REI Network with Gavin Timms

Recently, I finished a flip in Maui where we took a $955,000 house, renovated it, and then sold it for $2.65 million. And I’m currently looking at repeating the process in the South Arcadia area of Phoenix. If flipping houses in high-end areas intrigue you, or you’re ready for a new challenge, let’s talk about the differences between value-add flipping or completely tearing down property and building from the ground up, and what you need to do to get a property up to the high-end price tag.

Just remember, before you start this process, the money is made when you buy the property. That means you’ll have to negotiate for a price that gives you the flexibility to do whatever you need to do to the property to get the value up, but there’s one small caveat. The sellers on a million-dollar house are a little more savvy, so it’s unlikely that you’re to be able to lean on the normal creative financing solutions that wholesalers prefer. The high-end seller is going to want more from you than your word.

They’re going to want:

• Proof of funds
• Your website address
• Examples of your past deals

Then you’re going to need to decide if it makes more sense to just add value to the existing structure or knock down the entire house. And of course, because the finishes on a high-end house are going to be different than the middle-of-the-road $200k houses that you may have been working in before, you’re going to need contractors or developers who can handle crown molding, marble floors, or whatever your designer wants to put in the house.

Check out my Maui case study for a more in-depth look at how even virtually flipping high-end houses can be lucrative and rewarding for real estate investors.

What's Inside:

• Why you’ll want to use a double close over an assignment fee when working with high-end properties.
• Does your network currently have the right kind of contractors to work on million-dollar homes? My suggestions for finding some upscale contractors.
• You’re going to need a slightly different approach with sellers of high-end properties because they’re a little more savvy than a burnt-out landlord trying to unload his most troublesome property.

How can you actually network in a post-pandemic world? Some in-person events are coming back in certain parts of the country, but virtual networking is still more common. It’s time to put down your excuses and jump into networking.

For in-person networking, I recommend:

Don’t talk to your close friends at these events.
Do talk to the oldest member of the group.
Do create win-win scenarios for anyone you approach.

For virtual meetups, whether you’re in a Facebook group, a forum or a webinar, you can start networking in there. Provide value in the conversations that people are having, start DMing people, connect with them, and then move to phone conversations to continue building that relationship.

If your real estate business is feeling a little stagnant, I challenge you to pick up the phone and network with three new people a day. Whether that’s a cash buyer, a lender, mortgage broker, Realtor, or other wholesalers, every time you create connections with other people in the business, you extend your influence too.

I’m so passionate about this topic that I named my business REI Network. If you’re ready to expand the size of your network, let’s connect.

What's Inside:

• How to create your very own VIP buyers who will buy nearly every property you have.
• Collaboration is my whole model because you don’t need to go it alone.
• If you want to expand your network, take part in my networking challenge that will dramatically increase your circle of influence.

Today, I’m bringing back one of my favorite interviews. One of the mistakes that people make is that they try to sell the lease option concept, but they lose every single time. Instead, you should start thinking about how it’s all about positioning. In this coaching call, I walk some of our students through the wall they keep running into as they talk to sellers.

Positioning yourself as an investor when you talk to sellers should be the basis of all of your conversations. You are investors, even if you plan on using a lease option. Explaining to a seller what a lease option is right away can be overwhelming, especially if they’ve never worked with an investor before.

As I walk our students through what they’re doing, you can see this really cool “Aha!” moment when they realize that they’re assuming what the seller wants. It’s easy to think you know what the seller wants, but when you approach a deal waiting to be sold on whether you should buy the house, you give the seller a chance to talk.

While the seller is convincing you that you should buy their house, they’re convincing themselves even more that they’re ready to sell it, no matter what. They might be a tired landlord or an out-of-state homeowner, but either way, when they realize they have a chance to make some money, they’ll get excited about an offer.

Sometimes a sandwich lease option won’t work for a situation, so I show our students how to transition from a sandwich lease option to an assignment lease option. When you work with coaches like myself, I can help you figure out where your script needs some tweaking. Sometimes all you need is an outsider’s view to help you see where you can improve.

What's Inside:

• One of the biggest mistakes made with the lease option concept.
• How a coach can help you untangle one of your common problems.
• How one offer can make another offer look better.
• Don’t assume you know what the seller wants; let him tell you.
• The point where you should mention lease options (and it might surprise you!).

Ronnie Baras loves real estate, but the pandemic is affecting his regular business as a comic hypnotist, so he really, really needs to make real estate work for him. We work together to break down where he’s at right now and where he wants to go. Ronnie’s system needs some work, but it’s not until we start going over it that he can see where he’s going wrong.

Ronnie works consistently on his real estate business, but he’s only texting 10-20 sellers a week. That pencils out to 2-3 hours a week, which leads to talking to 2-3 sellers a week. That turns into 0-1 contracts a month, which is simply not enough volume to get his numbers to where he’s going to be successful.

Is texting better than a phone call? Well, I’m biased about this because I love everything about the phone. But there’s a reason we encourage our students to start with texting. When Ronnie gets shut down on the phone, he doesn’t know how to work around that. We talk through a couple of scenarios to help get his mind in the right place.

Ronnie wants to go virtual and expand his market, but I’m going to recommend leaning in hard to networking. Contacting Realtors and wholesalers is going to help him nail his system down so that when it’s time to expand out to a better market, he’ll be ready. I help students like Ronnie build out a system that meets their lifestyle. If you’re ready for a better system, let’s connect.

What's Inside:

• Watch Ronnie become coachable as we talk about his business because he can suddenly see for himself how to improve his current system.
• How to position yourself to make a lease option to a reluctant seller.
• What I look for in a virtual market, and why I think Ronnie should wait to move into virtual wholesaling.
• I advise Ronnie that there are a time and a place for direct mail, and how he can know if he’s ready for it.

Alex Pardo’s entrepreneurial life started by wholesaling baseball cards as a kid, but he got distracted by checking all of the boxes for things he “should” do. After college, he took on a corporate job, but it wasn’t long before he realized that he didn’t want to be chained to the W-2 life forever. For him, one of his biggest fears was that he’d look back in the past and regret what could have been.

As Alex so perfectly puts it, “A salary is a ticket to forego your dreams”. That’s when he started to look into real estate as a side plan to escape corporate life. Alex started scaling up his business, but then he realized that that was not the direction he wanted to go into. As you scale, you need more people to keep up with the volume, and then your overhead rises.

He was no longer the one talking to buyers and sellers. He was managing people, and he didn’t love it. Pretty soon Alex felt like God was tapping him on the shoulder to do something different. And part of that something different looked like making more money by scaling down.

Now, in addition to his smaller team, Alex found his passion in helping entrepreneurs get clarity on their vision for their business. He runs an exclusive mastermind named Ascend for entrepreneurs who are serious about building a life around their business. If spending more time with your family sounds like the kind of lifestyle you’re looking for, check out Alex’s podcast Flip Empire.

What's Inside:

• How Alex makes more money by doing fewer deals with a smaller team.
• While scaling down, Alex found that he was passionate about helping other entrepreneurs make that same pivot into living their best life. 
• Why I believe that 80% of what we do is grounded in our mindset.

The first real estate check I got was for $1500, and in some ways, it still feels like the biggest check I’ve ever gotten because it was proof that wholesaling works. It was such a massive win for my mindset and it gave me the courage to keep pushing forward as I built my investing business.

Cornelius has had some big wins in the last 7 weeks with 2 houses under contract and 2 more in escrow, but it wasn’t always like this for him. Both he and his wife have full-time jobs, plus a new baby, and sometimes it’s hard for him to consistently work on his business.

The way we teach our students about wholesaling totally works for anyone, especially for those in the nine-to-five grind. You’re going to be inspired by how creative Cornelius has been able to get once he had a solid system in place.

If you’re struggling to be consistent or you need some help creating a system, you need to remember that if you don’t change, then you won’t get different results. Set up a call today to see if we’d be a good fit to get your real estate business on the road to success.

What's Inside:

• How Cornelius used a Facebook group to find an investing partner.
• If you’re still holding down a day job, it can sometimes be hard to work consistently in your real estate business.
• How do you know if you have a VA problem or a marketing problem?

Sandra came to me already a successful real estate investor. 18 years ago, she was bitten by the real estate bug, and she’d had success with wholesaling, fix and flips, creative financing, and even Airbnb. She was making money, but she was driving herself crazy working so hard.

When Sandra started in real estate, she bought courses, books, and CDs. She immersed herself in education, and she took bold action. Her work though was sporadic. She didn’t always follow up on her leads, and she had trouble getting a team built out that she could delegate work to. In short, she wasn’t getting consistent results because she wasn’t providing consistent instructions to her team.

It didn’t take much work to plug an already successful investor into a system that meant more money for less work. Listen to how we fine-tuned Sandra’s business so that she could do 14 deals in the extremely competitive Atlanta market. You can literally hear her excitement over having less work on her plate.

Sandra’s also living in a 32,000 square feet mansion outside of Atlanta, completely rent-free. After getting into the property with a creative financing deal, Sandra used more creativity to make the house actually work and earn money for her.

If you want to partner with Sandra, she’s got the money and she’s actively looking for properties to buy. You can email her at: [email protected]

What's Inside:

• Being disorganized was literally costing Sandra money because she couldn’t keep track of her leads.
• Do you want less junk leads? How Sandra improved the quality of her leads.
• Mystery dinner parties, AirBnB, and all of the other ways Sandra uses her own property to earn its keep.

How can you become financially independent in the nonprofit world? And then, what if you’re on the other side of the world? Don’t get confused as you listen to Josh Howard share how his wholesaling business supports his nonprofit Central India Christian Mission. Josh lives in India, but he invests in the Indianapolis, Indiana market, which is sometimes referred to as just Indy.

In the middle of last year, Josh could see that his work in India would be better supported if he could make more money, but he didn’t want to work a full-time job and a full-time nonprofit job. He partnered with his brother-in-law and decided on a market, but their beginning was just chaotic. They had some small success, but they were dealing with a broken system.

Additionally, if sellers called him, the time difference might mean that he was answering the phone at 3 am. Josh needed to have marketing in place that accommodated his time change and his distance from the market. Hear how we built a system for him that helped him start hitting $25,000 months just six months after he began.

If you don’t know where to start, “Keep taking action and taking the next step”, says Josh. If you’re interested in JVing with Josh in the Indianapolis market, or you’re interested in his nonprofit work, you can reach out to him at: [email protected].

What's Inside:

• Why Josh chose the Indianapolis market, and how that made virtual wholesaling there easier.
• Turning to wholesaling let Josh support the nonprofit work he’s passionate about.
• An international time change is challenging when dealing with sellers in the US, but Josh made it work.

Technology may not be your strong suit. And if that's the case, then the idea of getting a system into place might freak you out. I completely get that, but that’s why you absolutely must have a system in place. Steve and Coco, some of my most popular guests, are the poster children for how having a system in place helps you play to your strengths.

When I first started working with Steve and Coco, you could just see that Steve wasn’t as into real estate investing as Coco. And he was absolutely convinced that it just wasn’t going to work. I see this a lot when an investor is trying to run their business like someone else, and I knew that if we could build the business around Steve’s ability to chat up anyone at any time, then they’d be able to watch their business take off.

We spent most of 2019 getting Steve and Coco’s system in place, and in 2020 they were able to build out three additional teams. We’re only a month into 2021, and they’ve already gotten five contracts. Now that they’ve gotten used to building a team on a smaller scale, they’ll be able to replicate it on a larger scale.

And you can absolutely hear the excitement in Steve’s voice when he talks about his wholesaling business. He loves what he does. If you want to buy or sell in Ohio, Steve and Coco are moving properties and they’d love to connect with you. Send them an email at [email protected].

What's Inside:

• By ignoring everything that Steve can’t or won’t do, we were able to build a system that supports the one thing he excels at: talking.
• Why hiring an admin VA has been a game-changer for Coco and Steve.
• Besides outsourcing their weaknesses, Coco and Steve have outsourced their lower dollar activities so that they can focus on getting the deals over the finish line.
• Don’t get stuck on all of the “Nos” you’re hearing.

With a couple of different marketing methods, Kat and Bill are trying to figure out the best approach for finding leads in the Nashville, Tennessee market. One of their current favorite ways to find sellers is by scraping Zillow for leads, but it takes so long that it’s slowing them down.

Kat and Bill’s problem is a common one that beginning real estate investors run into. Do you have more time or money? And if you spend all of your time on activities that have a low rate of return, then how can you get to the point where every activity is yielding a high rate of return? I share some strategies with Kat and Bill to help them reduce the amount of time they’re currently wasting on marketing.

When should you make phone calls? You know what I’m going to tell you; whenever you can, you should pick up the phone. Stop looking for excuses to put artificial boundaries around the work you can do. You can talk yourself out of every time slot if you give yourself an out.

A little apprehensive about talking on the phone to strangers and asking them questions about their property, I give Bill a pep talk about how easy it can be to have a normal conversation that gives you information that you need to know. Figuring out a seller’s situation is going to be the key to help you position an offer that gets them interested in selling to you.

If you’re at the beginning of your investor journey, and you need some more eyes on your business system, send me a message. I’d love to help figure out how you can plug the holes in your marketing system so that you can turn yourself into an efficient marketing machine.

What’s Inside:

• How to increase your VA’s efficiency by working with them strategically.
• Get more confident talking about the price and making offers with my strategies.
• The absolute best time to make phone calls to reach the most receptive sellers.