s called.

 

So you’ll see Learn How I Increased My Net Worth by 600,000 in Three Years with Rental Properties that will give you that free e-book as well and you can search Invest Four More right below that. Just click on a little box where it says “what are you looking for?” and you can search for any term. And if I have an article title that matches that term, it will pull up everything for you.

 

So if you want to search for flipping, if you want to search for rental properties, real estate agents that will pull up any articles that are having to do with it. If you want to search for 1031 exchange, just type in 1031, it will pull it up and then connect with Invest Four More is below that. As you can see, we’re up to 16,000 likes on Facebook, almost 10,000 on Twitter, you can connect with me on all those places by clicking on those links.

 

LinkedIn says 500 followers because it maxes you out at 500. I think I am somewhere around 5,000 on there and you can see my books on Amazon. Of course, my Build a Rental Property Empire book, Fix and Flip book, both of those are on sale right now.  Amazon has dropped the price from $15.99 to $11.99 for Build a Rental Property Empire and Fix and Flip Your Way to Financial Freedom is from $11.99 to $9.99 on Amazon. Those are both the paperback versions. The Kindle versions are even cheaper.

 

All right, we’ve got an ad for Rental Property Portfolios. That is a company that does 30 year fixed loans, portfolio loans for investors. I’ve talked to them. I might use them to refinance some properties and below that, you’ll see categories. All the different categories on the blog; real estate agents, rental strategies, fix and flip, if you click on that, it will take you to all the articles that are just in that category and a few more things down the side bar, but that’s the gist of it.

 

All right, now we’ve gone through that. If you go back up to the top menu in blue, you’ll see podcast. You’re listening to this podcast now, so I assume you know how to listen to the podcast but if you click on that podcast menu that will take you to all the podcasts I have done. So they go most recent on back, you can scroll all the way down to my very first one.

 

This will be number 49, so I am almost been doing this a year now. I do one every week and you can click on the podcast, read a little bit about what’s going on and listen to it to get more information of course and please, I’d love to have any reviews you can leave me on iTunes. That helps me out to get to more listeners so if there’s anything you can do for me, leave a review on iTunes.

 

All right, then next to the podcast, we have the forum. Honestly, I don’t get to the forum as much as I should but I do go on there usually at least every week and try to reply to everybody who’s asking me questions and I can see it’s getting pretty active. It was a little bit slower for a while but now it’s getting active again. There’s seven posts on there that I have not looked at yet that came up recently.

 

So I’m going to look at those later today and hopefully I can respond to them and get some information. So that’s one way to talk to me, talk to other investors and if we go back to Invest Four More, we have the calculators. So if you hover over calculators it brings you the cash flow calculator and the cash on cash calculator. So these tools I love.

 

The cash flow calculator tells you what your cash flow is going to be on rental properties. You enter the monthly rent, your loan, your taxes, your insurance, enter maintenance cost. which I help you do with the table to figure out how much the maintenance will be, the vacancy cost which I also help you figure out, property management, HOA and then it tells you how much money you’ll be making each month on cash flow.

 

Really cool calculator. It is free to use, just run the site and then that cash on cash calculator, you take that cash flow and you put it into my calculator here with your loan amount, how much money you put into the house and it tells you how much money you’re making, cash on cash return, based on how much cash you invested into the house.

 

So I love that number that tells me a lot about how much money I am making, what a good rental property is. I will be coming out with new calculators soon. I’m going to have a fix and flip calculator which gives you real basic information on what a good fix and flip is and I’m also going to be coming out with some premium calculators for calculating rehab costs, repairs and then also, I’ve been working on a rental property calculator that’s very detailed, for a long time.

 

But I’ve been getting caught up on being able to export an extremely complicated Excel program onto the Internet and getting everything done and how I want it to. The quotes that I’ve had to actually do that are close to six figures to have someone create these calculators and that’s why it has not been done yet but I’m trying to figure out a little cheaper way to do it because frankly, yeah it’s not worth it for me for the blog at this moment but we’ll see what happens with that.

 

All right and then the last thing, there’s a shop and resources I have on the tool bar or the menu bar and if you click on resources, you can see I have all the tools, the things that really help me out on my investing. So it starts with kind of my real estate books, Build a Rental Property Empire, that’s a paperback book that’s doing awesome. Like I said, it’s on sale right now.

 

I have to go to Amazon to buy it. We’ve got a link right there to Amazon. Fix and Flip Your Way to Financial Freedom, is also on paperback on Amazon. Both of those have Kindle versions too. You do not have to have a Kindle to read the Kindle version. Basically any phone, any iPhone, any android, any laptop, tablet, you can download an app and read a Kindle e-book from your phone or your computer. You don’t have to have a Kindle.

 

All right and then below that, I’ve got more real estate books. These are all Kindle versions or I have PDF versions on my site too and some of these, I may make into paperbacks eventually. It takes a lot of work to create a paperback book. I am working on How to Make it Big in Real Estate, my real estate agent book. I am close to getting that as a paperback. I am re-writing the whole book, re-editing it and going to re-launch that soon. So that will be in paperback eventually and I’ve got a new goal setting book I am working on too which is not done yet.

 

All right, then below that you will see that I have tools for investing and success. You have my calculators, tenant screening, fix and flip spreadsheets. Some of these are sites that I’ve used before. Some of them are articles on my site. It just gives you an idea of how to calculate rents, how to find financing, how to set up the correct entity, how to use land trust, accounting, rent collecting, all kinds of different information on here that I found valuable.

 

All right, then I have some of my video training programs below that. I’ll go through this real quick here. The quick start rental property training, what that is, is it’s basically me talking about how I find deals, how I get them from the MLS and it goes through screenshots of me searching the MLS, how I set up searches, what I look for and what I’m looking for when I look at MLS listings, to give you an idea on what I am doing to get awesome deals.

 

I also talk about how to find deals if you’re not an agent too because you’re not an agent, you might not have access to MLS but I help you figure that out too and then I walk through some houses. I take videos of properties that were for sale at the time. I didn’t end up buying any of those but I do walk you through one of my rental properties too. So that video training is $19, super affordable. I forget exactly how much time it is, close to two or three hours I think a video? I’m not sure, don’t quote me on that but it says on there, when you click on there and go to the shop which I can do right now, it will tell you.

 

So if you click on the title, it will take you to my shop where you can purchase the rental property video training and same thing, my $100K Real Estate Agent video training, that’s $19. Its five different videos of me talking about exactly how to become an agent who can make a $100,000 very quickly. Don’t get me wrong, you’re not limited to making $100,000 as an agent. That’s a starting point, the way I feel. You can make so much money as an agent if you really know what you are doing and this video training helps you get an idea of what it takes, what you need to focus on, that’s $19 too.

 

All right, then I have some other real estate investing programs. The Complete Blueprint for Successful Real Estate Investing, that’s a program I’ve had for a while. I’m doing a conference call later today for the people in that group. We do a conference call twice a month where I talk about a certain subject, an investing topic, people sending questions before hand. I answer questions and then I take live questions during the calls as well. So anybody on the call can then ask questions from me.

 

Then it also comes with audio CD’s, e-mail coaching from me, 300 page guide, tons of information on there, video modules and we actually mail you and ship you the guide and CD’s or if you can download the MP3’s right away as well. So that’s The Complete Blueprint for Successful Real Estate Investing. If you have any questions or interest on that, send me an e-mail. Often I have discount codes I can give people, [email protected].

 

Sometimes, we ran sales on it. We just had a sale last week where I was doing 50% off anything on the shop because my e-mail went down for three days. We were switching themes on the website and things got a little crazy. So if you see anything wrong with the website right now, that’s probably why we switched themes and some things got messed up but we’re slowly working through all of that. If you do find something that looks a little messed up, let me know and we’ll try to get that fixed right away.

 

All right Six Figure Real Estate Agent Success System, that’s similar to the blueprint but it’s for real estate agents. So it’s basically kind of the same thing, audio CD’s, MP3’s, a guide, video training and we do calls twice a month as well. This is for real estate agents building a team. If you’re just getting started, if you don’t have your license yet, lots of awesome information and one thing too, for both of these programs, all the calls are recorded and you get all the past calls when you sign up.

 

So I think we’ve done, I don’t know how many calls for each of them? Probably 20 for the Complete Blueprint. You get all those recorded calls, all the links to them with the subject matter and what we talked about. Same thing for Six Figure, we don’t have quite as many calls so I haven’t has as long but all the previous calls are available to anyone who signs up for those and then my real estate agent, REO and BPO starter kit.

 

REO is how I made it in this business. That’s how I started becoming very successful in real estate and this kit shows you everything I did to get business, to find asset managers, to get started doing BPO’s. That kit goes through it all. It gives you a sample resume. It tells you how to complete a BPO, a sample BPO form, all types of great information there plus we have video training to go with it. I do have consulting. I’ve got a few people who want to talk with me one on one with the phone and that’s how you do it, is clicking on Consulting with Mark Ferguson, you can setup sometimes with me.

 

For people who want to do it kind of an ongoing thing, I can offer some discounts but my time is very valuable and talking one on one with people takes a lot of time because I’m doing — I’m usually researching helping them out outside of the call as well, it’s not like I spend the time on the call with them. There’s that option there, and if you keep going down, we’ve got webinars. I’ve done a number of webinars on real estate agents, rental properties, buying out of state. So a lot of my rentals webinars are listed right there, you can watch those or all of them are over an hour long I believe.

 

Turnkey rentals if don’t want to go through the trouble of buying a rental property, it an be worked, I can let you know who some turnkey companies are. I bought a turnkey rental property in Ohio. So if you click on there, it will give you more information, tell you about turnkey properties. Success programs. So there’s a couple of sites I really like if you really want to improve your career, Success.com, ton of information. I bought a lot of Darren Hardy’s CD’s, programs, he is awesome. I love that site, I love their magazine, really good stuff.

 

The Hundred Day Challenge, that’s a goal setting program if you listen to one of my podcasts with Brandon Turner from Bigger Pockets, he loved the Hundred Day Challenge. He keeps doing it over and over again and it’s just, it makes you set goals and pay attention to them every day, it just is awesome. Secret Entourage, PJ Gadami was on my podcast when I first got started.

 

He is incredible. Immigrated from Iran to France to the US when he was very young, started multiple multi-million dollar companies in his 20’s, really cool inspirational guy. He talks all about it on our podcast, and then he also has an awesome site called Secret Entourage where they take other entrepreneurs who are willing to talk about their success, how they got started, where they’ve come from and I’ve been featured on there lots of other great people, awesome place to learn from other successful people.

 

All right, keep going down to my resources page and so my most popular post, I list them there, my plan to purchase 100 properties, fix and flipping, real estate agent information, those are some of my most popular articles and then you can see my blog categories there, help you kind of quick navigation to what you’re mostly interested in. If you want rental properties, flipping, financing, goals and success information, you can go t the main articles on those topics.

 

Then at the bottom, I have information on every single rental property I own. So you see them all listed, one through 16. You click on there and it takes you on an article about the property, what I bought it for, what it rents for, many of them have videos of the properties, some don’t because I had properties before I started the blog and started doing videos but a lot of them have videos. You can see all the numbers and what’s going on with those.

 

At the very bottom, my before and after videos, these are videos on YouTube. If you have not seen my YouTube channel, just search for “Mark Ferguson YouTube” and you’ll see investing videos where I talk about rental properties, fix and flips, being a real estate agent, all of that information just kind of educational videos to help people out. I have before and after videos from my fix and flips and my rentals there.

 

So you’ll see a lot of my flips before I fix them up after and I had some videos of my Lamborghini as well and a trip I took to Seattle to see some other Lamborghini’s and all kinds of great information on my YouTube channel. You can always leave comments and I’ll respond there as well. So that is my resources page, my products, different things I have. Check out the resources page, great place to find information on the site.

 

Now, the best way to contact me, some people do find my phone number and have called me, that is not a good way to contact me, that does not make me happy because I’m very busy, I cannot take phone calls from random people asking me about investing or being an agent. My phone is very — it’s restricted for straight business, I don’t have time to talk to people all day on the phone.

 

So email is the best way to talk to me, [email protected], you can send me an email and if you really — the best way to get in touch with me so probably leaving comments on YouTube, Facebook or you can even tweet at me, Twitter I’m pretty active on, that’s really the best way to talk to me and you’ll usually get the fastest response that way.

 

On Facebook, it’s just Facebook.com/investfourmore. You can just search of invest four more on Facebook, my page will pop right up. Like the page, I have a ton of articles I’m posting on there, pictures, information on what’s going on in my investing world, if I’m buying new flips or the 34 acres I bought, what’s going on with that, all kinds of information.

 

Then, besides the Invest Four More page, we have an Invest Four More Real Estate Investing Group. If you search groups or just search for Invest Four More Real Estate Investing Group, it’s a public group, few hundred members in there, really good information, lots of high level investors in there, people asking questions, commenting, not only do you get comments from me but other investors as well who are very successful.

 

Looks like we’ve got 500 members now, that’s cool. I didn’t know we’re up that high. So we’ve got that group and that is not a place where you’re going to find a bunch of people advertising for loans and other properties and wholesale deals, this is strictly investing. I moderate it, I keep out all the spam, I keep out all the junk. Some of the other real estate investing groups you’ll find on Facebook are just full of advertisements. We don’t allow that out here. We get those people out of here real fast.

 

So Facebook is an awesome place, our Invest Four More Real Estate Investing Group, anybody can join, very easy to do. The forum is also another place but honestly I’m not on the forum as much as I am on the Facebook group. Everyone uses Facebook so much, that’s really the best way to contact me, get in touch with me and yeah, so I think I went through most everything I wanted to talk about. Of course the podcast, some of the products, the coaching products I have, consulting, all that.

 

Oh, one thing I did forget to mention, I have two email lists. If you get signed up for my — I have an investor email list and a real estate email list. If you’re on one of them and want to be on the other, there’s a spot to do that when I send you emails from one of the lists or you can just email me, I can put you on them. But the real estate agents, if you go to any real estate agent article, that will have a separate opt in for real estate agent list. That will give you a completely different free eBook as well.

 

So if you go to an article like What is the Difference Between a Realtor and a Real Estate Agent? You’ll see a little opt in below the first paragraph that says get started making $100,000 a year as a real estate agent, that gives you a free eBook and on my real estate agent email list which gives you the same thing, articles on real estate agents, different training options, some coupons on my products which the other investor list has as well.

 

And again it’s not a big sales pitch for other sites, it’s not a big sales pitch just for my stuff. It is good, genuine information. So there are two email list on my site, which can confuse some people but there’s a reason, because many people want to know about real estate agent information, many people want to know about the investor information.

 

All right, actually, there is one last thing I want to talk about that I almost forgot. On my resources page, it’s not there yet because it’s brand new is my new Fix and Flip program. So if you go to my shop which you can do on that op menu bar as well, the blue menu bar on the blog, it says shop on the far right. That takes you to all the things we discussed on the resources page, the different products, the Quick Start Rental Property, the $100k Real Estate Agent program, my BPO Kit.

 

I have a new fix and flip video training course, it just came out, we had a few bugs on Monday when it was launched. So I know some of you may not have been able to get to the shop but we had that fix, if we have some problems, you can go there now. It’s $97 three hours of videos I created just for the fix and flip. It’s, I don’t’ know, 15 different videos? I’m not sure exactly. You can’t get those anywhere else, tons of other resources.

 

You will get all the fix and flip calculators, the rehab calculators as well with this program when they’ll be out, this will be out in the next two weeks. So you don’t have to pay anything extra for those and this is just goes through everything I have learned flipping. I have 11 flips going right now, historically I have averaged over $30,000 in profit on each flip and that includes financing costs, selling costs, that’s the HGTV profit numbers that forget all those cost.

 

I go through how I find them and detail from auctions, from direct marketing, to MLS. I go through how much money you need, how much profit you need, selling costs, carrying costs, all the costs you need to pay attention to, how much time it will take. How to find contractors, what repairs to make, how much those repairs will cost, how to sell a flip, all that information I go through and it’s all online videos, you can watch, you can listen to them when you're in your car, please don’t watch the videos while you’re driving. I always have to say that.

 

This week, if you use “flip 20”, you get 20% off that, that coupon again is “flip 20”. Check that out, really awesome program, took me a long time to put that together but I think it’s great, I’ve sent it to a few people to kind of preview before I launched it, they loved it, they thought it was awesome. So that one will be up on the resources page soon but it’s not there yet but it is on the shop and I did write a post on it on Monday, which you may have seen.

 

So I think that is all I’ve got, I went through my site, the podcast, the forum, the Facebook groups, Twitter, YouTube, all of that, tons of resources. I’ve tried to really give a lot out there for people who want different things and hopefully that helps you become more successful and helps you in your investing career. If anybody wants personal help from me, I love to do that, I don’t charge 20 or $30,000 like some of these other programs like Rich Dad or the Fortune Builders, there’s a lot of groups out there trying to get people to learn to flip but they take all their money that they whatever use to flip in the first place, which is kind of — doesn’t make much sense to me.

 

All right, again, if you want to reach out to me, [email protected]. If you want the free eBooks, make sure you sign up for my email list, Quick Start Rental Property programs are a great way to start. The books are an awesome way to start. Build a Rental Property Empire is a great book, please leave a review for me if you enjoyed it on Amazon.

 

All right, I’m signing out, thanks for listening and I hope to hear from some of you soon.

 

[END]

 

On last weeks episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast I spoke with Jason Luchessi, who was a professional body builder. We discussed how many successful people were athletes or in the military. Today’s guest David Corbaley, was not just in the military, he was a green beret. David talks about his journey into an elite military unit (at least the things he can talk about), and how he eventually became a real estate investor. David built his real estate investing business very quickly, and realized he was a master marketer. He starting helping other businesses market online

On last weeks episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast I spoke with Jason Luchessi, who was a professional body builder. We discussed how many successful people were athletes or in the military. Today's guest David Corbaley, was not just in the military, he was a green beret. David talks about his journey into an elite military unit (at least the things he can talk about), and how he eventually became a real estate investor. David built his real estate investing business very quickly, and realized he was a master marketer. He starting helping other businesses market online and built a huge business aside from real estate.

How did David become a green beret?

David entered the military at a young age. While in the military he happened to see an advertisement for elite forces. He called the recruiter who was very secretive about the program and decided to give it a shot. David went through intense training programs that were meant to weed out the week recruits. He talks about how recruits not only quit because they were not tough enough mentally, but they broke bones and suffered other injuries that forced them to quit as well. In the end 7 out of 79 people made it through the programs and David became a green beret.

David talks about how incredible it was to be in the elite forces. He was one of the most highly trained military personal in the world. When he had been in the military about ten years, he knew had to make a choice. Continue in the military for another 10 years, or try something else.

How did David get into real estate after leaving the military?

Although green beret's are highly trained, they are not trained for civilian careers. David struggled finding work that suited him. He was a mechanic, worked in retail, installed cable and eventually became a fire fighter. Fire fighting worked well for a while, but he knew he wanted to work for himself and start a business. He figured real estate was the best way to start a business, without much capital.

David bought many real estate courses and studied them in his down time at the fire station. He learned about lease options first, and 6 months after buying a course, he did his first deal! David made $4,000 without spending any of his own money, but realized he was a one trick pony. He knew how to do lease options, but that was it. He wasn't sure how well lease options worked for the seller, so he expanded his knowledge.

How to invest in real estate with little money down.

What real estate investing techniques did David learn?

David bought more courses and learned many more techniques. He learned how to use subject too's, how to wholesale, and how to market. He warns that course can be a great way to learn, but too many people get caught up in constantly learning, without taking action.

David built a very successful real estate investing business using marketing. He marketed to sellers using bandit signs, post cards, and letters. He was doing well, but realized he was constantly chasing sellers. He had to market non-stop to bring in seller leads. If he stopped marketing, his business dried up. He knew he had to change things to build a business.

How to find off market sellers.

How did David build a marketing company?

David decided to build an online marketing system to get seller leads for his real estate investing. He built a website, started advertising and the leads started to come in. He continually improved his online system until he had a 7 figure business. David had something interesting happen while using his website to get real estate leads. He had other businesses start to ask him for help.

Local businesses wanted David to use his marketing techniques for their business. These were not real estate investors, but computer shop owners and other small businesses. He built his business even bigger and found even more success. David was able to build his business so that he was not doing all the day-to-day work and he was free to pursue other activities. Right now David is moving to Arizona to start renovating million dollar homes.

How can you contact David?

David has built a website and programs to help people market better. He also created a free guide for investors called: 7 Easy Places to Get Motivated Sellers.

You can find the free guide here.

If you liked this episode, be sure to leave us a review!

The podcast is really starting to take off! Thank you all who listen and reach out to me. If you know of anyone who might be an interesting guest send me an email:[email protected]. If you enjoy the show, be sure to leave a review on iTunes!

LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW FOR US OVER ON ITUNES

Check out my best-selling books on Amazon

You can find all my books on my Amazon author page here. Amazon currently has two of my books on sale as well. Don’t forget to leave a review if you liked the book. I am also coming out with a new flipping coaching program hopefully in the next week.

Transcript

[00:00:58.9] MF: Hey everyone, it’s Mark Ferguson with Invest Four More. Welcome to another podcast on the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast. I have a really interesting guest on today. I want to hear his story a lot, I haven’t heard the full thing yet so I’m excited to have him. David Corbaley, who has been a Green Beret, a firefighter, transitioned into real estate investing, created a seven-figure marketing company is on with us today. So David, how are you doing? And thank you for being on the show.

 

[00:01:26.4] DC: Hey Mark, I’m fantastic. Thanks a lot for having me.

 

[00:01:28.5] MF: Yeah, I am excited to talk to you and learn how you got into real estate, how your whole career transitioned. I always start with my guest how they first got started in real estate but I am actually interested about your Green Beret career a little bit too. How much can you tell us about that? Is it all classified or can you tell us how that happened?

 

[00:01:46.8] DC: No, no. Let me tell you, I can definitely tell you some stuff. Right out of high school, I joined the military. Actually, I left high school early because I was — let me back up and just say that when I start the story, I always like to preface it with something that people can relate with and I think a lot of us, all of the listeners and stuff, we’re probably pretty much in the same boat. That is that since we’re trying to be in business for ourselves, we’re a little different, right? We just wanted to do things a little bit differently. We might have a job or punch the clock or even our own business, a contractor business or whatever, but we’re looking for that freedom and we don’t know it.

 

So when I was younger, when I was in school I was that way. I had no idea. I thought I was just a problem child so I couldn’t stay in school. It bored the heck out of me and I actually left school early to join the military because I just couldn’t stand it anymore and I didn’t realized then but I realized it now that it’s just because I am different like most of us and most entrepreneurs are. We just don’t understand that it’s not a problem but you know what’s wrong with this. And that is actually a good thing.

 

I joined the military and spent a couple of years in and then that’s when things really started, that pull began for me was, I was in my early 20’s. I’ve been in the military for a couple of years in Ghana and Germany and I was in the infantry and I would see these helicopters flying overhead and it was just amazing to me. I decided that, “You know what? I want to fly. I want to be a pilot.” So I applied and went through the different testing and things like that. When I got to my class one flight physical, well I found out that my eyes weren’t quite good enough to be a military pilot. So I put the kibosh on that and said, “Dang it!”

 

So I came back to the States and one day, I was in the gym and I saw this poster on the wall and it was these guys in these Zodiac which is like the black inflatable boat and they were all camoed up and they had these cool weapons and I saw this picture and I’m like, “Man, that is just really, really cool,” and I realized that it was actually Special Ops and it was a recruitment poster. So I called the number on this poster and said, “You know what? I’m just going to do this.” I took the number down and we didn’t have cellphones back then so I called the number.

 

I think I probably called it from my unit and the guy was just really not aloof but mysterious and I’m trying to like, “Well what’s this about?” And he said, “Well, if you want to do this, we need to meet up and have a conversation.” I’m like, “Well this is just kind of weird.” So I did and I ended up finding out more about Special Ops and it was a secret society back then. I applied, I went through all of these testing and training just to go to the selection process. I went through the selection process in Fort Bragg, North Carolina and that was three weeks of dirty word.

 

It’s just a really, really nasty three weeks where they pretty much try to kill you and get you to quit and most everybody did and over half of the people, I think we had 300 or some people there and over half of the people didn’t make it. Either you quit or you don’t see much of things like that on TV like the SEAL movie stuff like that where they ring the bell, think of it like that. So either people quit or they break because people would break bones in their feet and things like that just from carrying such heavy loads for such long periods of time and it was brutal.

 

So I finished that, I went back to my unit and then you actually go through the Special Forces Training, which is anywhere from a year and a half to two years and from that, I think there was 79 people that started my class and I was one of seven to finish. So it was, needless to say, extremely intense. Some of the most difficult, actually the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life but the most rewarding things as well because then, I popped out the other side as a Green Beret and then went to my unit. This is where we get to the point where we can’t talk a whole lot about different things but we did so many things, travelled all over the country.

 

I was on a team, a couple different teams but an A Team is just a group of guys, it’s 12 guys that are the most highly trained efficient people in the world and you are a part of this and you know without a doubt that there is nothing you can’t do collectively as a team. Also, there is nothing you have to worry about because these guys have your back no matter what. So it’s an incredible feeling. We went all over the world doing all kinds of really cool stuff we did State side stuff as well, we did counter drug interdictions on the southern border, pretty amazing things. Really amazing things got to play with the coolest newest toys and equipment.

 

Anyway, some of the best times I’ve ever had in my life and most rewarding and challenging but kind of a long story but what that did was it gave me an edge and it taught me a specific way to deal with any situation, any problem or anything like that. So that’s the biggest thing that I took away from that career was learning how to do things unconventionally because as a Green Beret, you become an expert in unconventional warfare and also an unconventional life. You learn how to do things that other people just don’t think about doing. You look at things at a different manner, a different perspective so you can come up with solutions to problems and find ways around things and we’ll get to that but that really helped me in the real estate and the marketing space that I’m now.

 

So I get out of service, you get to the 10 year mark and it’s either you’re staying in for 20 or you’re getting out. That’s pretty much what it’s like because I know, if I keep going, you’re usually enlist for four to six years at a time and it’s like, “Well, if I re-enlist, I know I’m going to be in for 20 plus,” and I saw buddies of mine. It was a great career, we love what we did but I saw buddies of mine getting out at 38 or 40 years old and there isn’t a whole lot you can put on a resume for what we used to do that is attractive to employer’s on the outside, back then.

 

Now there is contractor opposite of stuff like that but back then, really wasn’t much and I saw guys getting out and just having to take crappy jobs after all the things that we did. I’m like, “You know what? I’m not going to put in 10 more years to have to start over in a job like I’m seeing some of my friends have to get. I’m just not going to do that.” At the same time, I started having interest in doing something else. I started getting this feeling if I wanted to work for myself and I didn’t really understand what that was and I’ll get to that in a minute but so I got out and I was a jack of trades for a while. I was actually again like I said, you can’t really make much of a resume with what we used to do.

 

So I worked in retail, which was horrible. I was a cable installer, I actually ran lines from telephone poles to houses. I was a mechanic whatever I can do, I did that stuff for two years. So kind of a jack of trades and then I got hired on at the fire department which was a blessing. That was another fantastic job because it took me back to a para-military operation where I felt at home. While I was in the department, I was there for about two years and most guys have a side job, guys and girls in the department have a side job. Usually, it’s like contracting your construction or something like that. Guys do brick work and cement work and so because you have so much time off because you work 24 hour shifts and I thought, “You know I wanted to do something too,” and here comes this pull again.

 

So, this is where things took a turn for me because for whatever reason, I think I was at somebody’s wedding party or something and we stayed at a hotel and we got done with all the festivities and I was up in my room late one night and this infomercial came on and it was Robert Kiyosaki and I’m sitting here looking at this and gosh, it is interesting. So I sat there at 1 o’clock in the morning and watched enough of this infomercial trying to get interested in it and it was about the four quadrants and it was actually this course you could buy. It was $200 and that was a lot of money for me at the time but I thought, “You know I’m going to do this. This looks really interesting,” it’s all about timing right?

 

I went ahead and bought this thing, it showed up in the mail, I took it to the fire station and after we were done with our work one day, I just went in the backroom and just devoured this thing and I realized that, “Wow, this is what I’ve been waiting for, this is me. I need to be in business,” and because I’ve done different things, we created this wholesaling business where we get items from manufacturer from wholesalers and go to a flea market and sell them. I didn’t know what I was doing but I just knew that I wanted to do something different and when I went through this course, I realized that, “Wow this is it. I need my own business,” and I realized that real estate was pretty much it, I didn’t have enough capital, so real estate was pretty much my only option and I also realized that creative real estate was definitely my only option because of not having the money to do real estate.

 

So then, I think I ended up with a Carlton Sheets course and a few different things and I went into study mode and this was 2001. I went to study mode and just started learning different ways and this is a lesson right here for everybody listening. I started learning the different ways to invest in real estate. I started learning about lease options and creative financing where you can get owners to hold and carry the note and things like that and I got into learning mode and I stayed in learning mode for probably six to eight months. And I probably should have been in learning mode for three to four weeks before I started looking for properties. But you’re scared because you have never done this before and you’re thinking, “I’m talking about buying a house here and not only that, I’m talking about buying a house and having to talk to somebody about some creative stuff that they’re going to hate anyway and it just isn’t going to work.”

 

So I was in my own way and the way that things changed were I found this guy on a forum, I was in one of the real estate forums and I found this guy in a forum and I actually asked him if he would help me and he told me he would help me in exchange for a piece of deals that I did, which I agreed to and he told me what to do. So I actually put an ad in the newspaper talking about, I forgot what it was. It was the lease option ad or maybe just a regular old “we buy houses” add or whatever but I put it in The Thrifty Nickel and I actually got a few calls and I ended up going and talking to this home owner, Wally and Wally was an old contractor guy who had a second house and he couldn’t sell this house that he had that he used to live in.

 

So we chatted and finally Wally said, “You know what? I like you. I trust you and I’m going to do this deal with you,” and that’s what he called and it was a deal because it was my lease option deal and that’s all I knew is how to do this lease option thing. I think that’s what he called it, “I’ll do these lease option thing with you.” So I used my paperwork that this guy had given me and we signed up a lease option with Wally and I put a sign in the front yard just like I was told to do. Literally, I went home and I set up a voicemail system and all of that, it’s so easy now. It was so much more complicated back then to figure out all these stuff and the technology and stuff but now, things are just so easy.

 

But I set up a voicemail, put a sign in the yard and by the time I got home, I had six voicemails from that house and I literally put somebody in that thing within a couple of days and got a $4,000 option payment and that was the turning point right there. When I walked away from that after just a few days with $4,000, that’s what I would make in an entire month at the fire department minus taxes and all that other stuff. So I was like, “Holy cow, this is really cool.” Anyway, long windy story but that was pretty much my beginning.

 

[00:13:59.1] MF: Wow no, that’s some good stuff. I’m curious, I talked to Jason Lucchesi last week, I’m not sure if you know him.

 

[00:14:05.5] DC: Yeah, I know Jason.

 

[00:14:06.5] MF: Yep but he’s a professional body builder before he got into real estate and we talked about how it seems like so many athletes are very successful in life because they’ve got the motivation, the work ethic built into him and he mentioned military too. I am just curious that if you feel having that structure and you can’t give up. You can’t quit in the military or else you’re done, if that helped you succeed as well?

 

[00:14:30.0] DC: Absolutely, there is no doubt about it. I believe I am more driven today probably than anyone I know and I think that is a big part of the reason and anything that you do whether it’s the military or sports or whatever it is, when you have a regimen, it teaches you to have that regimen and keep it. So those days, if you’re an athlete or a school athlete or whatever, a swimmer, you might not feel like it on Wednesday but guess what? You’ve got to be there. Your team is there and you’ve got to go there and practice or it might be cold and you have an outdoor pool, whatever it is.

 

If people have something like that and there’s so many various things you can do but if you have something like that where you get in the habit of having to do it, then I think that carries with you through your life but it also creates something inside of you. It’s not just a habit that’s formed, that habit that I got to do this, I’m just going to do it but it creates something deep inside of you that gives you the ability to turn on that drive and it’s nothing more than self-discipline right? It allows you to flip that self-discipline switch no matter how miserable you are, no matter how much you hate it, you can flip that switch at any time because you’ve learned how to do that so it’s a huge asset, right?

 

[00:15:49.0] MF: Now I imagine nothing you do now is even close to what the things you went through in the military are.

 

[00:15:53.9] DC: No, no.

 

[00:15:54.5] MF: So that was your first deal in real estate, how soon did you get to the next one? How did you progress getting into the business?

 

[00:16:02.2] DC: So what happened was, I did that first lease option and then needed a little bit of money so you figure okay, well obviously you’re going to spend some of that money because you’ll never had it before. So, “Oh this is cool,” but then okay, what do I need to do next? I needed to find more deals. So you still have your ad in the paper or, back then, however you started. “Okay, this worked let me keep doing it and let me get some signs too, let me get some banner signs and put those out,” and so I just started doing more types of marketing, getting calls and what I found was, I didn’t know a whole lot of ways to do real estate ad. I basically had learned this lease option thing and I’d studied the Carleton Sheets and things like that in the very beginning.

 

Which I don’t think I ever did a deal that way but it was a hold off because I actually think that was a very complicated way to do a deal. There’s so many easy ways now to get a deal under your belt with minimal risk to you and benefit to the seller and everything else. So the lease option thing wasn’t that attractive to the people I was talking to, to the sellers I was talking to. So I tried to figure out a different method and the next thing that I came across was subject to the existing financing. I actually came across a course on that so I learned how to do these others, to the existing financing and I actually was fairly successful with that.

 

I got a few different deals that way and I wanted to expand my business but for whatever reason, I was on this rollercoaster. So I will get a deal here and a deal there and I probably wasn’t, some deals were good, others were not so good. They were marginal so I would be on a rollercoaster where get a good deal and then keep going, get a mediocre deal maybe not so good of a deal. So my revenue would be, I will get a little spike, it would be exciting and then my revenue would dip. I was like, “Oh this sucks.” So I was on this rollercoaster doing this over and over and I think what happened was my marketing, I wasn’t focusing enough on my marketing because I would get a deal, get excited about the deal, focus on the deal and my marketing would drop off.

 

Well looking back, that’s a huge deal because if you’re a sandwich shop and you own a sandwich shop and you don’t consistently market your business with your different mediums, you’re not going to get new customers. You’re going to always have your existing customer base but it doesn’t work that way in creative real estate. I’m going to have a motivated seller come back to you over and over and over and most of the time, the motivated seller doesn’t know other motivated sellers. So he can’t go say, “Oh, you’ve got to sell your house too because you’ll get in divorce so go see this guy.” It doesn’t work that way in our business so we have to create new business with our marketing and that’s why our marketing is so much more important than even a traditional business like a sandwich shop or whatever.

 

And I didn’t realize this back then. I thought I was doing a decent job marketing but I wasn’t so it was a feast or famine thing. What happened was, when I realized this, that’s when I took a step back. I was so ensconced in diving in this real estate business, I was in the fire department at the same time too but I was into learning about this business and driving this business forward that I wasn’t looking at it from the outside and when I finally realized there was a problem, I decided to take a step back and fall back on that training and look at it from a different perspective. “All right, let’s look at this from an unconventional manner. What is everybody else doing? What am I being told to do by everybody else? You know, all these other people training and teaching on how to do real estate.”

 

Well, they’re all teaching the same thing. They’re all teaching me how to do direct mail and bandit signs and put ads in the Thrift Nickels and there’s nothing wrong with any of that stuff and it was working but it wasn’t working to the level that I wanted it to. So back then, I started thinking about the Internet, this was 2004-2005. I started thinking well, the internet, people are looking for stuff in the internet. I even did an ad on the phonebook, it was very expensive. I think I got one lead off that thing in an entire year but I’m thinking, “Okay, the phonebook is going away, More and more people are going to the Internet, how can I make that work for me?” So I started learning more about the internet and how it worked and how people do search and Google is really coming up then.

 

So I started learning about marketing online and how I’m chasing people with my letters and my bandit signs and I’m trying to chase sellers around hoping to find them. Where the ones who are really interested, they’re actually looking. They’re online looking for solution so I started doing research on this and found that people actually were typing in stuff like, “How to sell my house fast?” And, “Investors who buy houses,” and if I could show up when those people searched, I could be the answer and I didn’t even have to send direct mail and all these other stuff. So I started learning about this and it took me about a year and a half to two years to figure it out.

 

And when I did, that was about 2006 that is when we hit the gold rush because nobody else was really doing this back then. There was a few sites out there but we created this junkie ugly site and got traffic to it when people search and they would find us and we would get phone calls. Pretty soon, the phone just started ringing like every day with motivated sellers. We were doing a lot of short sales then so we knew exactly how to target them and that’s when our business blew up and in 2006 became the first seven figure year and it was amazing to learn what happens when you plug the right components into your business.

 

So going from struggling, getting a deal, getting a junkie deal, spending money, having to replace the furnace, feast, famine, feast, famine, basically being a contractor in my own business to hitting it big and being able to build a team where now I had agents that are working for me, I had a team in the office doing marketing, that all happened in one year because we started doing the right thing which was marketing the right way. So my point to that is, for me, any business that you’re in, any business, real estate, the sandwich shop, insurance, whatever it is you’re not in any business other than the marketing business. Now you sure have to know how to do your craft but if you focus on being in the marketing business, you’re going to win over everybody else and that was the biggest lesson from this entire career.

 

[00:23:04.9] MF: That’s awesome and what you said, I am a real estate agent, I have been for 15 years and I talk to a lot of agents, I am also an investor of course but it’s really similar with the feast and famine with agents too where they go really hard for a couple of months getting clients, finding buyers and seller and they get a few deals and then all of a sudden, they concentrate on those deals and they stop going after the buyer and sellers. They have two months of not selling any houses, it’s up and down, up and down, the same thing.

 

One other thing, it sounds like you were in the education phase but you bought a lot of courses and learned from a lot of people when you first started. I know there’s a lot of people out there in the real estate industry, they call them gurus with a bad name for charging too much and taking people’s money but I would say 90% of the successful investors I talked to took some kind of course. They got started with it even if they said it was a horrible course, it still got them started in real estate. I’m curious how valuable did you find those courses and getting that material?

 

[00:24:00.7] DC: I would say the majority of them had great value and the problem is and I would admit to this too, I bought a lot of courses. I bought $79 courses, I bought $997 courses, I went to boot camps, I did all of that stuff just wanting to have success. So I probably spent, I don’t know, 30, $40,000 on real estate courses and boot camps and stuff like that. A lot of money and that’s not including any coaching programs that I was in as well later on. So I spent a lot of money on that but the bottom line is, number one, I didn’t have to spend that much money. I did it because it was my fault but the reason is and this is for everyone including myself is stop learning, right?

 

Stop learning because we think we have to keep learning and there’s a better way and there’s a newer way when in reality, we’re just afraid. We’re just afraid to pull the trigger because most of the stuff out there, I’m sure there’s courses that aren’t that good but if somebody is going to take the time to make you a course, it’s probably got the information in it to get you what you need but if you go and get a course or two, I know people that have bought four different courses on wholesaling. How hard is it to wholesale? How many courses do you need on wholesaling?

 

Now, if you want to do wholesaling and then you want to do rehabs and then you want to learn about private money, sure, learn about that stuff but the main thing here is apply. So learn what you’re going to learn but begin applying it immediately and that’s what I did. I would learn, my big thing is buying marketing courses because I realize that was the deal but I definitely bought a few different how to courses in the beginning but then I started getting into marketing courses because that’s what I needed. I would buy a marketing course, “Oh this is cool,” I’d take it to the fire station and just plow through it in the day.

 

I would be really excited and then not really apply. My fault. My fault. And then what would I do? I would find a deal and then I would have some money and then I’d buy another marketing course. It’s just dumb right? But that’s what we do so my point there and my whole big tip and when I say stop learning I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean stop learning the same stuff. Get what you need, buy what you need, invest in your education and career for sure but take action on it. If you don’t take action on it and you just look for the next shinny object, you’re going to keep chasing shiny objects. I’ve chased a lot of shinny objects and you know what? You find them and they just rust really quick. They’re not that shinny after all.

 

[00:26:44.8] MF: Yeah, I know.

 

[00:26:45.7] DC: You’ve got to polish them. When you get it, you’ve got to polish it and keep polishing it and then you’ll have success.

 

[00:26:50.6] MF: Yeah, that’s great and I think one of the best ways to learn is to do it. You can learn all you want in theory but you’ll never going to know exactly how to apply it exactly what it takes until you actually do it and get out there and buy a house or talk to people. You can’t just sit on your computer and read all day.

 

[00:27:08.3] DC: Absolutely and it’s scary. It’s scary to, “Well if I do this marketing — I am excited about this, yeah I am excited about motivated sellers but in the back of your mind, you’re not. You’re scared. What am I going to say when the phone rings? I remember sitting there and going to the scripts in this dang courses and studying them and practicing.

 

When the phone would actually ring and I knew it was forwarded from my tracking number or whatever, it probably sounded like this: “He-he-hello? Hello?” I am digging through my script right? Trying to get it on the table so I can know what to say. Dumb. Just have a conversation. It isn’t scary, you just think it is. You’re just talking with somebody that’s looking for a solution and have a conversation with them.

 

See if it’s a fit, person to person and be straight up about what you do. If it’s creative, it’s creative. If you think it’s wonky, you know what? If it makes sense for the seller, then it makes sense for the seller. I’ve gotten some crazy deals where I’d walked away with the seller giving me money, right? It’s all about finding motivated people to talk to.

 

[00:28:19.0] MF: Right and at least you have answered your phone. A lot of people go through all that work to get someone to call and then they’re afraid to answer the phone or even talk to them. So that’s the first step.

 

[00:28:27.2] DC: Yeah, absolutely and the thing is, once you start and once you do it a few times, “Oh I got an appointment, what am I going to do now?” It’s just a step by step process. You talk to a few people, you finally get an appointment, you go to the house, you’re just on the drive there, you just know that they’re going to call you stupid and “get out of my house” and “I can’t believe you offered me that” but they’re not.

 

Then you do that a few times and then the next thing you know, the homeowners are shaking their head and they’re like, “Yeah that sounds good. Let’s do this” and you’re like, “Uh” you know? It’s just a step by step process. One day, you will have an agreement in your hands and before you know it, you’ll have a check. Wow, this does work and it does.

 

[00:29:05.4] MF: Nice, now when you’re doing a seven figure business, were you wholesaling most of those deals or were you flipping some of them? What was your end goal with those properties?

 

[00:29:15.8] DC: Those were primarily retail on the back end. So we were doing a combination of short sales and renovations. We had a crew going. I actually had a buddy, we partnered on quite a few deals, the ones that we would retail and he ran the construction people and then we ran the acquisition side of the business. So we were doing a ton of marketing, we actually had a machine set up, where we had our marketing so dialed in that people would call or fill out web forms on our website. A team member would call them back, send them the information that they needed so that they could print it out, have them bring in what they needed. They would come to our office without us even seeing the house.

 

They would come to our office, sign all the paperwork. We do the deal and then within a couple of days, one of our people would go out to the house and get repaired and stuff like that and then we would begin our thing but we just had a machine. That was when we were doing a lot of short sales. We don’t really do that anymore but when we were doing a lot of short sales, we had a machine for that process and it was just amazing. So that was our primary push is the short sales creating the spread on the short sale and also doing rehabs and getting the max spread, the max value for the rehabs and yeah, it worked really well.

 

[00:30:35.4] MF: Cool and yeah, short sales have dried up and they have also added a lot of regulations and different things regarding short sales which made it tougher, that’s for sure. How did your business progressed because that’s right before the housing crisis? Did that hurt you? Did you have to change things completely?

 

[00:30:49.6] DC: We definitely changed things and you’re right. To step back on in the foreclosure thing, that was huge for a few years. We got in early and we rode until 2008. We knew the market was started to go south, we steered out of that business, we started off loading all of our inventory and we basically ended up sitting on three or four houses for a couple of months and making some payments but we got out of everything which was great.

 

Then, the focus switched to actually doing more retail stuff. So finding stuff, buy it, renovate it and then keep targeting higher value properties. So we moved into the higher value properties because there was more of a spread and we got better and better at doing the rehabs and it’s fun to take something and renovate it and take it from old and dilapidated to pretty and put a family in it.

 

That’s just as fun and its rewarding and you make a lot of money when you do it but you’ve got to start somewhere even if it’s wholesaling for $3,000 but you work your way into what works for you there. So we transitioned into that. We’re getting ready to move to Scottsdale and I’m going to spin up a brand new business from there.

 

We’re going to start a wholesaling there and then we’re going to get into high end when we were there looking for properties. The midrange stuff goes really quick, the bread and butter stuff, two, 300,000, $400,000 goes really quick but the high level stuff, a million, a million and five, it sits four, five, six, eight months and the reason it sits is because most of it is old.

 

It’s 20 years, 30 years and it needs a renovation and there’s a lot of motivated sellers there. So we’re going to start wholesaling and then we’re going to move into that high level stuff and start doing high level in the million dollar houses to rehab. So we’re really excited about that.

 

[00:32:45.3] MF: Nice and are you in Seattle still? I know you started out in Seattle, is that where you’re at now or have you moved around a few times?

 

[00:32:51.0] DC: No. Well this is one of the joys of being your own boss. I left Seattle, I went to Southern California and tried that out for a bit and then I went to the Southeastern side of Florida so the other side of the world. I was there for about six months and then I went to Boulder. I was in Boulder for about three months and now I’ve been in Denver for about four months and now, I’m headed to Scottsdale.

 

So for the last year and a half, I’ve been looking for home and my businesses have been running because of the team that I’ve built, that is the beauty of being your own boss and having your own business when you structure it right because I have a fantastic team and they have my back. If there is a time when I’m going to be coming up. I’m in semi work mode now.

 

I work half the day and then I’ll work on the move half the day and our moves are going to be so smooth because everything is gone. Everything is boxed. We’re ready to go, we have our packing crates coming Monday and we’re going to pack them all up and go but my team has my back because I know that I can do this half days for a week and then next week, I cannot work at all for four or five days.

 

I will come back and everything will be running smoothly just like it always is. I’ve been on my own for 10 years now and the team that I’ve built is phenomenal and there’s no greater joy than being free and doing what you want when you want to and not having to punch a clock or be somewhere. It’s just phenomenal and anybody can do that. You really can.

 

[00:34:23.5] MF: Yeah. I completely agree. I’ve got a team of 10 now with agents and assistants and they help me run the website, my real estate team, the flips so I know exactly what you mean. It’s nice to be able to go on vacation without having to work the entire vacation like I used to. If you can find the right people, it makes your life so much easier.

 

[00:34:43.0] DC: Absolutely.

 

[00:34:44.3] MF: So you’re going to Scottsdale, you’re going to work on some high end stuff there, have you done a lot of high end stuff before? I know you said you did some previously. Do you see more risk or if you know what you’re doing, is it not as risky to do the high end stuff as the low end stuff?

 

[00:34:59.1] DC: There’s always risk involved obviously when you’re retailing because now, I’ve never been a proponent of “let me go ahead and do a subject two on this house” or do an owner finance and put $30,000 into a rehab. I’ve never been a person that suggest that because you don’t have full control of the property so it comes out of actually owning the property when you do rehabs.

 

So that’s when you incur the risk is you’re getting financing on it or you’re using private money on it where if you mess it up, you’re going to ruin that private money partnership. So there is definitely risk involved but the flip side is, you look at the numbers and the market and you take a calculated risk so you know or if I get in at this price, even if things go south and I have to take a hit on this house after my rehab cost and selling it even at a hit, I’ll be fine.

 

I can sell it even if I have to dump it because I can’t sell it for X months, I’ll be okay. So as long as you take the calculated risk, I think you’re pretty safe and as far as high end stuff, we haven’t done it for a while but my previous partner who we used to do deals with in Seattle, he continued just climbing up the ladder and they’re doing beautiful million, two million dollar homes now and they do full remodels and they’re just fantastic so I always have him to fall back on for guidance as well.

 

[00:36:27.5] MF: Nice, that’s great to have. I was asking about Seattle because I know a few people there who talk about how crazy the market is in Seattle and then being in Denver, it’s absolutely nuts in Denver too. You’ve been a part of a few absolutely crazy markets for appreciation right now.

 

[00:36:44.4] DC: Yep, absolutely and what does it come down to right? No matter what the market is, if the market is extremely hot or the market isn’t that good, well if the market isn’t that good, you can still sell the house if it’s priced right because if you can make it more attractive than the other houses on the market, people are still buying houses. Maybe not as many if you have a soft market but they’re still buying. So if you’re house is the most attractive one, guess what? You win. What do you have to do to get that? Well you have to price it better than everybody else’s unless you are selling a fixture to an investor or something but still, it’s all about the price.

 

And if you’re in a hot market, same thing. You’re just going to sell it quick no matter what, it all comes down to what though? Marketing. If you can get in the back door, everybody who’s marketing are motivated sellers. Everybody is, right? Using mail and everything else that they have always done but if you can get in the backdoor and get in touch with these motivated seller and be the solution and get the deal at the right price, you can win on a soft market and you’d definitely win on a hot market.

 

Because I’ve heard so many times, “Oh that’s such a hot market, how can you real estate in a hot market like that? There aren’t any motivated sellers.” Yes, there are. There’s always motivated sellers. I don’t care how hard the market is, you just need to find them and when you do, you have a smoking deal because now you have a deal in your pocket and an ultra-hot market so you can sell it super-fast. Actually, I love hot markets.

 

[00:38:17.8] MF: Right, I agree. I didn’t know if you knew this but I am actually in Greeley, which is an hour north of Denver.

 

[00:38:23.3] DC: I did not know that.

 

[00:38:24.8] MF: Yeah and I went to Boulder. I went to CU, but we have 12 flips going on right now in a hot market so it’s definitely possible. It can be tougher or it can be easier like you said depending on what’s going on. I’m not holding rentals as much here because prices are so high but flipping is definitely possible. One more thing I wanted to talk about, there are some other things I wanted to talk about but as far as you’re investing, do you use mostly private financing or have you used banks at all? How do you normally finance your properties?

 

[00:38:51.7] DC: I’ve done both. There’s three primary ways that we’ll finance and one is with owner financing. I love that unless we’re going to put a significant amount of money in the deal, then it’s a scary thing and if you do it that way, then definitely protect yourself. Get title no matter what whether you do it in a trust or whatever it is but if you’re going to have the owner carry and you’re going to put the money at all in the property, then get control of the title somehow.

 

Then the other way is financing. We’ll go out and actually finance a property. If you can get the numbers right, we can finance the property. A lot of times with nothing out of pocket and if you do have to come out of pocket, then you can use private money for that sometimes or money from a deal or whatever but if the numbers are right, it isn’t hard to finance a property if you have even decent credit. I mean it was hard there for a while but when everything crashed in 2008, probably for a couple three or four years, it was difficult especially for investor financing but things really changed and it gotten better and I have the numbers on the house work then you’re good.

 

And then the third way is private money and private money is probably the favorite. Especially when you’re looking at any renovations because once you build the private money partnerships, people know that you’re good and you’re going to get the deal done and they’re going to get paid. So you can get private money at 6% or 8% or whatever you do and then the cool thing is, when you get the numbers right, a lot of times you can actually get money at closing to fund your rehabs as well.

 

So literally with nothing out of your pocket, you can acquire the deal, take ownership of the deal, pay for the renovation, sell the deal and that is true creative real estate. It’s fantastic because you’re not coming out of your pocket a dime and you literary have no risk. It gets everybody else that has the risk, obviously you have to take care of them and play a smart game but yeah, those are the three ways that we finance deals like that.

 

[00:40:53.4] MF: Nice and I do very similar. I mix with private financing, bank financing and I’ve had good luck with banks but supplementing that with private money has worked really well for me. Very cool and now, we have talked a lot about marketing about how you’ve built extremely successful business from finding these marketing techniques. You created a program that goes over that. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

 

[00:41:18.3] DC: Yeah. We actually, in my different mastermind groups and stuff like that in real estate, I would share what I was doing with my marketing and a lot of it was online based. All of my peers, every time I would show this, they’re like, “Oh my gosh can you do that for me?” We started doing that for our peers and helping that with their online marketing. What happened was a funny story because we transitioned in and out of working with businesses with their marketing and outside of real estate and what happened was in our office one time in Seattle, one of our computers went down and there was a computer repair shop across the street.

 

So literary at the end of one of the business days, I unplugged the box. The CPU, I just picked up the box and took it across the street and said, “Hey, this things is for business, can you work on it?” And, “Yeah, sure. Come back and get it in a couple of days,” and so when I went back, I started talking with the owner and we started sharing ideas about what we do and things like that and I told him what we do.

 

He’s like, “Well how do you get your deals?” And I started talking about how we do online marketing and of course he perked up. He’s like, “Oh man, I’ve been trying to nail that. We just can’t get it right. I’ve hired consultants and we can’t get this internet thing right and I know there’s business to be had off the internet” so the next thing you know, this guy was our client.

 

We built the website for him and he went from two computer stores in the Seattle area to seven and it was all because of his online marketing. Well, who does he know? Everybody right? Because he works on everybody’s computers, so the next thing you know, we were doing online marketing for chiropractors and dentists, you name it.

 

So we inadvertently we didn’t mean to but we spun up this new business on marketing local businesses online and what it did was it taught me an entirely different way to market because I was marketing a real estate business online but I was using specific methods to do it and when we went down this local business marketing path, it taught us an entirely different way to market online.

 

In doing that, I realized that you know what? This real estate business is a local business, it’s no different than a chiropractor or a dentist, it’s a local business too and I don’t care if we’re in Seattle doing real estate in Phoenix. It’s a local Phoenix business. So we started looking at how we can market a real estate business as a local business and it blew up even more.

 

So then, that’s where the need came in. Just like anything, in business if you can fulfill the need of a motivated seller, you can get a deal. “Well if you can fulfill the need of people looking for motivated sellers, you have a business, and so people started hearing about what we were doing, other investors and stuff and they started coming to us.

 

“How do I do this? Can you help me do this?” so we ended up creating. It started out with just one course on how to market your real estate business online and this was a number of years ago and that course just blew up. We had customers all over the country and that has morphed into a full business of its own where we have an entire series of trainings and courses on how to market your business.

 

Yeah, it just morphed into that so now we have a publishing business as well where we do an online marketing and things like that and then we’re headed into different fields like the health and wellness space and online marketing. It’s funny where life takes you and that’s really exciting because I love the online marketing component because you can build a tribe.

 

You can build enormous groups of people that are all interested in the same thing and you can build great communities that way. Thousands of people that are all interested in the same thing so it’s a lot of fun.

 

[00:45:12.2] MF: Yeah, that’s awesome and I hadn’t realized that you had expanded that marketing to so many other businesses as well.

 

[00:45:17.9] DC: Oh yeah, it’s great.

 

[00:45:19.1] MF: That’s awesome. Cool and then I know we’re running short on time here, do you have any tips if someone wants to get started in real estate, maybe they don’t have a lot of money like you when you first got started, what’s one tip for them to get started? Is it should they pick up a course and learn that way? Should they browse online for hours trying to figure stuff out? Should they just go out there? What do you think is the first step someone should do?

 

[00:45:46.1] DC: Ideally, if somebody doesn’t have money to get started and a lot of times when you don’t have money, that’s the big thing. I have seen people they might have a website and their website says, “We buy houses, cash,” and then the person who has the website says, “You know I only have this site because I can’t buy houses cash” and I tell them, “Why can’t you?”

 

In their mind, if they don’t have the money to even buy a course, they’re afraid they can’t do real estate because obviously, if they can’t buy a $500 course, they’re not going to buy a $300,000 house and that is absolutely not true because I will answer your question in a second but I just wanted to point that out. Even if you can’t afford a course or something like that to learn, you can do a deal.

 

The thing is, if you talk to a few people, a few motivated sellers, it’s all about talking to motivated sellers, if you talk to enough of them, you’re going to find somebody that is interested in your solution and your solution might be, “Hey, I can get this house sold for you in a couple of weeks” or “I can get you cash for this house in a couple of weeks.”

 

How the heck are you going to do that? Well, if you can get this house under contract for a good price, you can go find investors in your neighborhood, in your area. Call the signs, go after their marketing, get online, start calling, “Hey, I specialize in finding deals. Would you be interested in working with me if I can find you deals? I am just looking for an assignment fee and it’s yours”.

 

You’re going to find people who say, “Yeah. Heck yeah bring me the deals”. You’re going to find people who say, “No, I’m not interested” but you will also find people who say, “Heck yeah, bring me the deals”. Now, you’ve got a place to take the deals, all you need is to get deals under your belt. If you’re short on funds, the biggest thing that I think you can do is you need to know how to tie up a deal. That’s important.

 

So if you can find a course on how to do that, that’s a big thing. You don’t necessarily need to know all there is to know about real estate but you need to know how to tie up a deal with paperwork and you need to know how to get an assignment fee right? That’s really important so you need to learn that at least.

 

Could you do it on forms and stuff? Probably. I would try to get a course of some type on wholesaling if you could. Just simple wholesaling, that’s where you need to start because it’s the easiest and you can start making money right away and then branch your business from there but once you do that, start marketing and if you don’t have money to start marketing, there are so many places that you can several leads for free.

 

You just have to do the work so marketing comes in a couple of different segments. One is where it’s automated and you don’t do the work. You have somebody else do all the work. The mailings or if it’s online marketing or whatever it is, that’s all preferably being done for you and the other is where it’s mechanical right?

 

You are doing the work because you can’t yet afford to pay somebody else to do all the work. So that means getting on Craig’s List and sifting through those dang ads and reaching out to the owners. Don’t search agents typically because they’re not going to want to go to their home owner that’s listed the house with them and offer you a deal.

 

So do the by owner stuff, go through Craigslist every day, find them, contact them, don’t be afraid. You can e-mail 50 people and maybe get one response or you can call 50 people and talk to 25. What do you think is going to do better? So reach down deep and do the hard work and it’s going to be uncomfortable at first but literary, so many websites out there where you can find home owners that are ready to sell their house. Just start talking and it’s going to teach you how to talk to them and in the process, you’re going to uncover motivated sellers.

 

[00:49:34.1] MF: That’s awesome. Great advice. I think that is all I had. I learned a ton of stuff from you. Thank you for the Green Beret stories and all the marketing. If someone wants to contact you, they want to get a hold of you or check out what you’ve got to offer, what’s the best way to find you?

 

[00:49:49.2] DC: Actually, we have a resource kit that’s really cool and that’s a good place for somebody to start as well but we have a resource kit and there’s not just one but there’s seven different ways to find motivated sellers for free and they can actually get the resource kit. It’s actually at investfourmore.com, it’s on your site, investfourmore.com/commando.

 

So they can go there and just download that resource kit for free and it will teach them seven different ways to find motivated sellers for free.

 

[00:50:20.9] MF: Awesome and yes, thank you for offering that. I always like free stuff, I appreciate that. Great, well David I think that’s all I have. A lot of awesome information, I learned a lot. I didn’t really realized you were in Colorado right now either that’s why it’s funny how that works out but yeah, thank you for being on the show and hopefully we can keep in touch.

 

[00:50:38.5] DC: Yeah, thanks for having me. I had a good time Mark and I appreciate chatting with you.

 

[00:50:41.9] MF: All right, great. Well you have a great weekend and I’m sure we’ll talk soon.

 

[00:50:45.0] DC: All right, thank you too. Take care.

 

[END]

Jason Lucchesi has found success in real estate through a number of avenues. He was a successful lender, mastered the art of buying short sales, invested heavily in notes, has wholesaled many properties, and is a coach. Jason has learned to adapt with the ever-changing real estate world, and he talks all about it on this episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast. How did Jason first get started in real estate? Jason was a competitive body builder when he was in his late teens and early 20’s. Jason feels the rigors of being a body builder helped

Jason Lucchesi has found success in real estate through a number of avenues. He was a successful lender, mastered the art of buying short sales, invested heavily in notes, has wholesaled many properties, and is a coach. Jason has learned to adapt with the ever-changing real estate world, and he talks all about it on this episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast.

How did Jason first get started in real estate?

Jason was a competitive body builder when he was in his late teens and early 20's. Jason feels the rigors of being a body builder helped him develop the discipline and work ethic that is needed to succeed in life. But body building does not pay very well, and Jason had to have a job as well as train. Jason had sold Cutco knives, but decided to make a change by becoming a loan originator. Basically Jason was given very basic instructions and told to go get clients! He did a lot of cold calling and very little training, but eventually found some success in the lending field.

After a couple of years, Jason got a job with Countrywide where he was given training and found a mentor. He flourished and at one point was Countrywide's top lender in the nation. Jason's primary client were people who needed subprime loans. Either they had bad credit, no credit or did not make enough money to qualify for a regular loan. At the time Jason was doing what he was taught, but looking back on it he estimates over 50 percent of the loans he originated defaulted.

In 2007 Jason was hit with a massive blow. The housing crisis hit and subprime loans were no longer available. His bread and butter business that had pushed him to the top of the lending business was gone.

Here is another great podcast from lender Mike Bowen.

How did Jason start investing in real estate?

After the subprime loans disappeared Jason left the lending business. He moved to Indiana and decided investing in real estate would be his next venture. He borrowed some money to learn from a real estate mentor, who he admits did not know much more than Jason did. He called it the blind leading the blind. Eventually Jason found his niche as a wholesaler. He used short sales as the way to source his deals and sell them to investors or in some cases retail buyers. He set up a team to negotiate with the banks, and business was booming.

How to get a great deal on a short sale.

Jason did very well with short sales for many years, but the laws and regulations began to change with short sales. New laws made it harder to be a negotiator with the banks and the banks themselves started to add clauses making it harder to wholesale short sales. Jason did not give up real estate, he found new ways to source deals. One of his favorite ways to get great deals was to buy notes directly from the banks.

How did Jason find banks that would sell him notes?

Jason likes to target small banks who are more likely to sell small packages of notes to investors. He would find contacts on LinkedIn and then convince the banks it was easier to sell him their non-performing notes than it was to take properties through foreclosure or complete a short sale. Jason was able to buy notes for 50 cents on the dollar or less. He says the note business has become more competitive, but he can still get great deals on notes.

How to invest in non-performing notes.

What is Jason up to now and how can you contact him?

Jason is still wholesaling deals, but has set up his team to do most of the work. He likes to look at the big picture items and improve his business from the outside (smart guy). He is constantly trying to increase his passive income and one of his goals is to buy a large apartment complex (over 50 units). Jason also offers some coaching for real estate investors and you can find him on his blog JasonLucchesi.com.

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Transcript

00:00:58.9] MF: Hey everyone, it’s Mark Ferguson with Invest Four More. Welcome to another episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast. I have a really awesome guest on today’s show. I’m really excited to talk to him, Jason Lucchesi has been an investor, a lender, a coach. He has been through a lot in his real estate career. I’m really happy to have him on the show.

 

Jason, thank you so much for being on. How are you doing today?

 

[00:01:24.0] JL: I’m doing great, thanks for having me on the show today Mark. I appreciate it buddy.

 

[00:01:27.9] MF: Yeah, no I appreciate you taking the time to do it and I’m interested to learn more about your journey because you have done a lot of different things in your career. The first thing that I always ask people is how did you get first started in real estate? It looks like you became down the lending field around 2002, is that right?

 

[00:01:47.1] JL: Yeah, it was actually interesting. I needed a job because I was competing. I was a competitive bodybuilder from the age of 19 to 21 and I needed a job when I wasn’t training for shows. So I got into the mortgage business as a telemarketer at first. I first started doing telemarketing to where I was getting leads for the loan originators and then I saw how well they were doing. I decided to hop in and become an originator myself and that was actually the start of I would say a pretty long career in the mortgage business because most people, they typically, they’re good for about six months to a year and then they fizzle out because it’s not for everybody. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea.

 

[00:02:42.6] MF: Yeah, I can imagine. I’m curious before we get too in depth. I’ve talked to a few athletes, do you think being in competition, I mean body builders have crazy regimens and diets, it’s insane to see what they go through. Do you think that helps you become more successful in life just having the habits and the work ethic that that built into you?

 

[00:03:04.0] JL: Well I would say yes. Most people that I’ve worked with, military people and people that played some sort of athletics or still play athletics from the competitive standpoint, I always feel like they are the ones that really know what it takes. Know that it’s going to take hard work because man, it’s a grind especially from a competitive bodybuilding standpoint. You’re constantly critiquing yourself and it’s hard work especially getting ready for a show.

 

I was up at five in the morning to do cardio and then typically I would have one or two meals and then I’d be back in the gym for my weight training session and then I’d be off for a little bit during the day and that’s when I would work. I’d go to work and then soon as I get off work which is right around 9 o’clock, I would go back in for another hour session of cardio. So yeah definitely. It helps me stay a lot more organized and from a business standpoint and just trying to be on top of my game as best as I can.

 

[00:04:15.1] MF: Right, no that makes sense. I know with athletes and body builders, you only have so much time in the day and you have so many things to fit in. I imagine that helps you filter out the junk and focus on the really important things when you’re in that situation.

 

[00:04:30.4] JL: Yeah, absolutely and in high school, it was football, basketball and I threw shot put my senior year and you had to make the right decisions or else you would fall behind and I always wanted to be at the top and I wanted to do whatever it took to get there. You have to be very disciplined if you want to be at the top of anything not just sports but in your own company, in your own business.

 

[00:05:01.8] MF: Right, that makes perfect sense. So what was it like getting into the origination business? Was it what you thought it would be? I mean were you cold calling people? What was that like when you first started?

 

[00:05:13.8] JL: Yeah, it was cold calling people. It was pretty difficult at first and I was kind of used to it because as soon as I graduated high school, I was doing lots of cold calling because I was selling Cutco Knives. A lot of people actually know what they are just because they get hit up from graduated high schoolers, it’s a way for them to make some money over the summer and I was fine doing that.

 

I always told myself I’m like, “If you’re able to sell $20,000 worth of knives in a 40 day period, you can pretty much do anything in the sales standpoint.” So I really hit the ground/floor running and it was really difficult at first just because you needed to fill out the borrower application just perfect and you really need to be on top of your game especially from understanding that at that time, it was the closing costs.

 

You needed to make sure that it was under the threshold for the State of Illinois from closing cost perspective. So the high cost standpoint, so you really needed to really be sharp and on your game and it did take a little bit of time. I didn’t really have a strong mentor helping me out every step of the way, which it could have sped up the process quite a bit if my manager probably would have spent some time with me.

 

[00:06:37.0] MF: Yeah that always helps.

 

[00:06:38.6] JL: Yeah, absolutely.

 

[00:06:40.1] MF: Yeah. I tell the agents the same thing because being a real estate agent is very similar to a lender I think. A little different job description but it’s about relationships and training and if you go into being an agent with no training, like you said, most people would fail in the first six months.

 

[00:06:55.5] JL: Oh yeah. It was definitely tough for sure man and if I wasn’t living at home with my folks at the time, it would have been really, really tough and it was a struggle for probably the first two years just because I had no idea what I was doing and I ended up going to like three different brokers and they all do the same thing. They all said, “All right, well here’s your rate sheets, here’s your desk. Good luck.” I didn’t even get a computer or anything. They just said, “Here you go, good luck,” and that was it. No proper mentorship or anything so it was definitely a struggle at first.

 

[00:07:30.1] MF: Wow. Yeah I can imagine with no guidelines at all and after that, a couple of years it sounds like you’ve moved to country wide and things changed around a little bit there.

 

[00:07:39.7] JL: It did. I had proper mentorship country wide at the time. That was a large bank. It was a large company so I received lots of help, lots of mentorship and I would say after my first 60 days of being with Countrywide, I really started doing eight, 10, 12 plus deals every single month consistently and I was a top producer not just in my own branch but within the whole company.

 

I really started seeing what I could do and I started climbing up the corporate ladder. I really thought I was going to be with Countrywide like 20 or 30 years and retire, do the normal thing that you’re supposed to do, and that didn’t happen. But I thought I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing.

 

[00:08:32.7] MF: And what exactly happened? I imagine it had something to do with the housing crisis but what happened with Countrywide?

 

[00:08:38.1] JL: Yeah, well I was with their sub-prime side and they called it the Countrywide Full Spectrum Lending Division and I moved up pretty quickly with Countrywide. I started off as an account executive, which is their loan officer and I was doing lots of volume, became what’s called a team manager. So you’re right below a branch manager.

 

They sent me and another guy off to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We were doing really, really well there, we turned the branch around and then I got another promotion. I came down here where I live now, Indianapolis, Indiana and what happened from there is, this was probably early 2007. So this was before the market really took a turn for the worst and one of my friends who is my mentor at the time, he decided he was going to go out to the east coast to the New Jersey, New York area. I was like, “Okay, I’ll go with you,” because I was very loyal and he gave me tons of opportunity. So I went out there. Wasn’t out there for long and all of a sudden, we’re unable to do sub-prime anymore in August of 2007 and I’m like, “Oh man, I wonder what’s going to happen here?” Because we were only starting to do just a paper so prime deals.

 

So people that had the 6-85 plus four or above where the people that we’re able to work with. No more people in the 500’s because the branch that I was at, we were not licensed yet to do FHA. So we couldn’t do FHA or VA loans at that particular branch. So I was just like, “Oh my gosh what am I supposed to do here?” My wife and I at that time, we got married in October of ’07 and we were just completely freaked out.

 

We didn’t know what to do, the cost of living out there is just crazy. So we decided to come back here to Indianapolis, I actually put in my resignation on December 31st of 2007. So literally, I wanted to start a brand new year fresh without Countrywide or anything that was going on and we literally packed our stuff up and moved back here and we never looked back.

 

[00:11:07.7] MF: Wow. That’s pretty crazy with the timing there and for people that don’t know sub-prime, is it defined as under 630? I can’t remember the exact definitions, like the credit score?

 

[00:11:18.8] JL: We could do stuff all over the place but in all honesty, you can have a FICO score of 500 and as long as you have some equity in the house, we could go up to 70% loan to value at the time and we’re doing some crazy stuff. You can do — they had special stated W-2 programs as long as you had a 580 FICO score, you can get a 100% financing.

 

So it was pretty crazy but no, we went all the way on up. We had to make it justifiable so if somebody came in and they had a 720 FICO score and they were getting approved for sub-prime loan, we had to state a reason why they were going to sub-prime versus a prime loan. So it just really kind of depended at that time on what they were trying to do because Countrywide would always want us to do the right thing.

 

If somebody isn’t sub-prime, they need to be in prime paper and that’s how our underwriters work. So we needed to make it justifiable because as you know, I am not sure if everybody has seen or read the book, The Big Short but a lot of our loans were packaged up in triple A ratings. We’re talking these loans that we were doing, they probably got defaulted on probably 65 - 70% at the time.

 

They were being packaged up and triple A rating packages and being sold off on the open secondary market. So I didn’t realized it at the time what was going on but looking back on it, it was like, “Holy crap, I can’t believe we were able to write some of those loans that we did.” I think I still have some of the old rate sheets of 580 FICO scores can get a 100% financing and I kid you not man.

 

Six months or a year later, people would come back. They’d be like, “Hey can we do a refinance?” Because what we typically did with these people is we had paid off all of their debt, they would refinance, they’d paid off all their debt, they would come back to us in six to 12 months later, they’d be back in 50, $60,000 in debt and I’m like, “Didn’t you learn from the last time?” What happened here?

 

[00:13:34.2] MF: Yeah that is nuts and The Big Short is an awesome movie. You really have to be in real estate to understand what’s going on, but it is really interesting how all that worked, and yeah I imagine the economy did so well for a while there because people were refinancing their house and taking out all these money all the time and just dumping it into the economy. Then once that stopped, it’s like a double edge sword. All of a sudden housing is crashing plus people couldn’t refinance and kind of cure their bad habits with their house anymore.

 

[00:14:05.8] JL: Right, exactly. Yeah it was the most interesting times I could ever remember within our period of time, it was nuts.

 

[00:14:18.0] MF: Wow, so what happened after you started fresh, January 1st, 2008, what did you do at that point?

 

[00:14:25.5] JL: Yeah, so I started doing a lot with getting into real estate investing. I actually paid and I shouldn’t say I did, but I borrowed some money from my mom. It was weird how everything happened. My grandmother passed away a year prior, they just sold her house. It forever to sell it. This was right during the crash and they sold the house and I asked my mother if I could borrow some money for mentoring.

 

Low and behold, it wasn’t a solid program. I think I was being taught from somebody that may have done a deal, like one or two deals within the last five years so I wasn’t receiving the right type of mentorship. So I was just kind of — a blind with a steering a blind and I didn’t know really what to do and so I was putting offers in on all these properties and some of them were getting approved.

 

Then I looked at the numbers just from using some of my originator background and I was like, “This does not make sense. There’s no money here.” It took me a while before I really got started. I actually went back into the mortgage business with a company here and it was awful. Talk about awful, I have no college degree or anything so the only drive was I was being offered a 100% commission and I had a son on the way.

 

So the pressure was on because all of my money through Countrywide was gone pretty quickly because their stock went from $42 to $12 really, really fast. So I didn’t have much left so I really needed to get something going. I ended up working for a company and they micromanaged and I had to start all the way back at ground zero and it was not fun.

 

I ended up actually, I hate to admit this, but I actually got fired mainly because I was starting to focus on real estate investing and I think that they saw that my productivity wasn’t there. Mentally, my mind was already gone from there and I needed to focus on something for myself. I wasn’t going to work 40 to 50 hours a week for somebody else and make them a ton of money. I just figured I should do this myself, and that’s when I really started getting into short sales. I started doing a ton of short sales and that’s really what kind of took the business and blasted it off from there.

 

[00:17:03.1] MF: Nice, yeah sometimes being fired can be the best thing that ever happens to someone.

 

[00:17:08.2] JL: Yeah, in that case it was. I actually, I remember being fired and I was actually smiling the whole time. I was so excited. I was excited but I was also so fear shocked. I was like, “Oh man, okay now it’s settling in. I’ll probably have to live on unemployment to unemployment check and this is just going to be awful,” and that’s what I ended up doing. I was literary on unemployment check to unemployment check during the first few months of being a real estate investor.

 

[00:17:42.7] MF: Wow. So with the short sales, were you wholesaling them? Were you buying them to flip? What was your angle with the short sales?

 

[00:17:50.6] JL: So what I was doing was my angle was we found people off the notice of default list. So it’s a notice of default list here in Indiana. Some states maybe lis pendens and what we would do is we would find these people. We would talk to them, let them know of what we can do from a short sale standpoint and I had about five to six agents working with me.

 

What we would do is we would get the property listed and my company would do the negotiations. So we would do the negotiations, we would put in our offer on the property and once we received an approval from the bank, what we would do is we would turn around and quickly sell it the same day. So we actually did close on it so most people know, it has an A to B transaction. The seller was the A, we were the B so we were the buyer.

 

We closed on it with our own funds. We use transactional money and then we turn around and we sold it the same day to an end buyer and that transaction was called a B to C and we sold it the same day and that’s what we did multiple times over and we did do some rehabs. Some properties that made really, really great sense. We took them on and rehabbed them but 90% of the transactions were same day closings.

 

[00:19:13.4] MF: Cool and that’s basically impossible to do now with short sales with our new guidelines but at the time it wasn’t too bad. Are you still doing any short sales now or is it all evolved to something else?

 

[00:19:23.8] JL: Well I would say we don’t it the way we used to do it. We do it in a way where we just find the deals, we put in our offers and that’s it. We don’t do any negotiations or anything like that anymore because the state did come down hard on people and if you don’t have what’s called a mortgage foreclosure consultants surety bond, then you are operating illegally.

 

So they did come up with that in 2010. You needed to have that mortgage foreclosure consultant bond because a lot of people were misleading home owners and telling them they could stop foreclosures and stop sale dates and all that kind of stuff and kind of made it a bad scene for people that were doing it the right way.

 

We still do short sales yes but that’s definitely not our main bread and butter. Just because there is deed restrictions on approval letters now especially from the big banks and you have to hold them for 30 days minimum and we can do that and it’s not a big deal but it’s definitely not the model that we did back in ’08.

 

[00:20:31.1] MF: Right. No, makes perfect sense. I actually had another guest who is doing very similar to what you are doing and had the same exact thing happened where the deed restrictions came in, some legislation came in and they pretty much tried to stop that dead. How did you progress from doing the short sales? How did your investing expand and progress? What were you up to next?

 

[00:20:52.9] JL: Sure. We ended up, I say “we” all the time but the company is an imaginary person. It’s not us because according to tax law, it is considered a person but anyways, yeah I moved forward. I started doing notes and we started doing more wholesaling. So we’re going after absentee home owners, probates, vacant properties.

 

We did some commercial stuff with some apartment buildings, nothing like gigantic or huge but we got into those types of deals and I started doing more rehabs and wasn’t focused so much on the short sale. We had a pretty big staff, I had negotiators, I had a couple BPO people and I just ended up parting ways with those folks just because of the mortgage foreclosure consultant stuff. So we just completely moved in a different direction and I really like doing the notes. It made sense, I knew what to look for in the mortgage documents that they would send me and it was a good opportunity.

 

[00:22:00.7] MF: That’s one thing I have not talked about anybody yet is note investing. So do you mind expanding on that and how you would look for notes and what your end play was for those?

 

[00:22:10.7] JL: Yeah, absolutely. I do feel like I was one of the first to really break the mold with finding people on LinkedIn. I started really showing people and teaching people what I was doing on LinkedIn with finding asset managers, portfolio managers, loan workout officers, I was finding these people on LinkedIn and most people have to realize especially the people that are listening to this is I wasn’t going after the top 20, top 25 nationally recognized banks.

 

Those banks only sell off big blocks of properties like 10,000 blocks or more and you’ve got to have $30 to $40 million to proof up with and I obviously didn’t have that. I was going after the smaller banks and I was talking to state level and regional level banks about them being able to liquidate and sell off some of their non-performing assets.

 

That’s the way I was doing it, was I was using LinkedIn’s platform to find these people because before I start doing the LinkedIn strategy mark, I was cold calling a lot of these places and if you know this or not, it’s really difficult to get past the gatekeeper if you don’t know who you’re asking for. So I really branched out on LinkedIn so I could have a name of somebody I can talk to in a department.

 

What I quickly started to understand was if you connected with those people on LinkedIn, you had all of their contact information. You had a direct phone number, you had their e-mail address, you could connect with them on Facebook or Twitter, you had their website. So it went from having an 800 number to having a direct contact number to their office and some of these people put their cellphone number on there. So it was pretty remarkable.

 

Some would put their instant messenger on there like Skype and I don’t think people use AOL anymore but they had instant messengers, their screen names on their so I was like, “Wow, this is phenomenal.” So I did that and I still do that. It’s one of the best ways for me to connect with people and I started doing that a lot and we started getting our note deals that way, was working with state level and regional level banks.

 

[00:24:45.6] MF: That is really funny because my main business as a real estate agent, I’m an investors as well too, but is an REO agent and working with HUD and banks and asset managers and I did the exact same thing whereas trying to find not to buy notes but to list their properties and LinkedIn was the best resource in the world getting through the gatekeeper because it was impossible to cold call a bank and find anybody to talk to so that’s funny.

 

[00:25:13.4] JL: No, no that’s great. I haven’t come across many people that did the cold calling recourse, so it’s refreshing to hear that you actually did it too because you know that if you don’t have somebody’s name, you’re not getting past the gatekeeper. There’s just no way. So it’s cool and it’s refreshing to hear because LinkedIn, most people like same to LinkedIn and their putting their resume out there and it’s so much more than that.

 

[00:25:40.2] MF: Yeah and one of the problems I had was nobody at the bank knew what I was talking about to begin with so they couldn’t even send me to the right department. It took eight calls just to get to the right department and then they’re like, “Oh yeah, we don’t do that. You need to just stop calling us,” was pretty much their answer.

 

[00:25:57.0] JL: That’s too funny.

 

[00:25:58.6] MF: So what did you do with those notes once you were able to buy them? Were you holding them? Were you selling them off? What was your strategy from that point?

 

[00:26:08.4] JL: So it actually turned out pretty cool with what I was doing. So I would find these properties to where the note was in a non-performing stage and what I would do at that point is I would make sure that I would get a proper due diligence period from the bank. What I would do is I would talk to the home owner or I’d have an agent talk to the home owner and let them know their options for when we became the new bank.

 

I would typically let them know the two options and those two options were we could do a deed in lieu and in some cases, we would do cash for keys but we obviously wouldn’t say that right off the bat. We’d let them know how we could do a deed in lieu and how it would be different from if they went through like a large bank.

 

How we would do it is we would just do a deed in lieu and we would report to the credit bureaus that their account has been paid, zero balance and if you know anything about credit, that dramatically raised their FICO score considerably compared to what the banks do. They were reported as an account settled for less than owed amount and that reports back to the credit bureaus as extremely negative. So these people really don’t have a shot at getting another home for quite a while.

 

So we reported it much differently and what we would do is we would get a deed in lieu signed. Obviously, we couldn’t execute it because we weren’t the bank at that time. So we held it in escrow at the title company and we had an agreement in place with the owner of record that once we became the bank that that document would become executed and that they would be taken care off according to the agreement that we had in place with how we would report to the credit bureaus.

 

So we would do that, we would have that completely already negotiated before we even closed on the note. That would all be done. Some people that were like, “Hey, you know I’m not going to do that. I’m going to wait until the foreclosure date.” That was pretty rare. I would say that we had a pretty high success ration with people doing the deed in lieu option, but there were some people that are like, “All right just take it to foreclosure,” and we did.

 

If it made sense, we have to. It’s unfortunate but they wanted to stand until the very end but most of the time when we have a deed in lieu signed and that was completely taken care of to where they’re completely fine with doing that, we would actually have a same day close. We already had a buyer lined up for the deal from our buyer’s list.

 

We would let the buyer know that it’s going to be a property that they’re going to own free and clear. There’s not going to be any liens on the property, it’s going to be 100% theirs and that was true because as soon as we took ownership of that note, we executed the deed and by executing that deed, there was no longer a mortgage showing up on there and it was always clean title in most cases.

 

I’m not going to say every time but in most cases, it was completely fine. There was nothing on there and then we had turned around, we would close it at the same day. We would do a personal transaction in the morning where we were acquiring the note and then we would do a real estate closing at the same day.

 

So we would typically spread those out. I would close at nine or 10 in the morning on the personal transaction with the note. I would give my title people enough time to go down to the country recorder’s office, record that deed in lieu and then we would closed in the afternoon which would show that my company was the proper owner of record. So that’s what we were doing just a quick flip on those.

 

In some cases, we would take it back, we’d do the deed in lieu and then we would do some basic stuff to get the property sold like do some carpet and paint just to show people, “Hey the property is move in condition ready,” and they would move in so we would have some retail buyers and then we would also have some cash buyers that would come, see it as an income producing property.

 

They would come in look at that opportunity and come take it from us. They would put in an offer and buy it from us. So we do sell off a lot of properties to investors that want to make the property a turnkey opportunity.

 

[00:30:33.1] MF: Wow. Now what kind of discounts did you see on those notes from the bank? So I imagine it was much more than you would see from REO’s or homes that are around the market.

 

[00:30:41.8] JL: Yeah, they would be anywhere from 50, 40, 30% discounts on properties and we’re talking not on UPB, which is what the home owner owes from an unpaid principle balance. They were going off of their current BPO or appraisal and most of the time, those were fairly accurate. Not all of them were but most of the time they weren’t too far off the numbers.

 

The discounts we were receiving were good enough to uphold the values that they had so we had large profit spreads in those most of the time, and I think I said it incorrectly but no, we were getting them at either 50, 40 or 30 cents on the dollar of what they were being comped out as from a fair market value.

 

[00:31:30.4] MF: Wow, that’s awesome. Do you still do that anymore or has the market changed?

 

[00:31:35.3] JL: It has maybe risen a little bit but not dramatically. I would say you’re going to still be able to get them at 60, 50, 40 cents on the dollar and if you’re buying more than one, two or three, you’re probably going to see maybe 20 or 30 cents on the dollar.

 

[00:31:53.6] MF: Wow. That’s good to know because I have followed. I’m a HUD listing broker so HUD’s been selling off bulk packages of properties and some of the big banks like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America have been doing it too and the price some of these large hedge funds are paying is crazy. I think I saw, I think it was last year, but they’re paying 78 cents on the dollar for packages for thousands of homes which I don’t know how they’re make any money doing that.

 

[00:32:21.5] JL: Yeah and to be honest with you, that’s where I see the next issue coming up with our market across the county is these hedge funds have been buying up lots of inventory and, like you said, they’re buying at such a high amount that they don’t realize where the profit margins are and most of these people are extremely intelligent. I’m not saying they didn’t buy at an intelligent cost, but they’re buying so many of these properties and they’re not putting them into an income producing stage which most of them want to do.

 

Because I talk maybe on like a quarterly basis with some people over at Black Stone and their bread and butter right now is they want to buy properties that are in B and C class neighborhoods. They are your bread and butter type properties and they want to be able to have a gross rent of $1,200 or more and if those properties don’t meet it, they will flood the market with whatever else they don’t want.

 

So I do see properties coming on the market here again in a way that will be more than likely haven’t seen before. Yeah, it is much different in ’08. I don’t see it being like it was in ’08 but even the guy that really saw what was happening before everybody else did in The Big Short that Christian Bale’s guy, Michael Bury.

 

[00:33:51.9] MF: Right.

 

[00:33:52.9] JL: He just came out about a month ago and said that there’s another economic crisis coming on caused by the housing market again.

 

[00:34:02.8] MF: Interesting. Yeah, on the last crash, I think a lot of people could see what was going on from the lending standpoint because like what you said, it was crazy the loans that they were giving out.

 

[00:34:14.1] JL: Right.

 

[00:34:14.4] MF: I don’t see that happening now but the hedge fund is an interesting thing to see what they’re going to do because I know. One difference is they have billions of dollars so they don’t have to sell those properties but if what you say is true that they decide to dump a bunch of them because they don’t need their standards that could definitely change the market.

 

[00:34:32.5] JL: Yeah and like you said, they bought up billions of dollars on real estate so it’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be interesting especially because some of the bigger banks are still holding onto some shadow inventory and I know it’s been something that we’ve been talking about for years now but it’s more than likely going to come out here pretty soon especially from a commercial standpoint.

 

Commercial loans are being called due and owners of record are unable to take care of their balloon payment by getting refinanced because a lot of these banks, it’s tough to get a refinance with on a five year balloon that just ended. They want their money, they want to get paid and they’re not in the landlord business so they want to get rid of these properties as quickly as possible.

 

[00:35:25.0] MF: Right. I’m curious of what do you think — do you think if we do see changes in the market it will be mostly regional in certain areas that have seen huge price increases or maybe areas like Florida, New Jersey and New York where it takes three years to foreclose on a house and they have a built up shadow inventory, or do you see like a national down turn? What are your thoughts? I know you can’t predict the future but…

 

[00:35:47.2] JL: Right. Yeah unfortunately, what was the lady’s name in the late 90’s that had all the infomercials, the 1-900 lady? She had the Jamaican accent? I forgot her name but I don’t have her crystal ball but yeah, I think it’s going to be somewhat on a regional level because I have been talking with folks in California and they said their back to values before the previous crash.

 

I’m like, “Oh my, are you serious? Like, has nobody learned?” Because literally like San Francisco, San Diego, Northern and Southern areas of Cali, houses that are as soon as they are out in the market they are pretty much gone within a day or two. Same places like Vegas and Scottsdale and Phoenix and certain parts of Florida. I think it’s going to be more of a regional level because the Midwest didn’t really take that big of a punch on the chin during the crash because we didn’t have those dramatic value increases.

 

Here in Indi, it’s still a pretty stable market and some parts of Michigan took a really bad beating just because of the car industry up in Detroit but Michigan from a standpoint if you eliminate the trait is actually a really good market. Same with Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, there are still a lot of great markets out but don’t get me wrong and they are still going to be great markets out there but to mainly get your question, yeah I think it’s going to be more of a regional level than a national level.

 

[00:37:27.6] MF: Right, and I’m in Colorado where we’ve had the highest depreciating markets in the country and I can tell you prices now are probably 30% higher than they ever have been in the history of Colorado. So before the crash, I mean we didn’t crash as hard as many of the other areas because our prices didn’t go up quite as high but our median price before the crash and my town was probably $180 and now, it’s $250 so it’s crazy what’s going on over here.

 

[00:37:58.9] JL: Yeah, you know, we talked to folks all the time that are like, “The Denver area, it’s just such a hot market right now,” and I think I started seeing Denver become a really solid market in 2012. I started hearing all the good things, the positive things with Colorado in general. Yeah, that market is super-hot right now.

 

[00:38:24.8] MF: Yeah so we’ll see. I’m thinking about selling off some of my properties and reinvesting in other places just to put my money to use but it’s just…

 

[00:38:32.4] JL: Yeah, I hear you.

 

[00:38:33.6] MF: Yeah, very cool. Well, we’ve been talking for a while, what are you up to right now? What’s your main focus and is it the coaching side, are you still investing, what are you working on at the moment?

 

[00:38:42.8] JL: We still have a full time investing business. I do a lot of it. I don’t know if a lot of your listeners have read the book The E-Myth, but they should. That’s a great book and I look at my business like that. I don’t want to be constantly working in it so I work on the outside of it. So we still have a full time investing business. I have a lot of my team running that but we still do a lot of wholesaling, rehab, we purchase a lot of packaged deals and just constantly, just like you are, constantly building up that income producing portfolio.

 

So we’re still doing a lot of that so we’re going after probate still, absentee home owners, vacant properties, we’re still going after pre-foreclosures. We’re just doing things to have a successful investing business. A lot of different stuff to have business come in. It either comes from banks, we’re buying deals from hedge funds, we are doing a lot of mail. We are doing a lot of different things within the business to really have a good consistent business coming in.

 

[00:39:55.9] MF: That’s awesome. Are you primarily focused in your area or have you expanded to other areas?

 

[00:40:01.4] JL: No, we’ll do some stuff nationwide. It just has to make sense. We look at some commercial buildings in other states and we’ll have some of our students bring us deals and if those deals make sense, we’ll get involved with them but yeah, we do coaching but since I do have a full time investing business, I don’t do the whole come do an event and there’s 300 or 500 people in the room. I work with people but on a very exclusive level, only like 15 people at a time just because I have my full time business.

 

[00:40:37.4] MF: No, that makes perfect sense and I agree with your strategy on that. It takes a lot of work to do and pull off all of that and pretty much, it seems like the companies are doing that. That’s all they do. They’re just doing coaching, they’re not investing, they’re just trying to teach people.

 

[00:40:51.8] JL: Yeah it’s true and the reason why I have to do it so small like that is because people work directly with me. I don’t outsource anything to a filment center in Utah or anything like that. People work directly with me and it’s much different than working with the people that you see on TV and stuff so that’s why people do come to us and want to work with us directly.

 

[00:41:19.1] MF: Very cool. So do you have any big goals in the future? Anything you want to do in the next couple of years, either investing wise or otherwise?

 

[00:41:28.4] JL: Yeah, personally I would love to get a big apartment building. Probably 60 plus units, get a nice apartment building and if I need to do like some sort of a value play to get it up to a higher occupancy rate, buy it at a 50-60% occupancy rate and do some value plays to the property to get up to 90-95%, I would love to do that. I personally think self-storages if you buy them at a great price, they could be great income producers for you and so continue to do that.

 

I’ve only bought some and flipped them really quick, that’s why I didn’t have them for a long period of time but I would like to put some of those in my own personal portfolio and continue doing what we’re doing right now but we’re also going to get into land opportunities and also some mobile home opportunities. So that’s from a business standpoint. I would love to do that, I would love to still continue to work with people as well on an individual basis.

 

[00:42:37.2] MF: That’s awesome. You have your plate full it sounds like, I tend to do the same thing and start. I have big dreams and hopes but there’s only so much time.

 

[00:42:45.9] JL: I know there is. It is yeah. You’ve got to always dream big and if you fall a little bit short, it’s still probably — if you fall short of half of what your big dream is, I would still consider that a success.

 

[00:42:58.7] MF: Yep, for sure. I am working on developing a small minor subdivision now. So I just got word from the water department this morning. They are approving my water plan so that’s nice to hear.

 

[00:43:09.6] JL: That’s awesome man, congrats.

 

[00:43:11.1] MF: Thank you. Very cool, so what’s the best way for people to reach you Jason? If they want to e-mail you or go to your website, how should they find you?

 

[00:43:18.8] JL: Yeah, if people want to check out my blog, it’s just JasonLucchesi.com and I know I got a weird last name there but it spells L-u-c-c-h-e-s-i, JasonLucchesi.com and there’s ton of stuff on there, tons of stuff. Lots of freebie stuff that I do and if you want to come and check us out, I share tons of content on there Mark, and people are more than welcome to come on over, check us out and yeah. I don’t have anything to where they have to buy something from me to get some stuff, some freebie stuff. I’m an open book, I try to help out as best as I can.

 

[00:44:03.9] MF: Very cool. Yeah, I’m the same way. I’ll put a link up on our website too so people can reach you there. Yeah, I’m the same way about giving away free stuff. I probably give away too much free stuff but at the same time, you know?

 

[00:44:14.0] JL: Yeah.

 

[00:44:14.6] MF: There’s my main goal. My main business, like yours, is investing and it’s more fun for me to build and help people than to try and strain every dollar out of them.

 

[00:44:25.0] JL: Exactly, yeah. No, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Yeah, I wish there was more blogs out when I started it to where I could really find some information but I think the internet, people were just getting involved in internet marketing at the time and there weren’t quite as many blogs out. So there’s ton of information out there.

 

You just need to choose the right person out there and Mark, I’ve checked out a bunch of this stuff and he seems to be on the right track with getting the right people for you guys to listen to and get some great tips from. So you’re doing a great job Mark and I appreciate again having the opportunity to be on your show.

 

[00:45:04.4] MF: No, I appreciate that. Thank you very much Jason. Well, yeah I know we’ve gone a little longer than I said we would so I will get us out of here soon but thank you so much for being on the show.

 

One last thing, if someone is just brand new to investing and they wanted to get started, do you have any quick tips for them? Let’s say they wanted to get involved on notes, is that something they should start out with or do you think they should start in something else first before they move into the note business?

 

[00:45:30.6] JL: Man, that’s a great question. I would recommend doing the easiest barrier of entry for real estate investing and that would be wholesaling. Getting into notes right off the bat I think may be a little bit too overwhelming for folks but after you do your first three to five deals, it’s absolutely something you can do. I don’t want to be the one to tell you that you can’t do it but you absolutely can.

 

Wholesaling really gives you a good perspective, a good general overview of the business. You can walk through the property, you can kind of take a look at things. If some of your end buyers want to go with you and you’re like, “Oh what do you think of this property?” They could start telling you what they would do to the property.

 

So you can really become a sponge and you can make some really good money wholesaling properties and become a sponge to some of your buyers to see what they would do to certain properties. So I recommend that. That’s a great foundation to just get that moving and this may sound really, really simple but some people don’t do it.

 

I recommended taking, getting just an eight by 11 or eight by 11 and a half, whatever it is for the legal pad. Get a legal pad and every single day before you end your work day, write down the top five things that you need to accomplish for the next day in order for your business to be successful and it goes a long way. It helps you stay organized.

 

I know there’s tons of stuff out there on the internet that could help you stay organized but this is something from a visual standpoint and I don’t know about you Mark but when I write something, it just becomes more real and more authentic more than typing on a keypad. So it’s something that I’ve always done since I’ve even been on the mortgage business. It’s helped me stay on a really good narrow path with being organized and knowing what I need to do to be successful for that day. So hopefully that helps and does that answer that question?

 

[00:47:38.3] MF: Yes, that’s awesome. I do the same thing and I have notebooks all over the place that I write in because I keep some notes on my computer and on my phone that I need to have access to it or whatever but I try to write down, physically write as many things as I can. Because just like you said, it engrains in your brain and you see it. It just feels good writing sometimes out your goals and thinking about it in that way.

 

[00:48:00.4] JL: Absolutely, yeah. That’s one of the reasons why I do it. It just helps you stay on track and if you put five things on there, once you finish them, then you move onto another project. For those people who haven’t heard of that Ivy Lee story, I’d recommend just Google the Ivy Lee story. It’s probably worth five to 10 minutes reading about it. Where Ivy Lee tried getting himself in with I believe it was Dale Carnegie with Bethlehem Steel. I don’t want to ruin it but go check it out. It’s really, really good and it’s some valuable information.

 

[00:48:36.0] MF: Cool, awesome. I wrote that down too because I haven’t read that one yet.

 

[00:48:40.5] JL: Oh, it’s great. It’s great stuff for sure.

 

[00:48:42.7] MF: Cool. All right, well Jason I’ll let you get out of here. Awesome job. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot listening from you. I’m sure the listeners learned a lot as well. JasonLucchesi.com again is where to reach you. I will put a link on that in the little article write up I do for this podcast and any parting words before we go?

 

[00:49:04.4] JL: I would just say, again, I appreciate you inviting me to be a guest on your show. I appreciate your listeners for listening to your podcast and don’t be afraid to ask questions. That’s the only thing that I would say is there’s so many entrepreneurs out there not just in real estate but just in businesses in general and they’re afraid to ask the questions.

 

It’s like when we were kids Mark, we have no problem asking a gazillion questions to our parents and then for some reason, we started to stop asking those types of questions as we got older and I would just tell people get back to that mentality when we were kids and we asked a gazillion questions like “Where are stars from? Where do babies come from?” Just the simple stuff, just ask questions and I promise that will help out quite a bit.

 

[00:49:57.1] MF: Oh, that’s awesome. Great advice because yeah, too many people are scared and it doesn’t hurt to ask. Nothing bad can come from it.

 

[00:50:05.9] JL: Because the thing that comes away from that is, if you don’t ask your question, your answer is always going to be no. So if you need to know to that answer and you don’t want the answer, then that’s what you’re going to get but seriously, just go out there and ask questions. You’re on this podcast right now listening to it, Mark is putting out a ton of great stuff. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to him, to me, to any of his other guests around the show because we’re not afraid to give you those answers.

 

[00:50:37.8] MF: Right, very true. Very true. Awesome. Jason, thank you so much for being on. I really appreciate it. I hope you have a great rest of the week and hopefully, we can be in touch again soon and catch up on everything that’s going on.

 

[00:50:50.8] JL: All right, thanks buddy. Have a good one.

 

[00:50:52.8] MF: All right, you too. Thank you.