Learn this week’s Best Ever guest’s best ever books, real estate deals, ways to give back and biggest mistakes
Best Ever Book – Visioneering by Andy Stanley
Best Ever Deal Travis has Done – Six-figures profit on a short-sale deal
“[It was a] really desirable area near Eugene. It took over a year to finish it, to close on it.”
“As soon as we looked at it, even online [and] looked at comps and stuff, we knew that it was a great area, great property. We really wanted to have it. Even before we looked at it, we said, ‘If we can get this anywhere near $300,000, it’s a deal.’ So we met with the sellers, they were very cooperative – he was actually a parent attorney, so he knew a little bit about the legal process.”
“It took a long time, a lot of handholding – I don’t mean that in a condescending way. Just walking him through the process and negotiating with the banks, meeting the agent there, dealing with all kinds of liens that popped up with credit cards, and just going through that whole process.”
“We ended up buying it for $244,000 I think, so just right out of the gate we had probably $50,000 in equity, and then it was a light rehab. Of course, over the years, from when we started to when we finished, that area went through the roof even in property values. It probably went up double digits, so we ended up with over a hundred thousand dollars in equity when we ended up closing on it, finished rehabbing and then appraised.”
Best Ever Way Travis Likes to Give Back – Donating to Charity
“I think it’s just the lifestyle. It’s really [about having a] plan. All of us can give emotionally when we see the kid on TV with the belly sticking out, but I think giving is really a lifestyle, so it’s planned. We plan that we’re going to give a certain amount. We’re not just surprised at the end of the year when we do our taxes.”
Biggest Mistake Travis Has Made So Far In Real Estate – The deal that kept getting worse and worse
“Bought at auction, so of course it’s done [since we] paid cash. Trusted a partner who … was outside of his area of expertise as well. Then we made it worse by over-rehabbing it by about double. Then we made it worse still by selling with seller financing – not that that’s a bad strategy in general, but just delaying our misery. And then [we] ended up taking the loss I think two years after we bought it.”
“We should have just swallowed the poison a couple of years earlier and taken a loss.”
Best Ever Book – Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill
Best Ever Personal Growth Experience – Investing in First Deal
“I’m going to have to say it was buying the quadplex. It’s been about a year and a half now since we bought it. We had to do so much work to it. We really took ownership of it and we really did a great job, I feel.”
“Our tenants really love their units. We do a good job maintaining that tenant/landlord relationship with them. So just this whole experience of stepping towards financial freedom – this experience has been great for the both of us, as a family.”
Best Ever Way Sunny Likes to Give Back – Mentoring
“My wife [and I] are assisting young adult pastors at our local church, so we give back that way.”
“Recently, I’ve been getting very much into mentoring people through breaking habits from pornography – that’s recently what I’ve bee diving into.”
Biggest Mistake Sunny Has Made So Far In Real Estate –
“Doing all [the rehab] work ourselves. We had a lot of holding costs. It was completely vacant when we bought it, so it took us like three months to do all that work. Honestly, I think we could have probably saved some money if we had hired some contractors to help us out, because I’m working full-time and my wife was actually on maternity leave with a baby, so it’s hard for her to do a lot of things.”
“If we had hired contractors, yes, we would have had to pay them a lot of money, but we were also paying the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance – all of that without having any tenants to helps us out. That was kind of painful.”
“If I were to do it again, I’d definitely do some of the work, but I’d hire a lot of it out as well.”
Here is a summary of Sunny’s Best Ever advice: Guide to House Hacking Your First Investment Property
Best Ever Book – Secrets of The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker
Best Ever Deal Matt has Done – Subject-to Million Dollar Flip
“The best ever deal I did was a 17-unit apartment complex. I did the deal subject-to. The scenario was the owner was an absentee landlord. They were underwater, and they were basically on their way to losing the property. I was able to structure the deal subject-to the existing loan, and it was one of those deals where everything lined up perfectly.”
“The mortgage balance was 50% below market, the interest rate was excellent, and they were motivated. They were over 120-days delinquent, and I was able to provide a win/win scenario by making their mortgage current, making their taxes current, and then giving them some cash to do the deal.”
“It worked out that we acquired the property for just under $560,000. Total cash out of pocket was $25,000 and total rehab was about $100,000. After about 14-months, we sold the property for just over a million dollars.”
Best Ever Way Matt Likes to Give Back – Setting his family up for success
“I love to give back to my family. I grew up in a middle-class family. My parents did the most that they could do for us, but we certainly were never in a position to get ahead or to invest in real estate or to put money away. It was kind of paycheck-to-paycheck deal. My mom is the hardest-working person I’ve ever met. She’s worked every day of her life and never complained about it once, so last summer I called her up – it was actually on the 4th of July, and my mom always drove kind of like a beater, it you will.”
“She had this Ford Taurus and it was always breaking down on her. I never liked the fact that it was just like an unreliable car for her, and I’ve got two little boys, so I wanted her to have something that she could take the grandchildren around and take them out or whatever they wanted to do. So I just called her up and I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to come pick you up’ and I drove her over to the Honda dealership in town and I said, ‘Mom, I just want to let you know that I appreciate everything you did for me and I want to buy you a car. Whatever you want, please pick it out.’”
“For me, it was a blessing to be able to do that for my mom because a that point her whole face lit up. She couldn’t fathom the idea of being able to go and pick out any car and not have to worry about the price or the payment. That for me was just a total enjoyable experience. So my big why in this business is to take care of my family and set up a generational opportunity for my kids. That for me is why we can get up everyday and do this business.”
Biggest Mistake Matt Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Not understanding the value he brought to the table
“To be honest with you, I’ve never lost money on a deal, thank goodness. I thought about this questions, and I think the biggest mistake I’ve made earlier in my career was not understanding my value that I was bringing. I would tend to give away a lot in the deal just to please the other person or improve my worth to others.”
“I think now as I have gotten more entrenched in my business and learned more of the value that I bring, I’m a little bit more apt to negotiation and make it a two-way street, if you will. I try to provide value at all times to my clients, but I never want to give away too much.”
Here is a summary of Matt’s Best Ever advice: How to Net Over $1 Million a Year Wholesaling Real Estate
Best Ever Book – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Best Ever Deal Steve has Done – Distressed “single-family” property
“Definitely the deal we did in suburban Atlanta. It was actually a duplex community, and the property was being run more like a single-family neighborhood than a multifamily property. It was in big distress, so we came in and purchased the property all cash, because it was a mess, so it wasn’t financeable.”
“To give an example, it was in such bad condition after the foreclosure that there were residents who instead of reporting a termite infestation, [they] would just put posters up over the holes in the wall, and wouldn’t even report it because they didn’t think anybody would fix anything. So we really had to sell the vision on that one of what we could turn it into [and] the transformation we could make.”
“We were able to do it. Four years later, it’s worth about three times what we paid for it. And we were able to finance out all of our capital, and it’s been a great deal. We basically turned it form a single-family neighborhood into a multifamily property.”
Biggest Mistake Steve Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Buying in 2006
“It’s actually on my own personal house. I bought a house at the absolute worst time in 2006. I always laugh about it because I’m a real estate person and I still bought a house in 2006, at the absolute worst time. Just going back and thinking about it, it’s funny. I think we all ignored a lot of the signs that some of this stuff didn’t make sense and we all paid the price. But hopefully, we came out the other side better for it.”
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