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Stay Paid Podcast
How We Closed 40 Transactions from Absentee Owners
00:39:35
Stephen Acree of Acree Brothers Realty Team shares the exact strategies his team used to find, pitch, and close 40 deals with absentee owners last year. Discover what motivates absentee owners to sell and the importance of having the right data,...
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- [00:01]
Luke Acree
Welcome to the Stay Paid podcast where we help agents and entrepreneurs master the latest business trends to unlock growth and create a life of freedom. Brought to you by Reminder Media.
- [00:11]
Joshua Stike
Welcome to Stay Paid. My name is Joshua Stike.
- [00:13]
Luke Acree
And I'm Luke Acree.
- [00:14]
Joshua Stike
And today we have on the episode, Stephen Acree and Cody Smith of the Acree Brothers Realty Team, the number one real estate team in Lynchburg, Virginia. We're going to talk about a strategy here within real estate sales for absentee owners.
- [00:29]
Luke Acree
So, so get listings. Yeah, so if you're, if you're looking to generate listings, you got to pay attention to this one.
- [00:34]
Joshua Stike
That is, that is what this episode is going to be about. We don't have a. We don't have another guest.
- [00:38]
Luke Acree
No, I wanted to do this one because we're writing an article for BAM.
- [00:42]
Joshua Stike
Yeah.
- [00:42]
Luke Acree
So everybody knows we're partners. BAM Media. BAM.
- [00:45]
Joshua Stike
Is it now BAM.com or BAM? Yeah, now BAM.
- [00:47]
Luke Acree
Yeah, now BAM.com. so check it out. They put out the best content. Shout out to Byron and Eric and all them over there, but we're writing an article for them and it's going to be on essentially, the title of the article is 40 listings in the Past Year from Absentee Owners. Here's how. And so if you're finding this podcast because of that BAM article, welcome. Listen to this podcast because we're going to walk you through. Stephen and Cody have crushed it in this lead gen strategy of absentee owners. So I want them to kind of break down how they're doing it so you can go replicate the success. How many deals are you guys at right now, Stephen, for. For the year?
- [01:23]
Stephen Acree
249.
- [01:24]
Cody Smith
Yep.
- [01:25]
Stephen Acree
Yep. 249 on.
- [01:27]
Joshua Stike
And we're recording this the day before Thanksgiving.
- [01:29]
Luke Acree
Yes.
- [01:29]
Joshua Stike
Contact everybody.
- [01:30]
Luke Acree
Yeah. Yep. So you're about 249 deals in. So you guys are crushing it. You have a myriad of lead gen campaigns. Obviously Serve Influence is most popular. And then you go down to paid leads and absentee owners. I'm calling it Absentee Owners. But do you want to walk people through kind of the steps of what you guys do, how you came across this as a Legion strategy and why it's working?
- [01:51]
Stephen Acree
Well, the cool thing is, and we were just talking before this podcast about Tim Heil and Ryan Young, and you know, I've been watching them for years, but we have been doing the strategy. It's the same exact strategy. Because what we recognized is like we're not after buying properties and we'll go over the whole idea here, but we're not just after buying properties, we're after getting leads.
- [02:14]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [02:14]
Stephen Acree
That will turn into listings. And when you can funnel both of those things together, where like we're calling one lead source to get two sources of income, we can either do a flip prop rental property or we can list the property. It's just a beautiful thing. And what we recognized as well is there's just so many of these leads out there.
- [02:32]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [02:33]
Stephen Acree
And there's one motivational piece for these leads too. So it makes the script extremely easy to figure out people's motivation because you pretty much know it before you're making the call.
- [02:42]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [02:43]
Stephen Acree
So an absentee owner basically is. Is someone not living at the property.
- [02:46]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [02:47]
Stephen Acree
So you have a myriad of things that could be not receiving rental income on the property. They could have, you know, not been performing very well. Right. You have a 400 rent when it could be 800 bucks.
- [02:58]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [02:59]
Stephen Acree
For rent, could be that the house is dilapidated. And of course we'll go after that for a flip or go after that for selling it to our investors and then they'll fix it up and then we'll get another listing out of it. It's just a lot of things there. But yeah, we have.
- [03:14]
Luke Acree
You guys have a threefold approach in the sense of you yourself buy properties and flip them and hold them for rentals. Then you have investors that you and the team have and you're, you know, kind of that are in the area that want you to find deals for them. And then third would be, obviously you are a real estate team listing properties. And so did the absentee owners come out of just the necessity of trying to find flips yourself and it turned into the listings or opposite?
- [03:44]
Stephen Acree
The opposite, yeah. So I heard a guy, I think it's. And something Morin. Do you remember that guy, Brandon Mulren? Maybe.
- [03:53]
Luke Acree
Yeah. He's really popular on YouTube, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, yeah.
- [03:56]
Stephen Acree
And he's awesome and he's doing a lot of coaching and stuff. But I heard him early on, like, I think a year after starting in the business, and he was talking about absentee owners and I was like, ah, this genius. Because of the same reason I'm like, their motivation is going to be high.
- [04:08]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [04:09]
Stephen Acree
So if you have someone that has a property they're not in, they're not living at.
- [04:12]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [04:13]
Stephen Acree
And it's rented. There's so many options there. Rented. It could be underperforming. They could be tired.
- [04:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [04:20]
Stephen Acree
Of renting the property. It's a lot of management heavy. And we Found a bunch of other things that we'll go into a little bit here. Just about the, the people that are going to the target, people that will want to sell. But I heard him earlier on. I called and got an opportunity to list some properties, but the guy was like, I don't want to put these on the market. He's like, I don't want to scare my tenants. And so if you have an investor for these properties, great, you know, make me an offer. And I got off the phone and I actually called Luke. I called you Luke, because I was like, why are we not investing in this properties?
- [04:57]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [04:57]
Stephen Acree
So I told him he could get 300,000 for three properties. And we just got off. The phone I got for Luke was just like, go, yeah, do it. You just like go for it. So I called the guy right back. I was like, hey, decision too.
- [05:10]
Luke Acree
They didn't pay off.
- [05:11]
Stephen Acree
Kidding. Those are actually some of our best performance. We kept two of them, sold one of them to pay for the other two. But anyways, I told him, yeah, hey, we offered 200,000. When I told him he could get 300,000 on the market and he ended up accepting. We met somewhere in the middle, like 220,000, 230, something like that, but ended up getting the properties.
- [05:33]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it's. That's pretty insane. So walk through then. You know, how does someone go and get these absentee owners? Like that's step one. Where do you find them?
- [05:41]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of sources to get absentee owners. And actually, I mean, if you want to tackle this, you can. Yeah, yeah.
- [05:48]
Cody Smith
And it's a little bit broader than just absentee. So like circle prospecting on how we do it. And what I love about this strategy is that anyone can do it. It's 100% action based. So you can do it as an individual agent looking for yourself. You can do it with a team of ISAs, which we have two ISAs that we use. But Steven started this by individual agent doing himself. So this can apply to anyone that can take the action on this. And the simplest way to do it through circle prospecting is you pull up two websites, you pull up the Parcel viewer, and then you're going to pull up white pages, which is a public phone book. So you're going to pull up the white pages and then you can, you can use, and we often use like if there's a listing already on there or if your client says their house they're looking for, you can look at that neighborhood, but you Just circle that neighborhood. You pull all the names and addresses and then you look them up in white pages and then you put them toward the do not call us to make sure they're not on that. And then you call them.
- [06:47]
Stephen Acree
Yeah. Earlier. And that is what I did early on, just so you know. So like instead of spending money on a big list or something like that, I would actually drive for dollars, you know, So I would pinpoint the properties that looked like absentee owner property, and then I would pull them up in parcel viewer, take the address to white pages, look it up. You have, you know, three people that may own it, something along those lines and call through those numbers. And they're fairly accurate for the most part. But then obviously, as you scale this thing up, you want to buy, you know, big data list.
- [07:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [07:20]
Luke Acree
Where have you guys purchased the list from?
- [07:23]
Cody Smith
Yeah, Deal Machine has probably been our biggest one this year. Yeah, we've got a lot of deals from. So Deal Machine was big. We've done Pioneer before as well.
- [07:34]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, Pioneer Data Solutions.
- [07:35]
Cody Smith
Yep, yep. And so but another common question is like, hey, do I need to get a dialer like a Mojo or something like that? And we actually found our ISAs would prefer just to call with their regular number than using a Mojo dialer. The pickups are better. They like the numbers. So the list you get through Mojo, they actually did prefer them. And our success rate was higher when we just did the actual pulling our numbers ourselves. It takes more time, but it seems to be more accurate.
- [08:01]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, it says the answer rate, go ahead.
- [08:05]
Luke Acree
Do you not have a local area code for the Mojo dialer?
- [08:08]
Cody Smith
A local.
- [08:09]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, we do. Yeah. So you can set the phone number.
- [08:12]
Luke Acree
Interesting.
- [08:13]
Stephen Acree
I think it shows up more as spam because like when you're triple dialing people, you'll get a, you know, you'll get some people answering more in a triple dial rather than a double dial and you know, they'll say something to that effect. But we just found we have more conversations when we're doing it. We actually do it through follow up boss on the number unfollow boss than we will through like a mojo number. For whatever reason. You can try both those things out. But that's what we found.
- [08:40]
Cody Smith
Yep. And then I think a key nugget that Steven just said that don't miss is the double dialing.
- [08:45]
Stephen Acree
Yeah.
- [08:46]
Cody Smith
So every single person we call, we call twice and sometimes three times. So that's a, A key. A key thing you can't miss because most pickups are actually going to be on that second call.
- [08:56]
Luke Acree
So let's talk about how many dials you have to make to get somebody on a phone call that you guys are seeing. And then let's talk about the actual phone call.
- [09:07]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, and, and let's look at it like. Cause you're going to hear a big number, right? You know, people are going to hear a big number. But then you really relate that to 40 listings. I mean, it's well worth it. But we've, we've gone on just so people understand, probably 100 plus appointments.
- [09:22]
Cody Smith
We looked at it this week and it was 100, like eight appointments that we went on this year.
- [09:26]
Stephen Acree
Yep.
- [09:28]
Luke Acree
Boys, come on, you gotta.
- [09:32]
Stephen Acree
Well, we've, we've figured out two things there. One is your systems and operations have to be really, really good. So we're doing it with the isa. We have them go out to the property first for a video to send it to us, and then we'll set up the appointment for the person to come into the office and for us to list the property. So that's, that's one way you can handle it. And then. Man, I lost my train of thought there.
- [09:56]
Luke Acree
Well, my, my top. You were saying you've gone on 108 appointments or so you've closed 40. I mean, that's still amazing for what you're doing in this kind of cold outreach. Why didn't the other, you know, whatever, 68, not close and that, that's what.
- [10:11]
Stephen Acree
I was going to get into too. It's the, it's the data. So your script has to be really good to pull out as much data on the phone call as you possibly can. Because, you know, a lot of people, everyone's going to throw out a price. For instance, if you have a house that's worth 250,000, everyone's going to say they want more for that property. Because that's what you would do as a consumer, right? You'd be like, if it's 250, if I tell for 270, yeah, do this deal, right. So whatever's on their mind on price, where they feel like they're going to win, they're going to up it right for that. So I think it's not the 108 appointments. A lot of it was you didn't get the price. How come we don't know the price that they want for this property before we go out there? Are they super unreasonable? What's their motivation, right, to sell this? Because if their motivation's not high, that makes sense.
- [10:59]
Luke Acree
You're basically taking Someone who is in the unaware thing and instantly trying to move them to bottom of funnel. So there's going to be a way less conversion on that. Even though I think 40 out of 108 is fantastic. I guess my question is the 68, you're obviously nurturing still and drifting on to hopefully eventually get them to turn into transactions. But this is 40 within the. In a year that you're closing. Talk about then the number of dials to pickup and, you know, ability to pitch them.
- [11:32]
Cody Smith
Yeah, and I'll say too, for the nurtures, one thing we do is actually drip them on the magazine. So once we meet them, we'll add that in and then our plan of action is like quarterly calls from there to keep in touch. So that's how we do our nurtures. Unless obviously it was like a hard, hard now, you know, we tried and tried and they're like, nah, we're not this hard for us. Which the key phrase to that actually is someone says is you find out if it's their dream home. So if they find, hey, this is my dream home. Yep, I'm in it forever. It's good, sweet. Move on. I don't keep on to try to convince someone to sell. It's not gonna sell. That's not our goal. Our goal is to find the person that isn't. But yeah, our goal is so two for a second.
- [12:13]
Luke Acree
There is. Isn't an absentee owner someone who doesn't live in the property? So you're almost, I guess you're, you're essentially. We could call this strategy a cash offer strategy, but the main source of leads you're going after is absentee. They don't live in that property. But you're also doing this for essentially circle prospecting as well, which is you're calling just random homeowners and offering them a cash offer based upon your intuition of the market or whatever.
- [12:43]
Stephen Acree
Yep. Yeah. And I mean like it's the same kind of concept if it's an investment property for someone you know, is this, you know, you know, how, how well do you like this asset? You know what I mean? You know, I mean, like, are, are you guys really proud of this investment? What are you making? Because once you dig into the numbers, man, it's surprising how many investors, once you dig into it, like we just got a listing the other day from this strategy and they, they're losing money, you know, on the property, they just don't know it.
- [13:06]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [13:07]
Stephen Acree
So then when you go over forma with them and show them where they're losing money. And you go, hey, why don't we put this into another investment? You, you're not losing because the equity in this home is going to get you a good return. They're going to still end up with 30% return on the investment. They're just not cash flowing. You know, they're. They're losing money every month in the cash flow. And so why don't we take that 30% that you're going to win and take it into another asset that's performing well.
- [13:33]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [13:33]
Stephen Acree
And, you know, get you on your way to more investment properties. So essentially, we're going to get another deal out of this person. We just got a listing. We're going to get another buy once they get that money going to put into another investment property.
- [13:44]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it's beautiful.
- [13:46]
Cody Smith
So the goal is to call a hundred people a day. We'll double dialing, so it's really 200 calls. We'll average, I would say, around eight conversations, from five to 10 conversations in a day from those a hundred calls. And out of that, it's getting one appointment from there.
- [14:01]
Luke Acree
Okay.
- [14:02]
Cody Smith
And those are usually our average, you know, the average down the line. So the goal will be at least five appointments a week, um, yada, yada.
- [14:10]
Luke Acree
Okay. And then out of the appointments, your strategy is you're sending the ISA out to first vet the property, basically get you more details on it, and then you're, you're deciding whether or not you, you know, kind of walk through the different ways you can pitch our SOP.
- [14:30]
Stephen Acree
For this is basically they find out what the, the person's motivation is. They find out how much money they want for this property. They send it to Cody, me and Mark. We determine if it's already a great deal for an investment property, then we will go to that, that appointment, like 100%. If you, if you got a great lead.
- [14:49]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [14:49]
Stephen Acree
You better go close that lead as soon as possible. If we get it and there's, you know, you know, hey, they want something that sounds a little bit above what we'd be willing to pay. We just don't know enough facts because we haven't seen the property, then we will send the ISA out there to get more data on that property. So they'll go through, and their SOP is video, everything, picture of everything, the age of H Vac, windows, roof, Right. Whether or not the foundation's good, all of those things. So they'll determine all of that, send that back to us, and then they'll call and set up an Appointment for the person to come in to the property or to the office, or if we, you know, need to, we'll go out, you know, for an appointment at, you know, their, their location.
- [15:33]
Cody Smith
I've got like a full list of things they need to find out that they take with them so they can fill it out so we get exactly the information that we need. And all this was learned. Like, we didn't, we didn't have, like this system in place and we were wasting a lot of time. So we really had to drill down on efficiency, especially when you're starting to scale, to do that. But that's, again, why I love it, is that you could use the individual agent, just do it all yourself. But the more that you do, you're going to have to put some types of systems in place if you want to actually get that number pretty high.
- [16:01]
Luke Acree
That makes sense. So you basically already know based upon what the intention is or the motivation is of that homeowner that, oh, Stephen wants less than what his property is worth on market right now. This might be an investment deal. Let's go that route. Oh, Stephen is too close to this estimate or over. This is going to be a listing presentation. Let's go that route. And so you're determining that based upon the buyer or the seller's motivation.
- [16:30]
Cody Smith
Right, Right. And I would say then when we get there, we give them typically the three options. Once we get to, like, the offer.
- [16:36]
Luke Acree
Phase, what's the three, what's the third options? Kind of walk through all three.
- [16:40]
Cody Smith
It would be, this is what we buy it for, this is what it would sell for as is, and this is what it would sell for renovated. So you won't always do the middle one. Right. Because if it's already, you know, kind of updated and stuff, you can just do that last price. But the first one is like, hey, and there's a pitch too, to all of it.
- [16:57]
Stephen Acree
Right.
- [16:57]
Cody Smith
So if we're going to buy it as is, know you can save your time. We, we can close in two weeks. If you're doing cash and we can get this, you don't have to worry about it anymore. Right. If you want to spend some more time in it, you potentially make some more money, but it's going to take more of your time. So it's the pitch of what? Yeah, everyone has its inequalities to it. You can pitch which one?
- [17:16]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, the key there too is it's so funny how transparency and educating people will get you a better deal all day long than if you're Trying to manipulate the situation. So, you know, we see a lot of wholesalers out there that will go in and they just won't share what the person can make on the market. And they end up losing in the long term because the person doesn't trust them.
- [17:37]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [17:37]
Stephen Acree
It's why, you know, all these big brands, they're like, educate, educate, give free information, because no one's going to go out and do it, right? Like, we just won't give free information to the consumer on the other end. Completely in transparency. And we, we win a lot of deals because of that.
- [17:52]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it makes so much sense. And I would assume, like, the, the piece I think of is like, well, how do you get to the actual appointment? So when you're making the. The phone call, that seems to me to be the hard part is like, how did the ISAs. How were you doing the script? Like, what's the pitch there?
- [18:12]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, well, the. The cool thing is if we go back to the beginning, we go. The motivational piece is already there, right? For someone. If I were to ask you, Luke, um, you know, if you received an offer on your property, would you be open to looking it over? Your first initial thought is, of course, I'm not tied to anything. I don't have to sign anything, right? And I get this free information about what someone's willing to pay, you know, for my property. And, you know, we were talking the other day in one of our meetings just about how the Zillow's estimate has become something where no one trusts. They. They go to it, they want to see it, but they don't trust it. Like, this is what my home's worth. Well, when you have a piece of paper in hand and this is what they're thinking, they're thinking they're, we're about to send them an offer. They know this is an offer. This is what my home, you know, I could get for my home, right? And the curiosity there, because it's such a soft close, the motivation is so high for people to say, well, of course, right? I'd be open to looking at ever. And then you go, well, tell me, what exactly do you want for it?
- [19:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [19:16]
Stephen Acree
And they're gonna go, they're. They're gonna have a couple responses. One is, they don't want to tell you, what do you think it's worth?
- [19:22]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [19:22]
Stephen Acree
And if they say, what do you think it's worth? We go, well, the Zillow's estimate, you know, has a range of 240 to 280. You know, on it. What do you think of that?
- [19:31]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [19:32]
Stephen Acree
And they're gonna go, they're Gonna like the 280 range, right? So they're gonna go, well, that's higher than their thought process. Of course it's higher than their thought process. Why? Because they probably looked online and they've saw the middle of that number.
- [19:45]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [19:46]
Stephen Acree
So I said two, I think 40 to 280. They're going to be like 260 is what they thought. So when they hear 280, their motivational, their, you know, their mind's going, can I get 280 for this property?
- [19:56]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [19:57]
Stephen Acree
And so you go, you know, they're going to say something to the extent of, I mean, that sounds about right. You go, great. What we need to do is we need to meet at the property, we need to see it, and then we can make an offer on your property. Because people are thinking they're going to get the offer instantaneously. And then now you've set them for the appointment because their excitement, motivation is high towards that. And then we go for the close. You know, what does your schedule look like Monday or Tuesday of this week? The mornings or afternoons work better for you, right? And then you go, how does 4 or 5 o'clock do most people.
- [20:31]
Luke Acree
Sorry, Cody. Do most people give you an offer or are you going this estimate, route range, majority of the call.
- [20:39]
Stephen Acree
It depends on how high the motivation is.
- [20:41]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [20:42]
Stephen Acree
So we get a lot of people if they're, I mean, if they give us a price right off the bat, their motivation's high at that point.
- [20:47]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [20:48]
Stephen Acree
And like I said before, you have a lot of people, everyone will go higher than what they think it's worth.
- [20:55]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [20:55]
Stephen Acree
But the key factor is you're. No one's checking the market like we're checking the market daily.
- [21:01]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [21:01]
Stephen Acree
And if we go into the target, which our targets, Baby boomers. So people know we can go into that in a second. But when you're targeting someone like that, that hasn't watched the market in 10 years, doesn't want to manage their property anymore because they want to retire, right. They're going to throw out a number when it's worth 250, they're going to say something like they think it's worth 150 and they're going to throw out 170.
- [21:23]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [21:23]
Stephen Acree
And so right away you have, you're going to have an appointment for that. And then we go out and we go, well, here's what you could get on the market. You could get 250 if you listed this property, they. Most people, honestly, it's kind of shocking. Don't, I think, believe you that you can get that? So when you offer them 170, at that point, they want the set 170, that's set in stone, bought because they.
- [21:47]
Luke Acree
Bought it for 80, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years.
- [21:51]
Stephen Acree
Property under contract we're about to close on, that's worth about 195. We're picking it up for 160. And we told her, you can get one 95 on the market, right? You will be able to get 195 on the market. And she, you know, the tenants in there right now, that's paying a little bit lower rent. So she doesn't want to go through that. So she said she'd sell it to us for 160. And I think we're getting 3% back in closing costs as well.
- [22:14]
Cody Smith
That's the same with the duplex that we're buying. So investor wanted to sell his property. You know, I said, hey, I'd be interested in buying this. This would go on the market for 260, potentially higher. But you wouldn't need to renovate the kitchen and do this instead. I would buy it for 2:15 and then I'll take care of the rest. He countered. We countered back. We set out 220, and then I got 10k in seller assist. So it's 230. So 10k to do the kitchen renovation and do all the work. So. But he could list. Do it himself for 260.
- [22:43]
Luke Acree
Yeah, that's. That's crazy. Yeah, it makes so much sense. You know, we've talked about this a little bit. I believe the cash offer is the new cma because people are used to the instant valuations that you're getting from the Zestimates and the Rocket mortgages and stuff like that. So they, like you said, there's an inherent, like, is that real? But when someone says, I'll give you this offer, call it a cash offer, just a straight offer, right? You're real offer. So they take that as this is a real value. And we're seeing this in marketing, when, you know, you guys are doing it manually, but you can even see. Send emails out to your database. You can send mailers out going, hey, get an instant cash. Cash offer on your home. Get an offer on your home. And people are responding to that stuff. And here's.
- [23:28]
Stephen Acree
Here's what we know from phone calls. I don't know as much in the call to action from marketing, which is what you Know, obviously we're getting ready to launch and test, but we, we want to push instant offer. We don't actually want to push cash offer because people have put in their mind that a cash offer means a low offer on the table. An instant offer doesn't necessarily mean low offer. And so that's just what we've seen on our side. We'll have to, you know, play it out for the marketing side, for call to call to actions, especially investors. Yeah.
- [24:01]
Cody Smith
Because investors, that's what they're doing. Right. You know, cash offers to get a great deal.
- [24:05]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:06]
Luke Acree
So really leading with instant offer, but coming in and going, hey, I'll buy it for cash, which means it's guaranteed and I can close within 15 days, 30 days, whatever. Right, that, that, yeah, that's where that actually.
- [24:19]
Stephen Acree
Yeah. Keep in mind, don't normally. The ones we bought. If I could look back, they don't normally need a fast closing. It's not normally the motivation. It's normally like the price that they're getting for the property and what their belief is on price. But we, we closed most of ours in 45 days. So don't think that that is a, you know, something where someone's going to kick you out the door if you don't close in two weeks. Um, you don't, you could do a construction loan, a normal conventional loan, close in 45 days, duplex. We're closing in like, probably two months.
- [24:49]
Luke Acree
You know what, what do you say to an agent that goes, well, I don't have the money to offer an instant offer. Like, I can't fund that. Or I don't know people who can fund that. Like, what's your belief system there? What should they do?
- [25:01]
Stephen Acree
I think it's, it's a better opportunity for you as an agent.
- [25:04]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [25:05]
Stephen Acree
So, like, you don't need to invest. You're actually going to go, okay, well, if I don't have an investor, what do I need to do to get an investor? Well, what does an investor want? They want deal flow.
- [25:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [25:16]
Stephen Acree
And so you go, well, this is an easy way for me to pick up an investor to work with by saying, I have inventory of listings right off the market listings that I could provide you. And so that's helped us get multiple, multiple investors that we have two investors that one of our agents just picked up. They'll both do about 20 flips a year. So you're talking about 40 listings. And one of the reasons they're going with us is because we do have the opportunity for off the Market deals to provide them with. And so you're getting a double transaction in it. Most of the time you're getting the listing and the buy and then they're going to flip the property. So you're going to get a triple transaction on that one.
- [25:55]
Luke Acree
Such a good value add.
- [25:57]
Stephen Acree
Yep.
- [25:57]
Cody Smith
Such a good value. And I would say too, like even individual agent, you're part of some brokerage, you've got some other realtors in your life and realtors typically are investors. So there's gotta be people in your sphere of influence that you know that would actually buy it. So your head person at the brokerage, I guarantee you they most likely are investors. Go talk with them, like, hey, if I found you a great deal, would you put an offer on a house? Yeah, I would. Boom. You've got your person that you can say that now with, like, hey, I've got an investor that's looking. And then you can offer that.
- [26:26]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:28]
Luke Acree
There are also these I buying sites out there that will give you instant offers at the, at the. I mean those ones aren't going to be the best of deals probably ultimately, but at least allows you to fulfill what your promise was to that person.
- [26:43]
Stephen Acree
One probably helpful thing for people is you need to educate yourself. So when you're going into this property that you're going to feed to an investor, you really should be looking at it. If I were to buy this property, what would have to be done if I, if I'm truly doing a cma? CMA is not just pulling up listings and, and pictures.
- [27:01]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [27:01]
Stephen Acree
And going, okay, this is the square price per square foot. It's going into the details of going, well, this is an older kitchen, older plumbing. We have an older H Vac on this property. So if, if your target price for the comparable property has a new H Vac, it's been updated inside and all this good stuff. Okay, I need to do the updates to this property. This is what needs to be updated. So then run a perform on it.
- [27:27]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [27:28]
Stephen Acree
Get a contractor out there, a GC to tell you exactly what it would take to fix up the property and then pitch it to your investor. Because you'll, you'll become so much more valuable to the investor if you can show them that information and it not be pie in the sky. I think most people are trying to win investors by not saying sending them good deals.
- [27:45]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [27:45]
Stephen Acree
And you send them good or bad deals and then they're going to think that you're not real.
- [27:50]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it's the complete opposite. You're actually making sure they never work with you. When you.
- [27:55]
Stephen Acree
That is exactly right.
- [27:56]
Luke Acree
It all comes back to doing the work. It's like it's hard work to make 100 phone calls, really double dials 200 phone calls to get one appointment to try to find a deal. That's very difficult. So few will do it. So that value add to an investor because the investor is not going to do it. The investor's not going to. That's why they're an investor. They don't want to do that work. Right. It's very hard work to get the GC or the, you know, the contractor out there, the electrician, whoever it is, to figure out if this is real. Real. That type of idea. That's hard work. You bring that to the investor, they're just like, this is a dream come true. Of course I'm going to use you. And if you look at the top agents in all these areas, they tend to work with investors and builders and they have a source of deal flow that is consistent for them. And then they have their sphere and they have, you know, Zillow or Facebook ads or whatever. So it is, it's so interesting. Now, I think today's market really plays well to this strategy because inventory is still low, interest rates are still higher than what they were, even though historically they're not that high. So there's a lot of demand that if you can find a deal, you're almost not in every market but in most markets guaranteed to sell it.
- [29:12]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [29:13]
Luke Acree
You can renovate it, you know, and get it on market within 90 days or whatever. At least that's what we've seen. Yeah.
- [29:19]
Stephen Acree
And you start doing, the opportunities become better and better. Well, one, you can buy the property and do it yourself, but two, you can do a wholesale deal on it, right? So if you recognize, hey, all this, all these properties I'm feeding to my Investor, they're making 80 grand on it. I know my investor is happy with 50 grand. Why don't I wrap this up in a wholesale deal and sell it to them instead of making a commission check on it, I'm making a spread of 20k right on this wholesale deal. Like we just did one the other day with an investor where we made 20 grand. They're very happy to make us 20 grand. You know, we got them a property, right? So like, as you're doing it, just know you're educating yourself constantly so that you can make this really well worth it. And one of the things that we did recently is we recognized, hey, we're finding a bunch of listings where there's $60,000. It's taking a lot of time for us to run these listings. So why don't we set a standard for how much we're going to receive commission wise, like a flat rate.
- [30:16]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [30:16]
Stephen Acree
Instead of receiving 3% on a $60,000 property, we're going to receive $4,500.
- [30:22]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [30:22]
Stephen Acree
And so we just, you know, we, we're constantly changing that to go, okay, it's not smart time for a $60,000 property. It would be valuable enough for our time to make 4,500 on this as a flat rate. That's dude smart.
- [30:36]
Luke Acree
Yeah. And it's just a deal. The investor doesn't care as long as the numbers make sense return they're looking for.
- [30:41]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, right.
- [30:42]
Luke Acree
To pay you that.
- [30:43]
Cody Smith
Now we're going to be dedicated because if it's a 60,000, it's a location. It's hard. Like I've got a lot of things going on.
- [30:48]
Unnamed Speaker
All right.
- [30:48]
Stephen Acree
Yeah.
- [30:48]
Cody Smith
This is worth my time for it. So.
- [30:50]
Luke Acree
Yeah, that makes so much sense. Yeah, that's so interesting. And then you think about from a marketing standpoint, what's the number one thing that can help you get more listings is your current listing. And so in this, you are dialing for dollars to get the most valuable asset to help you get more listings. Those 40 listings spread your brand tremendously, gave you open houses to do which fee, which is a deal flow source for you. Gave you the ability to do mailers, gave you the like. It's so exponential and what this can grow for you. And what I love about it is it's not passive, it's a proactive activity. It's like everything else. Not everything, but a lot of things are very passive in the real estate industry because it's a relationship based business. So you're a waiting game trying to massage deals to happen. This is a proactive. I am just pounding these doors to find a motivated seller.
- [31:41]
Stephen Acree
Yeah.
- [31:41]
Cody Smith
The biggest thing that's helped with buyers actually with this is the off market deals. Because that is like one of our main pitches to get buyers is like if you want to work with us, you have to sign exclusive right to access the off market properties that we have. Last month we did six off market properties. So we're able to help clients a lot with that. We do that by dialing through.
- [32:00]
Luke Acree
That's so sick. What a great value add. Yeah.
- [32:04]
Cody Smith
So in order for them to get this off market, you're going to have to agree to partner with Me, you know, I would love to work with you and help you and show you these off market properties and even do some of this search for the house you want. But we got to be in business together.
- [32:15]
Stephen Acree
Yeah. Now we, how we do that too is because like, you can do exclusive rights within your own brokerage, right. So you can sign a listing agreement that's exclusive to your brokerage. And, and that's what we do. So like, you can't pitch it out to, from what we know here, you can't pitch it out to like other brokerages. Exp. Real. Right. And so we, we sign it exclusively to the team and then we feed the deals from there.
- [32:42]
Luke Acree
Yeah. It's so smart. Yeah. What great strategy.
- [32:45]
Stephen Acree
One of the things I said I'd talk on, well, I'll just do brief on this, but I thought this was the coolest thing. When I went to KW Mega Camp, there was this guy, I think Corey Vaden, something. Vaden maybe. Probably off. Rory. Yeah, Rory Vaden.
- [33:00]
Luke Acree
Because he a, he's a really popular motivational speaker, right?
- [33:03]
Stephen Acree
Yeah. And he was great, but he was talking, he does all these data analytics, right? So he was talking about baby boomers. And as he was speaking, I was like, this is exactly our target audience for all of these investment properties and absentee owners. So the facts on baby boomers is they're in the retirement age, right? So, you know, they don't want to hold on to a property that's not performing even if it is performing. They want to retire and they want to get that management heavy off their plate. They also hold the highest wealth in all of America.
- [33:42]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [33:43]
Stephen Acree
And so they, I think they hold 51% of all wealth in, in America. This is the generation that has all of the real estate, Right. And they don't want to own the real estate. They also are probably not following along with the market. You know, they've probably been doing this for a long time, so they're just done, you know what I mean? They want to retire. They don't want to check the market and see how appreciation has gone. So anyways, my, my point to that is, man, that audience, that target audience is so good to go out and get listings. And though we don't pull a list of, you know, baby boomers, I don't even think you can do that.
- [34:18]
Unnamed Speaker
Right.
- [34:19]
Stephen Acree
It might be against l like Target. It's just knowing that side when you're making a phone call, when you get someone, you immediately know what their motivation is going to be is the point.
- [34:30]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it's so good. Yeah, it's super, super smart.
- [34:34]
Stephen Acree
Yeah.
- [34:34]
Luke Acree
It makes you realize that it's. It's really just trying to get the value prop in front of the right people and not personifying your negative beliefs onto the deal. Like, the biggest mistake we see, like, at Reminder Media, and this is such a interesting comparison, is the sales caller will think that a $300 setup fee is a lot of money. And I remember a time in my life where I thought $300 was a lot of money. You might be thinking right now, listening to this podcast, well, $300 is a lot of money, Luke. It's not. It's all perspective. $300. So then take that now to the real estate side. You might be thinking, why would someone ever give up 30 grand worth of equity to get a quick one 70 when they could get, you know, 200? And you're like, because 30 grand doesn't mean that much to them. And you're personifying your belief of 30 grand onto them. And don't do that. Like, it's. It's such a thing in sales that people fall into that they don't realize that, hey, your belief about money, your belief about value, you're. You personify, don't do that. Literally go into with the value proposition and they take it, you know, and most of the time, you'll be shocked, because I've been shocked. Even some of the deals we've gotten just like, geez, man, these people, they're either dumb or they just don't care. And it's like, no, they just have a different value.
- [36:02]
Cody Smith
Yeah.
- [36:03]
Stephen Acree
And stop going into, like, people do take that and they go into it trying to hide information. If you're going into a property that's already been updated that looks really, really good and is going to be a fast sell on the market, I just tell them, hey, you do not want to sell this to us.
- [36:21]
Unnamed Speaker
Right?
- [36:21]
Stephen Acree
You don't want to sell this to us. Because my offer, honestly, you'd be insulted by my offer. Right. But we have to make margin, right. To make this work. What you want to do is you want to put this thing on the market and you can get this amount for the property. So just like when you go in, you're just educating people on what they should do in the situation.
- [36:40]
Luke Acree
And that's confidence. That's confidence because it's grounded in knowledge, which is grounded in integrity. And that's where confidence ultimately comes from, is your. Your knowledge and doing what you say.
- [36:49]
Stephen Acree
You'Re going to do.
- [36:50]
Luke Acree
And being a Person of integrity. Yeah, I love that. So good man.
- [36:53]
Joshua Stike
Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all that. Before we close out, let people know how they can connect with you, you if they have any questions.
- [36:59]
Stephen Acree
Yeah, yeah, we've been actually, I say this every time, but we get a lot of calls from this podcast. So reach out to me. I would love to share our techniques, exactly what we're doing. We're just transparent. We want to cut out the fluff. We want you to be successful. So feel free to reach out 434-216-5306 and then follow us on social Acre Brothers on Instagram and Acre Brothers Realty Team on Facebook.
- [37:22]
Cody Smith
Yeah, and I would say too, we've spoken at a lot of different market centers, going over the strategy in detail, doing the script, you know, working. So if anyone wants us to come and share and really, you know, present on how we do this in action, you know, we can do that too.
- [37:35]
Stephen Acree
Love that.
- [37:36]
Joshua Stike
That is awesome. Thank you. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've come from Luke's article, welcome to Stay Paid. We are happy to have here. Make sure to subscribe, hit the thumbs up new episodes every Monday. And if you're a Stay Paid listener and didn't come from from BAM, make sure to go to now BAM.com follow those guys. Those, they are incredible. And you can get all of Luke's articles there as well. You're a featured creator and have I've done some webinars and various speaking events with that that team over there as well. It's awesome. You can get all of the show notes and any of the resources that we mentioned over@staypaidpodcast.com you can subscribe to Stay Paid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or on our YouTube channel. And if you like this episode and want to show your support, go do that. It's the best way to show your support is share this episode with somebody that you know. If you do want to get a hold of me or Luke, you can email us@podcastmindermedia.com or you can follow and follow us. Message us over on Instagram. We're at Stay Paid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Styke.
- [38:34]
Luke Acree
And I'm Luke Acree. I am grateful for all of you listening to this. I know it comes out after Thanksgiving, but we are the day before.
- [38:41]
Stephen Acree
Thank you.
- [38:42]
Luke Acree
Never ends, it just flows. So thank you for listening. Please subscribe. Hit the like button. The strategy is simple. I would test this out. It's like Cody said, you don't have to have a team of ISAs. You can do this as a solo agent. You don't even have to buy the list of absentee owners. You can do it and drive around and look for, you know, houses that are a little run down. Or just apply it to circle prospecting. Apply the same type of concept of offering an instant offer to people in a neighborhood and utilize something that happened in that neighbor neighborhood as your reason to call. Maybe it was a listing, a sale, or something like that that came onto the market. Remember, the difference between top producers and mediocre producers in every business is top producers take action. Take action on that today.