Learn this week’s Best Ever guest’s best ever books, real estate deals, ways to give back and biggest mistakes
Best Ever Book – “It’s Your Ship” by Michael Abrashoff
Best Ever Deal Scott has Done – Million Dollar Profit on DC Condo Conversion
“[My best deal] was the condo conversion. We’ve been working on that — our plans went in in June 2016, and we actually split those plans into foundation plans and building plans, so that we could go ahead and get started with all the underpinning and foundation work that we needed to do, while the set of building plans was running its course through the normal application process.”
“We got a pretty sweet deal on that. We worked on it for about 18 months, trying to track down the owner, and just a random, fortuitous meeting at a corner bakery with an attorney to talk about another project, he referenced having a client with a property on L Street, and we immediately knew who it was. We had talked to the owner a couple of times and she had told us that she had an attorney and we didn’t think that it was even remotely possible, but it turned out it did. The financials are pretty good, we’re going to be all-in at a million and out at 2.6 million.”
“We’re actually taking a single-family and we’re digging out underneath it and we’re adding a floor and a half, so when we’re done we’ll have four two-bedroom, two-bath condos. Three of them will be about 1,000 square feet, and the third one will be about 1,300 to 1,400 square feet.”
Best Ever Way Scott Likes to Give Back – “Mentoring and Education.”
Biggest Mistake Scott Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Missing out a Multimillion Dollar Profit on Church
“We had the opportunity to buy a church that was right behind where my partner and I lived when we were in DC, and at the time they needed two million bucks to make the deal work, and we were pretty novice and had no idea about raising money, and we’ve been able to raise two million dollars in like two hours over the last couple months… So that deal, the guy that bought it is building 36 units there that will probably have a sales price of probably 22 million dollars for that deal. We could have had it, but we didn’t know how to raise money.”
Best Ever Book – “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis
Best Ever Deal Aaron has Done (As a Realtor) – Helping Friends Close a Deal
“I have very good friends that I got to write an offer for… I’ve actually done this twice now with friends, but one where we went and saw the house – it was the second house they saw – we walked in, they loved it, there was already an inspection done. I called the realtor and I said ‘Hey, my clients really love this place. Do you have an offer?’ They said, ‘Yeah, well we’ve just sent our counter-offer back to them but it’s not signed yet.’ I said, ‘Okay, well if I wrote you an offer at this price, could it bump the one you have?’ They said, ‘Yes, it could…’”
“So we sat down at a coffee house, we wrote up that offer, got it to them, they rescinded their counter-offer and accepted our offer. So while that’s clearly some other realtor’s least-favorite deal, that was my favorite. I loved being able to do that.”
Best Ever Way Aaron Likes to Give Back – Volunteering
“I do work with a company called Landmark Worldwide. It’s a company that’s committed to transformational leadership and transformational educational in the world, and I’ve been participating and leading programs with them for about 20 years. It’s a volunteer process for me, but man, to watch people step beyond who they know themselves to be and into a world where they become leaders in their own life… There’s just nothing like that.”
Biggest Mistake Aaron Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Failing to Conduct a Final Walkthrough with a Client
“There was [a deal] last year where I had this great client, I totally loved them – and they did love me, up until this – and the deal was sort of closed way too quickly. It was out of protocol; the whole thing was out of protocol. They were using Bank of America, which if I could make sure that none of your investors ever use the big banks, it would make me thrilled and happy.”
“So they were using a big bank, and I knew it, it was a problem all the way through the deal. The deal finally got approved and was ready to close on a Friday, and my client e-mailed me and said, ‘Can I please, please, please, please get in there this weekend? Can we close today?’ and I said ‘Yes,’ and I should have said, ‘Well, we really do need to do a walkthrough, which could postpone the close until Monday… But we should do a walkthrough. How do you want to do it?’ – and I didn’t say that, I just said yes.”
“We went ahead and closed, and then we did the walkthrough and the seller had left just a ton of stuff all over the house, and while I paid for the cleaner, I got it all cleaned up, my client was just heartbroken. They had gotten a house that was just so poorly maintained, and it all could have been avoided had I done the walkthrough, had I done what I know to do. They won’t use me again, it was a tough deal to put together, but I didn’t do what I know to do at the end, and it was just a shame. It was really disappointing.”
Related: Aaron’s Best Ever Advice – How to Find a “Commission-Free” Real Estate Agent
Best Ever Book – “Chase the Lion” by Mark Batterson
Best Ever Deal Susan has Done – Two Identical Properties Closing this Month
“[Two deals] that I’m going to close … on this month. On one I received two offers that went over the list price, and the second-place guy felt like he lost out, but instead I was able to come to him and tell him I have an identical property that I was going list that next week.”
“I was generally more excited for the second buy than he probably was, but I loved knowing that I could help him out, help veterans out and also put a deal under contract in zero days.”
Best Ever Way Susan Likes to Give Back – Tithing and Day-to-Day Giving Back
“I feel like a lot of times we wait until something happens before we can give back; I don’t need to wait until my career has hit a certain number or mark to give back. We can give back daily, which is what I do, whether it’s helping someone learn this business and make a little extra on the side, or whether it’s me tithing to support my friend in the Congo who’s taking care of the much less fortunate… I’m grateful I can do something to help.”
“I give back every day by doing what I do, which is why I love this business – I create jobs, I make homes beautiful, again… They were once beautiful and I’m making them beautiful again and I help new owners create beautiful communities.”
Biggest Mistake Susan Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Sooner, Rather than Later
“Well, the biggest mistake I was thinking would just be not to start sooner, but I can’t really focus on that because I’m here now, and I’m making the best of it. But if there’s a mistake… There’s always hurdles in this business, you just have to adjust to them. I guess for me maybe just this one deal – I took the owner’s report for the sewer, instead of doing my own sewer scope, and then I had to kind of change it.”
“After the whole project was done, the new buyers did a sewer scope and there was a crack, and I had to spend another $10,000 to fix it and change it. Maybe that one… I mean, there were still profits in the deal, and that’s 10k out of my pocket; my investors made every dime that they were promised… But maybe just not getting that sewer scope done sooner.”
Best Ever Book – “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”
Best Ever Deal David and James have Done – “The Hustler Building on Sunset Boulevard”
Best Ever Way David and James Like to Give Back – Animals and Homes for Families in Need
David: “I like to donate to animals, that’s where my heart lies. Because I don’t have kids at the moment, I have a lot of dogs, so for me it’s animals… And we also do give-back homes; we actually help families in need build houses, which is with an incredible organization that the agency is very strongly associated with.”
Biggest Mistake David and James Have Made So Far In Real Estate – Spending Too Much on a Website
James: “Our website – we spent an absolute fortune on creating our website, and then the reality of the world, we really didn’t need to go all out. But you learn from your mistakes. We were trying to launch our business and brand our business, and we probably spent $60,000 on a website, which in hindsight was a mistake. But you learn from your mistakes.”
Click Here to watch the full interview with James and David
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