Welcome back to the Discount Property Investor podcast. Our mission is to share what we have learned from our experience and the experience of others to help you make more money investing like a pro. We want to teach you how to create wealth by investing in real estate, the discount property investor way. To jumpstart your real estate investing career, visit freewholesalecourse.com, the most complete free course on wholesaling real estate ever. Thanks for tuning in. 

David: Alright guys, welcome back. Today Mike and I are all pumped up, we're excited. We're going to be answering some questions from some of our students that have sent over recently. We sent out an email and asked for those who are struggling right now with anything real estate-related: talking to sellers, running appointments, motivated seller marketing, writing offers and contracts, and beyond wholesaling as well into the fix and flip realm or the BRRRR method, right? Anything and everything, we are here to help so we sent out a message. We got quite a few responses and on this episode today, we are going to be answering those responses. 

Mike: Sweet. 

David: Having a little convo. 

Mike: All right, little QnA today. QnA, let's do it Dave. 

David: That's right, that's right. 

Mike: So all things real estate, it's gonna be a hodgepodge of a podcast. At least that's the plan, let's hodgepodge it up and answer some questions. You know what we didn't do Dave? We didn't even test our mics so guys if you aren't hearing us now, it's because we didn't test our mics. We're going to re-record this entire podcast later. 

David: Haha that's right. 

Mike: But it's all good. If you hear this- 

David: We love doing things 2nd, 3rd, 4th time. 

Mike: Yeah, there's no reason to do things once right when you can do them twice righter, that's what I always say. 

David: That's right. 

Mike: All right let's jump in. [inaudible]. 

David: Okay, so first question. It's a wholesaling specific one, it's very basic but it just says: I have not found a motivated seller yet and I have been working on my marketing efforts for 2 weeks. So what we responded with that was: how many offers have you made in the past week and how many offers have you made in total, okay? And the reason that that's our response is because offers equal deals, okay? And if you are not making offers, you are really not going to uncover motivated sellers, right? So this particular person may be talking to motivated sellers but they may not be aware that that person is motivated and that's why Mike and I like to send offers and run appointments because when you get out in the field and you meet them, things change. When they call you on the phone or you call them and you're basically offering to pay them 60, 70 cents on the dollar and they say no you're crazy, beat it, right? That doesn't mean that they're not motivated, it just means they don't like that offer, right? So get out in the field, make those friends and you will have a much easier time finding those motivated sellers. Mike, what do you think? 

Mike: No, that's a great strategy. 

David: Yeah, I think I pretty much nailed that one. 

Mike: Knocked it out of the park- 

David: Home run. 

Mike: -if I do say so myself. 

David: That's right, that's right. Easy enough, easy enough. So if you are also struggling guys with the motivated seller thing, do more marketing, send more offers, run more appointments, right? But there's more than just those things, I'm telling you. You have to make friends with people. That's really what matters. That's the secret sauce. Make friends with people, listen to their problems. 

Mike: I got a great example of that Dave. It's a property I went out on and this was actually from a Batch Driven. I ended up going and what did I do? So I drove for dollars, found it in Batch Driven, sent them a text and started texting back and forth, and they said yeah come out and take- set up an appointment. We were just texting, did not call cuz it went- the conversation went quick. 

David: Sure. 

Mike: And she said okay let me- I'm not in St. Louis, let me introduce you to my son-in-law. So son-in-law went and met me at the property and I was able to build rapport with him and I was able to kind of make a friend with him, but I wasn't able to make a relationship with the seller, I wasn't able to connect with her. So I know what the problem is and I have a solution but now I have to text back and forth there because apparently- it's a long story but she's also hard of hearing so phone calls aren't even really gonna work, but the fact that I didn't get to connect with that person, build rapport, build that relationship makes it I'd say a hundred times more difficult to actually buy the house. So all these services for mass texting and mass calling are awesome but you have to get on the phone so like once you- once you- I mean your objective is to get on the phone with people, make offers, figure out what the problem is, that's what Dave was saying, that's what I'm circling back to. 

David: Yeah, right. 

Mike: I know the problem now is that it's a tax issue, so they don't want to sell it for tax reasons, so I've got a solution to that so that's what I need to propose to them, not just my cash offer and that I can close quickly, that's not helping them. They've got a tax issue that they need help with, so I'm here to help them with that and you may be wondering what that is. I'll give it to you. We're going to offer them to do a seller financing to us so that they no longer have those problems of being a landlord cuz they're going to rent it out again, even though they don't want to. I'm going to say: don't worry about being a landlord, sell it to me, you're not going to realize all your gains, you're not going to have that tax issue today, but you're still going to get the cash flow from that property because you're going to finance it to me. So again, that's my solution to them and yeah. Again, you have to figure out what people's problems are to really win the deals. 

David: I love it. 

Mike: Long- long- a lot of talking over here from me. 

David: That's alright. Alright, we're going to try to add this on the screen, see if we can make this a little prettier as we go. That's- alright, cool. Alright, next question. Hey Dave, how long do you use a contract expiration time frame for the seller to accept the offer? Okay, that's a good question. Also, what would you use as earnest money deposit? Which is kind of a loaded question and we're going to break that down. So Mike, help me out. How long do you use a contract expiration time frame for when you send offers? 

Mike: Well, kind of depends. It depends on situation. If I don't think they're going to accept it, I'll usually give them like a week or if they say oh I've got to think about it or whatever and they don't seem real motivated, I'll give them a week because I need to put a time frame on there. A week or even a month sometimes if it's not motivated at all. If I think somebody is motivated and they are interested in selling, they need to close quickly, you can use this to your advantage to put a little bit of pressure on someone. So you can then say: okay I sent you this contract, it expires in 24 hours. You've got to sign it in 24 hours or the contract is no good and here's the reason why: I've got other properties I'm out buying, I can't have my money tied up or my commitment to use my money tied up for a really long time so either commit to me and I'm buying this one and I'mma use my cash to buy this house or I'm moving on. So again, you can kind of use the contract expiration to your advantage just depending on on the situation. 

David: Right, don't overthink it though. I think that's the main point here. 

Mike: A week, put a week on there. 

David: Put a week on there, right? If they don't sign it but they're willing to sell, you're gonna have to send them another one. Not a big deal, you know. If you want to put some pressure, put a couple days. Don't overthink it. Second part of that question: also, what would you use as an earnest money deposit? 

Mike: Money. 

David: Money. Hahahaha I love it. No, but really that's a great question because this really depends on who you're making the offer to. Are you making the offer to a seller? Are you making the offer to a bank or are you making the offer to an agent? And I think that that really matters. So, when making an offer to a motivated seller directly, we typically use $100, sometimes we'll put 10 just because it's like really cheap shitty property that we don't even want, we'll let them know our interest is that bad in it. It's like very low, right? But typically it's $100. Now if we are making an offer to an agent, typically we will do 1% of the purchase price. Just keep it simple. We also use that formula whenever we're making offers to banks, right? And it's that simple, so $100 sometimes 10 direct to seller and 1% to agents in banks, right? If they don't like that, then ask them why and then figure out what they want and use that, all right? Now with earnest money also, it can be refundable or non-refundable. Typically it's nonrefundable unless it's stated that it is refundable so just make sure that if you are the investor or the buyer that when you're putting in the contract anything about earnest money that you somewhere put in that the earnest money is to be returned to the seller if the deal doesn't close, all right? Or what you can do is you can say earnest money is forfeited to the seller if the deal doesn't close, but in exchange for that, all legal remedies would be fulfilled essentially, right? So there's no issues on your end. Great question. And then last but not least, what additional terms and conditions if any would you include in a wholesale offer? I like that one, I like that one a lot. That's a really good question. Mike, I'm going to let you handle that one. 

Mike: Sure, so we've got a pretty cool tool available: cashoffercontract.com. That is a contract that we actually provide to people. Sends it really really quickly. You could send it from your phone in about 3 minutes to yourself or send it over to a seller and that's going to have all of the different conditions that we would put or some people call them your out clauses. So what are those specifically? One of them is subject to partners approval. That's one of my favorites because although Dave and I are partners here, we also partner with many other people including our money partners. 

David: That's right. 

Mike: So again, if somebody says I'm- again, if you shop this and none of your money partners or buyers are interested in it, your partner didn't approve so that contract is no longer void, sorry. You notify the seller hey, my partner doesn't approve of this and I'm going to have to cancel this contract. So that'd be one of them. That'd be something I would definitely include. Another one is subject to sellers opinion of taxes, title and value. So Dave you like this one, the value thing is very, very subjective so basically you put it under contract and you believe that the property is worth x and that's why you made your offer at x, but then during your due diligence which is your inspection period, you get the opportunity to look up comps, to research further, to find out what is actually happening in the market right around that property and if you find out that you offered too much or that it's going to cost too much to repair it, your opinion of the value obviously changes. So you're going to say mister seller I'm sorry, I believe that the value is much lower than we had originally agreed upon. I'm no longer able to purchase this property and that is worst case. Dave, we don't actually like to back out of contracts, what do we really do? We usually- 

David: We like to renegotiate at that point. 

Mike: We do. We really say- 

David: That's really were the motivation kicks in. Are they motivated or not, right? 

Mike: Exactly. So that's when we say: mister seller, I know I said we can offer this, here's where we're at, here's what I really think it's worth and here's what we want to do. If we can get this now for this price, we're able to move forward and why would you say that? Because you had your buyers or your partner's come through and say: we can't buy it at that but here's what it's worth and that's where you're going to move forward on, so that you guys can help that person out of that jam which is the property, get it sold and make some money for yourself. 

David: I love it Mike. Thank you for helping with that one. 

Mike: Yeah, anything else you would add? Again, I think those are two pretty good ones though. 

David: I think so too. 

Mike: Partners approval and value, I think those are very very important. Yeah, that's probably- that's probably- I don't know, that's about it. 

David: That's about it. Okay, cool. Next question: I'm trying to use Redfin to find the ARV, but I've been struggling. Do you have a video on that or any help with that? So- 

Mike: No. 

David: It's difficult to use Redfin exclusively for ARV's. If you don't have MLS access, I would use a combination of Redfin, Zillow, appraise- or um real estate- realestateagent.com? What's the main- realtor.com. realtor.com and maybe there's probably one or two more that will give you an estimated number but use multiple of them, right? Don't just pick one, okay? Now again, these services individually aren't really designed first- with the ARV first in mind, it's just an estimated number. So in order to get a really good comp or comps on the property that you are trying to find the ARV on, its best to use your local MLS or a third party company that will pull MLS data, okay? Mike and I have MLS access, in fact Mike's a broker and we've tend to find ourself using Propstream most of the time to pull comps, all right? Now, the estimated number that even when Propstream gives us one, doesn't mean that's what the ARV is. When we are finding an ARV, we have to dig a little, alright? Doesn't mean you got to spend 2 hours doing it but you got to spend five or ten minutes typically minimum looking at the other properties, how alike are they? How close are they? How long ago were they sold? Right? What updates did they have compared to yours and why are the prices the way they are? You have to learn those things, okay? So that's a great question. I would say don't put all your eggs in one basket, and that basket in this case is Redfin. Use multiple resources guys, it's definitely going to help you out in the long run. 

Mike: Yeah and in our market Redfin just never really seemed to be that good, right? Never took off or whatever. 

David: Yep. 

Mike: Yeah, so we just- we don't have anything on Redfin specifically and as Dave said: do a couple different ones. 

David: All right, this next one is a really good question. I'm really happy that somebody asked it and it's a good one. How do I change my mindset? 

Mike: Dude that's tough man. 

David: That's a tough question. 

Mike: I mean again, it is- with everything going on, we've got pandemic and crazy politics stuff going on and I mean just a whole world of nonsense. 

David: Man, 2020 has been a doozy, 2021 hasn't been that much better. I mean we're already- today is February 10th, right?  

Mike: Yeah, I mean that's a tough one. 

David: Wow. 

Mike: We're actually- Dave, you missed this one cuz you were down on your mastermind. I gotta remember to talk into this mic. 

David: That's right. 

Mike: You were down in your mastermind and one of the things that I was sharing with everybody was the miracle morning. 

David: Oh, I love the miracle morning. 

Mike: Yeah. This is a book by Hal Elrod and in that book, you got to read the book if you're interested in this, he recommends starting off your day the right way and one of the things he says 'if you win the morning, you win the day'. I was just actually kind of shouting this at my wife this morning getting her out of bed: 'you win the morning, you win the day'. 

David: Yeah but Mike, your morning is 3:30 in the morning. 

Mike: It is. 

David: Mine is about 7:30 or 8. 

Mike: I was supposed- this is when she woke up already obviously. 

David: Right. 

Mike: I'm digressing here, so you win the morning, you win the day and Hal's method is called the SAVERS and the SAVERS is an acronym for different activities that if you do them all first thing in the morning, so it's basically taking that hard thing first, get the hardest thing out of the way and his is SAVERS and it stands for silence or meditation, A is for affirmations so basically daily affirmations, positive mindset, you kind of set yourself up for success, V visualization so figure out what you want in life and visualize it, you could do a vision board or just again, take some time to visualize yourself in the- 

David: Put it out in the universe basically. 

Mike: Exactly. 

David: Right. 

Mike: E is for exercise. A lot of people don't want to do this one but go out for a 15 minute walk, go down your basement, go do some push-ups, some pull ups. 

David: I want to just- I want to jump in on this particular one. Whenever you think about exercise, typically people think like it has to be a whole hour and they got to go run 8 miles and they got to sweat their ass off. It doesn't have to be that. 

Mike: Get your heart rate up, that's it. 

David: 5 to 10 minutes of stretching will change your life. 

Mike: Every day. Yeah. 

David: Every day, 5 to 10 minutes. So start somewhere, start small. I love that Mike. 

Mike: Exercise is E, then R is for reading. So expand your mind is my suggestion is don't read- 

David: If you're watching this video, you should read this question on the screen right there. 

Mike: Don't read for just pleasure, don't read nonsense fiction, read some other books that are going to help you, develop yourself to read some personal development books, read some business books, read some books on investing, I suggest the BRRRR method by David Dodge & Mike Slane. 

David: It's a great book. 

Mike: And The Ultimate Guide to Wholesaling Real Estate. No, but seriously, read personal development books. It's gonna help you. Then the last one is S for scribing and Hal recommends that you take time to journal or to write and to kind of help you organize or get creative on that. To me, all those things, again it sounds like a lot. Well if you do each one of those for 5 to 15 minutes, it's about an hour so wake up a little bit earlier, do the SAVERS. Again, check out Hal Elrod's book or just Google the SAVERS and you're going to find a bunch of stuff, there's a miracle morning communities on Facebook, etcetera etcetera. I think that's the fastest way to change your mindset is to take some action. 

David: Take some action, yeah. 

Mike: Do all the things that are hard right away because they- cause quite frankly, if you're in a bad state of mind, all those things sound terrible. I don't want to do that. 

David: Yeah. 

Mike: I don't want to go meditate and freaking focus on what's good and exercise. 

David: Yeah, but those things really matter and here's another thing, you don't have to go do all of them tomorrow, just start with one or two things, start with a little bit of exercising, start with a little bit of meditation, start with a little bit of daily affirmation. Daily affirmations doesn't have to be anything crazy, right? They could be something that you just tell yourself over and over throughout the day whenever something good happens or something frustrating happens, put something positive back out into the universe, right? Great way to change your mindset. Also, last note on this: whenever you fear something and then it happens, you suffer twice, right? So try not to worry about little things because if they don't happen, you're still suffering once by worrying. So, life's going to throw shitty things at you and you just have to learn how to deflect them and just live with them, move on so try not to be so worrisome about what could happen or what can happen, all these what if's? Most of them don't even happen, right? That's great advice Mike, thank you for helping me with that. Next question, would you guys help me like how do I get started- 

Mike: Where can I pull leads, whatever. 

David: Okay, no prob. Where can I pull leads other that bandit signs and driving for dollars?  

Mike: Sweet. 

David: Well, I just pulled 9,000 leads for vacants last night and another 13,000 tired landlords. I use Propstream, we talked about this a little bit earlier. It's not free, I think you would ask for free leads. It's a hundred bucks a month but you get 10,000 leads a month. That's a penny per lead, practically free. Free leads. You can find free leads on Zillow, you can find them on Redfin, you can find them on realtor.com. Search for for sale by owners or properties that are for rent. You can also find them on gosection8.com. It may be one by one, you might not be able to pull them in bulk and download them but there is lots and lots and lots of free leads out there. Go ahead. 

Mike: Here's what I want to say about free. There are free lead sources out there like Dave just mentioned, but here's the problem is that free means you're going to have to spend your time, okay? So Dave gave you some great resources: gosection8.com, even Craigslist, you can find people that are looking to sell their properties for free, but it's going to take time. You're going to have to go through and call fifty, a hundred of these people before you get someone who might actually be a motivated seller, you're gonna have to screen through them. So free is available, hundred percent, but again you're going to spend your time. So again, I think that the Propstream thing that David mentioned for $99, it really really is pretty close to free if you value your time. 

David: Agreed. 

Mike: Long story short. That's all I wanted to add on there. Free is available but if it's an illusion, nothing is actually free. 

David: That's right. All right next question: I have been doing homework on becoming a real estate investor and wanted to know what would be my first step? I love this question. 

Mike: I love it too. 

David: We get this all the time. You're already excited, go ahead. 

Mike: I'm excited because I like my answer cuz it's kind of snarky. Stop doing homework. Stop it. 

David: That's the truth. 

Mike: Stop it. 

David: The absolute truth. 

Mike: Stop doing so much homework and start doing more action. Start taking more action, just be a real estate investor. It's really that simple. 

David: Yeah. 

Mike: I mean again, everyone is so afraid of making mistakes, here's the thing: Dave and I have screwed up royally on many, many deals. We keep screwing up, we just keep screwing up bigger and bigger and it gets better because we do more deals that way. 

David: That's right. 

Mike: So fail- what is that saying? Fail forward, fail fast or yada yada yada. So do some deals. Again, just take action, you're going to learn so much more. 

David: Right. 

Mike: By taking action than by just reading other people's opinions about how to do things. What's the best way to do this? What's the best postcard? There's no silver bullet. 

David: Yeah. 

Mike: Send a postcard. 

David: Here's my answer to this question, very similar but it's a little different actually. So I agree, I've been doing homework on becoming a real estate investor and wanted to know what should be my first step? Well in order to answer that question I first want to define real estate investor. What is a real estate investor? Well, a real estate investor is typically somebody who buys, sells and/or holds property. In order to do that, you need to learn how to find people that own them as well as learn how to make offers to them. Mike said quit doing your homework, I agree. Quit trying to learn all these things, instead focus your time on finding these people and learning how to send them an offer, all right? Both of our books, The ultimate guide to wholesaling real estate and the three pillars teach you how to find them as well as how to market to them and how to send them an offer. And here's the coolest part: you don't need $100,000 to flip a $100,000 house, you need a hundred bucks. In some cases, maybe 10 bucks, because that's what the earnest money is going to be. You don't actually have to buy a property to flip it so don't think that you need to save your money. If you have $100 guys, you can get invested in this business. You can become a real estate investor, you can learn how to wholesale. It is incredibly simple and our goal and focus is to teach you how to eliminate all the risks from the deal so you can maintain control and if it closes, you get paid and if it doesn't, exit with nothing, no big deal, right? 

Mike: What's the- I'm going off topic here, going off script. Dogecoin or doge- well how do you say that one? 

David: Doggy or Doge, I don't know. I don't follow that one. 

Mike: Doggy coin? Doge coin? Yeah so if you don't have any money, throw a hundred bucks at this Dogecoin and you know take it to the moon with the other boys right? 

David: Yeah. 

Mike: You guys following what I'm talking about here? If you've been following- woah. 

David: Whoops. 

Mike: If you've been following the Wall Street bets thing, that's what I'm referring to so they're talkin about this Dogecoin now, but again I think that one's a speculative play. So, totally teasing on that one. Please don't put money into that if you're not planning on it already. 

David: Alright, next question. This is kind of a long one, but we will stick it up there anyway. 

Mike: Yeah take off some of that. 

David: I'm just gonna clean it up here.  

Mike: Take out that one. 

David: Enter there, enter there, enter there. 

Mike: So if you're listening, this is great rare podcast stuff.  

David: Okay, cool, here it is, we're going to add it up there. It's a lot of text that's going to be a little hard to read. It says, I'm going to read the full question, I edited it here. It says: hey boss, quick question, working out a deal in STL- hey that's our market, maybe we can help you. Her father died and the house was titled on her and her father's name. She doesn't know if it's still in a mortgage etc., what to do here? She says she needs an attorney, should we just run her title with my title company or would I need an attorney? Great question. You don't need attorney ever in my opinion, they're way too expensive and they're just people. Most of them are more dumb than you and I, all right? I have a lot of friends that are attorneys, not all of them are the smartest individuals. So you don't need an attorney, okay? Title companies, this is their job. This is what they do, this is how they make money, right? The people that own title companies feed their families by solving problems just like this one, okay? So, contact the title company, they are going to tell you if you can buy it and when and how and why you might not be able to be, right? They're going to let you know all these answers and in the event that there are roadblocks, they are going to be your coach on how to get through them. They may do them for you and charge you money for those issues or they may tell you: here, you need to go down to the city with this paperwork and do that or you need to contact the state and get the death certificate for X and Y and Z. They're going to help you. This is the coolest part about title companies, you can make them your real estate coaches kind of for free. You only pay them with deals get done, so use them, ask them for advice on how to do things and most of the time, they're basically going to say here's the issue and here's how to resolve it and it may or may not be a possibility, but don't go hire an attorney, just contact your local company or maybe the company that the seller wants to work with. It doesn't really matter. 

Mike: So digging into that. It's going to depend. I mean, so you say it's titled in her and her father's name, its going to depend on if he had a will, if you had an estate plan, if he had yada yada. 

David: Good point. If it needs to go through probate first but again, the title company- 

Mike: So yeah, go to the title company, they're going to help you with that. They're going to figure it out, they're going to tell you what the next steps are. 

David: Love it. 

Mike: So yeah, Dave's answer, 100% correct. Just wanted to clarify or add on to that a little bit. 

David: Absolutely, absolutely. 

Mike: Cool cool. 

David: All right. Couple more. Go ahead. 

Mike: Hey Dave's gonna queue up another question and I'm gonna fill up some space here. So if you're watching, thank you so much for watching on YouTube. This is the discount property investor channel. Dave and I also have our own channels where we do more real estate content and we do some other stuff as well, so check out the David Dodge Show or The Michael Slane. We both have a channels out there and we put out additional content on those as well. 

David: That's right, that's right. Next question: how David do I do my first wholesale real estate deal? Didn't spell that right but hey I'm copying and pasting here. Simple, we just talked about this a second ago guys, just like, how do I become a real estate investor, do the things that real estate investors are doing. So, in terms of this question, how do I do my first wholesale real estate deal? Well, you do so by doing the activities that successful wholesalers are doing and I can really talk about three simple things which we wrote a book on called the three pillars and those three things are market to motivated sellers, this is a requirement to do a wholesale deal typically, okay? Unless you're an agent and something falls in your pocket, you're going to have to do some marketing to motivated sellers. Number two, you have to send offers to people, lots of them. If you send two offers and they both get declined, don't throw in the towel. We probably get 19 offers declined out of 20 that we send. Eh maybe 14 out of 15, but regardless, you're going to get a lot of them declined. Now, just because they say no today doesn't mean they're not going to say no in 2 months from now, and that's the beautiful thing. Once you start sending contracts to people, you hopefully have all their information and lots of notes and a task to follow up on that offer or resend it or whatever, right? So start doing those activities. So one, marketing, two, sending offers and three is following up which I was just talking about. Learn to follow up with these individuals and if you do all three of these things consistently, there is no reason that you will not start doing deals. 

Mike: I love it. So guys check out the three pillars of wholesaling real estate. We actually- are we still giving that away for free Dave?  

David: We are. 

Mike: Okay, so we still give away a free copy at discountpropertyinvestor.com, check that out and look for the courses. We've got a three pillars course and it's a free version or free copy of that book. Do we have enough questions for another episode? We'll just chop this one up. 

David: Uh yeah. Well, no we don't. We have like 2 or 3 more.  

Mike: Let's wrap it up then. 

David: Let's just wrap it up then. 

Mike: Yeah, let's do this. 

David: Okay, cool. So let's see here, we got another one here, it says: I'm currently building my buyers list, but how do I figure out the repair costs? When I figure out, how does that affect the assignment fee or how do I get paid? So this is from my buddy Kendrick, I've been chatting with Kendrick. He's young, he's only 17 so I think he has to see a lot more of the of the big picture, right? But we're always going to start with the ARV in mind and that's basically what the property is going to be worth once we fix it up. It's kind of backwards because it has nothing to do with the current repairs right away or the condition of the property. It's take a look at the property and what could it become, like what's the highest and best use for the least amount of money? That's what we would like to refer to as the ARV. We don't want to be overly optimistic or pessimistic. What's the highest and best use for the least amount of money? That's how you get an ARV and you use comps to do so. Next, what you're going to do is you're going to multiply that by a discount rate, depending on if you're a Fix and Flipper, a rehabber, a wholesaler, that rate could be 90%, it could be 50%. So you're going to multiply it by a discount rate and that's how we get paid guys. That's how investors get paid is the discount rate, that's where the profit comes from. Next, we're going to take out the repair costs. So I think part of this question was how do I- it's multiple questions. How do I build my buyers list? How do I figure out the repair costs as well. Again, when we're using our MAO formula, we're going to then subtract out the repair cost and/or any fees. When we determine our repair cost, the simplest and easiest way is 10, 20, 30 or 40 dollars a foot. Doesn't need much work, needs a little bit of work, needs a lot of work, needs everything. It's that simple. Take one of those four, how bad is it, 10, 20, 30 or 40 a foot and multiply it by the square footage of the property. It's rare that we see properties that are 50 and 60 bucks a foot but it does happen and even when we buy our own properties to add to our rental portfolio that don't need that much, we still end up typically spending 8 to 10 bucks a foot. So even really nice ones, even ones that might be listed and look good and clean, once you get in there with your inspector, you're going to find things. So, that's how we determine our repairs and that's how we make our offers and that's how we figure out what those offers are going to be. Last part of that question, multiple parts here, buyer list. Mike help us out. 

Mike: What's the question here is- 

David: How do I go about building my buyers list? 

Mike: Ah, don't even worry about it. You're gonna build your buyers list by finding deals. I mean it's as simple as that and once you have good deals, the buyers are going to find you. I know it sounds silly and it doesn't and you almost don't believe it but it does happen. The hardest part of this business right now is finding a good deal. If you find a good deal on something, it will get sold. Like, I- I don't even know how else to answer it. I mean, the simplest thing is- or the easiest way right now is utilizing Facebook groups. We have a ton of activity when we post properties that are off market in local Facebook groups and again, don't post it in the wholesalers group, don't post it in the real estate US group, post it in a local landlord or a local investor group and just say hey, I've got an off market deal in this area, who's interested? And you will get probably 5 or 10 people in an hour saying hey I want that property, like it- the market is just, it's- it's- it's crazy right now, so don't worry. 

David: It's bananas. 

Mike: Do not- I love it. So do not worry about building a buyers list right now. If you have a good deal, you'll be able to sell it. I truly believe that. 

David: Absolutely, and if you want to build a buyer's list, once you start doing deals, you are going to give people that call you on deals that you've already sold. Those are your buyers or if you want to just skip all that and just build a list pretty easily, get Propstream, go type in the zip codes where you have deals or where you're marketing for deals and export all of the cash buyer transactions, skip trace them and start calling those people. Call them, text them and you're not calling them to buy a house from them, call them and just say hey, I see you're investing in this area, do you have interest in buying more in this area? If so, great. What's your info? Tell me about your company. What's your criteria? What are you looking for? What are you not looking for? and start taking notes guys. You can build a buyers- I can build a buyer's list of over 500 people in my city in probably less than 5, 6 hours. I'm talking a good one, a good one with notes on every one of those individuals that I was able to get on the phone or send a text to and start learning about them. I'm confident that that is the least thing you need to worry about. Next question. Hello, I find deals for investors. "Birddog" Is there anything different in receiving a check from escrow versus the closing agent? Not really sure I understand this completely, but we can morph it. 

Mike: I don't think there's any difference.  I'm pretty sure they're- yeah again, I don't know if they quite understand fully what they're talking about. I mean, escrow is- oh no no no, I do understand. 

David: I think it's supposed to be how do I find deals from investors? 

Mike: I find deals- no, I find deals for investors. "Birddog" Is there anything different in receiving a check from escrow versus a closing agent? 

David: Oh I get it. As the birddogging person. 

Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So from escrow- 

David: Okay, great question actually. It's a really good question. Go ahead. 

Mike: Yeah well I'm confused, the closing agent- 

David: They're asking how they can get paid, that's what they're asking. As a bird dog, I go out and I find deals for other investors as a bird dog. I'm driving for dollars or I'm doing some marketing and I find deals but I'm scared to send the offer or I don't- I think I need to have all this money to buy something, right? These are false beliefs but a lot of people may have them. They're bird dogging and they find the deals for other people. How do they get paid? Well, it can happen anyway, right? You can get paid directly from the investor outside of closing, you can get paid directly from the investor during closing, you might get paid from the investor per lead and it may not matter if it's a deal and you just get paid every time you send something over. I know bird dogs that get paid in the end. They basically say I want 20% of any deal I find you and I don't care about getting paid today but when you go fix and flip it and make 75 grand, I want my 14 or 15 thousand, right? There's people that maybe take take money up front on a deal and then a small split in the back. I mean, there's really no right or wrong answer here, it just depends on your relationship with the investors that you are finding the deals for. I think that's a really good question though. I really like that one. Mike, I think we got one more. 

Mike: All right, let's do it. 

David: And then we're going to wrap up. All right, last question. This is actually kind of a funny one. Let me get it prepped. 

Mike: [inaudible]. You're gonna have to explain that one. 

David: Let me prep it. All right, here it is: can my grandma call the title company or do I need to physically be there? 

Mike: For what? 

David: This is from one of our- one of our individuals- our friends here out in North Carolina, he's only 16. This is a valid question for a 16 year old, do you get that? Okay, so you can call the title company at 16, 17, you can be 14, don't worry about your age whenever you are making a phone call, all right? Do you need to physically be there? No, especially with nowadays and covid and everything, everything can be handled via email and mail, all right? So do not- do not worry about physically going there. Now, I suggest you do because you want to build a relationship with your title company and your title reps, and the fact that you're 16 and you have a grandma on this situation that seems like they'd be willing to help, all that would matter would be that they would be the one that would sign assuming the title company or closing attorney has an issue with you being sixteen. I personally don't see any issues with age. 

Mike: Yup, there are. 

David: Are there? You gotta be 18 to sign a contract in the state of Missouri? 

Mike: In everywhere. 

David: In everywhere? Okay. 

Mike: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that technically, a 16 year old can enter into a contract and then can legally say eh, I didn't really want to do that, at any point at any time. 

David: That's a good point. 

Mike: So, they're almost always going to require the person to be 18 but again, I wouldn't necessarily worry about it. It's kind of your advantage. 

David: Yeah, they- this particular friend of ours has a grandma that's already, it seems like, willing to help. 

Mike: Yeah, so then- 

David: So once you find the deal, put it in your grandma's name. Use our contracts, they have so many out clauses that you're protected guys, you don't have anything to lose if you do it right. Again, we talk about all of this in The Ultimate Guide to Wholesaling Real Estate, all the CYA clauses, all the simple things that you are going to need, they're available in that book. Is that it? That's all you got? 

Mike: Uh yeah, so grandma can show up to title company and sign though. I mean again, I think that's a great idea, it's great work around. Again, there's going to be tax issues but again, just talk to your grandma about that. Say hey, if we make 10 grand this year or 20 grand on this deal, you know, I know you're going to pay taxes so here's, you know, $5,000 of it to pay taxes or whatever it is. Again, there's going to be- there's going to be some other issues to work out, but don't let that be an obstacle. I love hearing that somebody at 16 is figuring out how to do this. 

David: I love it. Guys, don't forget to check out discountpropertyinvestor.com, we have a brand new website, tons of free resources on that website that teaches how to find deals and how to do marketing and we even have a free copy of the three pillars of wholesaling real estate on the website discountpropertyinvestor.com, check it out. Thanks for watching, thanks for listening. Until next time, signing off. 

Thanks for listening to the discount property investor podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, share, and subscribe to help us reach a wider audience to jump-start your real estate investing career, visit freewholesalecourse.com- the most complete free course on wholesaling real estate ever. We would also appreciate it if you left us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Thank you in advance for your support and remember you make your money when you buy, you get paid when you sell. Now let's go build some wealth.