Loading summary
Transcript63 lines
- [00:00]
A
What's up, guys? Welcome back to another Real Deal episode. This is Brody Fawcett, your host. And if you guys remember, this is a short, sweet, down and dirty 20 minutes. We're going to dive into one deal with the whole purpose of how you can take and learn some stuff so you can go replicate it on your own. And we have a special guest today. I'm actually really excited because I was asking him what deal he wanted to dive into and it's one that, that we started talking about at dinner the other night and I was like, oh man. And I think this is so interesting because it really is. What kind of catapulted him into going full time real estate just a couple years ago? And what's cool about our guest, I'll tell you his name here in a second. But the cool thing about him is, is he was like corporate job, making great money, good salary, like thought his life was just kind of like set up and ready to roll. And then he discovered real estate and was like, oh man, this is, this is a game changer. And so he now is one of the founders and helps run REI Call center, which we'll dive into. We'll have him back on our, on our full show and dive into the ins and outs of our call center. But essentially they help people cold call and find good off market deals and they have a whole system. How many employees do you have?
- [01:17]
B
We got over 300 right now.
- [01:19]
A
Over 300. So anyhow, you can hire his company and they have over 300 people that are dialing and helping you find deals. Super, super awesome. But with all that being said, Anton Z, I can't pronounce your last name, so we're going to call you Anton Z. Welcome to the show, man.
- [01:40]
B
Not a problem. My guys. So good to be here. Thank you so much for having me. It's Anton J. But I know it's probably the hardest last name anybody.
- [01:49]
A
Yeah, it is that dude. I'm glad you said that because I'm like, I don't even, I can't even remember it now. We'll just call you Anton Z. Awesome, man. We'll give us. Obviously in this, this show we just kind of like get right to it. Talking about, talking about these deals. But I mean you, you kind of started real estate full time during COVID and this was, was this the first deal that you did that kind of got you going?
- [02:13]
B
Yes, this is definitely one of my first deals that got me. Yeah, it wasn't my first deal in terms of real estate. It was my first deal in terms of what I would like to talk to you and about your listeners with. Because before that I was doing wholesaling.
- [02:27]
A
Okay.
- [02:28]
B
And my first couple of deals with wholesaling, I didn't make much. I made about $5,500 before this. And I thought I was doing great until I hit on this jackpot and my whole perception on real estate changed.
- [02:43]
A
So tell us about it, dude. Give us a kind of a brief summary and then we'll dive into how you found it, how you funded it, and then how you forced it.
- [02:50]
B
Awesome. So it's a single family home down in Port St. Lucie, Florida. I'm in Miami, so this was a few hours north, and it was a. Do you want me to go into how I found it or you want to ask those questions?
- [03:02]
A
Yeah, no, you can. You can dive into how you found it. Yeah. Awesome.
- [03:05]
B
So, yeah, so as I mentioned, I was doing wholesaling before that. And guys, just to give you a little perspective on how long I was doing wholesaling at that point. It was about six months in. I jumped into real estate, like Brody said in 2020, knowing nothing about real estate other than listening to a couple podcasts. And this guy came on one of my mastermind calls. His name is Gonzalo Corzo. Big shout out to him. And he talked about wholesaling. And I was like, great, I can do wholesaling because this is something that I don't need to really buy properties with because I have no clue what I'm doing. So this is definitely going to allow me to learn. So what happened was I was doing wholesaling. Like I said, I was making a little bit of money here and there. I thought I was doing great. And then this deal came along, and this was a single family home that I found off market through cold calling. So that is why we have REI call centers, because that's how I was looking for deals back then, and that's how I was doing wholesaling, and that's how Gonzalo was actually. He's the one that taught me. So I found it through cold calling online and I spoke to the owner and locked this puppy up for $115,000. It needed a pretty much a complete rehab. Right. It was in a really bad shape. Brody, the people and the landlord never took care of this property. It had mold in it. I should be careful saying that, but it had mold. It had a whole bunch of problems. This is the type of property where you would want to go in with a Hazmat suit on. Almost like I. It was. It was bad, man. It was bad. It was really bad. So I locked up.
- [04:31]
A
Did you. I'm just curious. Did you ever see it in person? I know obviously from wholesaling you're not looking at properties, but did you buy it sight unseen?
- [04:38]
B
I bought it sight unseen. I have not seen it in person. Well, I have not seen it in person when I locked it up. So let me take that back. I don't want to say that I bought it sight unseen. I locked it up at 115, and then I had a couple realtors go out there with their buyers and show the property to them, and it wasn't really moving. And again, because the property had so much problems with it. So that is when I was like, you know what? I'm gonna roll up my sleeve and drive up to Port St. Lucie is that it's about two hour drive and go look at this thing. And like I said, when I walked in there, I was shocked. I'm like, I understand why it's not moving. It had holes in the walls, it has mold. It had missing doors, man. It was. It was a complete.
- [05:14]
A
Did you know all that and it was just worse in person or you had no idea that it was that bad?
- [05:21]
B
It was a lot worse in person. The guy sent me some pictures, but of course the pictures that he took did not show the whole picture, so it was definitely a lot worse in person.
- [05:31]
A
And. And that didn't scare you away? You still did with it.
- [05:34]
B
It did scare you away. I don't know if I'm allowed to cuss on this podcast, but it scared the bejesus out of me. So I said, you know what? We're going to lower our. Because I was going to. I was shooting for $125,000 assignment fee, so I was going to make 10,000 GS in in the process. So I was like, you know what? Let's lower it to 5,000. Because I was. I said, you know what? This guy is a lot worse than I thought.
- [05:56]
A
Yeah.
- [05:57]
B
So I lowered my assignment fee to $5,000, and that's what I was going to make for it.
- [06:01]
A
Okay. And obviously something changed. I want to pause you for a second. I. I love that you said, like, I didn't. I locked it up first and then I went and saw it. And I think this is just. This is like one of those gold nuggets. It's so easy to skim over, but there's so many people right now in real estate that they are so scared to lock up a property because they haven't seen it or because they're. They're not like, a hundred percent certain on it. And it's funny, I was actually having a conversation with my wife this morning. We were talking about one of these deals that we, like, we waited too long on it. It was probably like three or four days of, like, thinking about it, going and seeing. I think we saw it twice, right? And this was like, early on, we started investing, and then we finally put an offer in, and another person put an offer at the same time, and it went to highest and best, and we ultimately didn't get the property. And we were just talking about that, that it's gone up over a million dollars in value since that time. Since that time. Like, like, not exaggerating the price anything. It's gone over a million bucks. And we're just like, man, at that time, it was scary, but going back, we would have just jumped on it right away. And so anyhow, I don't want to take over the show. I just, I. I think it's such an important principle to take. Understand, like, nothing hurts to get. To get something under contract. Like, no harm, no foul. Like, it's kind of the process. It's what you have to do. It's. In my opinion, it's part of the due diligence process. It's not like I'm gonna do my due diligence and then get it under contract. So glad you brought that up, and I'll let you continue on your story.
- [07:36]
B
Sure thing. My God. No. But this is key, guys. Right now we have a lot of clients at REI call center. This is not about REI call Center. But don't be afraid, like Brody said, to lock up properties under contract without seeing the property. In real estate, unfortunately, deals fall through every single day. And if the deal doesn't work out, you can always back out. Just make sure that your contract stipulates that. If you guys need help, reach out to Brody. I'm sure he can help you with that. But don't be afraid to lock up things up under. Even if you locked it up too high, we always do the renegotia. No matter what, you always got to do the renegotia. This is something that I'll learn now. I didn't know back then because he can always go back to the property owner and say, hey, look, we looked at the property. My contractor told me that there's a lot more work than I thought there was going to be. And we're going to have to decrease the property price by this much and see what the owner says. You already have it under contract. The worst thing they can say is.
- [08:25]
A
No, no, a lot of times, at least. At least split it with you. You know, like, hey, you're not going to cover the whole thing. Like, let's go half, Half. You know.
- [08:34]
B
Absolutely. Exactly. So don't be afraid to renegotiate. That's a. That's another nugget for you there. So put it on a contract and then renegotiate or try to renegotiate. If you cannot get it lower, that's perfectly fine. You're going to lock it up. I mean, close it off at the price. But let's go back to this deal really quick because there's so much that happened to this deal. And I know you want to get everything done in 20 minutes.
- [08:51]
A
Yeah.
- [08:52]
B
So $115,000, $5,000 assignment fee. I get back home, my head is spinning, and I'm like. And I'm sitting at dinner table. I'll never forget this conversation. Big shout out to my girlfriend at the time. She's still my girlfriend now, but I'm sitting at the dinner table, I'm telling her the story, how shocked I am about this property. And she says something to me like, well, why don't we just buy it and flip it? I said, what? Why don't we just buy it and flip it? Back then, guys, I was only six months in, so first of all, we don't even own a hammer in this house. I don't know what you're talking about. Neither you and I have any experience in flipping properties, and you want to just go into it like this. She's like, let's do it. And sometimes, guys, it's another thing here is you have to be on the same page with your partner because without her, without hers, quote, unquote, me pressuring or I guess pushing on me a little bit, I probably would have just wholesaled it and made a quick $5,000, moved on, and this deal would never. Would have happened. And this deal really brought me to my, quote, unquote claim to fame in real estate because of what happened in the end. So, long story short, I said, okay, let's do this. Going back to the renegot part of this conversation, I call up the owner. I said, listen, the cash buyer that was going to buy this property fell through. Now, I'm still interested in this property, and I would like to go ahead and purchase it and listen to this Brody. I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know why I said it, but I said it. It was like one of those instinct. I said, I want to purchase it using a primary residence loan, an FHA loan with 5% down. Again, the worst thing he could have said was no.
- [10:22]
A
Yeah.
- [10:24]
B
He said, okay, Brody, I got this thing at 5% down as a primary home.
- [10:30]
A
It's awesome, right?
- [10:32]
B
So very, very little money down. I.
- [10:35]
A
We did the work and so people understand, like you went under contract assuming, like someone's gonna pay cash for it and he's gonna get cash money. Right. Which he still did, but it's just going to take a little bit longer for the loan to go through and all the good stuff, Right, Exactly.
- [10:48]
B
Instead of the 14 day close, now it's going to be 30, 45 day close, maybe even more at that point because I had it under contract, having buyers looking at it. So yeah, absolutely. He thought he was going to get money quick in cash, but yeah. And he said yes. I said, okay, let's do this. So I applied for a loan. I got a loan. Of course, it's 115,000. I put 5% down. I started working on this property. This was in May. We closed on it, I believe on May 22. Somewhere around that time, we started working on it as quickly as we possibly could. I got lucky because one of my girlfriend's cousins actually had a really good experience with handyman type of work. I had no clue at the time, but I said, hey, can you help us out? This guy had, I don't know, you know how people have, have it and they can do it. And this guy did it. All I did was just push him and really helped him. And I spent every single night we would go out there. Brody. I would get off work back then. I would still have my W2.5, jump in a car, drive over there. I get there around 7, 7:30, work until midnight, 1 o', clock, drive back, get to work and do this for a month. It wasn't easy. I don't want to say it was easy. It sucked because it was something I was like, look, it's my first one. I can't mess this one up. I got money on the table. And even it was not that much money, I still wanted this one to go through pretty quick. Yeah, Brody. We finished the work ourselves. The guy did most of the. His name is Santi, but he's. He's really, really good at what he was doing. So we were able to get it all Rehabbed, including the mold. Again, I should be careful when I say this, and you might want to cut this one out, but we've done it and put $20,000 in terms of the whole rehab around that number. Around 20 to 21,000.
- [12:33]
A
Yeah. And was that money you had saved up or what?
- [12:37]
B
That. Yeah, that's. That's just the money that I had saved up. To be honest, Brody, I was sitting on good amount of savings because, like you said earlier, I had a really nice cushion, six figure W2 job. I just didn't know what to do with that money.
- [12:50]
A
Yeah.
- [12:50]
B
So, yeah, that's something that came out of my pocket. The 5% down and the $20,000 rehab came out of my pocket.
- [12:57]
A
Cool.
- [12:57]
B
So all in. We're at 135,000. Okay. So now we have this property, and because we had it fixed up so nice now in a month. We did it all in a month.
- [13:08]
A
Yeah.
- [13:09]
B
And again, going back to my girlfriend, she says, why don't we sell it? Right? Because I was going to keep it at rental at that point. Like, oh, renting is good. Let's go ahead and keep it as a rental. Which, to be honest, I probably should have, but at the end of the day, it wouldn't give me that much experience as I got out of this.
- [13:25]
A
Right, right.
- [13:26]
B
So we end up listing it on the market for $230,000. We end up selling it a few weeks later for $225,000, netting us around $90,000 in profit in three months.
- [13:41]
A
That's awesome, man.
- [13:43]
B
In the same day? Brody, this is crazy. I swear, this is not. This is not me. Just saying. In the same day, I got a notification that we locked up and closed on a wholesale deal for $8,000. So I remember texting my business partners, Felipe Mejia and Diego Corzo. Hey, guys. I just made 98,000 in one day. I mean, it was three months, but I. For me, it felt like it was in one day.
- [14:04]
A
Yeah. Yeah. You got the payout in one day.
- [14:06]
B
When I saw that check, Brody, the whole thing in your mind changes. Yeah, I was making pretty good amount of money, but not $98,000 in three months.
- [14:15]
A
Yeah.
- [14:16]
B
So your whole perception changes, and that's definitely when you understand that there's so much power in real estate that you really got to just stop overthinking it, stop overanalyzing it, and start jumping and doing deals. And you figure it out as you go, because this is not over. What happened? You remember going back to my primary residence purchase?
- [14:36]
A
Yeah.
- [14:36]
B
So we flip this property, right? So now I have to pay capital gain taxes.
- [14:40]
A
Uh huh.
- [14:41]
B
I go back to my, I have a good CPA and I talk to him about this. So CPA is another nugget, guys. Find a good CPA that you can talk to because it's going to help you save a lot of money. And he said, well, we can 1031 this thing. For those of you who don't know what 1031 exchange exchanges is, a program that government puts on for you to sell a property and then invest that money into something bigger and better. But I'm not going to go into right now. And I said, are you sure? He's like, yeah, this is two, two hours away from you. You can say that you were not, you're not happy living in the neighborhood and the whole primary residence, quote unquote. Because you cannot 1030, 1031 exchange primary residences. Yeah, he was able to help me to do that by proving to the lenders or whoever was on this involved. I'll let him help me with this to 1031, this thing. And I bought a, and I put that money into a duplex that's, I'm netting about 1500 bucks a month right now in pure net cash flow after expenses. So I'm doing pretty well on that one. But $100,000 deals, go ahead. Sorry.
- [15:48]
A
No, I just said it's, it's cool because it's like I love you. Like, yeah, it's, it's not over because it's what you did with the money, you know, and it's, it's not as much about how much money you make one time, one day, but it's like how much money can you keep making again and again and again? So I love it. It's like, oh, you took that and you recycled that. And really the deal has paid you way more than that because you've been cash flowing 1500 bucks a month for who knows how long. And then I'm sure there's equity that's been built up in that, that duplex as well. So it's awesome.
- [16:19]
B
Now I have $120,000 line of credit thanks to Felipe Mejia, who you had on your podcast earlier. Yeah, on that, on that duplex, I have 1500 dollars cash flow plus I went through experience. So flip flipping a Property doing the 1031 exchange and I'm cash flowing. So it's an insane. I guess everything all at once is a lot, but overall it's, it's a cool deal, dude.
- [16:44]
A
That's awesome, man. That's awesome. Yeah, there's. There's a few ways to, I don't want to say avoid capital gains tax on your primary, but, like, if. If you moved because your family's growing or because your job force you, like, there's a. There's a few different loopholes that your CPA can probably help you with that are, like, legal loopholes to. To get around that, but. Dude. So cool. I love that. And it's interesting because, like, in retrospect, it's. It's not that long. It happens so fast. You know, a lot of people, like, oh, like, it's so tough to get started and. And looking back, you know, you spent those late nights and going from getting off work, I'm sure the last thing you felt like doing was going and actually doing physical, you know, labor. But you did that. And looking back, I'm sure it was all worth it.
- [17:33]
B
Thousand percent. I'll do it over again.
- [17:36]
A
That's so cool. Yeah. And it's, I think, like, in the moment, it's hard to see that going through it. It's hard to see, like, this is all going to be worth it and this is going to set me up. And we talk about, like, the. The power of momentum in real estate investing, and you just need to get that momentum sometimes. And sometimes it's just like anything to get momentum going. You know, you're talking about the snowball or the rock or the vehicle you got to push. Like, that's the hardest part, is to get it going. Like those late nights, that's the hard part. You know, putting in the extra time, sacrificing, you know, saving up your money, doing, that's the hard part. But once it gets going, it's really hard to stop. And it gets easier and easier and easier. And so I love your story. Cause it's kind of proof of that.
- [18:21]
B
I appreciate you, my guy. Absolutely. And for those of you out there that I'm not sure how many of you listeners are new investors or seasoned, but even if you're new guys now, every time I talk about this story, I always think of beginner's luck, right? So I. I might have been lucky, but at the end of the day, I took action. I thought creatively, and things worked out. I was scared shitless every single day that I was going out. Then I'm like, every. Things were just popping up out of nowhere, and it was scary. But like Brody said, is, it's a snowball effect. Once you start it, it just keeps on Building and building and building. And then you realize at the end that this was definitely a good decision.
- [19:05]
A
What would, what would you say Antona, like looking back kind of your whole experience with that if you were to one, one, like hey, I learned this from this deal. And then two, giving people advice to go and replicate it or similar. What, what advice would you give?
- [19:28]
B
So one is don't be afraid to be creative and don't be afraid to negotiate with the seller. That is based on the purchase price, based on the purchasing terms. Don't be afraid because at the end of the day they can just say no and you're back at point A. So that's one of the biggest things that I say I would learn from that deal and in terms of replicating it, I think one of the benefits and one of the key things that really helped me here is that this deal was off market, right. So I was able to lock it up at a very competitive price at 115 and sell it for 225. So don't be afraid to look for off market deals. And there's different avenues out there. REI Colson is one of them. But you don't have to go to REI Colson and go, go, go door knocking go find an off market deal because that is where you have the most equity and that is where you have, you can take the most risk with rather than trying to compete on market and paying the value of the home and then trying to make some money at the end it works. You can definitely find deals but it's going to be a lot harder. So I would say especially if you're a beginner investor, try to find something off market.
- [20:38]
A
That's awesome. I had somebody text me yesterday that's in real estate investing school, just a student and they just locked, they went under contract yesterday on a seller finance deal and they were just raving about like how cool it is and man, like this is so different. We literally don't have to worry about the banks. Like we, we've negotiated things that, that work for both of us and it's a win, win scenario and it's like, it's so different and creative and something you would never ever, ever do like getting financing from a bank. But he's like, it's just so cool we can do this. And he was just pumped on it, you know and he's going to make good money from the deal. But dude, such good advice, such a cool story and look at you now. That's awesome, dude. I want you to maybe just tell people if they want to follow you, learn more from you, where's a good place to find you? And and also where can they learn more about REI call center if that's something they're interested in? I know that with real estate investing school, we're in the process of negotiating something so we can get our, our students to have, have. Have dibs on that and get it for a good price. But yeah, where can we find more about you?
- [21:51]
B
Sure thing, my guy. Absolutely. So my number one source of social media, I guess, is Instagram. I'm always on Instagram. DM me, guys. I'm always answering DMs, but my handle is Anton Zrei. And in terms of learning about REI call center, you can definitely visit our website or just shoot me a dm. We can jump on a quick zoom call and I can walk you through the process. But definitely, even if it's not about REI call center, if you just have general questions about real estate. Guys, I only started this like Brody said three years ago. So. And I still feel like I'm learning and I'm getting better every single day. Don't be in one thing that I remember or know that. Why. One of the biggest reasons for my success is because I was able to surround myself and ask questions from people like Brody, people like Felipe Gonzalo. As I mentioned on the. On the call. Yes. A few minutes ago. Don't be afraid to reach out to people and ask questions. Right. And definitely make sure that you're not waste wasting their time. But don't be afraid to reach out. I always try to help as much as I can, especially if you are asking a good question. Right. Something that I can add value with. But yeah, Anton's. The REI reicallcenter.com is our website and I can't wait to come back on the show Brody to talk more about REI call center because it is really unique business that we got into and it's really cool to help people do this before.
- [23:18]
A
Yeah. 100. It's fun jamming on on it and it's cool seeing what you've done. Dude, thanks so much for hopping on and thank you guys for tuning in today and listening. Remember, remember, it's not about what you know, it's about what you do. Right? So don't just take the knowledge, don't get motivated, but actually go out and act on it. Put it into practice. Show something, get something out of it. Right? Like it. Real estate investing has the power to change your life. If you apply the principles. If you don't like it might change your mindset. But it's not going to change your life. So let it change your life by taking action. Much love, guys, and we will see you next time.