The 24-Week Challenge: Week 7 – Finding The Right Investments

So, the big question is this, how do aspiring real estate investors like us escape from the rat race and build real wealth and freedom without access to millions of dollars in investment capital and start to live the life that we know we deserve? This is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Zack Childress and welcome to Real Estate Investing Talk Show.

Hey guys, this is actually Zack Childress. Welcome back to another Real Estate Investing Talk Show. You’re joining us on the blog talk radio. And I encourage you, if you’re listening to me on YouTube or if you’re listening to me on the podcast or if you’re listening to me on the radio, you should jump over on our Facebook. That’s where our community is at and that’s where we grow. That’s where we get to ask questions to each other. So, I encourage you, go over to REISuccess academy.com/Facebook and join us on Facebook because we got some great fans on there. I’d love to see you over there. I’d love to see you participate on our Facebook page. That’s where you can ask questions, but on the radio channels in the podcast and all that, you just get to listen. You don’t actually get to engage. So, join us on Facebook. It’s important that you do that.

What we’re talking about today is finding investments for free, whether you’re going to acquire them yourself or rehab choir them for a rental property or even if you’re just going to wholesale them or do some type of tier two strategy with them. I encourage you to know that there are free ways to do this. How do I know that this is a reality? Because we do a two-day immersion class and we put anywhere from 30-40 investors in a room and we have them all dial for free, no paying for leads. They just offer free leads and, they acquired deals. The last one we did, we generated an estimated $1.1 million in projected profits. The one before that was close to $600,000, so the classes just keep getting better and better and the students keep getting better and better at understanding what they need to do before they get to the two-day immersion.

But let’s just talk about some things really quick with you. I got some notes here I want to cover with you. But when we’re talking about free leads, we want to have multiples of these. So, one of the right out the gate that you need to be aware of is free leads from Facebook or from agents from real estate agents, okay? You can go to any agent out there and you can set up your criteria. What do I mean by that? That goes back to knowing your market, knowing what the average houses that sell in your market, knowing the neighborhoods that you need to be in, and so that you can take that to your agent and say, “look, only show me properties that come up in these neighborhoods and these price ranges, first day on market, 90 days on market, price adjustment, things of this nature,” right?

And the reason that’s important is because you need to set that relationship up early so that you can then automate that. It just comes into you every single week or day as those leads pop up. So, it’s a huge resource for you. Now the other thing I want you to understand is people ask me all the time: how do you work with so many agents? Well, I only have one primary agent, but I work with every single agent in this business. And here’s why. Because every other agent that I communicate with, I let them know very clearly. I say, “listen, I don’t need to just you scouring them a less for deals for me. I have an agent that does that, but if you ever get a pocket listing, if you ever get a listing that needs to be sold quickly, give me a call and I’ll make you an offer before you even have to list the property.” It might show up for a day or two on the MLS, whatever, but I can be the first offer in on that deal.

So, agents are very important. The other thing that you need to spend time in is going through like the online newspapers, the regular papers, the pinch pennies, the penny savers, things like that. You need to be on those sites and in those papers and on those newspaper sites. Newspapers.com is one. You need to be always looking for motivation, motivated, must sell, need to sell fixer upper, things of that nature. That shows that the seller has some form of motivation that they need to sell quickly. And that is where the rubber hits the road in most cases. Are you actively putting in the time to find these types of leads and services out there?

The other thing about the newspaper is, you need to be in the rental section. Let’s talk about this real quick. This is all free, okay? So don’t come to me saying you can’t find leads because I’m going to say you’re not trying hard enough. That’s what I’m going to tell you right out the gate. There are massive amounts of leads out there. You’re just not tapping into them. Here’s something that you need to write down and be very clear on.

If you want to do 40 deals a year, you need 40 marketing streams, 40 of them. You need to do one marketing stream for every deal that you want to do. So, if you want to 10 deals a year, then you need to have 10 marketing streams and all you need to do is expect one deal out of each marketing string. That’s important to know. Rental ads, there are people who are renting properties because they’re burned out. And let me tell you something, they’re renting and you need to get on the phone with them because here’s the beauty of a rental that not only will it give you a burnt-out landlord, but it’ll also give you a buyer because if they’re not burned out, then they’re probably wanting more.

So, as a wholesaler, you want to find those guys, right? You want to know who they are. If they’re interested in buying more, you want to put them in your buyer’s list. This is why it’s so important that you work the rental market. I’ll also tell you this, that more deals are wholesaled that are cash flow type properties than there are fix and flip properties. So, write that down. The other thing that you want is you want to build your relationships with your title companies. They can’t give you information from a closing, but they can refer you to whomever needs a buyer. So, what does that mean? Well, they might have a closing, getting ready to close and the buyer may not qualify or may not have time. So, they’re are going to be pulling out where you can step in and they can refer you to the seller or the seller’s agents say, well, here’s somebody I know that might be interested in buying.

So, the other one is property management companies. You just need to pick up the phone and start calling them and asking them, “hey, do you have any burned out landlords? You have any landlords that just aren’t taking care of their properties anymore? You know, I’d love to step in and buy those from them and leave them with you for management.” Those are all streams that you can start to control that are all free. Okay, free, free, free, free, free. It’s really about free leads. One of the things you also need to start thinking about is code enforcements. There’s a lot going on with code enforcements. People just not taking care of their buildings and the city is stepping in on violations and you can go down and get those reports. And a lot of times the reason that they’re not taking care of the properties is because they don’t even live in this area. They don’t live here, so therefore they don’t know, they can’t see it.

So, we want to get those people on the phone, we want to talk to them about the property and all the things that we can help them with. And so, I encourage you to do that. Another avenue is any type of appraiser out there. Appraisers are always appraising properties, doing all kinds of things. They’re in the network. This is really, if you understand this, is about building your network. There’s outbound dialing for, for sale by owners. There’s outbound dialing for rental ads, there’s outbound dialing for property management companies. There’s networking with appraisers, networking with code enforcement companies, networking with attorneys. Getting attorneys on your team is huge, specially like probate attorneys, eviction attorneys. A lot of times eviction attorneys list people that they’re evicting and those sellers may not want to deal with that headache anymore and they just want to get rid of the property.

So, you want to be on top of that and building your team, property locators as we call them. You know, getting that network built up, getting that team put together so that you’re in the right moments, at the right time with the right people, bringing you the right types of deals. And I encourage you to build that.

One of the other things that you really need to focus in on is driving for dollars. Now, why is that important? Well, let me tell you some. I learned this a long time ago. Sixteen plus years ago. And that is, I would take somewhere new home every single day. I would go a different way to work in a different way home so that I could drive through neighborhoods and see what’s out there, see what, what looks shabby, what looks abandoned, what looks vacant, what looks like an opportunity.

And that’s the thing you need to be aware of when it comes to free leads. They’re everywhere, but they’re not instantaneously unless your outbound dialing, unless you’re using the phone, you’re dialing out. But the rest of them come through your network. I’ll give you an idea. I got presented a fourplex supercheap 15,000 a month for $80,000, right? Anybody would jump over that deal. But how I got that fourplex was because I know a guy who knows a guy who knew a guy who ended up with a property that they didn’t want and they came all the way back through that pipeline and it got back to me. I didn’t know the seller directly, but it was about my network. It was about letting people know what I do, letting people know how I do it for them. Then they start sharing the information and more information gets shared. More information gets shared, and that’s something that you need to be aware of, that you have to understand.

If this is your business, you got to be talking about it all the time. You have to be talking about your business with everybody that you go to. Everywhere you go, this is your business. People won’t know that you buy houses or you’re in the house business of being a property specialist. If you don’t tell people what’s going on, and so it’s highly important that if you’re looking for free leads.

Number one, you got to get you outbound game down in. Number two, you got to build your network. You got to let everybody know from attorneys to appraisers to bird dogs, to property locators, to code enforcements, to the meter readers, to the postal lady or the postal man. You gotta. Let them all know. You’ve got to let them look. Even at my kid’s school, I let them know. The principal brought me deals. I wholesaled one of them. They brought me other deals because why? I let everybody know what I do. Everybody.

I’m visiting the doctor this morning getting an allergy test done and my doctor knows that I buy houses. He’s telling me about a house that he saw that you know, would I be interested in it? You know, like everybody I talk to knows that I do real estate and that is my conversation with everybody. And so, it’s important that you build that model around you. If you’re just starting off, it doesn’t matter. You need to let them know, hey, I’m getting into real estate. If you find any deals I’d like to know about. If you’re seasoned and you think you’re doing just fine, you’re not. You could do more. You’ve got to let people know. That’s what today’s message is all about. It’s about you acknowledging that you could do more on a regular basis, but it requires you to get out there and not always using the excuse.

You know a lot of people use the excuse, oh, well, I don’t have money for marketing leads. That’s not true. There’s free leads out there. Co-wholesale. You could JV a wholesale deal like I did. Brent Wade found a wholesaler with a deal, found a wholesaler with a buyer. $12,000 assignment fee. He collected $4,000 off that assignment fee for putting that deal together and he never had a buyer. He never had a seller. He never spent $1 on marketing.

Guys, you’ve got to understand something. You can tell yourself constantly that you need this before you get started. You need that before you get started, but the reality is at the end of the day, you don’t need anything but the will to get up and go do it. That’s all you really need. If you have that, then you’re in for the long run.

I hope you guys are enjoying your time with me and short and sweet, but I’d love to see you on Facebook so that we could actually answer your questions. Hey, this is actually the real estate coach. I’ll see you guys again next week. You’ve been listening to the Real Estate Investing Talk Show. I’m Zack Childress and I’m on a mission to create 10,000 real estate bosses over the next year. Will you be one of them? Head over to my house website, REISuccessAcademy Dot Com/webclass and register for my free web class will you’ll discover how to escape from the nine to five grind and become your own boss in real estate. See you there.