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David: Hi guys, welcome back to the discount property investor podcast, I am your host David Dodge. Today, I am joined by a friend, a local investor, and a good guy. Trevor Rice is joining me today and Trevor's going to talk to us about his biggest wholesale deal to date. Trevor, welcome to the discount property investor podcast, how are you sir?

Trevor: Thanks, buddy. Thanks for the- thanks for the kind words. I'm doing really good man, doing really good.

David: Awesome, glad to have you. I haven't had a chance to network with you recently cuz of Covid, so this is always a good opportunity to do that as well, but I hear you are closing today and tomorrow, I guess it's a little mix closing, but you are closing your biggest deal to date. I wanted to learn a little bit more about what you were doing, how you got the deal, and of course how much money you're getting paid and making my man so welcome.

Trevor: That's right. Yeah, the money's the best thing so I- yeah as you know, man, we're close so we- I was doing a lot of networking deals last year. I network with guys and get deals from realtors, stuff like that, other wholesalers and then coming into this year, I showed you direct to seller, so this deal came to my desk cuz I hired two VA's. They cold called the lead, and the lead came from a Propstream lead that I exported on a list and skip traced some, VA cold called, it was her second day. She sets the appointment, and it was such a good deal that I just went out on the appointment and then I closed it, went under contract and that was- that's how I got the deal really.

David: Let's slow down and back up real quick. Propstream VA cold call, that's some of the deal parts. Let's back up though, when you went to Propstream, what kind of list did you find this one on?

Trevor: So, this one was a pretty broad niche list. It was a- it was a St. Louis high equity list- St. Louis City high equity list is what it was. St. Louis City high equity list.

David: So, it was a high equity list in the city limits of where we live, here in St. Louis. Guys, if you are listening to this podcast and you want to check out Propstream, I can get you a free trial, go to DPI podcast.com/comps and we use it to run comps and pull lists. So, Trevor used it to get a list, he got a high equity list. I love it. From there, he pulled it down, what'd you do next Trevor?

Trevor: So, I pulled it, I skipped traced it, got the phone number from the lead after I exported it from Propstream. I had Charise who is one of my VA's, I had her cold call-

David: How'd you skip trace it?

Trevor: I skip traced it using Lead Sherpa and this actual one was an LLC. I know Lead Sherpa just recently came out with skip tracing LLC's and trusts.

David: Yup.

Trevor: And I finally used it for this, and they skip traces LLC and called the seller, ended up being it was cool because it end up- the seller ended up being an agent, a licensed agent so-

David: That's cool.

Trevor: Yeah, so we ended up calling the agent. It was on lockbox already, it ended up being-

David: Wait, the seller was a licensed agent? This is crazy.

Trevor: Yeah.

David: So, two days ago- no, yesterday. Today is the nineteenth, right? Yesterday, the 18th, one of my students closed his first deal, $9,800 profit, seller was an agent. What the hell? I don't get this man, they can list it, they don't. You know why? Because you come in and you offer them a crazy high level of convenience and they're willing to trade you a discount for that level of convenience.

Trevor: That's true. Yeah.

David: I love it, it's amazing. So, they don't have to- if the owners are agents’ guys, that doesn't mean that they're not motivated. Trevor proceed, I didn't mean to interrupt.

Trevor: Sure, no it's okay. He uhm, like when we skip traced it- skip traced LLC, got it from Lead Sherpa. Once we got the phone number, I handed off the number and the lead through a software I use called Call Tools, it's kinda like Mojo but I use Call Tools. I put the script in there for the VA, she cold called the seller, used the script that I use and then spoke with the seller, got him to be interested in selling the property and then he ended up setting an appointment with me. He actually didn't even end up going out there, it was just vacant. He wanted me to make an offer over the phone and I usually don't like to do that, but we ended up doing it.

David: So, hold on when you say Call Tools, is that the VA or is that a software that's in between you and a VA that you work with and hire and pay directly?

Trevor: So, Call Tools is a software that is kind of like Mojo where it's a triple line dialer. It's a dialer and it does that, so the VA has her own login access, Charise does. She cold called the seller from Call Tools so that way she doesn't have to manually pick up her phone and keep dialing phone numbers, just power dial it.

David: Gotcha, so whenever you get your list from Propstream, you take it over, you skip trace it and then you add the list or she adds the list right into Call Tools, so then from there, she's calling these people and her job is to just find motivated sellers, right? To seek motivation.

Trevor: Yeah.

David: I mean, the simplest way to kinda describe what she does is just talk to as many people as possible that have a house obviously cuz you pulled the list and verify they own the house and just seek motivation, ask these people if they have interest in selling. You never know, you call a thousand people, one of these people is going to be like yes, I need to sell yesterday, please help me and that's all we're doing, right?

Trevor: Yeah, absolutely and I- and we, you know, I only have her doing two things. I have her texting and cold calling and like that goes on to- me and you use the same service Batch Leads and she actually also texted this seller to make sure- to update with the appointment an hour before just to make sure hey, is Trevor still cool to go out there? What's the lockbox code?

David: I love that. Yeah, great thing. You always want to call or text before you go, save yourself the trip, or the person you're hiring. If you’re paying somebody to go do that, if you're virtual wholesaling guys, you know, always follow up an hour or two, maybe even the morning of the appointment so that's really good that you guys are doing that and I love that you're utilizing the virtual assistant to do that, freeing up your own time. You sound like a business operator not a wholesaler my friend, but I like it.

Trevor: Right, I switched from last year man.

David: Keep that movement moving, that's what's up. You got to have these VA's to buy back some time but the same time we love our virtual assistants, they're friends of ours. They're like my family at this point, and you know, if I don't- or I'm always making sure that that I'm getting them paid and that they're keeping going and whenever we get you know, a big deal, we make sure that they see a little piece of it, right? Virtual assistants are great, it allows you to buy back your time. Now, whenever you are working with virtual assistants, it doesn't always have to be an overseas person. It could actually be somebody that just isn't in your office or in your home or even in your city, with that being said all of mine are overseas because I'm able to pay less money out of pocket as a whole but I still pay very competitively, but what that ends up doing is it provides more value to them because if they're used to getting four bucks an hour and I can give them eight, right? They're going to be like holy cow, this is awesome but in the states where we live, 8 bucks might not get somebody off the couch, right?

Trevor: I think a dollar converts like it's 50 or 49 or something like that in the Philippines.

David: Something along those lines.

Trevor: Yeah, so $4 an hour for them is a lot of money.

David: Assuming you're talking about a Philippine-

Trevor: Filipino, yeah that's what Charise is, yup. I also have an American too.

David: Yeah, and that's a couple of hours.

Trevor: Yeah, I have an American VA, he's in New Island.

David: We love the VA's though man, they help us and in return, you know we're- it's a win-win. I love that. So, the VA used Call Tools it looks like, they contacted and sought motivation and then from there, did they set the appointment, or do they pass it off to you? Is it a notification saying hey Trevor, I got a good lead here, how's that go?

Trevor: So, this lead kind of came in and it came into my Podio which is the CRM customer relationship management system that I use and when she put the appointment- the great thing about Call Tool as soon as she disposition the lead, so as soon as she said okay, appointment was set. It automatically gets put in my Podio and then Podio transfers it to my Google calendar, so I don't have to touch anything, neither the sheet. So, it got put in my Google Calendar, as soon as I saw that okay, it's on Michigan Avenue, I was like, oh crap this- for this price? I was like this is a good deal so immediately I was like, hey did you set the appointment? Yeah, and I listened to the call recording of the appointment, I was like okay this is gonna be a good one and then I ended up following up with the seller the next day on the appointment day, just to follow-up to make sure that we know we're all good to go.

David: That's awesome, man. That's very cool. Do you have a phone system through Call Tools or just her?

Trevor: I don't have- I don't have a phone system anymore. I used to, I used to call other wholesalers, I used to call you know, driving for dollars leads myself. That was actually at Leads, I think it was is 115 leads I ended up calling myself, but at that moment with the kid coming in and then just me just doing other things, I was just like okay, I have enough money now or I can delegate this somewhere else and so I just hired the VA's and now they have the cold calling access.

David: Very cool, very cool. So, you set the appointment with the guy, tell us what happened when you met him.

Trevor: So, met with him, walked the property, took photos.

David: Tell us a little bit about the property real quick.

Trevor: Sure.

David: Single family? big house, small house, ranch?

Trevor: It's a huge single-family, 3000 square-foot.

David: Okay big house, single family.

Trevor: Yup. When the lead came in, he told me it was already renovated and that really threw me off.

David: Hahaha, they always say that.

Trevor: When I came in, it was actually renovated but it was terrible. It was a terrible renovation, you know, like a DIY almost.

David: Right.

Trevor: We were you know, we were talking, and he was like, oh I hired a first contractor, they kind of botched it and did a terrible job and they did you know, the gray walls, white trim, they had the nice flooring. The kitchen actually doesn't even need to be touched, their stainless-steel appliances still in there and it was a- it was a two-story with a third-story loft area and then he just built a brand-new garage with a new roof on the backyard, so now this- it had an actual garage in the backyard with some backyard space as well as this huge building that he painted the outside, brand new windows, everything. So, what happened was when I walked the property, he was an agent, he started talking about how he owns over a hundred rental properties and he was saying that look, you know, we were buying rentals and this deal came across us so we just couldn't pass it up, it was such a good deal, we know what the comps are in the area but he's like we've been so busy at Lake of the Ozarks for the last 3 months that we just don't have time for this deal anymore, like we have so many other rentals going on right now as well as we have you know, 4 other projects we're trying to close out, so we just don't have time for this and I was just like, that's where the pain came in and then I started talking about how I can help them and then that's where I got the deal.

David: Okay, so you what'd you lock it up for?

Trevor: I locked this one up for a 150 thousand.

David: Did you- how did that work? Did you bring a contract with you when you went on the appointment or did you go there just to view the property and then follow up later with an email and a call or? Just curious on the steps.

Trevor: I always intend to lock up right there on the spot.

David: Good, me too.

Trevor: Just because I know the drop off rate, you know, the drop off rate is insane and people get to start, they think about things, they go to sleep, wake up in the morning change their mind, you know talk to the wife or something so when I spoke with him, I made sure he was the decision maker cuz I knew he had a business partner so, you know, I just want to make sure everybody's all here and then I went down to the price, we started negotiating. He said, look I know what the comps are in this area, you know, there's this house down the street that sold, fully flipped in great condition, sold for $310,000 and you probably put some work into here and then we start going to the price and I start digging a little bit more and I'm like, I'm listening, listening, listening. I'm asking him motivated questions, so if I can help you, you know, get rid of for this and buy this cash, I can pay all you're closing costs. I'm not you know, I'm not going to be bringing any agents so there's no commissions involved, like what's that number look like for you? and he said I would like to have 160 is what he originally had and I was like well, you know, tell me a little bit more about the things that I've seen inside the home cuz there was some stuff like drywall messed up and now he's like this kind of- it kind of threw me off because it's already renovated, but he wanted really cheap pricing for a property that could sell tomorrow on MLS for 200 and I was like, I think there's something weird, off about this property and he was like-

David: Yeah, why would he list it? It would take him an hour.

Trevor: Right, and I was like, this is so confusing, and he was like- he's like, well the left side of house needs mortar and tuckpointing all in the left side and that's why we painted it gray because we wanna to hide that. I'm like, okay and then he's like well, these back beans on the back deck, they don't pass because the size and uhm-

David: So, the house needs five grand with the work.

Trevor: Right, and he started talking about that but in my head, I'm just laughing inside, you know, and I didn't say anything. I just use that as a negotiation tactic-

David: Hey, that's his motivation. Right.

Trevor: Right, I went back to the price and said you know, I can get a guy to come out here, you know, and I'm also gonna have to get you know, if I'm going to be at that price, I'm going to have to get a sewer lateral inspection done, I'm going to have to do this, this and this and I said I'm going to have to get a mortar guy and these guys aren't cheap. I have to get a guy to look at the roof and I said you know, are we willing to go that route and do a 10-day inspection and you know, go all the way through with those contingencies and he's like, look man, what do we need to do if we can just get this price locked down,  you know, what price you need to be at if we can you know, just go ahead and do a clean closing in 30 days and I was just like, well I mean, I'm at like 140 and- I pitched to him 140-

David: And his original ask was 160?

Trevor: Yeah.

David: Okay.

Trevor: So, I dropped in 20k and I knew that even at 1- let's say 160, I could have probably wholesale it for 185, 190 all day long so at that point, I was just trying to see where his comfortability is on price and what he would say no to and then he said no to 140, immediately just shot it down and then he called his business partner right there in front of me and I- you know, we chatted and we got to a 150 number. Just back and forth you know, what's- what number would you take? Oh, I- well, I don't know I think 160's fair but I said yeah but I'm also taking care of this and this and I'm providing this for you. You know, and they're like yeah, you're right.

David: You just pushed on some pressure points which he gave you.

Trevor: Sure, he gave them to me, I just listened and asked the questions.

David: Yeah, just listen, yup.

Trevor: And so at that point, we locked up for 150 and because he's an agent, he actually- I said, you know, this is what I do with agents all the time too, I say look, I'm not an agent, I have a 2018 modified version of a seller contract, I was like, I know you guys are licensed, if you have an updated contract that you would like to use, I'm totally cool with you sending me to contract as the agent to feel secure, I just want these things put on the contract. At the end of the day, I really don't- it could be 2 pages written out with crayon, as long as there's signatures, the title company will pretty much take it, but I like to make them feel comfortable with a price in their contract because I got a lot of times where people back- like agents they pounce back and forth if I sent them a 2-pager, you know.

David: Right, no I get it. What were the items? What were the CYA's that you had added into the contract?

Trevor: Sure, so I put in- I just put in the straight 150-thousand-dollar purchase price. I did do a financing, or I did not do a finance contingency, but I did do a lender walkthrough in the special agreement section. I told him that I use Lawrence Hawkins Longhorn, he's going to have to walk it and I was like, okay this would might be a good fix and flip for me cuz it's such a deeply discounted deal, I could cherry pick it and I said, I'll have Lawrence walk it so he'd- my lenders gonna have to walk it within a certain amount of days to approve it or deny it so that was one and then a sewer lateral inspection was another one. Those two were the inspections I use on the contract in the special agreement section and that was kind of my CYA, you know, of the contract.

David: Sweet, so you got it under contract. Did you even bring Lawrence over? You probably didn't need to.

Trevor: No, I didn't need to at that point. I just knew like I was like, okay, I'm just gonna wholesale this, this is gonna be easy.

David: Right and Lawrence probably would have lent on it too.

Trevor: Absolutely.

David: Sounds like it's a good deal you know, so then how'd you market it?  You got yourself a deal, when we’re wholesaling guys, we're just flipping paperwork, we're not flipping houses. It's an agreement to purchase a house, but the wholesale itself is just selling paperwork. So, you got this contract now whoo, love it, got a good deal- 150, house, ARV's you know, call it 200 and it needs 5-10 grand.

Trevor: So, we ended up doing the numbers, it looked like it was going to need like for the cosmetic, the beat up on the walls and then it needed all new flooring and then there's that water damage from the tuck-pointing issue. It ended up being- we said 40 and that was conserved, that's what I had my head, I said 40, no one can argue with me on that number.

David: 40 thou?

Trevor: Yeah, I was like 40 thousand, no one can argue with me number cuz I had an ARV, you look it up 2814 Michigan, it came out to like over $300,000 ARV.

David: Oh, it had a 300 thou- I'm sorry but you said 200.

Trevor: No, 300 thousand ARV.

David: 3- Okay, so I was gonna say- I was actually gonna say I don't understand how the numbers are working, now I get it.

Trevor: I just saw it, yeah.

David: So, 150, 300k ARV, you got it half- you got it at half however you have to do some updates and you need 40.

Trevor: Yup.

David: Deal, that's a deal right there. I love it. And you saw it too, so you marketed it out, you sent it out. What do you do to market? I'm just curious, what's the process that you have on your end once you have the signed contract to get the word out?

Trevor: So, I usually do regular single family residentials and [inaudible] on the rental markets, overland, stuff like that and I sell to the reefs the you know, the turnkey buyers all that stuff and I sell them to out of state guys who just buy it cap rate.

David: How? How do you sell to those people?

Trevor: Well, a good method that I used to find those people was I would go- let's say if on Michigan Avenue, that property that had it for 150k, I would look around within a half-mile radius of all properties that have recently been flipped in the last year around that house and then I'll call all the listing agents around saying hey, I noticed that this is a fix and flip house that you stole a couple blocks away from mine. I'm a wholesaler, I had this property owner by contract, you know, can you have that same buyer that fixed and flipped that one come take a look at my property? and that's how I found the big buyers that I have now, the A-list buyers I guess you'd call them. So, at this point when I have the contract, I was kind of nervous cuz I've never done city, I've never wholesaled city, I've always wholesaled out in accounting and I'm like, this is a totally different beast and-

David: It's not.

Trevor: Yeah, and I- that's what I thought though and that was like my thinking and I was like, okay, let me market it to my buyers list, let me just do it the normal way I usually do it and you know, first thing first- and then another wholesaling company, the local guys at FasterHouse team, they call me up and they're like here's the easy button man, we'll give you 20k right now, you just take it and I was just like, okay and I'll pay your closing cost they told me so I said- I just said yeah, I mean it was one of those instances where if I could sell a house in 4 hours and make 20K rather than sitting out there, walking people through properties, dealing with all the negotiations and then hopefully getting 30, I just thought that okay, I want to take the easy button and get a guaranteed payout instead of dealing with fire so you may have the funds or has to deal with other hard money, so I didn't want to take the chance, I just took the quick payout.

David: Man, I think that's awesome. 20k in 4 hours and that's all you got to do guys. It's literally that simple. Trevor's an experienced investor and wholesaler so, you know, not every deals going to be a 4-hour deal that's gonna make you 20 grand but the cool thing is the more you do this business, the more you become familiar with what a deal is and the more you get familiar with how to determine an ARV and what the comps are going to be, you can start recognizing deals and in this case Trevor could have made 30, 35 grand probably listing it but there's no guarantee there, right?

Trevor: Right, and the time.

David: And he may have pissed off his seller because time is of the essence. The convenience that Trevor used in this scenario was speed, that was the convenience that his seller needed. He needed speed, Trevor needs a discount, they traded, that's it. Traded discount for convenience and you can get a deal. He took the, you called it the easy button, the easy route but really, I mean, you need speed too so, you know, your-

Trevor: It's time and money.

David: Your motivation to sell is speed so the fact that you took the 20K in 4 hours is perfect. You solve both problems at this point, created a triple win. You're going to make 20 grand, this guy if he has anything else to sell is probably going to want to keep working with you and then you got our friends over at FasterHouse a nice rehab or rental, whatever they decide to do with it. So, man I love it, you kept it simple too. You didn't have that much time invested in the leadgen process, which is typically the longest and hardest part of getting a wholesale deal, wouldn't you agree?

Trevor: I would yeah. Sorry about train, I live by the train.

David: Oh, you're fine.

Trevor: As far as the leadgen process, it probably were. We're following up, we're hitting the same lists that we're pulling, you know, three, four, five times. This one just came off as one of those ones where you know, it was the first time we pulled the list, came out-

David: High equity, right?

Trevor: High equity list and it so happened to be vacant, we- I like broad and I like niche lists and sometimes I like to combine them, you know using Batch Leads.

David: Yup.

Trevor: You know, you use the service, so I like to combine them and this broad list helps me a little bit cuz you'll still run into people who are in a divorce situation or in a motivated situation even though it's just a regular St. Louis City high equity list, you still going to run into those people and I just got- that day, her second day at work, she called- she's never cold called in her life, but she did really good when the training, she trained a week before that with me and then she cold called on our second day starting and she landed that appointment and it went through. It was a really great deal, it was very quick from start, it was on a Thursday, I locked it up.

David: How much do you pay her?

Trevor: $4 an hour, yup.

David: How many hours a week does she work?

Trevor: 40, full 40.

David: So, you're paying her 160 a week?

Trevor: Yup.

David: Probably give her two weeks off right? Maybe?

Trevor: So, the way I did it with her, I told her and this is a lot of money. I told her 250 bucks, I would pay her as a bonus for giving me this deal like that, so quick.

David: Love it, you got to do that man cuz if not, they're going to jump ship. My point is $4 an hour times 40 is 160 times up by 50 weeks, assuming you give two weeks off, that's 8 grand so you just got yourself a VA for 2 and 1/2 years, if you want to look at it like that too, you can spread that out. You got yourself an employee to do nothing but leadgen for you for two and a half years my friend. That's very cool. Got to leverage other people's time to create wealth. That's just the way that it works.

Trevor: So true, you can't boss them up though too much you know, because you gotta- at the end of the day, they're people, you know.

David: No man, not at all. I look at my virtual assistants as my friends, you know. Like yes, they are employees, but we work on things together, if they have a problem, I have a problem and vice versa so yeah, absolutely I mean, these are an extension of you and they are representing your business at the same time so, you know, everyone's got to stay in line, but I love it man. This has been a great break down on this particular deal and it was pretty simple. I mean a lot of investors are using Propstream, I use it. Again, if you guys want a trial, DPIpodcast.com/comps to pull lists and from there, skip trace it, cold call them or text them, get out, make an offer to them, and then market the deal to your cash buyers. So, I do like one of the- one of your strategies or I guess I should say one of the approaches that you have to cash buyers is you go the route of pulling recent sales in the area recently of course and then contacting the agents. That's one way to go about it. I think that's a great way because that agent may know of other people that might not even did anything right there but will.

Trevor: That's true.

David: You can also go to Propstream and actually pull the owners of any cash transactions as well, and another, it's really just more numbers to call to try to sell your deal to and the student that I interviewed yesterday Derrick, he found his buyers that way. He used- this is great Trevor, he used Propstream and Batch, that's it.

Trevor: Wow.

David: He doesn't have anything else, he doesn't have any CRM, doesn't have any cold callers, no VA's, no dialing system, that's it, Propstream and Batch. So, Propstream to get a house or the list, right? and then Batch to connect with the seller and then once he had the contract, he went right back to Propstream, pulled a perimeter, pull the cash buyers, went back to Batch but this time changed the message, I'm not looking to buy your house instead it's hey, I see you bought a house in the area recently, I have one that I'm selling at this address, here's a link to pictures, let me know if you have interest, all with Batch. Pretty cool right?

Trevor: And that's how he dispo-ed it?

David: That's how he dispo-ed it my friend.

Trevor: Wow.

David: Two services.

Trevor: That's powerful.

David: That's powerful, so guys if you are listening, Batch is like one of my favorite software's. You can try it out and you can get your first month at 50% off, just use my name all caps D-A-V-E, not David but Dave. They'll give you a 50%off your first month to try it out which will help obviously on the cost side of things, but also if you use that code, they're going to give you a one-hour onboarding call and they'll basically hop on a screen share with you for an hour and train you how to use it, show you best practices, set up templates, help you navigate the system. I use it for all my skip tracing Trevor, I use it for all my outbound leadgen SMS. My favorite tools though are the list stacking, right. You said earlier, you get a big list, you get small lists. Whenever you have some hits on 3 4 5 6 lists, it's like hey the likelihood of them being a motivated seller is going to be so high, right? Let's spend our- it's 80/20, right? Let's spend our or 80% working on these 20% of leads that we think are going to be the best leads, but even cooler than that is the match savings, so if you are skip tracing and like we just spent two grand on skip tracing yesterday, like we do a lot of skip tracing, you know, a couple hundred dollars. We do probably 4-5 hundred a week on average, right? So, the coolest thing is don't skip trace the same lead twice. Easier said than done however Batch will match it up, if they see the same property address in there, they're not going to charge you, so like the last skip trace we did I saved $400.

Trevor: Awesome.

David: It was like a $1,200 skip trace but 30% of the leads were in the system so it saved me more money than the cost of the monthly service, how cool is that?

Trevor: Yeah, the duplicates and the organization.

David: All the duplicates, everything else. I've only been using it for three months dude so that's cool because if it's saving me that much now 3 months in, imagine what it's going to be doing at 15 months in. You know, I may go try to skip trace a list and only 10% of it go through but that's good because it's like they're not interested. Don't throw money at somebody that has the house, otherwise we're probably following up with them already. So, guys again check it out Dave, D-A-V-E all caps, get 50% off the first month to check it out and again the cost savings if you get into skip tracing which I recommend you do, I think Trevor would too.

Trevor: Yeah, I love it.

David: Is the way to go, I mean you can- I pay $0.12. I'm in one of the higher packages, of course, but if not, it's like 14 or 15 cents to skip trace and you get their phone number and their email. Otherwise, you're sending a postcard or a letter to somebody with 1-2% response rate, that's gonna cost you between 35% or 35 cents up to maybe 60 cents, some cases a dollar.

Trevor: Yeah, the real handwritten ones are a dollar.

David: Right, and that doesn't even guarantee you that they're going to call you, right? That's just marketing your message. It works, all of these things work, right? but you want to stay focused on cost savings and that's why I love Batch as well dude, so- but you went the approach and I got off topic there, but you went on with the approach of finding the transactions and contacting the agents, I love it. It's an- that's a great way to go about finding your cash buyer and then you said 20K wholesale fee, are you signing this?

Trevor: Nah, I'm actually going to- I double closed it cuz I- you know, those guys over at FasterHouse, they're good, they're good, man and I know that like I was like, okay, I've always double closed all my transactions and the reason why I did that is in the future, I really want to record all my transactions in a double close so my LLC's in there when it- when you know, the tax records check and then when I can go ask for private money lender down the road and I pitch private money, I can pull up all the addresses of all the properties, I have a list of it and Excel sheet, all the properties I've ever bought and sold and how much return on investment I made those buyers.

David: Oh, that's really smart. You're building experience doing that, you're building a resume, right? Cuz when you walk into a bank or you sit down with a private lender, they don't care if you have a college degree bro, come on, they don't give a shit about that.

Trevor: No.

David: What do they care about Trevor? They care about your credit score, the capacity of you to pay them back and the history of other people that you've done business with.

Trevor: Absolutely.

David: That's basically your credit report and a credibility packet that you can provide them which you are building in real-time, which I think is great because it's much easier to build it in real time and make it- make it big and valuable than try to go back later and do that so keep doing that because eventually you're going to have 500 houses under your belt like I do and you're going to be able to you know, show that list. Very very cool.

Trevor: Can't wait man, can't wait. I- and it gave me, it got me a pre-qualification letter this year from Carrollton Bank because of that. I sent that sheet over to him and he was like are these wholesale deals and what'd you do? and I told him kind of what I did with them and he was like wow, he's like yeah, I mean, obviously you're creating a return on investment for these big institutional buyers, these reeds, these hedge funds, these turnkey companies, you know, obviously, you know how to vet and underwrite, look for a deal correctly, I think that it would be you know, easy to work with you.

David: Isn't that great how like there's so much value that you can create by just finding a deal?  It's amazing.

Trevor: Absolutely.

David: I tell this to a lot of people Trevor, like students of mine but also just when I'm podcasting in general, it's in both of my books but I think people should start with learning how to find motivated sellers no matter what kind of investor they want to be. If they want to be a landlord or they want to be a fix and flipper and they have no desire to wholesale, that's fine. I'm not saying on how to wholesale, I'm saying learn how to find motivated sellers. The reason is, once you have a deal like you did, a property at 50 cents on the dollar, all the doors open up for you. You could have gone with Lawrence and got a hard money loan, flipped it, made 35 grand, right?

Trevor: Yeah.

David: You probably could have gotten a loan from Lawrence or FasterHouse for the rehab. You could have gone with Lawrence or FasterHouse funds and kept it and BRRRR-ed it, right? You could have wholesaled it, which is what you did, but regardless, you have these options, right? and it's what we do man. I mean, we market for deals that we want, we market for the rentals and the fix and flips, and we keep the best ones that come in and we wholesale the rest, but I think what I'm getting it, I don't mean to get off topic, but you know, whenever you have a deal, the doors open. Whenever you don't have a deal though, right? It's very difficult to add enough value by just fixing it up. You always have to buy at a discount in order to- the investment, a good investment or to limit your risk of loss in that investment, right?

Trevor: Yeah, it's gotta be a win-win too. Yeah, you can't- yeah.

David: Win-win, right. So, if you guys are new, start by learning how to locate motivated sellers and once you find those people, you can use a piece of paper to get control of their property and then you can sell that paper. That's all Trevor did, I'm not trying to undermine it. The philosophy of it is simple, it's not easy.

Trevor: Not easy, it's simple. Right.

David: It gets easier, right?

Trevor: Yeah.

David: With experience, right?

Trevor: Yeah, I knew that was a deal from the minute it went in my Podio.

David: Boom, yup.

Trevor: Some people, when you first start, you might not know that. You don't know that that property over or not's a hot- you don't know it’s a hot area or you can- the ARVs are that much but as soon- once you get that experience and you start doing deals, you get better and better. It gets more simple as you go and I think, to touch on earlier when we’re talking about the agent list and I really- that's really cool you're talking about Propstream cash buyers. I always wondered if that was a good way to go, but-

David: I personally have never done that, that's why I brought it up because when he told me that I'm like well yes, of course that's a possibility but I don't- just didn't think to do that, but the fact not only that he did that Trevor, that's cool but the fact that that's all he's using is those two software’s, right?

Trevor: Yeah, it's simple.

David: I have multiple CRM's and marketing systems and websites and phone systems and virtual assistants.

Trevor: You don't need it.

David: An office here with a closing coordinator, right? and 3 rehab crews, right? We have all these moving parts and it's great, it helps us scale, but it's not necessary and if you are new to this business, keep it simple. I mean, you can literally do deals and make 20 grand, he made 9800 on his but it was his first deal. He's been a student for little over two and a half months going on three months, so, you know, it's not that difficult, it just takes some hustle, so I love it man. The fact that that VA got that in two days is awesome, hopefully that will boost her confidence and a $250 bonus is going to be huge for her.

Trevor: Absolutely.

David: She doesn't make that in a traditional week working at 40 hours of 4 hours, that's 160 so, you know basically that's almost two weeks’ worth of work for her. That's great.

Trevor: Yup, and the cool thing about like- about going into this direct to seller, this is- it's funny that you say like, you know, you don't have to go crazy with the software and the systems to, you know, like you're saying that guy he just literally used Batch and Propstream and that was like it, you know, and when I started as you know, I was couch surfing, I had nothing like zero. I was driving a beat-up truck going from appointment to appointment. I just went to REIA events and networked with other wholesalers, with real estate agents. I was telling agents hey, I'll pay you 5% commission if you bring me an off-market deal and I started networking.

David: 5%? Wow.

Trevor: Yeah, 5%. Yeah, I was hungry.

David: Did you read my book buddy?

Trevor: Hahaha. I have not, no.

David: I'll have to send you a copy, man. Here's number one, here's number two.

Trevor: What'd you say? What do you have like 10%?

David: 10% of what?

Trevor: You paying the agents 10%?

David: Oh no, I didn't say that. No way.

Trevor: Hahaha.

David: I don't like paying them anything, but you know, if you have to, you have to. Of course, you know.

Trevor: Yeah, that's- I mean, and then last year, I- me- I- it was just me and I did a little over $200,000 from just network deals, like just network deals. I did that and that was amazing but I knew it wasn't sustainable, you know for a long period of time because I knew that if I wanted deep- more deeply discounted deals or you know, something along the lines where later down the road, when I do want to do rehab or buy one for myself, I can't just keep depending on these wholesalers and these other agents and stuff like that so I started going direct to seller this year and then it just changed the game for me. And another thing is, I saw other wholesalers make- going direct to seller and they were making $30,000 wholesale deals. I'm making, you know 5 to 10 and I'm like man, if only I would have known that seller before them, I would have made like 40 grand and that's-

David: Isn't that crazy man? I've done three deals over 60,000 to date, not me personally, my company, right? One of them was over six figures, which is really cool, made a 103 grand I think on it.

Trevor: Oh, I watched the video. Oh, I know.

David: Yeah, but the cool thing is man, I've never- well, I shouldn't say never, the fur- I've been investing 15 years my friend. I've been full-time for 5-6 right, and the first 10 years, I didn't know about motivated sellers at all. I didn't- I mean, obviously people get motivated to do anything in life, but I didn't like think like let's just focus our energy to find people that own properties that are motivated to sell them, and I bought 10 properties in the first 10 years as an investor, retailed with an agent, paid the you know, commissions were paid mostly by the seller. I don't have to pay them cuz I was buying them, but they were retail prices too, right and I got a loan on all of them at 80 maybe even 90% and they were just rentals. I used those to park my cash, I'm terrible at saving money, like terrible at it so why not put on autopilot and have somebody else fill up the piggy bank, right? Not to mention the tax advantages, but when I went full-time 5-6 years ago, I went direct to seller right away. I didn't know any other approach and man, since that time, I've never paid retail for a property. I love selling properties retail.

Trevor: I'm buying my personal house.

David: There's no way in hell I would ever pay retail for a property.

Trevor: I'm under contract on my personal house right now and I got it under contract for $75,000. It was a 4 bedroom, 3 1/2 bath, it was a motivated seller. It was a 2300 square feet, it's got an acre of land, it's got awesome, beautiful, two car garage on it and it's a beautiful house and I got for 75 grand and it appraised for over $170,000 and I got that and it's gonna be my own personal residence. I remember I'm like, you know, I'm never going to pay retail again for a house.

David: Ever, yeah. You got a great deal on that house. I'm going to come check it out sometime.

Trevor: And so, the deal was I get $75,000, they gave me a $6,000 credit for flooring and paint and then they also gave me $3,000 for closing credits.

David: That's great, are you gonna use that for FHA.

Trevor: FHA yeah, so I'm pretty happy [inaudible].

David: Yeah, that's even better so you're not even gonna have any money in it.

Trevor: No, like 2 grand maybe.

David: Couple thousand, yeah give or take which is sweet. They- a lot of times with the FHA, they roll the closing cost into the loan too, so it just reduces the barriers to entry to get into that. Man, that's awesome. Well Trevor, keep it up my friend. Congratulations on that deal, I mean that is a huge deal, 20 grand is life-changing guys. I mean imagine if you are working a minimum-wage job right now and somebody just deposited 20 stacks in your bank account, I mean, that's awesome guys. Trevor's used to this; he's doing deals as well obviously.

Trevor: Not this high though.

David: Not this high though, but the average person I mean, that is a tremendous amount of capital. So, it's possible, this business is incredibly simple. It's not necessarily easy, but hopefully in podcasts just like this, we help break down what it takes to do these deals. In this scenario, Trevor knocked it out the park, he made 20 grand in 4 hours, so his hourly rate was $5,000.

Trevor: Wicked.

David: Incredible.

Trevor: Hey, I called my CPA right after because as you know-

David: How much tax am I gonna have to pay on this?

Trevor: Absolutely, and she was like woah Trevor, I tell you what, you better start buying rentals.

David: Yeah, yup or up your marketing budget, you got to have some expenses on that, it could cut that down a little bit.

Trevor: I already knew immediately when I made 20 grand, I'm like half that's going back into my business. I'm like, some of that's going to taxes and the rest, like the other half of that is going back into my business to reinvest into getting more deals and the other half that's going towards my personal stuff to help me move to my new house, you know.

David: I love it. Man, one thing I would recommend, I do this so I think this is definitely something that I would recommend you look into doing but create a separate account for marketing and never take money from that account and put it towards non-marketing items. And here's the thing, you said you're going to you know, take half for this and half for that and that's great. I like to take 10 to 15% of a deal and put it in that marketing account. I don't think it's necessary to go 20, 30, 40, percent unless you just want to fund the account, cool do that but if you can consistently take 10% of every deal that comes in and put it in that account, what ends up happening is that account starts growing and all of a sudden, it becomes a game. It's like, alright I get to now go spend this money, but it's an investment, it's not a cost.

Trevor: Right.

David: You're spending it into more leads, you know, more of everything.

Trevor: You're saving more costs cuz software's like BatchLeads, you can- you pay more than you’re getting less for the skip tracing.

David: You're getting more for less, exactly. So, that's kind of our- that's what we try to do here at our business, we take, you know- sometimes it's as low as 5%, if it's a huge deal, there's no reason to take you know, 8 or 10 grand to put in the account, the account's got 15 in it, right? There's no reason to do that, so we'll take a little bit. When it's low, we'll take a little bit more but no matter what, every deal that's closed, we try to take you know, roughly 10% put it into that marketing account. The coolest thing is though, we never have to fund the marketing account. Well, you're saying what does that mean Dave, you're funding it every time you do a deal? That's exactly right. I'm never having to go get money from another account or get it or sell something.

Trevor: Or 9 to 5, yeah.

David: To get more money, it snowballs guys. So, you know, marketing is an expense. I tell my students, marketing is going to be an expense for 3 to 6 months, hopefully 1-2 but realistically 3-6 months. After that, you're going to have consistent deals dropping and as long as you are diligent to do that then you don't have to worry about that marketing budget. It's awesome.

Trevor: Yeah, it's great.

David: Very cool. Trevor, any parting words for the audience, the viewers? Again, congratulations, 20 grand, 4 hours, biggest deal to date, you're the man. I love it.

Trevor: Next goal is going to hit 50, that's the next goal.

David: 50 stacks.

Trevor: 50 stacks, that's the goal man.

David: I love it.

Trevor: I would say my parting to everybody here is that yeah, if you're just starting in real estate and you're really interested in the wholesaling game, I truly believe it can get you out of a lot of situations that you might not think that you can never get out of. Like I got out of a lot of situations I never thought I can get out of. And the same [inaudible] guys that I know that are good friends of mine who work at corporate companies, who make six figures and then they get out of the business and they realize this. The freedom that wholesaling, you know, can provide, the money it brings you know, the happiness- not the money- the money is just a vehicle, but the happiness it provides that the money can give, you know, you're not having to stress over bills anymore and you're working, I think I work maybe 10 hours a week, like maybe, like that's max, 10 hours a week is what I'm working. I think with all that being said, I think to bring it back, anybody can do it and I think that it can get you out of some tough situations or even get you out of situations that suck.

David: That's right, anybody can do this. You can do is part time, you just got to put a little hustling whenever you are doing it. Trevor, thank you so much for coming on the show today, grateful for your time. Congratulations on that deal. Guys, you can do this too, it is not that difficult. For more tips and tricks guys, head on over to DPIpodcast.com/toolkit and these are going to be all of the software's and processes that I use in my own business to do 8, 10, sometimes 15 deals every single month. Thanks for listening. Signing off.

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