Key Takeaways Note investing offers a highly flexible and passive alternative to traditional property ownership. Performing loans can provide consistent income and resilience in uncertain markets. Understanding creative finance opens powerful new options for both agents and investors. United States Real Estate Investor The REI Agent with Nathan Turner https://youtu.be/IqNSdPYXN38 Follow and subscribe to The REI Agent on social Facebook Instagram Youtube .cls-1fill:#fff; Linkedin X-twitter United States Real Estate Investor It's time to have an investor-friendly agent on your team! It's time to have an investor-friendly agent on your team! United States Real Estate Investor Discovering a New Frontier in Real Estate When most people hear “real estate,” they think about houses, rentals, or maybe the occasional flip. But in this riveting episode of The REI Agent, Mattias unlocks an entirely different strategy with note investor Nathan Turner, a strategy so overlooked, it might just be the secret sauce to long-term wealth and freedom. Nathan doesn’t own the properties. He owns the paper—the mortgages themselves. And in doing so, he’s created a system that’s not just lucrative but shockingly flexible in a world ruled by rigid banks and slow institutions. “Just keep going. There’s so much opportunity and so much to learn.” This conversation reveals how investing in notes isn’t some risky gamble; it’s one of the oldest, most reliable wealth-building tools ever created. In fact, it’s biblical. Literally. From Frustration to Fortune: Nathan’s Backstory Nathan Turner’s journey started like many investors, in the chaos of flipping houses during the mid-2000s boom. He bought properties across Canada, sleeping on floors with a tool bag and a dream. But when the market turned, he got burned. What came next? A powerful pivot. “I didn’t even know what I was doing was called note investing.” After accidentally creating seller-financed notes during a rescue mission for overvalued Midwest properties, Nathan found himself in a niche no one was talking about. He wasn’t just selling homes—he was creating income streams. And soon enough, he realized something profound: "If you buy the debt, you control the asset without the headache of ownership." Why Notes Might Be the Ultimate Passive Income Vehicle Nathan walks through how he shifted from buying non-performing loans to acquiring performing ones, notes that bring in steady monthly payments. The returns? Consistent. The effort? Minimal. “This is the mailbox money of all mailbox monies.” With his fund targeting a 12% yield, Nathan explains how investors can participate passively, especially through a self-directed IRA. And unlike big banks, he’s willing and able to get creative when borrowers fall behind. “Because I bought the note at a discount, I have the flexibility to modify it. Big banks can’t do that.” For agents and investors who have felt the frustration of rigid underwriting or narrow lending boxes, Nathan’s approach is a breath of fresh air. Creative Power: When You Control the Terms Mattias shares his own personal seller-finance deal—a hybrid solution tailored to his parents and a unique property. The beauty of the transaction wasn’t just the numbers; it was the flexibility. Nathan agrees. He’s seen it time and time again. “There's all kinds of flexibility here. Let’s figure it out.” Whether it’s reducing monthly payments, adjusting the timeline, or even increasing the interest rate, owning the note lets you play with the rules. It's real estate on your terms. And the cherry on top? If you ever want to exit a deal, Nathan, or someone like him, is ready to buy your note. No refinance required. The Market Is Shifting. Are You Prepared? Nathan doesn’t sugarcoat it. He’s seeing signs: rising defaults, increased stress in the short-term space, and the waning impact of COVID-era bailouts. But he isn’t worried. Why? Because his investments are protected by discounted debt and cash-flowing notes.

“Nothing is recession-proof, but we’re definitely recession-resistant.” His advice to listeners is simple but profound: prepare for the worst-case scenario first. If the numbers still work, you’ve got a deal. And when asked about the risks of note investing? “We know exactly what the return is the moment we buy the note.” No guessing. No waiting. No wild projections. A Timeless Opportunity That’s Hiding in Plain Sight Most agents don’t know this strategy exists. Even fewer understand it. But that’s exactly what makes it such an unmatched opportunity. “Literally, you can go back in the Bible and find verses about buying and selling debts.” Nathan Turner isn't just investing; he’s preserving a timeless system of wealth building. Whether you're an agent looking for better investment vehicles or someone chasing passive income, this episode is a masterclass. The Final Wisdom: Just Keep Going Nathan closes with a message that speaks to every entrepreneur, agent, and investor grinding through the ups and downs: “Sometimes you have to learn it the hard way. I did. But that’s what makes you better. Just keep going.” And if you're ready to learn more? He’s not selling a course. He’s running a conference. He’s building a community. And he’s proving that note investing might just be the smartest path to a bold and balanced life. Because in this corner of real estate, it's not about doors, it’s about dollars delivered monthly with the grace and wisdom of someone who’s been through the storm and came out with a strategy. This isn’t hype. It’s The REI Agent way. Stay tuned for more inspiring stories on The REI Agent podcast, your go-to source for insights, inspiration, and strategies from top agents and investors who are living their best lives through real estate. For more content and episodes, visit reiagent.com. Related Articles Therapy You Didn’t Know You Needed (Holistic Wisdom for Real Estate Professionals) From For Sale Signs to Life Design (How The REI Agent Transforms Real Estate Into Holistic Wealth) Achieving Holistic Wealth and Success Through Real Estate (Insights from The REI Agent) Partnering with Investors (How Real Estate Agents Can Exponentially Maximize Profits) United States Real Estate Investor Create healing and connection within yourself, your family, and your community. Create healing and connection within yourself, your family, and your community. United States Real Estate Investor Contact Nathan Turner Earnest Investing United States Real Estate Investor Mentioned References Invest in Debt by Jimmy Napier United States Real Estate Investor Transcript Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I'm Mattias, an agent and investor. And I'm Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let's do it. Welcome back to the REI Agent. Your friendly host Mattias here. We had Nathan Turner on the show today. Nathan is a note investor and he has a fund that you can potentially invest in if you're interested. I think it's a really interesting way of diversifying maybe if you're into that syndication or fund to funds phase of life. But yeah, I think with anything that comes to investing and learning your trade, your business or your finances in general, I think it's just good to have more information to kind of make a better decision about where you can kind of allocate your funds. So this is certainly something that you could do within a IRA, a directed IRA. He has something that you could, a contact that could help you do that with. But yeah, I think it's interesting. It wasn't a topic I knew as much about. So it was a good conversation for me to have. So I hope you also learn from this and I don't just look naive. But it was, yeah, like I said, it was a good conversation.

I mean, I'm gonna keep this one short since it was a great conversation and don't wanna take up all your time with my blabbering. So without further ado, here we have Nathan Turner. Welcome back to the REI Agent. I have the honor of having Nathan Turner here in the podcast today. Nathan, thanks so much for joining us. Pleasure to be here, thank you. Nathan, tell us a little bit about your niche first and then let's kind of get into how you got there. Yeah, so I know you're specifically targeting real estate investor agents and people who are getting in from that direction. So mine's a little bit different. It's real estate related, but it's not exactly real estate. So I'm buying residential mortgages, loans, contracts for deed, land contracts, whatever you wanna call them in different states, but essentially loans against property. That's what I'm buying all over the country. So that's my niche. It happens to be secured by real estate, so that's the real estate piece of it. Sure. Okay, well, we definitely had lenders on the show as well. So that's not too far off. But before we dive into the nuances of that, let's kind of get into how you got started in real estate in general or in this space. Sure. Yeah, I got started in real estate in the heyday, I wanna say, 2005, six, where everything was going so well and it was really easy to make some money off of real estate and it was great. Timing was perfect. I started doing fix and flip. I live in Canada, so I was living in Montreal. All the houses I was flipping were in Saskatoon. So just to give you some context, Montreal is right above Vermont. Saskatoon is just straight north from Eastern Montana. So clear cut across the country, but I would buy it with the help of a realtor in town there and I would fly out with my suitcase full of tools and a sleeping bag and sleep on the floor, just work like crazy for 14, 16 hour days for a week and bang out whatever I could. Mostly cosmetic, I wasn't doing anything too crazy. Because the market didn't demand it and so it was easy enough just to clean it up and then resell it for a really nice profit. And again, like I say, the market was a huge help in that. Honestly, I could have just bought it, waited a month and resold it for a profit back in those days. Yeah, I heard of people doing that, actually. Yeah, yeah. I had a guest on my show, he got burnt from it. But yeah, he was basically just doing that, just sitting on it for a little bit and selling it. Maybe a year. Maybe there was a year lease kind of situation. Anyway, keep going. Yeah, yeah, so I did that for a couple years and then just as the market turned, I got hung with one property and it was my last one. I only did half a dozen or so, eight, seven or eight, something like that. But it was this very last one and I didn't know very much about real estate and so I ended up renting it out because that's what you do, of course. If you can't sell it, you rent it and so I did that. But it was one property, one residential door basically in the middle of town, not a very nice neighborhood and no volume, it was one property. So I could find one guy in this city, small, small cities, 200,000 people but prairie town, very sleepy. There was one guy that I could get to take care of this property and he was terrible. He was absolutely awful where every single month I'd have to call him up and be like, hey man, so did we get paid? Like what's going on? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I just gotta do some accounting, I'll get this to you. And they did and for the most part, people paid and it was fine but every time we did have turnover, it was actually cheaper for me to hop back on a plane with my suitcase full of tools and go fix it up and then rent it out to the next person. I was like, I don't know, man. This is a lot of work. I don't know, I don't really care about this. Do you still own it? No, we ended up finally selling in 2009, I think it was. Okay,

but was it long enough to realize a profit or did you just kind of take a hit and move on? No, we still turned a profit but you know, and then with the market conditions at the time, I really liked flipping and I thought that was really fun but this renting thing, the market wasn't right for flipping anymore at that point and the rental, I was like, I don't know. It seems like a lot of work for whatever it was, 400 bucks a month or something like that. I'm like, I don't really get it. So I was kind of turned off to tell you the truth and then it was about a year or so later. So this is like fall of 2008. A friend of mine called me and says, hey, do you wanna help me out with this real estate project in the US? I'm like, sure, what you got? And I just sold my other business and so I was ready for something else and it was, we had all these properties, about 60 properties, mostly centered in the Midwest and it was a situation where they had bought these properties in like the spring of 2007. So like top, top, top of the market. So they way overpaid for this stuff. It was supposed to just be a quick flip. They were supposed to just sell it off to another organization and then deal went sideways. That deal never happened. So when I got on board, it was like, oh shoot, what do we do now? We're stuck with all these properties that were in really rough shape, spread out all over three or four states and how do we deal with it? They're all based in California, so none of them knew anything or had no real estate experience at all. So that was the charge and so we kind of thought we'd, a couple of Canadian boys, we thought we'd invented seller financing. We started selling these houses on terms and creating notes and didn't know any of the terminology, didn't know that's what it was, didn't know how to do that properly. So we made all kinds of mistakes, but at the same time, it was a great base. It was a way to get started in it. So that was my introduction to notes, was creating notes without knowing that's what they were. Okay. Okay, so now you are, this is your primary thing and you are, tell me how you, let me, walk me through a deal that you would do to kind of help me get some more context on this. Yeah, so you mentioned you've had some lenders on the show, which is great and I would love to meet them because what I do, I don't actually lend out money. I look for somebody else that has already done that. Then I approach them and say, hey, any of those loans are you looking to recapitalize? For a variety of reasons, whether it's because they're not paying anymore for some reason, or because they're just looking to get cash back out so they can turn it around, do it again, or they've got a different investment or they want to send a kid to college, whatever it is, they want cash for that long-term payment stream, they would rather have a lump sum today. Sure. And that's where I come in. And so I say, well, you've already done the work to create the note. I will cash you out of that, of your position and take over as the new quote unquote lender, even though I'm not actually technically lending the money out. Yeah, so the terms don't change. Right. And, okay. So is this then primarily, I think, is it primarily seller financing kind of deals that you're doing this with or? It is today. When I first got started, it was all about non-performing loans and the vast majority of those were bank loans at some kind of institution. But it's shifted over time, like as the economy has changed and there's less and less of the defaulted notes out there, which is great, but the banks aren't necessarily selling, not in small quantities to a guy like me, they're performing loans. So I'm now turned around. It's kind of fun. I'm going back to full circle and looking for those people that were doing exactly what I was doing when I got started and creating notes. And then I'm offering to buy them out and step into that place. When

you were doing the bank ones, was that, I mean, were they like Freddie Fannie kind of loans? I mean, were they big institutions, not just like your in-house loan, that your bank at the corner. So these were big institutions that you're approaching about buying their mortgage from? Yeah, typically the way it would go is like a bigger hedge fund would buy a big pool from the banks. Like US Bank, we got a lot from them. No, not like Chase or Well. Well, we did have some Wells actually, but typically, you know, tier B type banks is kind of smaller banks. But they would, the hedge funds would go in and do a purchase for a hundred million. And then they would say, okay, here's our parameters. This is what we want. Anything that falls outside of that, we sell off. And so that's where I came in and I was the guy buying whatever didn't fit their box. Okay. Now, is this on like Facebook Marketplace? Is there a portal somewhere you can go to like where, I mean, I understand this isn't happening as much now, but like at the time, this is just having a connection to these places or? All networking, like so much networking. So I started going to conferences in 2009 and that was it. It's just, I, you know, called myself the Canadian note guy just to help, you know, get some recognition, some kind of branding. And it worked pretty well. People got to know who I was. And, you know, if I say I want to buy that, I would actually follow through. And so got a fairly good reputation that way. And people knew I was for real. So yeah, it worked out great. And we've been just doing that for years and years. And then, like I say, we transitioned over to performing more these days. Yeah, okay. So now when you're looking at, yeah, the owner finance kind of deals, how are you finding them? Are you looking for like delinquent kind of things or what's that look like? It's still the same kind of thing, a lot of networking. So I actually took over a conference a few years ago. So we're running that now. And that's been huge where people, again, just recognition to know kind of who I am and what I'm about, which is great. And so I'm actively looking for loans that people are looking to sell off for, like I say, all kinds of different reasons. And is there, so obviously you'd be getting the interest that Azori agreed upon. I would imagine you can't change the terms to the borrower. Do you get a cut then off the top as well for like kind of doing this? Like, do you get like some sort of fee like to, yeah, like I have $100,000 note currently. Are you getting like, am I getting like 95,000 so that you or something like that? Right, yeah, it's gonna be some kind of discount and that's, it's calculated. There's a few factors. So very first thing is what's the interest rate on the note? If somebody wrote a note at 4%, 5%, my target yield that I'm looking for for my fund is 12. So my discount is gonna be pretty hefty. If it's 100,000 balance, maybe 50% and that's not great. You're probably not gonna like my offer. So if it's a note that was written at nine or 10%, we're gonna be much, much closer. My discount is gonna be much smaller. So we're more likely to make a deal. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, and there's probably more of those out there. Is there, I mean, just hard money, I know that's usually short term. Is that ever kind of come into play as well? Yeah, and it's funny. So I look for either short term or really long term. So it's either, you know, one to two years or 25 to 30 years. But that in between time is not so great for me actually. So it's either gotta be really short or really long. Okay, and if there's a person that is lending at a nine or 10% interest rate, and is that ever like a 25, 30 year product? And if so, what are like the circumstances? Is it just somebody that couldn't qualify otherwise? Yeah, we actually find those a lot. More often than not, that kind of a loan, like a long term higher interest seller finance note, you find a lot of those in Texas.

Not to say that's the only place, but that's the biggest concentration for sure. The buyers are gonna be anything from somebody who's self-employed to ITIN borrower. So like they're not here illegally, but they're not citizens either. Those are kind of the two major qualifiers, or just somebody that didn't qualify to a bank because of whatever. It could be lower credit score, or it could be, you know, any number of things that made it so that they couldn't qualify. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's interesting. So you said you're investors, so you have like a fund, is it a fund set up then to, you know, people can invest with you? It is secured by real estate, so that's probably a selling point there. Then you have like a target return on investment there. Does IRR come into play as well in this circumstance? Like do people get paid out at a certain time, or is it kind of more of a long-term kind of holding? I would consider it more of a long-term thing. It's a debt fund. Because we're buying performing notes, when I resell that note, there's not actually a bump. Like we're not selling for more at a future date. So because of that, we're not doing an equity share because there's no extra equity to be had. So this is your, you know, set it and forget it, use IRA funds, something like that, where it's just collecting interest and off you go. You can compound it if you want, you know, instead of taking the distribution, you just reinvest it. That compounds, that's another option, but yeah, it's the long-term stuff. That's gonna be your best bet on this. Well, yeah, and I mean like 12% is great. Okay, so then on top of that, I'm curious how often you've had to like, if people have defaulted, how often you've had to foreclose and what that process looks like. Yeah, it's interesting. So when I got my start, it was all non-performing. So foreclosure is, it's a great tool. I'll tell you the vast majority of the time, like more than 90%, 95% of the time when I foreclose, it's because the house is vacant. So either they've passed away or they've abandoned the property. Those are really most of the foreclosures that we do. It's really rare that I actually foreclose on a person. I'm mostly foreclosing just on an empty house. So I, and I don't like to be that guy, you know, like that's not what I'm about. I don't wanna kick people out of their homes. So we've got all kinds of options because I bought it at a discount, I'm far more flexible than the bank would be initially. So, or whoever the original lender was. So because of that flexibility, I can go in and say, look, you know, your $800 payment isn't working for you, obviously. So what's more realistic? You know, maybe we get this situation all the time where somebody, you know, lost their job and now they've got this other job. Okay, great. So first of all, do they just need one or two months to get caught back up? If that's the case, no problem. We can tack that back onto the end of the loan. All right, no issue. We'll just keep on going. If it's the better job or the other job doesn't pay as well. Okay, so $800 a month doesn't work. Could you do seven or how about 650 or six? And we come up with whatever terms are gonna make sense for both of us. And then it's a modification of the loan, it's recorded the county and now that's the new loan. That's those terms. So in that circumstance, I would imagine you're adding years to the end of the loan to make up for the less payment? You know, maybe that's one option and that's where it gets really fun and creative because we can say, okay, and I've done all kinds. We've raised interest rates or lowered them, stretched out payment time or shortened it. Payments have gone up or down and it just really depends on what really the borrower is looking for, the person living in the home, what's gonna make most sense. And then we come to terms and that's the new law. Yeah, no, I've done, I've personally done one owner financing creative deal, if you wanna call it that.

There was a lot of moving parts with it. It was kind of a unique situation. My parents were buying one, it's a very nice quadruplex or it's actually two duplexes put together. They were buying one apartment to live in, to downsize in. It's a perfect scenario for them in a great location, beautiful, beautiful place. We did owner financing on the rest and I actually put it all on one half of the duplex. So that half of the duplex is over leveraged, but an appraiser, it doesn't matter, right? It's the same thing as the owner. And then now that allows me some flexibility to, if my parents were like, God forbid, they had an emergency, they need to get to a nursing home or whatever, I can do a refinance on just that half and get their money out and let them do their thing. There was just, it's just fun when you get to that space because you can kind of custom tailor, yeah, perfect for that situation and where it's a win for everybody. Yeah, love that. That's awesome. And at the time I felt like I was probably paying too much for it. I don't know if maybe that was just my ego, but at the end of the day, I got a great term. So I only had to bring $30,000 of my own money into the deal, which made it a win for me. And like I said, it's a great property. My parents are super happy. So it's just a win-win all around. Yeah, that's perfect. And then, so one other option is instead of refinancing, you can sell off the note. And that's where somebody like me would come in and say, well, I mean, maybe it's because you don't wanna refinance with the bank because of, I don't know, because you don't like the bank, or maybe it's because this is faster or whatever the case might be, but it's another option. Me or somebody like me, and if it's not me, I can refer you to one of my colleagues and say, so this one's not really in my wheelhouse, but you know what? Call Dave, he's got you. Well, and the thought was securing more debt on it. So is that possible as well? Yeah, it's a little unusual, but yeah, that's doable for sure. That was kind of like a worst case scenario where we don't really have, they may need to move faster than we have really built up the equity or the appreciation to be able to do other options. And so worst case scenario, then we're very over leveraged if we have to be for a period of time. But again, we structured this on a 20 year note with the owner and that hurt extra because again, the rents were lower. I felt like I overpaid because of that, but it's all turning, so it's great. It's a really good situation. And again, I'm just bringing that up because it's the beauty of this space is that you can really fine tune the situation for, or fine tune the note, the scenario, all the details of it, all the terms for the scenario itself. And it's cool that you had the flexibility to do that. Big banks, they can't. I mean, they just don't have the capacity. It's just like, this is our box. That's the thing, the capacity, the imagination, I'm not sure which it is. In any case, yeah, they just, they won't do it. This is what we can do and that's it. And anything outside of that, well, you're out of luck. And then somebody like us takes over and we're like, oh man, are you kidding me? There's all kinds of flexibility here and there and we can structure this way or that. Let's figure it out. And yeah, I mean, any agent listening to this probably has had experiences with a bigger bank that they, one thing that comes to mind for me is I have a, we don't have a ton of condos in my area. And there's a condo that does, it's warrantable, whatever the word is, for Fannie Freddie. It's sold multiple times, tons of them have sold this way. But have a big bank come involved and they see something in the disclosure pack that they don't like and they're out, they're just done. And now we have a buyer thinking like, this place, I won't be able to sell it again. I'm like, no, like we've literally had VA, FHA, every kind of different loan you can imagine happen.

It's just, it was a big bank that has a box and they have very low risk tolerance and they don't care about their reputation going forward because they have plenty of business coming in. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And they're big enough that, yeah, you don't actually matter to them. Not at all. You work with a local lender. Their skin is on the line every time. They wanna make sure that deal goes through unless there's absolutely something they can't avoid. And that's gonna be the same for you. I mean, your reputation's on the line, you're networking to get your business. So it's important to you. Yeah, yeah. And then really where I like to come in in that situation is I'll let you go ahead and do all of that part of it. Qualifying the borrower and figuring out how to make the payments work and all this and that. I'll let you do all that part and then I'll just come in and say like, so what are the terms again? Okay, this is how much I'll give you for that. I'm the after effect. Sure, sure. But it's cool that if there is a bumpy road you can get a little creative. Yeah, definitely, yeah. For everybody. Yeah, that's awesome. So is there any other, well, I guess, a better question. Yeah. How is the market in your area now? Do you see things slowing down at all? Has there been any price drops since the craziness of 2021 I guess may be the peak? And if so, what similarities do you see from the 2008 kind of market? Yeah, it's so interesting to see and you kind of look back over time and see how things have changed and there definitely has been a change. So just to give you an idea, my first non-performing note purchase in 2010, it was a package of three different loans on three different properties, all based in Columbus, Ohio. Three different loans, three different properties, total purchase price for me was $10,000. And that was, I was talking with a friend, a colleague and he had the deal and I'm like, 10 grand, really? For all three of those? That's insane. Okay, and so I'm like, you know what? It's worth a $10,000 experiment to see what happens. And it worked out amazingly well. And I'm like, okay, this is awesome. I love this, let's do this. Go from there to coming up 2018, 19, non-performing notes were trading at almost the same price as a performing note. So in other words, if the balance of that note was $100,000 and it was, it had not been paying for the last year, the purchase price for that at the time was probably around like 70, 75, maybe 80 cents even. And if it was performing, if they had been making payments, I could buy it for almost the same amount. And so it just, the margins got so slim on that and just availability went way, way down. And so that was- Are you interested in this? Is that why? You know, it was a combination of things where there's much more interest in non-performers and so demand was much higher. And then at the same time, just market conditions had changed. Enough of the 2008 inventory had moved through. So there was just less availability there. And they didn't have to lower the price as much, that whole supply and demand thing. Yeah, interesting. Because of that, we started really thinking and then when COVID hit, it was like, okay, let's rethink what we're doing here and how do we want to change things up? And it just gave us, for me, it was kind of nice. We had a little bit of a break just to slow down enough to say, okay, let's start working on the business instead of in the business and rethink some things and decide how we want to go forward. So that's where we kind of first thought of, you know what, maybe we should just change over and start doing some performing loans. And the biggest advantage, disadvantage there is with the non-performers, the potential for higher returns is much greater because you're buying at a bigger discount and then it can take several different paths and all of them good. And depending on how you bought it and if it goes this

direction or that direction, you're still making money, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. But it's generally speaking, you're gonna get higher returns off of that. There's a lot more work and more time involved in those things. But like I say, it tends to be worth it in the end. With availability and pricing changing, it didn't make as much sense. Then you started looking at the performing loans. Performing loans have been around forever. Like that's been the mainstay of note investing for literally centuries, for a long, long, long time. Lower returns generally, but a lot less work, a lot less involvement needed once you've purchased this loan. Not none, but less. And so we started looking at that and looking at my kids are getting older and those sorts of things and looking at how I wanna be spending my time. And that was really the catalyst for everything that we're doing today with the fund. Yeah. And then it's just interesting, you start looking at it and going, okay, so not only is it better for me, but it's actually also better for the investor because then they're instantly diversified into a pool of funds and there's increased safety, there's increased predictability on when and how much they're getting paid. Like, yeah, okay, all right, we'll do it. Okay. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I've definitely talked to different people in different areas. And I think the areas that are seeing price declines are definitely in the opinion of maybe those markets being the canary in the coal mine for something bigger. It's really interesting how differing the opinions are between different people as to like kind of the future. I really say, obviously nobody has a crystal ball, but to me, it definitely, especially in my market seems very different than anything in 2008. Inventory levels alone is kind of the biggest thing. The lending practices seem to be much cleaner as well. So yeah, I guess it's just always interesting to hear people's opinions on. Yeah, and it was really interesting. So we just ran, I mentioned we took over this conference. We just had it just a few weeks back and same kind of thing. We had somebody there from Mortgage Bankers Association. So he's got all his charts and all his graphs and everything showing trends that have been happening over the last, I don't know, going back 20 years and looking to see where the line's going. And it is going up. Yeah, from like defaults and things like that. So we are definitely seeing like, and I would kind of consider that mainstream where that kind of information is coming out where there is an uptick in a lot of these defaults and people starting to struggle with the mortgage payments. Right after the Mortgage Bankers guy, we had a different panel on, and it's more people that are like in the trenches and doing this day-to-day. And I think a lot of that information that they've got at Mortgage Bankers doesn't account for a lot of the smaller investors like us and smaller being under a hundred million where we're not reporting to the same agencies. So that information is not included in those bigger charts. And we're definitely seeing that on our side where there is definitely an increase in short-term especially has been struggling just with payments and defaults. And even in the long-term, there's been a small uptick. It hasn't been massive, but there has been a small uptick. And so we're all kind of watching and waiting to see what's gonna happen. And are we gonna see a bunch of these non-performers coming back? We'll see. Yeah. I talked to, he was a realtor that helps people avoid foreclosure. And he had kind of a whole fund. He had went through it himself in 2008. And so he went through the whole process, has a lot of pain with it. And most of the time people just don't really understand their options and what they can do to try to advocate for themselves and try to right the ship. So he does his best to help them. And he was saying that he

believed that there was a lot of, like the bailouts that were happening that are happening are a lot more consumer related as opposed to like a big bailout to a bank which he thinks is a good thing. But he also wonders if that also kind of artificially creates a backlog of future foreclosures that could come and yeah, down the line all of a sudden. So yeah, it's hard to know. It's hard to know for sure what's going to happen. Actually, I would agree with that because like in 2019, we were all doing our thing and having conversations about like, okay, just if you look over history, we're due. Timing is such that we're due for some kind of a downturn and it wasn't happening yet. So when COVID hit, same thing. We all got on these calls and had this big 20 person Zoom call and we're like, okay, so this is it, right? We're gonna see all these defaults coming through. And then it didn't. And a whole bunch of money got pumped in and really artificially propped everything up. And so good or bad, right or wrong, I don't know. But I'm just looking at the aftereffects and I think we are starting to see and I think we're gonna continue to see and over the next year or so, a lot of those COVID payments that were helping prop things up are starting to fall apart. And it's getting tough for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Certainly if people didn't take advantage of or bought something after those crazy low interest rates, it can be a high payment. I mean, we actually just, we did a cash out refinance on a property we were flipping. And I think our payment on a house that's about a thousand square feet is I think a little bit more than our payment on our 46,000 square foot house. So it's just like, I mean, we got it a while back too. So there's a lot of appreciation and yeah, anyway. But it's just kind of interesting to see and it can be tough. So I guess anybody out there looking to buy, definitely I think it's good to try to be conservative on the numbers and make sure you got, yeah, you don't max out your possible mortgage payments. Yeah, if you're looking at that like worst case scenario, middle case scenario, best case scenario, maybe stick with the worst case scenario for now. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, and other news, I think, did it get past that the 100% depreciation would come back? I guess that wouldn't really apply to your world since you're not actually owning the asset. Yeah, and it's really interesting. And as much as things are going on in all over, inflation and different rules changing and announcements coming out every day and changing the next day, there's a lot of uncertainty. And again, I don't care what side of your aisle you're on or whatever, I'm Canadian, so I'm totally agnostic when it comes to that. But really the key word today is uncertain. And which means change and it means fear for a lot of people and uncertain is the word. The cool thing is with notes is because what I bought is an established set of terms, very little of that matters. Whatever inflation is doing, whatever it's doing, pricing and this, that and everything else, eggs can be more or less. For the most part, it doesn't really make a difference to me. Yeah, monthly payment is the monthly payment, the interest rate is the interest rate and it is what it is. And either you can pay or you can't. If you can't, I can probably help you fix that. But we're relatively unaffected. So it's, nothing is recession proof, but we're definitely resistant. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, yeah, you're not again tied to the pricing of the house so much. I mean, if it's not really bad and you owe more than what the house was worth, that might be a different story, but buying at a steep discount, that's a really good point. Which actually brings me to my next question, which would be like, are people that are investing in your fund, do they have to be accredited investors or what does that look like? Yeah, for my fund it is. It's one of those government rules and again, government, good or bad, right or wrong, that it is what it is.

And so that's what they've set up. And yeah, accredited. I wish we could do something different to tell you the truth, but my hands are tied. Yeah, so to hash out what that means to people that are listening, that's a net worth of a million or more outside of your primary residency or making what, 200,000 single, 300,000 married. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. And that's what, for the past two years, I believe? Yes. And I mean, if you've just had that one year, still come and talk to me and we'll see what we can figure out. But those are the, that's what's on the records. That's what's in the books. Yeah, and it's good to know about these options. I think like one of the things that I think is really good for agents to know is that this world exists. And as for many syndications, they can take advantage of the tax benefits with apartment buildings or whatever. Getting that accelerated appreciation is all gravy as well. But the beauty of all this is, is you can look at it kind of like a stock portfolio as well where you can kind of diversify and place a certain portion into something like what you're doing, where it's gonna not be as dependent upon what the value of the asset is. And you can get that steady kind of income from it. And it's hands-off and related to your field, so. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's what I say to people as well. It's like, look, don't put all your eggs in any basket. Split it up. And if you wanna put some into some kind of a syndication, great. Truth is, over time, you're probably gonna get a higher return out of that. But you're probably also gonna have to wait for it. Where something like mine is, it's, you know, we're generating income day one. As soon as the money comes in, we buy a note, and that money is coming in month after month after month. So it's not a promise of some future projected return. This is, we know exactly what the return is as soon as we buy a note. So it's, in that way, I like the security of it. And then, you know, you mentioned like the housing prices going down. That's another beauty, you know? So that $100,000 balance that we bought, the house is probably worth more like 150. And then we also bought a discount. So our investment to value is really, really low. And so we've got a lot of room there for the what if, just in cases, whatever happens at some future point. No, it makes a lot of sense. So when people are investing in a fund like what you have, I know that with syndications, this is different than a fund, of course, but with syndications, you're kind of presented the deal, right? Like you have to like vet kind of the operators, which would be an operator. You would have to vet the deal itself. But in this circumstance, you're more like kind of giving like your buy box, if you will. And so it wouldn't be, they're not gonna be presented each mortgage you're gonna buy or each note you're gonna buy, right? Right. Yeah, no, and I think the important thing is for people getting involved in something like this is make sure you have just at least some understanding of how it works, so that you can be comfortable knowing what you're investing in. But after that, you really don't have to think about it. It's the mailbox money of all mailbox monies is it's just coming into you without you really having to do anything at all. You can review the report, that's it. Yeah, no, it is the beauty of it. Because I mean, again, with like a syndication, like there's kind of a game plan they usually lay out. And so, it's not a bad deal to check in to make sure that that game plan is kind of being executed. So even though it is very passive, it is also maybe a little bit more work than what you would be providing. So, yeah, I mean, and the whole accredited investor thing is really boiling down to people. The government doesn't want people like just spending money that they don't have or they can't afford to lose. It's kind of like an asset class that would be a little bit less traditional.

Some might see risky, and there's risk always with all this stuff. Always, yeah. But yeah, so that's kind of the point behind it. And when you become successful enough in your pursuits of real estate or whatever, it's just open some more doors where you can kind of, the sum of all this money piled together can kind of, the magnitude of what it can do, it becomes a lot bigger. No, exactly. And again, this is a great IRA investment or a solo 401k or any of those retirement plans, any of those work for this kind of investment. And then it can grow out there. Does it have to be self-directed to do that? I guess. And if you're with Fidelity or somebody like that that doesn't let you do it, we can hook you up with somebody that will let you do that so that you can put it wherever you'd like. Yeah, that's a great point. A lot of people could take advantage of that as well. Well, yeah, I mean, so this has been a super interesting conversation. Not one that I really was as familiar with, to be honest. So it's been educational for me. I hope it's been good for everybody else. Before we sign off here, I'm curious if you have any golden nuggets you wanna share with our audience. You know, you mentioned that before we got on and I think first and foremost is just to know that this kind of thing exists and that it's not some weird idea. Literally, you can go back in the Bible and find verses about buying and selling debts. Like it's been around forever. So it's not a new idea. It's not a new concept. It's been around for a long, long time. For some reason, it's not very well known, but know that it's out there. And if you're a realtor where you're looking to sell a property and maybe you're having a harder time selling it, seller financing is a great option. And there's different ways that you can set that up and I'd be happy to have a conversation with you. And knowing that there's a backend, if you've got a seller who is looking for total cash out, that's still a possibility with seller financing in place. So we can have those kinds of conversations if you'd like. I think my last thing that I like to tell people is I think back in those days when I was flipping properties and things like that, that was almost 20 years ago now. And I just think, you know, if I can go back and talk to that guy 20 years ago, me is just, things are bumpy and there's always gonna be ups and downs and there's always gonna be some kind of roller coaster. Just keep going, just keep going. There's so much out there. There's so much opportunity and there's so much to learn. Sometimes you gotta learn it the hard way. I did, but that's what makes you better. So just keep going. Yeah, I love that, having that perseverance. Yeah, not getting too bogged down on the current moment. Yeah. Do you have any books that you think are fundamental that like you think everybody should read or maybe something you're just currently enjoying? If you want, so there's, man, I like to read. So there's a few books on note investing. There's not a lot of books out there. The one that I would say is kind of the granddaddy of note investing is called Invest in Debt by Jimmy Napier. It's a little bit harder to come by because it's older. It's like four or five years old. From the early 80s, late 70s, maybe. So it's an old one and the numbers are kind of frustrating, kind of embarrassing almost. But when he talks about buying a house for $50,000 and this is the kind of payment, I'm like, really? But the principles are there and add zero or whatever you gotta do, but the principles are there and they're correct. And so it's a great read and that's a good base for what we do in the note investing world. That's a great one. That's a fun one. Okay, cool. If people are interested in learning more about what you do or potentially wanting to invest with you, where can they find you? Best place to go is my website. It's earnestinvesting.com and that's E-A-R-N-E-S-T. So earnestinvesting.

Key Takeaways Jordan Smith successfully transitioned from ministry to real estate by finding a niche that aligned with his personal fulfillment. Building a wide toolbox of creative investment strategies offers flexibility and long-term sustainability. Purpose-driven investing can yield both profit and joy, especially when relationships and community are prioritized. United States Real Estate Investor The REI Agent with Jordan Smith https://youtu.be/0u7s2KhikLg Follow and subscribe to The REI Agent on social Facebook Instagram Youtube .cls-1fill:#fff; Linkedin X-twitter United States Real Estate Investor It's time to have an investor-friendly agent on your team! It's time to have an investor-friendly agent on your team! United States Real Estate Investor A Journey Beyond Sales—Finding a Calling Through Real Estate When most people hear “real estate agent,” they think of someone unlocking doors and collecting commission checks. But for Jordan Smith, guest on The REI Agent Podcast, real estate became far more than a profession—it became a conduit for purpose, impact, and community. Host Mattias Clymer introduced Jordan not just as another agent, but as someone whose life journey, from medical sales to ministry and eventually to flipping homes, embodies the full spirit of holistic success. “The riches are in the niches,” Jordan says. “But more than that, the fulfillment is there too.” The Forced Pivot: When Life Says ‘Now or Never’ Jordan never planned to become a real estate agent. After a promising path in medical device sales and a powerful stint in ministry leadership, life forced his hand. The pandemic hit. Furloughed and frustrated, Jordan’s wife gave him the ultimatum every dreamer secretly needs: “Either flip a house or stop talking about it.” He did more than flip a house. He flipped the script on what a career could look like. With $0 in his commission account and a heart full of ambition, Jordan got licensed and closed his first wholesale deal with a stranger-turned-partner named Wes. That first deal would be the spark that ignited a real estate empire. “Wes was the gasoline to the ember I had. We became partners in hustle—and in heart,” Jordan reflected. The Investor’s Toolbox: Why One Strategy Isn’t Enough Throughout the episode, Jordan walks listeners through the diverse arsenal that makes his business stand out. He’s not just flipping homes. He’s mastering wholesaling, double closes, seller financing, subject-to deals, wholetailing, short- and midterm rentals, lease options, sandwich strategies—the list goes on. “There’s no such thing as a bad deal,” he says. “You just need the right exit strategy.” This toolbox mentality has earned Jordan the respect of brokers and the trust of investors. He’s not chasing commissions, he’s crafting custom solutions. And in a market that’s changing faster than interest rates, flexibility isn’t optional, it’s essential. Bridging the Divide: Wholesalers vs. Agents In one of the episode’s most honest moments, Jordan tackles the stigma around wholesalers and agents head-on: “Yes, there are shady wholesalers. But there are also bad agents. The truth is, 90% of both are just out here trying to help.” Jordan’s mission is to bridge that divide. Through education, transparency, and creative deal-making, he’s showing both sides how to work shoulder to shoulder. His message is simple but powerful: “Everybody can win.” Homegrown Expertise: Midterm Rentals and Local Mastery Mid-conversation, Mattias and Jordan dive into one of today’s most underused strategies: midterm rentals. Jordan shares how a client built relationships with hospital HR departments to house travel nurses for 90-day stays, turning referrals into recurring cash flow. Mattias shares his own journey setting up a midterm rental, saying, “We loved the property, the location, the vibes—it just made sense. Even if we break even, it’s worth it for the long-term value and the joy.” That

joy, that experimentation, that playfulness, these are the invisible currencies successful investors trade in every day. The Golden Nugget: Know What Fills Your Cup If Jordan could tell every agent and investor one thing, it’s this: “Find your niche and pour gasoline on it.” Whether it’s flipping homes, working with first-time buyers, or helping fellow dog lovers find the perfect backyard, your zone of genius will never lead you wrong. Jordan’s not in real estate because it’s glamorous. He’s in it because “I’d be doing this even if I wasn’t licensed. I love it. It fills my cup.” Purpose Isn’t a Perk—It’s the Plan In a world obsessed with hustle and GCI, Jordan’s story is a loud and clear reminder that you don’t have to choose between passion and profit. You can have both. You should have both. “Congrats—you made a bunch of commission last year and hate your life,” he jokes. “That’s not the flex you think it is.” Instead, Jordan challenges agents and investors to zoom in on what makes them come alive, and then turn it into a career that sustains not just their finances, but their spirit. Because at the end of the day, the best deals in real estate are the ones that build you up from the inside out. Are you ready to build more than wealth? Then this episode is where your blueprint begins. Stay tuned for more inspiring stories on The REI Agent podcast, your go-to source for insights, inspiration, and strategies from top agents and investors who are living their best lives through real estate. For more content and episodes, visit reiagent.com. United States Real Estate Investor Create healing and connection within yourself, your family, and your community. Create healing and connection within yourself, your family, and your community. United States Real Estate Investor Contact Jordan Smith Realty ONE Group Revolution Instagram United States Real Estate Investor Mentioned References The 4-Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss The Tim Ferriss Show Furnished Finder Airbnb United States Real Estate Investor Transcript Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I'm Mattias, an agent and investor. And I'm Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let's do it. Welcome back to the REI Agent. This is Mattias Clymer, your lovely host of the REI Agent podcast and your neighborhood rock star. I don't know. I'm feeling fired up right now. I've had a lot of mornings of getting up and wanting to get up earlier than my alarm goes off because I'm excited to get to work. Like today, this morning I was building out an AI chat bot that would help with scheduling. So look at my schedule. And it would say, when do you wanna see this house built into the website? And they'd say, how about four tomorrow? And they'd be like, well, actually, there's no availability there, but can you do two or whatever it is? You set all the parameters in your schedule, in your calendar, like Calendly. And then the AI bot can just read it and kind of talk back and forth with that person instead of just them filling out a link, which I think is kind of cool. And it's not something designed to be necessarily pretending to be a real person. It can be honest and transparent. I think I named mine Booker T to just be fun and like kind of a tech forward brand anyway. That's kind of like how I've always been. So hopefully other people find it amusing. I won't push it on people, but it was a fun thing to play with. I'm looking to see, I'm curious if I can get that thing set up with showing time as well. It'd be really interesting to have it, be able to read the properties availability on showing time and my availability, and then give options to the client of what to book. I think that would be a really cool, fun thing.

Not that I would force, again, people to do that only, but if somebody is on my website and wants to book something, they could just do that. And then on top of it all, I could probably have an if this, then that kind of a workflow where if they are already an existing client, they wouldn't do this. But if it wasn't an existing client in my CRM, I have a workflow where it would send them a buyer brokerage agreement to sign right away, which I think is another really possible cool thing. There's some kinks in that system, so it's not quite ready. And I think it's probably better to meet first with the client to have an introduction meeting. So a lot of things to work out, but it's just fun to see where technology can take you. But anyway, I wanted to get into our guest, Jordan Smith. Jordan Smith is an agent. He was an investor first and then became an agent and has focused his sales business on investors. So he has a wealth of knowledge. He's done a lot of different things, a lot of different type of deals. And his book of business is mainly investors on the sales side. But there's a lot of knowledge there. This is, he's perfect for the show because he gets into, he's a bridge between wholesale and resale, if you will. So we are all about learning how to be investor friendly, understanding investments, or building up your own portfolio. And Jordan is a great example of that. So without further ado, let's get right into it. Jordan Smith. Welcome back to the REI Agent. I'm here with Jordan Smith. Jordan, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, man, thanks for having me. Yeah, Jordan, you tell us where you're coming out of, first of all. Yeah, so the metropolis of Rock Hill, South Carolina, which is Football City, USA, right outside of Charlotte. So I cover the Charlotte, North Carolina metro area. Cool. I mean, I feel like, you all probably have been booming for a while, but I feel like there's a lot of hype around the Carolinas, especially. Yeah, well, you know, it's pretty crazy, man. Like we, you know, we get all four seasons. It's freaking already hot as crap right now. And, you know, lots of folks wanna come here. Taxes and quality of life and seasons and beach and mountains, and it's all right here. So come on, we need some more folks. I need more houses to sell. So bring it all down if you're in the beautiful Northeast or West Coast or wherever. Yeah, like, no, I was in Denver last year and I was hanging out at a bar for a little bit while I had a friend had an appointment and he had to go to whatever I was visiting. And he had the, like the bartender was talking about how like, it just, like, you know, I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here. Like, it was like, you know, Boulder, Colorado is gorgeous. Like, I need to get out. I'm thinking like the Carolinas or yeah. And it just seemed like it was the vibe I got was that there was a bit of a movement happening that she wasn't the only one. And it just struck me as interesting because you hear about Colorado, Denver, you hear about, you know, California. Well, I've heard there's an exodus happening there, but yeah, have you experienced that? Yeah, I mean, I think there's, the market seems to be doing well here, right? I mean, we're a little bit insulated, I think, from the tumultuousness of, you know, everything that's going on. Still a good market here. You know, Charlotte itself, Charlotte proper is so saturated that really folks are really kind of commuting in from secondary and even tertiary markets around. So we're really hyper-focused on like an hour radius of center city Charlotte. And so you get down into South Carolina there a little bit, which is, I'm born and raised in Rock Hill and then loved it so much, moved back after college and a little bit of work. And so, you know, there's tax benefits to either or, right? Schools seem to be really well in some of these secondary markets. And so really, it's a great place to raise a family.

You know, banking is a big industry here. And so folks are moving to here. You know, we got Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which is, you know, it's not a massive airport, but you can get where you need to go from it. And it seems to be a good place to set up shop and you're three hours to the mountains and three hours to the beach. And, you know, it's fun. Yeah, I mean, that's not too different from Harrisonburg where I'm at. I mean, we are in the mountains. We're in the Shenandoah Valley. John Denver sang about that a little bit. Well, he said, people think it's West Virginia, but some argue it's Western Virginia because it talks about- Western Virginia, there you go. Which comes through us. But yeah, we're four hours from the beach and, you know, in the mountains. So it's a good place. But I definitely feel like the Carolinas were getting a bit more focus and hype than Virginia for some reason. I think you guys have bigger cities too. That's probably part of it. But anyway, I guess let's, yeah, let's hear a little bit about how you got into real estate to begin with. Yeah, so real estate's a third career for me. So I was a pre-med biology student in college and didn't get into med school. And so it's like, well, great. Now I went to school to go to school and now I can't get into school. What do I do? And so I got a job right out of college selling medical devices, orthopedic implants. So hip and knee replacements, plates and screws, that kind of stuff. So I was in sales, you know, full commissioned sales, bouncing around the operating room, had a ton of fun, learned a lot. Medical sales in general, and I think the industry's changed a lot over the last, gosh, this would have been, you know, almost 20 years ago, but it was pretty cutthroat back then. And so I loved adding value to my doctors. I didn't love the sales process of like, you know, hey, I'm gonna knock on your door. I called on you last week. Has anything changed? No, cool, like, you know, so I didn't love like checking the boxes of the sales process in like a corporate setting. So I did that for a few years and then got into ministry. I worked for a multi-site, pretty large church in South Carolina as a pastor. And really it was run like a Fortune 500 company. So really high emphasis on leadership, development, very strong org structure in place. I learned a ton as a leader from my time there in ministry at that church. And then left that in 2019, right before the pandemic. And my wife basically said, hey dude, if you don't shut up and flip a house, you're not allowed to talk about it anymore. Like, I'm so tired of you talking about flipping houses. I'm so tired of you like talking about how easy it would be. Like you either need to do it or I'm gonna forbid you to talk about it. And I was like, okay, challenge accepted. So I just got a nine to five just to pay the bills while I was trying to figure out like real estate stuff. And was looking for my first investment property for first fix and flip. And didn't really know where to look. I was looking on MLS. I found out for the very first time what wholesaling is and was talking to some wholesalers trying to find a deal. And was working and got furloughed with the pandemic. And so I was sitting at home and looking for deals. And I was like, you know what? I should get my real estate license while I'm sitting at home furloughed. I've got some time. It'll save us 3% when we list properties. You know, this would probably be a good tool to have in the tool belt. And so I did all my real estate classes online. Got licensed in November of 2020 and put my first flip under contract of purchase in November of 2020. And so, yeah, so that was kind of how I got started. And so, yeah, it was a great time to be in real estate, honestly. And the more I studied, like as I was going through the process, I had always thought like real estate seems like a cool career as an agent. But I was married and had, let's see, at that point we had two kids.

We got four now, we had two kids. And I had never worked a full commission job since I had had other mouths to feed besides my own. So I was a little bit intimidated by like the jumping full into the deep end. So, but I felt like I'd be really good at it. My biggest thing is, man, I'm a connector of people. Like I just wanna be a conduit to connect people with the people that they need to know. And I think that's a big part of real estate as an agent and an investor is just like having those relationships in place. And so in December of 2020, I told my wife, I said, hey, if I can sell a house a month as an agent, because this seemed like a totally reasonable goal starting as a new agent for whatever reason. I sell a house a month at $250,000, which was not even our median price point. It was a little under our median price point. I can sell a house a month for $250,000. Everybody's getting 3% commission, because commission wasn't, commission's decreased in our market. I don't know what it's like there, but it was still at around 3%. I said, that's 7,500 bucks a month. If I can do that for six months in a row, I'd like to quit my job and go into real estate full time. And I was expecting my wife to be the safety net and say, no, we can't do that. Like, I don't know, that's a good idea, whatever. And she said, okay. It's almost more scary. Yeah, oh shit. So that was December, turns January one. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna close the deal in January. And then I realized I don't have anything under contract. So how do you close a deal in January if you don't have any houses under contract in January? So I'm kind of freaking out. I ended up getting connected with a guy. I had followed this guy on Instagram. We had just kind of connected through social media. He was up on the north side of Charlotte. I'm on the south side. And just a hustler, man. Grinder, really good at social media marketing, and was getting into the wholesale space. So he was trying to be a real estate investor. He'd flipped one house with some partners, trying to get into wholesaling. And he said, hey, I'm looking for a real estate agent. So I DM'd him. I'm like, hey, I just happen to be a real estate agent. You know, what you got in mind? And he said, hey, I wanna list this wholesale property that I have under contract on the MLS. And I said, man, you can't do that. And he said, why not? And I said, well, I don't know. It just seems like you shouldn't be able to do that. And he was like, well, watch this video and have a conversation with your BIC and call me back. So he sent me a video of an investor in North Carolina, excuse me, two hours away from us in Raleigh, Durham area who lists all his wholesale deals on MLS. And in our MLS, you're allowed to list a property that you don't yet own as long as you have vested interest in the property, as long as you have the contract. So I had a conversation. I was like, okay, cool, let's do it. So we list, this is January, so we listed a condo that Wes had under contract to wholesale, listed on the MLS, got it under contract, closed it January 28th. That was my first deal. And man, it's been a wild ride ever since. Wes is now my business partner. He handles all the off-market side of things. I handle more of the design, project management, execution, and listing of things. And man, we've just become not only best friends, but really great business partners. We're very complimentarian of one another. And everywhere where he's weak, I'm strong, and vice versa. And he was really the gasoline to the ember that I had of getting into real estate. I've learned so much working alongside him, and it's been a wild ride ever since, man. That's awesome. How do you feel, or how do you all dance the perceived line, at least, of wholesaling versus on the market? Yeah, so I... Question? Yes, yes. No, I'll talk about this all day. I mean, I love it. Yeah, so I call Wes my partner. I literally had this conversation this morning with somebody else.

I call Wes my partner. We're partners in theory, not in entity, if that makes sense. So we have separate entities. We joint venture a lot of stuff. So I've done that really for his protection and for mine of like, hey, as a licensed realtor, I've got all these obligations to meet, right? I'm not in the room when you're having these conversations. Yeah, I'm not in the room when you're having these conversations with these sellers. And so if you do what you need to do, bring me something once you have it under contract. Let's talk about it. Figure out the best exit strategy, right? And we've done, man, we've done so much. I mean, that's one of the things that we really pride ourselves on is being well-rounded investors. So we've done wholesale deals, assignments, double closes. We've sold to institutional buyers. We've taken down ourselves and just paid cash for it in the turnaround and put it back on the MLS. We've fixed and flipped. We've done short-term rentals, long-term rentals, seller finance stuff, lease options, sandwich. I mean, we've done all kind of crazy stuff. And most of my agents in my office have no idea how to do any of this stuff, right? I mean, my BIC is calling me asking me questions about like, hey, how would you do X, you know? And it's really just because I've gotten immersed in that world and that's the world I live in all day, every day. And so I really, I mean, I had a closing this morning of a normal seller, a normal retail residential seller. And I feel like a fish out of water when I'm doing that kind of business because probably 95% of my business is investment related. Sure. Yeah, no, it makes sense. And it is, it's fun because you have this like big tool belt. You have a big toolbox, if you will, and you can really apply the best thing that makes the most sense for everybody to that unique situation where most people have like one or two tools. Yeah, well, and you know, and I think going back to your original question, like, you know, the reason everybody feels a certain type of way about wholesalers is because there's some shady wholesalers out there, right? And, you know, There's some bad agents out there. Absolutely, that's what I was getting ready to say, right? It's like, you know, I don't know where it is around you, but here it feels like, you know, investors feel like agents are like drastically overpaid to just open and unlock doors, right? And agents feel like investors are shady and like always like the cheapest SOBs ever and like trying to pull one over on everybody. And the reality is like 90% of both are neither of those things, right? But there's the 10% outliers who really have made a bad name for themselves and put a sour taste in the other's mouth. And what I try to pride myself on, and Wes is the same way, is like, we're ethical, we're honest, right? I've sat in someone's living room and had to explain to them like, hey, what do you think your house is worth? Yeah, you're probably right. If it was fixed up, it would be this. But if you back out your closing costs and your commissions, you're going to net this. And to get to that price point, you need to put $30,000 in a kitchen, you need to put $15,000 in the bathroom, like all that stuff. I'll buy your house for that number. And he's like, well, why would you do that? Well, because my guys, my kitchen renovation costs $10,000, not 30, because I have the contractors and the supply chain. It's really just education. It's an education gap. But man, I'm trying to add as much value as I can to investors to let them know like, hey, everybody can win, right? We can work shoulder to shoulder. I can be a tremendous asset to you, you can be a tremendous asset to me and my business, and everybody wins, and it's not a competition. And so that's really kind of what I've built my business on. Yeah, that makes sense. You listed out a bunch of different strategies you've done. And I'm wondering, like you talked about, like your broker, people in your office coming to you, asking you what those things are.

Do you wanna go through some of those and explain what they are at a high level? Sure, yeah, we can do that for sure. Yeah, I mean, so- That's double-closing, people may not be familiar with that. Yeah, so double-closing, I think it's a relatively new, you know, five years, relatively new exit strategy. So especially, I don't know what the laws are in Virginia, but South Carolina has a no wholesaling law in place. North Carolina's talking about putting a no wholesaling law in place. You know, and so when I say wholesale, what I mean is assigning a contract, right? So a wholesaler is going out, they're finding the property owner, the seller, they're getting the property under contract for X, and then they're gonna market the property and essentially find a buyer at price Y, and they're gonna marry the two together and take the money out of the middle, right? That's an assignment of contract. In North Carolina, our contract, by default, is non-assignable. So our North Carolina realtor form says this is not an assignable contract. So the way that people have been getting around that, you know, is what they're doing, they're doing what's called double closing. So they're borrowing money, it's called transactional funding, they're borrowing money from a person or an entity or an institution, and they're gonna buy the property and then turn around, they're gonna actually take title record and then turn around and sell the property to the end buyer the same day, usually. And so that transactional money comes into the attorney's account, it buys, the property's turned around and resold, and that money comes back out of the account back to the lender, and then the investor gets to keep the overage there. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. And what are other ways can wholesalers typically close? And again, I understand it's price-specific to your market, anybody listening to this does need to consult an attorney. And trying to find a good real estate or creative real estate attorney is challenging. So I can definitely recommend somebody that might be able to assist, even in a different state, to just kind of help educate other attorneys, if you will. But yeah, talk about what you know for your area. Yeah, same for here. If anybody's listening from the Carolinas or down in this area, we've got some attorneys that are certainly able to help on calls and educate as well. Yeah, so in my mind, when you're talking about real estate investing, it's all about what the best exit strategy is for the property, right? So there's no bad deal. It's just you gotta find the right exit strategy for the property. And so, like we said, wholesaling, marketing it up and finding an in-buyer, double-closing on it. We have dabbled in the creative finance space, so that's a whole can of worms. I don't know how much you want to open that box, but we've done some seller financing stuff where the seller of the property title transfers, but the seller retains the mortgage or they become the bank, essentially. We've done some subject to the existing mortgage kind of stuff. Sub two is a big thing. There's all kinds of videos all over YouTube about it, where you buy the house, but the loan stays in the original seller's name and you make payments on their behalf. We do a lot of fix and flip. We do some, we call it wholetail, where we're basically taking down the property with a hard money lender or private money lender and really just kind of cleaning it out and popping it right back on the MLS. I mean, the MLS is the biggest buyers list in America, right? It's the number one aggregate of buyers for real estate in your market. And with the IDX, it pushes across to Zillow and Realtor and all these other fun ones. And so if you can get your property there, you can get the most number of eyes on it. If you can get the most number of eyes on it, you can get the best price for it, in my opinion. So we're gonna always push to get things into the MLS so that we can then get it in front of as many eyes as possible.

And then it's just about educating the other agents, right? I mean, there's a ton of agents who have been in the game for 30 years and they have no idea what an assignment of contract is or they don't understand, we're getting contracts written and they're just pulling the name off tax records and putting that as a seller. And I'm like, no, the seller is this entity. And they're like, no, it's not. I'm like, yes, it is. And you're having to explain and educate, right? So yeah, so there's, I mean, there's all kinds of exit strategies, right? You know, rentals are hard right now. DSCR loans are tough with the interest rates where they're at right now. But, you know, buying and holding is still a great strategy, I think. We've done some short-term rentals, some midterm rentals, which is kind of that 30 to 90 day rental, you know, for like insurance or travel nurses, stuff like that. So in my mind, every property has an exit strategy. If you can get, if you can match the property and the exit strategy together, you can formulate a solution. It's just, you know, I get sent bad deals all the time and it's just, they're sending them with the wrong exit strategy, right? Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I think you're right with rentals being harder right now. And a lot of people are having to get more creative with how they are going about it. So some people are exploring the subject to area. And I think you mentioned something about a wraparound. That's another way of doing that, I believe, where you basically add an extra layer of protection to a subject to deal for the seller, where they basically have a deed of trust written, I believe is how that works. But yeah, and then there's, I mean, seller financing can help make that work better as well if you get better terms, so better entry rates. Lease options for folks, you know, if they can't qualify for a conventional mortgage, but they've got some money for a down payment, you know, there's the lease option there where the seller can get a lease option where the seller retains the title and, you know, they have a vested interest in the, the buyer has vested interest in the property with the down payment, and then they take over, you know, they're paying their monthly fee and they're handling all the repairs and all that jazz. There's, yeah, there's a ton of options, right? It's just knowing your market, knowing what's needed. I know you do a lot of listings. Are you getting a lot more creative finance or sub-two offers on your properties? No, not particularly. No, not in this area. Okay. And we still have a pretty strong demand. I just had a very big bidding war on my most recent listing. And so far, yeah, we haven't needed to go that route necessarily. And you're wondering, like, how is somebody willing to spend 20% over asking price at one of these interest rates but I mean, it's, I think it's just- Were you priced at market or did you price it competitively to try to drive it up? No, I mean, no, it was, no, I think it was right around market. The person who brought an offer would have argued that we were a little bit under, but, you know, it was based, it just depends on the comps you use. We were basing comps on the, in the neighborhood comps and they might've found some other ones in different neighborhoods that would have supported a higher price point. But, but yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, there's definitely properties that you can, I'm finding that different pockets of the market, you can do different strategies with like, you know, being competitive in the price point usually is the best, you know, route where you're trying to get multiple offers, trying to get it sold fast, pricing it right around where the comps say. But then I think there's sometimes, especially right now in this market, it feels like there's just this like pent up demand that's just like, you know, as soon as something comes on, it's getting sold. But there are markets that are a little bit slower.

And in that, in those markets, I've have actually pushed the price a little bit higher than I think should be, as opposed to hoping it gets bid up, thinking that we're only gonna get one offer on it, maybe as opposed to, you know, five plus, that if we're gonna get somebody in the first three days making an offer on it, right around asking price, as opposed to hoping it gets bid up, but it probably won't. Same results as $10,000 loss or whatever. So it's just, it's a fun, you know, it's kind of a strategy where you gotta get, you know, hyperlocal and really understand your market, like you said. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. But we're also setting up a midterm rental as we, as we speak, I hauled two mattresses over there today. They got delivered to our house instead of that house. So my checker on box on Amazon, huh? Yeah, exactly. I won't name names, but my co-host. Uh-huh, yep. But yeah, what, have you, you mentioned insurance. Is that like people that are like, you know, out of their house because of damage or whatever? Have you, have you, a few of these? Do you have a couple of these that you're running now or? Yeah, so we don't, I don't have any currently, but we've got, I've got some clients who do. And man, it's been, you know, again, it's a relationship, it's a relationship business, right? So, you know, this, this one girl in particular, she's done a really great job at networking with, Charlotte has a pretty expansive hospital system. And so they have a lot of travel nurses. And so what she's done is really networked. And I mean, midterm was kind of her, midterm and short term was her strategy of choice for a very long time. And she's done a really good job of building out relationships with folks in the hospital system and with, you know, in the insurance space so that when they have a need, she's their first call, right? And there's obviously, you know, websites like Furnished Finder and all that jazz, but for her it was a lot of, yeah, Airbnb, exactly. But for her, it was a lot of, you know, hey, the HR manager at this, you know, hospital system knows that these three travel nurses are coming in for the next 90 days and they're calling her going, hey, do you have housing for these three folks? Which is, I mean, it's exactly what you want, you know? Yeah, absolutely. It's where we're excited about getting this running and building those connections and seeing if it's a viable strategy to replicate. Because obviously, you know, if you do have a steady stream potential, but you like are constantly booked, you know, like having availability too will keep people coming back as well. But yeah. Now, what made your midterm on that particular property? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it's basically exactly what we were just talking about is it didn't pencil out well. It would have been an outstanding flip, but it's one of those things where we have held pretty much every flip we've done that we've liked the location of and liked the kind of size and everything about it, we've wanted to hold it. We've done a burn strategy with it. And this one is the same. And it could have, you know, penciled out barely. Like, you know, if you're not being super critical with the vacancies and all those kind of extra things that you're supposed to calculate in, if you were really strict about that, then it wouldn't have been the best or it would, you know, broken even kind of thing. But, you know, it was also just kind of a fun idea to try this. And, you know, I figured worst case scenario, we end up having, we lose some money on the furniture. Not really, because we'll sell it and it will make, you know, we have a pretty good margin to profit on that. So that's not- And then you can always pop a 12 month tenant in it, right? That too. Yeah, we could do that too. And, but yeah, we really liked the property. We really liked the location. We have a downtown area that's revitalized and it's brought a lot of vibrancy to that area and a lot of professionals want to be close to that area.

So this is about a thousand square foot house, not huge, and it's charming and it, you know, walkable to those bars and restaurants. And so I think it's just a, it's a great location long-term and we'd love to keep it. And we're excited about trying this kind of thing out. And if it works, we, you know, would look to maybe converting other ones that we have into a midterm or exploring some of the short-term possibilities as well. Our city itself doesn't allow it, so we'd have to go outside the city limits. Are you hyper-focused in your town, in your city? For investing? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so I've done stuff outside of, I think it's for, yeah. Yes, and why is I think that, A, I understand the market the best, B, the city itself has gonna have the most, I think the more you are under the median sales price, the more you are, you know, in the area that the most people wanna be in, the safer you are for renting, for selling, et cetera. So that's our sweet spot. If we can get something underneath the median sales price and value, right? There's just so many exit strategies there, like you talked about, like there's just, you know, having the best one is what we go after, but then having a BCD is also good. Yeah. Good to add to that. And that's one of the big things I try to teach new investors who are coming in, you know, they're like, hey, I wanna flip a house. I'm just like, okay, cool. Like, number one, let's talk about that. You know, why, what does that mean to you? What's your tolerance? Like, do you wanna have a full gut job? Do you wanna cosmetic, you know? But then what I try to teach them is like, hey, we gotta have backup exit strategies, right? Like if we flip this and we list it and it doesn't sell, then what are we gonna do? Yeah. Right? Will it cash flow? Will it at least cover your rent on a DSCR? Okay, cool. Then that's our check down, right? Like that's our audible. Or, you know, can we short-term rental it? Can we, you know, all these things, right? So we're really big on like, man, if it's got one exit strategy, not a great, not a great fit. Not a great fit. And you really are kind of like hamstrung, right? And so always making sure like, yes, option A, like you said, is the ideal world, but have we got a B, C, and D? And if so, then let's pull the trigger on it and go. Yeah, we, I had a couple pretty difficult flips that were in, you know, smaller markets and more rural. And just, I just, you know, they took a long time, they're difficult, and it's probably just something that, you know, it was, it's not like it was 2021, 2022. So, you know, I think taking a different approach, be a little bit more conservative is gonna be good going forward. And, you know, cooling my jets a little bit on it. And then, you know, there's a whole other thing with this. We're having fun with this midterm rental and we're excited. That's important. Yeah. You can't put dollars on that, but that's like very important. It keeps you engaged. It keeps you, you know, not from getting burnt out. And my, you know, my wife's loving spending money on all the different furniture and stuff. We're probably gonna be inquiring some of the nice pieces that, you know, we, hey, that would work well in our house. We'll get one too. But it's, you know, it's a lot of fun. They're doing a great job. I have a, you know, a stager design person that's getting her license, joining my team, but she's doing a ton of work with getting like everything just to feel really good and have design elements throughout it. So it's fun. But at the same time, like even if we get a really good return on it, if we just sold it and put everything into a good syndication, we probably would be doing better. Now you have that mathematical stuff in the back of your head too, but, you know, that doesn't really factor in the appreciation as much, so. That's right, for sure. But yeah, so you say about 70% of your business is investors, right? About 90% is investors. About 90%, sorry.

Yeah. Okay. So, and then the 10% are gonna be just, you know, connections, personal connections kind of thing? Yeah, I mean, we, yeah, personal connections, fear of influence, referrals. You know, we've got some lead, I'm with Realty One Group. We've got some lead programs, but not a ton of leads coming in that way through the brokerage. And so most of mine, you know, I'm born and raised in Rock Hill. I've got a pretty strong network of folks I grew up with, folks who know my family. And so people know what I do. I am the, you know, I'm the flip realtor guy, like that's kind of what people know me as. And so, you know, so I've picked up some business of like, you know, hey, if you can't find the house you're looking for, like, why don't we buy this ugly house and make it the house you wanna buy, you know? And so, but that's a little more, it's a little more complex because, you know, personally, the reason I like working with investors is because there's not a lot of emotion attached, right? So they're not crying, but I mean, you know, this lady this morning was like crying when she saw this house and moving back to Ohio. And I'm like, you know, pat her on the back, like, it's okay, you know, it's just a house, like, you know, but there's memories, right? And there's, you know, personal value to the home and stuff like that. And I'm empathetic for sure. Like I said, I mean, I got a background in ministry, like it equips me to handle people like this, you know? But with investors, it's just like, okay, do the numbers make sense? Cool, let's do it. Yeah. No, totally, I get that. And it is appealing. I think there's also, the bad part about it is also just then it's harder to find the right property in some ways. Like I think, like there's like, it's harder to pencil out these days, especially. For sure. But, you know, there's definitely been a huge advantage for me in, and that's kind of one of the niches I've narrowed in on is kind of helping sellers get their house ready for the market with my contractor teams and my knowledge and like, you know, kind of being able to get some of those good prices from, you know, the volume I give my contractors. And applying- Are you managing that process hands-on? Yes. Yes. And are you- I'm probably systemizing that a little bit. Okay. And then are you, and if I'm getting too personal, tell me to shut up. Are you having your sellers pay for that as they go or are you fronting that and letting them pay it at closing? No, it's on them. I help pay. That's part of, I've got like a, you know, help pay you, the contractors. But also I have a contract that mostly is okay with getting paid at closing. So- Yeah, just send an invoice in. If you can get that lined up and, you know, that's gonna be, you know, it might be an extra month or so for them, but that's a huge advantage to some sellers. And maybe that's something that, depending on your contractor, like say, hey, look, just for special occasions, like we'll try to get you 75% of them. Like, you know, if you want 40% upfront or whatever, we can try to get that for most of them. But, you know, if we have the special circumstance where you'd be cool with it, I think, you know, that's a huge advantage. We get you more and more business this way. So it's gotta be a win-win with them. And the higher volume, I think, is part of it for sure. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Yeah, man. I gotta ask if you have any golden nuggets you'd wanna impart on our listeners that could be for real estate agents or investors or, you know, agents that are looking to get into investing. Sure. Whatever you got. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think for me, like the drum that I bang over and over again to every agent that I talk to is like, find your niche, however you wanna say it, find your niche and like double down on that and really like build that out because that's what, somebody said the riches are in the niches. And I think that's like, not only is the money there, but like the fulfillment is there. Right.

So, you know, like I told you, my first deal was with Wes on this wholesale deal, but then I had a listing of a girl that I worked with at my nine to five before I quit to go into real estate full-time. Her and her husband are getting a divorce. They're like selling this house. And it was just like, I'm like, guys, like I would rather be anywhere than in this room talking through this. You know? Yeah. You know, and then I had a buyer that wanted to go see 80 houses in a weekend and never pulled the trigger on anything. And so I'm going, like if I'm a new agent who's not resilient and I don't know that there's, you know, real estate was a conduit for me to get to the investing side of things. If that's not me, if I didn't have like a bigger real estate purpose other than just being an agent and I got my license because, you know, it looks sexy on TV or it seems like you don't have to wear that hard and you can set your own schedule. Like I would have quit a long time ago because general brokerage, like if that's not your thing, you're going to pull your hair out. And I think you've got to really hone in on like what you want to do and what fills you up. Like I got a friend of mine, she loves working with first-time homebuyers. Now I would rather get a lobotomy, but she, like, it's her jam, man. And she's got it dialed in, she's got it systematized, like she's great at it. And I refer for, like if I get a first-time homebuyer, I'm like, you need to talk to her. You don't need to talk to me, you need to talk to her. She's an expert. But you really got to like hone in on like, yes, what can make you money, but also like what can get you fulfilled at the end of the day? Like when you lay your head down at night, you know, you got to know you're making a difference and you got to know that you're doing something that fills your cup up. And for me, man, that's like running around to flip. I mean, you know, probably TMI, but like my day-to-day, like I had a normal residential closing. Then I went, picked up some materials for a flip we've got going on. Then I went going checking in on new construction stuff. I'm like, use the bathroom in a porta potty at a job site today, because I might have so much going on and I'm like running around, you know? But like, I love that stuff. Every day is different for me. I'm like, you know, my shoes are dirty. I'm not in a suit. And like, that's like my jam. Now, other people, that would be miserable for them. And it's just because it's not their niche, right? So you've got to figure that out and you've got to really like lean into that. And I think there's a tremendous opportunity if you can identify it and you can really brand yourself and like put some oomph behind it, you know? And it doesn't have to be investing, right? Like everybody, anytime I lead a training on real estate investing, all the agents are like, hey, I want to learn how to do what you do. I'm like, no, you probably don't. Like, it's a lot. It's miserable some days, right? It's really hard. But like, maybe you really like dogs. Be like the dog parent agent, right? Like, you know, lean into that. Lean into like hanging out at dog parks and like passing out business cards and giving dogs clothes and gifts. Like whatever you love to do in your spare time, like pour gasoline on that and incorporate that into your real estate business. For me, it's flipping houses. I would be doing it whether I was a licensed agent or not. And so if I can help other people, you know, not make their flip look like crap, then that's like, I'm happy at the end of the day and I get to go home and, you know, not be grumpy and all that fun stuff. So that's my golden nugget. It's just like, find out what fills you up and figure out where it overlaps with real estate and go all in on that. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, what's the point if you're miserable, right? Oh my gosh, I mean. Money's nice. Congrats, you had a bunch of GCI last year and you hate your life, you know, like get real, dude.

Yeah, okay, so do you have any books then that you think are fundamental for everybody that they should read or maybe ones that you're currently enjoying? Yeah, so I got this question and dreaded it because I'm not a reader. I need to be a reader. I am massively ADHD. And so like audio books just don't even work for me. I'm that kind of guy. In fact, we just got back from Mexico on vacation and I checked out two books out of the library to take with me. And my wife laughed at me on the plane. She was like, dude, you're not gonna read. You're not gonna read those. But I was thinking about the question and I know you've had some Tim Ferriss fans on here before. The four hour shift for me was a game changer. So I got it. I don't know if you've read that. Have you read the four hour shift? Yeah, I don't know if I did the, so my problem is I'll start things. I don't know if I read the whole thing. No, don't worry. So I like to cook and it was pitched as like learn how to hack these chef skills and all this stuff. So I got it. And really, man, my biggest takeaway from it was like, he, you know, he's crazy anyway, but like he, just the way he broke down, like learning how you learn and like breaking things down so that you can learn it to become an expert, even if you've never done it before was fascinating. And then the thing that has stuck with me, I read this book years ago. The thing that has stuck with me is just because nobody else does it or because it's not how it's historically done doesn't mean that it doesn't work, right? So the example he uses in the book is he is trying to become a wine snob and he decants wine by taking an immersion blender and sticking it in the wine and immersion blending wine for like, it's like a really expensive bottle of wine. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, all these like, all these wine enthusiasts are like, oh my God. Yeah. You know, and he's like, but it makes sense, right? Like if the point of decanting wine is to get air into it, what's the best way to get air into it? And so that has, I'm a bit of a rule follower growing up. And so that has really pushed me. And Wes, my business partner is great of like, hey, Wes, we can't do this. He's like, well, why not? I'm like, well, I don't know, Wes. That's just not how it's done. He's like, well, why not? And I'm like, well, shit, I don't have a really good answer for that. So let's try it, you know? So it's opened us up to like so many things that I don't think we would have ever experienced if I would have just wet blanketed the conversation by going, ah, it's not possible. It's like, well, why not? It's like, well, that's a good question. I don't really know why not. Let's try it. And then we try it and it works. And so, yeah, four-hour chef. And there's some practical cooking stuff in there too, but Tim Curry's just a freak. I think I was talking about or thinking about, does he also have a four-hour body? He has a four-hour body, yes. Yeah, he's got four-hour work week was the first one I think. You read the four-hour body? Yeah, I never read that one. Yeah, and because he has some stuff about food in there. Like it's just like, you know, high protein kind of. But anyway, so, okay, that sounds interesting. I'd have to check that out. I mean, and honestly, like the food stuff, I love cooking too. I love food. I haven't had near as much time to do as cooking. And also the kids are a lot more picky than they want. They don't like to, you know, have my lamb sog that I want to cook, that's spicy. So anyway, eating that process up, which sounds like it probably would be part of the book, would be really, probably has some really good tips in there, I'll have to check it out. So thanks for that. Yeah, and it's like cookbook size. So it looks like a cookbook. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So it was a cool, and if you research it, there was a whole, it was a cool branding play too. Like that was the first book he published from Amazon Publishing.

And so it was like non-traditional book publishing. And all these like traditional publishers, like got all up in arms about it. And like Barnes and Noble, like blacklisted the book. It wouldn't care. I mean, it was like a whole thing, but you know, it just helped him further solidify, I think his position of, I mean, he's just so creative. I think he's really interesting to learn from just because he thinks way differently than I think. And so anytime I think he can be around somebody like that, it's worth taking notes for sure. Do you then, are you a big podcast listener? Like if you've interviewed. Yeah, yeah, I like some podcasts, man. Yeah, my interests are all over the place though. So I can't listen to like just real estate or just leadership podcasts because I'll get real burnt out. So I'm like listening to like, yeah, I listen to some wild stuff. What about you? Yeah, no, I do. I mean, I don't, I haven't listened to it near as much as I have in the past. But honestly, I like to do a podcast and mow the lawn every week at least. And that's something that's like, I have a zero turn mower, so I'm not out there getting exercise. But that is like the most peaceful, amazing thing. Like, I just feel so much better after I do that. Just like interesting ideas, things that get my brain going and just, yeah, the peaceful moment of the lawn. So I feel like I'm Hank Hill right now. Yeah. Damn it, Bobby. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, incredible King of the Hill reference. Way to go, man. I hadn't thought about King of the Hill in a minute and you just brought it all back. It is, I don't know if underrated is the right word, but it is, it's a, Mike Judd is a genius. But Jordan, if people were interested in investing in your area, wanna reach out to you or follow you for more, where can they find you? Yeah, Instagram's gonna be the best place. I am at JordanSmithSC, like South Carolina. And there you can find all kind of my escapades and some really pretty houses we've lived. I'm a design guy, so like I, that's my whole thing is, call it ballin' on a budget. In fact, there's a, there's a shameless plug, I guess. Well, we'll try to add value, right? There's a reel in there, I will, I don't think it's pinned right now, but I'll pin it before this goes live. But there's a reel in there that I talk about design stuff and I'm actually giving away a free design guide with links to materials and mood boards and stuff like that. So if your listeners are interested, they can go on there and there's a keyword to comment and it'll send them a link to download that for free. So check me out on Instagram, @JordanSmithSC. It's, yeah, it's always an adventure over there. And my Instagram stories are usually, when I'm posting them, it's like a flip house that's in shambles and then the next story will be like a ridiculously funny meme and then the next story will be like, you know, my three-year-old singing Taylor Swift. And so it's a pretty well-rounded follow. I think I'm pretty fun to follow. You got the Swifties at home too? Oh my gosh, we are. I, it's crazy. So Collins turns four at the end of this month and she somehow latched onto the heirs tour on Disney+ and we watched it all day every day for not an exaggeration, two months straight. And I mean, like everybody in our family, I've got four kids, everybody in our family knows every word. And then the darndest thing, man, I think the algorithm got her. So like, you know, like when you finish watching something, it'll be like, oh, if you like this, you'll probably like these three movies or shows. So she, her newest infatuation is 2025. Her newest infatuation is Hannah Montana. Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana, four-year-old. And she is all, I mean, she's so sassy and has a microphone and a mic stand and a guitar and will put on a dress and you cannot tell her she's not a rock star. So that sounds like our house. We have not gotten that bug yet, but we are- Well, don't delete Hannah Montana off of everything that you can. A Swiftie cover concert.

If you are receiving payments for property, settlements, lawsuits or any other type of structured annuities or monthly payments, we would like to make you a CASH OFFER on all or part it. For more info go to sellthisnote.com. Get money for a vacation, pay bills, invest or get ready for the upcoming holiday shopping season🎄🎁.

New Post has been published on https://real-estate.newonline.help/boost-your-real-estate-lead-conversions-using-creative-finance/

Boost Your Real Estate Lead Conversions Using Creative Finance

Selling Your House Fast using the “Subject To” Method

By: The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC

Why would anyone want to sell their home via subject to financing? Aren’t their major risks associated with such undertaken? What if the buyer flakes and defaults on the note? This situation alone would be enough to deter any homeowner from selling their home in such a way as relying on another stranger to pay their mortgage. Worst of all, your credit score would take a significant hit alongside many other financial hardships. On the contrary, everything could also, too, go as planned with the mortgage getting paid down and your credit score gradually increasing.

Today, most FSBO’s shy away from such creative deal structuring due to one major issue, LACK OF KNOWLEDGE!

That’s right! A recent poll taken by The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC had determined this issue among a survey selection of 50 FSBO’s who were either currently selling or planning to sell their homes very soon. The survey showed us that out of the 50 FSBO’s, on a professional critique level, 42 within the sample of 50 would have benefited more from a subject to deal than a traditional one-time closing. Out of the 50 FSBO’s 48 had no idea what it was and why it is used.

Why would a homeowner sell their home via subject to their existing mortgage?

Let’s start with the real-life story of Peggy Labate of Massachusetts. Peggy had lost her job Do tour company going to economic trouble. She then began facing the possibility of her home going into foreclosure, Putting her in a particularly dire financial situation. Peggy owed a total of $74,000 on her note for her home. This put her at an astonishing $12,000 in the hole.

She had an investor interested in a property, however, He did not actually have the full $74,000 needed for the sake of purchasing the property. Instead, the two of them worked out a compromise that would work for everyone. The compromise consisted of the following: He would purchase the property in such a way that he was subject to the existing mortgage payments per month. If agreed upon, Peggy will no longer have the monthly payment mortgage burden because the investor will be taking over her payments. Peggy then was able to make the sale work and avoid a disastrous credit hit by foreclosure. She barely had any money for food for that week, nevermind a mortgage payment. She was also able to sell the home within 2-3 business days following the agreement. YES! It was that easy.

In other parts of the country subject to the existing mortgage now has become quite popular among for sale by owners. Especially in post Covid era, selling subject to deals have increasingly spread. Especially in areas where unemployment has increased drastically.

Furthermore, most people don’t have the time in today’s world to even market the property by themselves. Additionally, they are not adapt to marketing, interviewing potential buyers, and credit analysis as Massachusetts license representatives are trained for. But why pay commission when you can simply pass your mortgage bill over to a investor who will take over the payments as well as put some money on the sellers pocket.

Another example was Hank. Hank was upside down on his mortgage because he bought right before the 2008 crash. The homes value dropped significantly but was able to almost break even in 2021. Let's look at Hanks predicament below

Home cost 2005: $320,000.00

Mortgage note: $335,000.00

POST CRASH

Home cost 2009: $245,000.00

Mortgage note Current 2009: $315,500.00

Present 2021

Home cost 2021: $285,500

Current note Balance: $295,000

Since Hank lost his job due to the COVID-19 virus, he is now finding it hard to pay for every day expenses and his mortgage. Therefore he’s in a little predicament. A friend of his told him “to suck it up and pay up to $10,000 and be done with it already”, but Hank doesn't have the $10,000 to come out of pocket. Plus, Hank is thinking “who actually sells a home to lose money?”. The plot thickens as the days go by and his bills pile up he is now three months behind on his mortgage and his banks are calling leaving messages on his voicemail. His monthly mortgage PITI is at $1,250.00. Thus, on top of all the other bills, as well as the $10,000 he will need to pay out-of-pocket if he wanted to sell, he is now behind approximately three months and four days owing a whopping $4,200.00 (includes late payments). The home is getting close to breaking even, and he has pre-permitted lot space to extend the square footage of his home. He was told by an investor he could add another 1000 to 1500 sqft to his home. Although costs would range anywhere between $68,000 to $80,000, it would bring his home value from $285,000 to $390,000. Additionally, if he were to add another a bathroom and a half in this addition, the after renovations value would be anywhere between $415,000 to $425,000. Unfortunately, Hank did not have the funds, which would probably be anywhere between $110-$120,000 to do such work, even though the value add would be $200,000 to $215,000. What is Hank going to do.

Hank is definitely stressed out!

Hank is now slipping into foreclosure and is getting unrealistic to almost cruel advice. Until one day he found an ad in his local paper from The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC.

Hank called The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC and told him his predicament. Hank began his conversation by saying, “ Look, I know you can’t help me in my situation but maybe you can give me some advice?”, the investor from The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC laughed and calmly said “ Well hello, my name is Gary, Whats yours?”. Hank forgetting his manners backed up his excitement and said with a sigh, “My apologies, Hank here”. The caller than asked Hank to fill him in on what’s going on. At the end of the conversation, the investor asked to visit the property and take a look at the permits that were once pulled by Hank that he never utilized back before the crash.

Although the permits had become null and void, the investor knew the area very well as well as the permitting process for building additions. The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC are constantly scrutinizing and investigating the housing market and its bylaws. At the end of the walkthrough the investor suprised Hank with a deal that almost had him fall to the ground. The deal, according to Hank was pure genius.

The deal looked like this:

First, Hank will transfer title to the property over to the Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC.

Instead of paying out of pocket, the investor offered him $20,000 cash in pocket for the transfer of title.

The Mass Home Buyers LLC would bring an additional $6,000.00 for closing expenses incurred and pay up the missed payments of $4,500.00 to the bank.

The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC would then own the home, however, Hank would need to leave his mortgage untouched and in place.

To lessen Hank’s anxiety, Hank and the investor called his lender on a three-way call to explain the transaction. Strangely, the lender knew the investor by the first name. Hank knew he was dealing with professionals. The investor kindly told the lender about Hanks's situation and that he offered him the title in exchange for paying off the back payments as well as take over his note as-is. The lender said, “ Ok, Gary, so you want to subject to the existing note and make payments on Mr. Hanks 30 year fixed?” The investor replied, “yes, Sir.” The lender asked, “ok, that's fine; when do you think it will transfer or be paid in full?” The investor said calmly, “I don’t know now; however, you will be the first to know when we do so.” The lender stated, “fair enough- ok, we are good, no static on this end.” Hank had heard about the dreaded due on sale clauses and was just relieved. Besides, the investor boldly asked the lender to keep the mortgage under Hank's name; however, cancel his insurance for a tenant-buyer who can be vetted additionally by the lender will be taking over. Hanks's problems were swiftly Disappearing. How does this subject to thing work anyhow?

Finally the closing date has come and looked like this.

Purchase: $25,000 transfer of deed w/ subject to $290,000 fixed 30 year mortgage payments.

Hank has money for first and last for a apartment and got his job back. Also, his credit was soaring because of all the additional payoffs by the tenant-buyer the Mass Home Buyers LLC had moved in.

Investors side

Current mortgage: $1,250 per month

The Mass Home Buyers Lease Option Payments by tenant buyer: $1,900.00 ( the areas rental median is $2,500) Cash Flow $650.00

The tenant-buyer was a carpenter who pulled a new permit and added over 1600 SF of home and an in-law and two full baths. The home soared from $290,000 to $480,000.00

After cash-out refinances, the tenant-buyer will be able to reflip, and the Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC will make over $235,000 within 1.5 years. Not bad for one deal.

Hank no longer is upside down and in debt. He also has money in the bank. The tenant-buyer has an affordable investment he will inevitably reflip. The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC made a healthy profit for saving Hank's credit from annihilation while providing inventory to one of many tenant buyers. Talk about a win/win/win heh? Subject to deal structuring is highly beneficial for sellers who are in situations like Hank, but also if they need to sell in a hurry due to a strict timeline that cannot wait for a realtor to research, market, interview, negotiate, and inevitably, sell their home.

Subject to candidates usually have three main scenarios in common:

They are facing foreclosure and/or exceptionally behind on payments

They want to repair their credit score and what better than a real estate solutions company paying their tab under their name on a monthly basis for an extended amount of time. As the buyer pays on the mortgage, the previous owner of which the note is named under, is being paid consistently. Sometimes even double paid due to the buyers motivation to pay down the balance in preparation of either a resell or a cash out finance situation.

They need to move very quickly and do not have the time to A) remote manage a realtor on the property which can result in miscommunication and other issues B) Has a new job that begins relatively soon that is out-of-state. C) A or B, however, has a significant amount of mortgage left to pay. and D) Is negative on their note and does not want to come out of pocket to pay the difference. The Massachusetts Home Buyers LLC not only assists those in selling their upside-down notes but will also. Reward the seller for transferring the title. What would you rather do?