BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 527: 300 Doors, 100% Creative Financing with Pace Morby
Episode Date: November 4, 2021Pace Morby’s name has become synonymous with seller financing, subject to deals, and flipping. He is one of the most educated players in the real estate game on all things related to non-traditional... financing. He even taught Brandon Turner, the author of Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down, a thing or two on today’s show! Originally working as a contractor, Pace was hired on as a flipper for some popular iBuyer portfolios. He flipped over a thousand homes a year but was doing so without building any wealth for himself. This is when he began flipping his own homes and slowly, steadily building a portfolio of rentals that would provide him with the cash flow he desired. Did we mention he did this entirely without bank financing? Since Pace is the go-to investor for all things creative financing, Brandon and David took advantage of his time on the show to ask him about subject to strategies, seller financing tips, and how he takes a seller from consideration to closing. If you’ve been wondering how to build your rental portfolio without down payments, credit checks, or preapproval from banks, this is THE episode to listen to. In This Episode We Cover: Outsourcing your business so you aren’t the driver of every deal Structuring a subject to deal and using it to create a win for the seller Why you shouldn’t be afraid to offer full price on a seller finance deal The first phrase you should say to any seller when viewing their property What to do when your “due on sale” clause comes to fruition How to find work, meet investors, and grow your brand through social media And So Much More! Links from the Show: BiggerPockets Youtube Channel Triple Digit Flip on A&E BiggerPockets Podcast 493: How COVID Changed Real Estate Forever (+How it Didn’t!) with Ken McElroy Opendoor Zillow Start Virtual Redfin Airbnb Kelley Blue Book Craigslist Open Door Capital BiggerPockets Podcast 260: The Ultimate Guide to Negotiating (for the Negotiation-Averse) With Former FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss Equity Assurance The Moth Podcast Brandon Turner’s Instagram Grant Cardone’s Instagram Ken McElroy's Website Pace Morby Interviews Jerry Norton On How He'd Get His First Deal Chris Voss' LinkedIn Freebies from this episode: Pace's ebook on Subto Exclusive seller video calls Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show527 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 527.
This is what's kind of cool about seller finance.
Why did she sell?
Well, because I paid her 40 grand more than anybody else.
That's the answer.
So many people are like, why are sellers doing this?
I'm like, there's 40,000 reasons why she did it.
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What's going on, number one?
It's Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green.
David, man, it is an honor to be in the room with you again today, digitally anyway.
The honor is mine, my big bearded battle, buddy, brother.
We'll talk more about that.
Today's show, okay, look, I know I say this a lot, I know I say it a lot, but this is one of my favorite shows we've ever recorded.
I'm not kidding.
When it comes to like negotiation and talking with sellers and making deals happen and creative finance and no and low money down, you're going to love it.
In fact, if you're watching this on YouTube right now, you'll see you, I'm going to hold it up.
But if not, I'll just explain what I'm holding up here.
This is my notebook of notes that I took, literally notes that I took while recording this episode.
but I have five pages of like tiny handwriting notes from our guest today.
His name is Pace Morby.
If you haven't heard of him, you will today.
Phenomenal real estate investor kills it on like the creative finance side by almost all of his
deals with creative financing.
In fact, the deal deep dive today, he goes into how he does this amazing creative finance
on a mobile home park.
You're going to love that.
He has to flips houses.
He does wholesale stuff a little bit.
But he does a lot of these like super creative seller financing and subject to.
And you're going to go into what those are and how to make them work.
I like, you guys, I literally wrote the book.
on investing in real estate with no and low money down.
Like I wrote that book and I learned so much today about no and low money down financing.
It makes me like want to go and make a third edition of that book now to put in everything
that I just learned from today's episode.
So grab a pen and paper, take some notes today.
We go through, I mean, what is subject to and seller financing?
How to get zero percent interest on your seller financing?
He goes into like specific phrases to use when talking with sellers.
Like that was one of the most phenomenal.
parts of this thing. Just so much good stuff. He's also got a TV show coming out on A&E. Actually,
I think it just launched like in the last week or two. So you may have seen his name or him around
there. He's got a new show called triple digit flips or flipping triple digits flips or flipping
on A&E. So all that and more to come. David, how'd I do on an intro for that one? Was that good
explanation of pace? That was a flawless execution. Flawless. Wow. All right. Well, thanks,
man, anything you want to add? I would say that Pace is giving such good tactical information.
Anyone could take this and actually go use it if they're in contact with direct to seller.
And that Pace actually, from what I hear, has a lot of content that shows him actually negotiating with the people directly.
So understanding the concept is where it starts. That's what we talk about on today's show.
But that's not the same as being able to execute it. Pace is a very good communicator.
He's a great storyteller like he mentioned.
So I would encourage anyone who's listening to this who thinks, man, this is really cool.
I could do that.
Go practice how you communicate.
Practice how you listen.
Pace gives very good examples during the interview of, I said this.
What number would make you smile?
What would make you happy?
Catch me up to speed with what's been going on, right?
We always want to step in and tell people, here's my offer.
Here's what we're going to do.
Every single one of these examples, he starts off by listening to the other person.
So just keep in mind, this is a double-edged sword.
Half of it is the information that we give you today.
the other half is learning how to execute.
Yeah, that's great, man.
Great.
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You know, I said earlier this is one of my favorite shows we've ever done. Here's what I mean by that.
Years in the future from now, like people are going to look back on this show and this is going to be
one of those defining shows. Like when I look back on the past like 520-some episodes we've done,
there's a handful that people bring up to me all the time. Like, oh yeah, I remember when that guy came
out or that story that that person told. This, when we get to episode thousand, people are going to
look back and be like, remember when you interviewed that guy, Pace, who did this and this and this,
like this is going to be one of those game changing episodes. So grab a pen and paper. Please grab a
pen and paper. It's going to help. Listen to this one two or three times through. This episode will
change your life. Let's get to it. All right, Pace, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man.
Awesome to have you here. Guys, I am such a huge fan. Just an unbelievable fan of everything you're doing.
I can't believe you guys are well past 500 episodes now. It's unbelievable.
Crazy, man. Well, thank you. I appreciate that a lot. And likewise, I'm excited to dig into your story. I've heard the name, you know, uttered in the halls of real estate. And so now we get to, we get to hear the man behind the myth. So tell us about yourself. How'd you get into real estate?
I got into real estate, basically kind of similar to Ken McElroy, same way that he was kind of talking about on a previous show, where he was working in real estate, but he was on the opposite side of the desk. So I was a contractor for a very long time, grew up in a blue collar family. And I was,
the first contractor that open door hired when they launched their company. And then I was the first
contractor that Offerpad hired when they launched. And then I was the first contractor Zillow hired when they
started fixing and flipping. And so what I would do is I would do all their turns, do all their big
renovations, and then I would open up markets for them because it was challenging for them to find
contractors that understood their process and their systems. So I would travel around the country.
and I just woke up one day.
It was just the craziest thing where I go, man, I'm making, you know, good money, but I'm not building wealth.
And here I am flipping a thousand homes a year for other people, a thousand.
And I don't, I'm not making any of that money.
I'm basically providing a service.
And I'm doing at the time, I thought that was the hardest part of real estate was the construction.
And so I just, I did my first flip.
And I just got addicted and I had to jump into it.
And then I kind of got addicted to one thing where I go, every time somebody said, you couldn't do
something, I said, okay, well, let's try that. And so I started doing all sorts of things.
And I ran into creative finance. I ran into wholesaling. I did a whole bunch of that.
Still do it to this day. And so our business today looks, we have about 300 doors, nothing like
your 2000. I'm like super blown away and impressed by that. We got about 300 doors. Every one of them
was purchased with either subject to or seller finance.
or we've got Airbnbs and mobile home parks, and we also do a lot of fixing and flipping,
and we've got a TV show coming out all about that on A&E pretty soon, too.
That's awesome.
All right.
So you're killing it in a few different ways here, and I want to go into that.
Before we jump into like the, I about 300 doors with Subject 2 and seller financing, which is super cool,
how did you get even connected with like, and by the way, let me clarify something.
Open Door that you're talking about is not the open door that I have.
So I have Open Door Capital.
Yeah, that's Open Door.
Yeah, you're Open Door Capital, right?
I'm Open Door Capital, correct.
I was originally open door properties.
It's kind of weird.
I'm like,
I was open door properties in 07.
Then Open Door was founded like 13.
They're like the world's biggest wholesaler.
One of the world's biggest basically wholesalers for lack of a better term.
I don't know, fix and flippers.
They're huge company.
And then I start open door capital afterwards.
So I don't know.
Eventually they'll probably yell at me for having the name Open Door Capital,
but I'll be like,
not if you yell at them first.
I know.
No,
I've heard they're good.
I've heard they're good people.
So I think we're fine.
Anyway,
how'd that happen?
I mean,
how do you get connected and started working on as a contractor on a thousand homes a
year. Like, that's crazy. Like, what does that even look like? I honestly, here's the answer. The answer is
I posted when I was just a contractor doing remodels and additions for homeowners. I would post
everything on Instagram and I would do a lot of before and afters. And so when Open Door came into
Phoenix, they were looking for contractors and because Open Doors are really progressive company.
And, you know, we call them an iByer in our industry. They understand social media. So they hashtaged
contractor in Phoenix. They found me, called me in and interviewed.
me and I became one of the first two contractors hired.
That's great.
I mean, how many people...
Yeah, that's...
Never underestimate Instagram.
I always like to say, I raised $75 million in the past year and a half all on Instagram.
Like, it flows through Instagram.
It's insane.
Obviously, the podcast is a big piece of that.
But even that, it flows to Instagram, and then Instagram's where they get to know me and they
like me.
And same thing with you.
Like, they saw you.
They saw your work.
They saw how you operate, what you do and got to know you a little bit through social
media.
So, yeah, a lot of power there.
People say that people do business with people.
like and I agree with that, but people really do business with people who do business, right?
Like, I can like you all day long, but if you're not active in the business, then what are we doing?
And when you're highlighting and you're showing people what you're doing, people are like, oh my gosh,
they're actually doing transactions or they're actually doing a fix and flips.
And so you got to talk about what you're doing or else you're missing a pretty valuable, you know,
opportunity there.
Yeah, that's such a great point.
I mean, how many employees did you have and what do that organization look like to have a
between that many houses and remodels. I mean,
you just had like multiple layers of a business here.
Yeah, we do. We've got a handful of different businesses. So the way we're structured as my
fix and flip entity is completely separate. So even if I buy a deal, let's say get a wholesale
deal here in Phoenix, I will take that cash deal and I will assign that deal to my fix
and flip business. They are so separate. It's ridiculous. Same thing with my, a subject two deal or
a seller finance deal. If that lead comes into my wholesale business and I decide, I want to keep it,
I will assign that to my portfolio LLCs, right?
And so we own a property management company.
Once we got up to about 30, 40 houses,
we ended up having to just kind of create our own property management company.
Because we have our own construction crews and we have all of those guys that are already working in our fix and flip business.
It just made sense for us to kind of self-manage that stuff.
We have between all of our entities, I think last time I counted, we have a little under 700 employees.
But 700, I'd say 500 of them are with my virtual assistant business.
So in my real estate business specifically, we have about 75 employees.
Okay.
Virtual assistant business.
You help people with virtual assistant stuff.
Is that what you're...
So, you know, a wide variety.
It's like truck drivers coordinating.
We've got cold callers and texters.
And we've got all the things that a virtual assistant can do, our business does all that.
What's it called that company?
StartVirtual.com.
Start virtual.
Art virtual.
I always like that business model, the owning a virtual.
It's crazy because you get a lot of people like, should I, you know, like especially
wholesalers, they say, how do I choose a market?
Should I go virtual?
I go, you should start virtual.
And that's where the name came from is just start virtual, you know.
It's like what you're doing.
Brandon, you're in Hawaii.
You're doing everything virtually.
Yeah.
It's amazing what you can get done, even in a non-virtual world of like real estate, right?
Real estate's not, you know, owning a, you know, whatever, an internet marketing company,
which is a lot easier.
But 99% of things you can do,
like on the internet or hiring somebody or they can hire somebody that's local if they need to.
In a weird way, I actually think it's better to do it virtually because then you don't get
the tendency to want to go to the property or you want to do the work yourself. It's like you got
to delegate this stuff. And especially coming from a blue collar background, I want to physically
do everything myself. And so when it's virtual, I'm forced to have to delegate it. Yeah, my two
biggest weaknesses when I was building my early rental portfolio in like Washington State was
that I knew how to fix everything and everything was within driving distance.
And so when you have those two problems, it's a horrible thing to put yourself into.
Yeah, because then you naturally, like, I got to pay $80 for a plumber to fix that.
I can do that in 20 minutes.
Yeah, let me drive over there, two hour drive and two hours back and go to Home Depot six times.
Yeah, my record was nine trips to Home Depot.
Nine trips to Home Depot.
Yeah, that was a rough day.
There was a quote I had where I was like, is it really Saturday if you haven't gone to
home depot 12 times?
Yeah, that's, that's it.
This is actually David kind of like instilled this in me when he wrote that book,
Long Distance Real Estate Investing is by by being a virtual or a long distance investor,
it forces you basically to be good at systems and processes and management and people and virtual
assistance and all that.
It's like sink or swim.
You have to get good at it.
And those are the skills that help you scale and work less anyway.
So you might as well do it.
So I love that.
Yeah.
I think if you read the book Rocket Fuel and you talk about how you really need to have a vision and
you need to have integration.
I spent half my day, like I had my bookkeeper calls me today and she goes, hey, I need to know the seller on this property that we just closed.
Can you put me in touch with them?
And I'm like, that's not my job.
That's not my job.
That's not my job.
That's not my job 12 to 15 times a day.
Yeah.
That's good, man.
And you have to because anything less than that and it will creep back in and you will just do it by default.
Yeah.
You kind of have to be like an unapologetic jerk about that one specific topic where you just go.
And then the challenge too is like when you're hardworking and you're red.
blooded and you're just like, let's go, go, go. You want to put all those monkeys on your back and you
want to like put all that burden on yourself because you want to show people you're a hard working
person. But then the results are, you know, now I've got to get myself out of that. And you also train
your employees and your team to rely on you for every little thing. And it takes years to get out of that.
Yeah. And then there's even resentment when you try to get out of it because now they expected that
you're the one who's going to come say. David, that is probably the most perfect statement.
I've heard all year long is because we, David, here's what we've had to do.
We've had to let go of employees because of the resentment that came from like, at one point,
I was in the sales department.
I was calling the sellers and I was doing stuff.
And then when I exited to work on higher level things, some of our sales guys were like,
they were addicted to that process or they resented me and they would say stuff like,
I'm the one closing the deals now.
Pace is not in here closing the deals anymore.
And we just had to let them go.
And then when we brought on new people, it was like, none of that existed.
They were like, well, yeah, it's my job to close deals.
It's just, but I did that.
That's the thing is I'm the one that created that situation.
It wasn't them.
And I feel bad because I just didn't understand that back then.
And that's why I think Brandon's point and maybe your point pace in the beginning that you want to start it the right way.
It's not just sometimes you think all adjust later.
And you can, but it comes to the price.
And the longer you take before you do it, the higher that price is.
we deal with that all the time is David's, when the client's really unhappy, I can just go get David
and he can talk him down. And when, oh, no, there's leads that they are not coming in.
David has to go get it. Now they start to think that, like, we think we're helping them
because we're like John Stockton, I know your Utah jazz fan, dishing the ball and putting them in a
position to score. Great, great reference. But I don't wear that short of shorts.
Yeah, I'm glad. Nobody should wear that short of shorts, right? But when you get used to playing
with the John Stockton and you think it's your job to just catch a ball and lay it up and you don't have to do
anything. Now it's like, oh, I got to actually dribble it twice before I score. That's ridiculous. And
it's very hard to dig out of that hole. And it hurts, right? It hurts relationship. That resentment is
real when those expectations get set there. And that's why we keep hammering this point. I know
people listen to the podcast and they go, why are you talking to me about that build a business? I just
want to get a deal. No, you're going to get that deal. Then you're going to get two and three,
and you're going to get locked into however you do it. And it is hard to get out of it.
Yeah, then you have to pay a business coach a ton of money to figure out how to get you out of your
business. And it's going to take you two years. And the people ask me like, what's the hardest part
of real estate? It was not getting my first deal or even getting my first 50 deals. It was scaling out
of my business and actually turning it from a hobby to an actual business and dealing with the
interpersonal stuff. It's like, David, everything you teaching is stuff people need to start that
way. Can I just reemphasize this point? Because this is so powerful is what you just said is like most people
and what they do is they start a business. They work in every single piece of it. And
And then they worked that way for years, whether it's real estate or something completely different.
And then eventually they got to pull themselves out of it.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
A person could literally build a real estate empire not being any of those roles.
I mean, again, there's lots of caveats to this, right?
You might have to have money to hire people or partners or whatever.
But when you think that way from the beginning is I am building an engine.
I'm building a machine and there's these 12 different parts and they all work together and they all move.
And I'm the tinker.
Like, I'm on top tinkering with this little engine because that's my job.
And when you have that framework or that mindset going into a brand new business,
then you're never, from day one, you're not working 60, 70, 80 hours a week potentially.
I feel like that's how I built open door capital.
It's like I'm not the one involved in this.
I'm not perfect at it.
I'm still involved with a lot of it.
But it's just such a difference that I, I know.
I'm glad you guys brought that up because that's why we harp on it so much here is because
you don't have to be everything in the beginning.
So let's jump into some specifics about like how you're doing the seller finance.
and the subject two. First of all, for those who have never heard this before, what the heck is
subject to? Oh, what is subject to? Okay. So subject two is essentially, let's say that a seller has a
mortgage on their house. And a lot of times in a subject two scenario, the seller doesn't have a lot of
equity or maybe they're in a tough position. And they're getting lowballed by wholesalers and other investors.
And so they need a specific number. The way that I buy their house is I go to them and say,
hey, I'll take over the payments on your existing mortgage instead of going and getting a loan
to pay off your loan where basically the only people make money in that situation are two lenders.
Why don't I just make payments on your loan?
We go through a title company and the title company transfers the deed over to me.
So I control the asset, right?
I have full ownership and the mortgage stays in your name.
And that is subject to.
We've subject to cars.
We've subject to air conditioning units.
We've subject to a whole bunch of stuff.
But primarily subject to is used in real estate to acquire real estate without, I call them the three Cs.
Cash, credit, or credentials.
And credentials specifically for people.
It's like, I don't have to have a W2.
Actually, I bought my current home from one of your guys's previous guests.
Oh, really?
Jerry Norton.
Do you guys remember Jerry Norton?
Vaguely, yeah.
Okay, so I bought this current home from Jerry, $3 million home, never,
nobody even looked at my credit.
They never looked at my bank records.
They never asked for tax returns.
I literally just went through a title company,
transferred the deed into my name,
and it cost $2,500 for a closing,
you know, for a closing,
to transfer the deed to my name,
but keep the mortgage in the seller's name.
That is what subject to us.
This goes against a lot of what we always hear,
you know, in real estate.
Some people maybe have never heard the idea of subject to before,
and they're thinking, wait, when you buy a property,
you have to pay the mortgage off.
that's how it's always done, right? So how are you getting around that or how are you not doing that?
Well, they're two exclusive things. You've got a deed and you've got a mortgage. They're not tied to each other
whatsoever. Now, there is a due on sale clause, which a lot of it's like one of the five boogeymen that
people talk about was subject to is like, oh my gosh, what about the due on sale clause,
which we can jump into that for a long time. I love the do on sale clause. So I can take over
anybody's debt. All I'm doing is making their payments on their behalf, right? So they're
not tied to each other. I can transfer deed as many times as I want, no matter who has the actual
debt in their name. They're completely nonrelated. They don't touch each other. None of that stuff
actually stops you from buying a house subject to. So what about the do on sale clause? Do on sale clause
says if you sell the property, so the original owner, if you sell the property, we have the right
to have you, you know, pay us off in full. Right. So you said it perfectly, Brandon, you said, so the
mortgage company. So this is what do on sell clause is for everybody. Let's say,
and I've got a whole bunch of examples, we can go through them. Let's say that I buy
somebody's house subject to, which means, I mean, I'll give you guys an example.
I'll actually pull one up if you guys don't mind. I love giving addresses. I love giving all the
stuff and showing huds and all that, all the things. So 2720 North Sterling in Mesa,
Arizona. I'll actually pull this up on screen share if you guys don't mind. And this house,
I bought it for 372, 788 on 1126, 2019.
Okay.
Why did I buy it for such a specific dollar amount?
$372,788.
Why was it such a specific dollar amount?
Well, because that's what the seller owed on their mortgage.
That's what they owed on their mortgage.
And why did they sell this beautiful home to me is because this seller was going through,
essentially he was in the process of buying a brand new home.
And the lender on the brand new home told him, he said, you have to go sell that other house because your debt to income ratio will not allow you to have two properties.
So Dave, the seller of Sterling, lists the property on the market.
And unfortunately, he owed $380,000 on that house.
So if the seller owes $380 and the value of the house, let's say is $390, how is it that that seller is going to sell that property?
Well, we all know in real estate that at 390, that seller is going to walk away with probably,
what would you say?
Probably 360 maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was going to say 355, 360.
Okay, 355, 360.
So if he walks away with 355, 360, that means he's got to cut a check to sell his property.
This is where a lot of times was subject to.
This is where the opportunity arises.
So his real estate agent comes to him and says, Dave, I've got an offer, but essentially,
you're going to have to write a check for about $25,000.
And in that process, Dave says, are you kidding me?
I got a down payment on this new bill I've got.
I've got furniture I'm ordering.
I can't cut a check for $25,000.
So the real estate agent knows me in town.
Real estate agent calls me up and says, pace.
The seller owes too much money on this house to sell it.
I know you're this creative guy.
Is there any strategy that we can utilize to have him sell the property and get the house
out of his name so he can get qualified for the other mortgage?
And so I go, yeah, we can buy subject two.
What is the O?
I find out, he owes 372, 788.
And I go, I can take over that debt and I can give Dave, let's say, $2,500.
So I bought that $372,000 house, which now in a year and a half has appreciated $200,000.
That house is an Airbnb for us.
And we make, I don't know, three or $4,000 net on it a month.
But that house, I bought it for $2,500 is what I gave to Dave.
Dave's number one question is he says, what do I have to worry about with this? I've never even
heard of this. And why didn't my real estate agent not even bring this to me? I said, Dave, here's the
number one thing you have to worry about is the due on sale clause. The due on sale clause means
that Wells Fargo, which is your bank, who gave you the loan that you owe $372,788 on, they're going to
want to be paid if we transferred the deed from you to me. And I'm now the owner, but I never qualified
for that 372, 78. And Dave's like, oh my gosh, does that actually happen? I said, Dave, yes, it does
happen. The due on sale clause does happen. And it has happened to me. I have actually had the
due on sale clause happen to me. So here's what we do when that happens. And he's like, well,
what is the due on sale? The due on sale, Dave, means if the bank finds out that you sold
house to me, I now have the deed, but your name is still on the mortgage, they will send me a
letter and they will say, we demand all $372,78, is paid to us right now immediately or we're
going to foreclose on the house. That's the due on sale clause. It means you owe the money.
The money is due upon the sale of the property. And since you sold the property to me and you
transferred the deed to me through the title company, we owe that money to that bank. And
he says, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So what assurances do I have that if the due on sale clause happens,
I don't, you know, damage my credit or something bad doesn't happen. He said, well, there's five ways to
handle that. One of them, just like you didn't understand what subject two was or due on sale
clause was, a lot of people don't know that there's actually multiple companies out there that
provide due on sale insurance, which is an interesting concept. A lot of people that talk about
do on sale don't ever talk about the insurance companies that provide insurance.
insurance for due on sale. So they come along and they say, hey, for 1% of the purchase price,
so in that situation, 372, 78, I pay $3,720 or whatever it was to an insurance company,
and they will provide insurance against the due on sale clause. In the event that Wells Fargo
comes along, which they still haven't to this day, we will buy out the first mortgage,
and we will then turn into the bank and seller finance the house back to you. At the
same rate, same term, same everything to you. So that's the first way. I purchased do on sale
clause insurance for this transaction. Another way is we could do it with an agreement for sale,
right? So an agreement for sale essentially keeps the deed in your name, but I have ownership rights
to the property. We could do it that way. A lot of people in different states, it's called a contract
for deed or Arizona is called agreement for sale. So contract for deed or land contract is another way
people to discuss it.
It's the same exact things just said differently.
And then I told him three other ways that the due on sale clause gets handled.
And he was like, oh my gosh, I love it.
And so I bought due on sale clause insurance for that transaction to provide safety and
security that just in case the due on sale clause gets called, we have the ability to get
him out of that situation.
I've never heard of do on sale insurance.
That's awesome.
So many people have not.
It's crazy.
And that's the kind of information you can expect on the bigger pockets podcast.
podcast. Pace, how would someone go about finding do on sale clause insurance?
I'm actually a partner in one of them because when I found out about about seven years ago,
I was like, oh my gosh, why do people not talk about this, right? But just like on your guys's
podcast, it's like there's things I learned in episode 400 and episode 480 and episode 500 that
even in the business I'd never heard before, right? Creative ways people are doing deals or marketing
or whatever. Do on sale clauses insurance is one of those things.
So there's a company that we owned it called Equity Assurance.
Equity Assurance.
That's Assurance.
Yeah, Assurance.
A-S-S-U-R-A-N-C-E.
Equity Assurance.
Now, here's the funny thing about do-on-sell.
Do I purchase Du-on-Sel clause insurance on every sub-2 that I buy?
No, 99% of the time I don't.
I only do that when a seller is really, really worried about it.
Most of the time.
So here's another example.
we buy a house.
This is an interesting story.
So we buy a house about two years ago.
It's on Lost Dutchman Road or Lost Dutchman Street.
And we buy the house subject to the seller.
The reason the seller let us take over their mortgage is because they were behind on their mortgage.
So they had like $15,000 in arrears.
So we catch up their arrears.
We wire the money to their bank.
We get everything reinstated.
Everything's good.
We get the reinstatement letter.
And then we close escrow like two days later.
Well, two weeks later, we get a letter from Johnson Bank.
They have six branches, right?
Super small branch.
We get a call or we get a letter from them saying they're foreclosing and they're moving forward
with the due and sell clause.
And we go, oh my gosh.
And for me, I love documenting everything.
So what I did is I go, watch me, guys.
I'm going to call the bank and I'm going to see what we can do to negotiate the due
and sell clause.
So I called the bank.
I record this whole thing.
It was fun.
We end up getting a hold of the actual owner of the.
the six branches of the bank. And I go, hey, you know what? We caught up this seller's mortgage.
We took it over subject two. We didn't do anything illegal. He's like, oh, no, no, no.
We know that, but it's just our policy. We call everything due on sale when we find out.
I was like, okay, well, if it's bank policy, like, is there anything we can do to change that?
He's like, nope, my dad started the company 100 years ago or whatever it was, 60 years ago.
And I'm just following protocol and policy. And so we're going to keep going forward with the
do on sell clause. And I go, okay, well, what of your other?
clients done? Because I'm nowhere near new to this subject two game. People have been doing this for
a hundred years. What have your other clients done to avoid due on sale? And he goes, well, you could
deed the property back to the seller and then just purchase it on a lease option with the option price
is the mortgage balance at the end of 30 years, which would be what? It would be zero, right? So essentially,
we pay the house down and our option price would be zero. So essentially at the end of the
lease option, it just transfers to our name.
I even wrote the book on investing in real estate with no and low money down.
And I have a whole chapter on lease options.
I have never thought about making the lease option price like the mortgage balance or
I know.
And you know what's funny, Brandon?
I didn't learn that from a real estate investor.
I learned it from the bank that was calling due on sale clause to me.
Yeah.
That's genius.
I paid this guy like, I don't know, years ago.
I paid this guy to teach me about creative finance like $40-something thousand dollars, some
crazy thing.
And man, when I brought this thing to him, he was like, there's nothing you can do.
And I said, no, there is.
There always is something we can do.
There's always something we can do.
And I could tell you story after story well beyond this Lost Dutchman Street one.
So we ended up, what we did is all of my documents, all of my purchase contracts with
the seller whenever we're buying on subject two.
It states that there might be a chance that due on sale clause happens.
In that event, we have the right the deed the property back and then repurchase it
on either an agreement for sale, contract for deed.
land contract, depending on what state you're in. We buy in multiple states. So we do all three.
Or we can turn into a lease option where our option is automatically renewed every year.
And then our option price is the mortgage balance at the end of the term of the mortgage.
Yeah, that's crazy smart. The only challenge there, Brandon, is that now I don't have,
I don't have fee title, right? So the challenge is I don't have the ability to go and use depreciation
on that asset, which, okay, fine, I've got cash flow, I've got appreciation, I've got mortgage paydown,
I've got all the magical things, except the one thing that I love more than anything, which is
depreciation. I lose that on that one asset. And for that, I'm okay with that. I can lose the
depreciation at that point. When I then own the property, I can then go forward and do that.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It really illustrates well. Also, like the wealth
generators of real estate, right? Cash flow, appreciation, loan paydown and tax benefits. And the fifth,
you could say, is leverage, which you kind of get all of those. You just might not get the tax benefit
if you have to do the lease option. Yeah, that's really smart. Now, one thing to consider, I'm curious
your thoughts on if the loan is still in the seller's name, because you never pay the loan off,
that shows still on their credit report, right? So that this is like the second most common worry that
people have is like, how can I go buy another car? How can I go buy another house? How can I go do
whatever? So one of the things that we figured out about six, seven years ago is that I would have
sellers come to me. And a lot of them were in the process of buying a brand new home. And they're like,
I need to sell this to go buy that. And my debt to income ratio doesn't justify two homes in
my name. So what we did is we went to somebody that knew what they were doing. We actually went to
somebody who had worked with Fannie Freddie for a long time. And we figured out that these mortgage
companies could wipe out people's debt to income ratio on their previous mortgage if it was
serviced. So what do I mean by that? If I buy a house subject to and I have it serviced by a
professional servicing company, which could cost 27 to 50 bucks a month, that servicing company's
documentation is enough money to go to a mortgage broker and say, this seller is no longer paying
this. It's being serviced and here's proof of payment that's being received by a third party.
and they can take, for their first 12 months,
they can take 75% of that mortgage payment off their DTI.
After 12 months in one day,
100% of that mortgage payment comes off their DTI.
Interesting.
And certain lenders will do this,
or you found that?
Most lenders?
Every lender.
I've never once,
and I have thousands of people that I teach all this stuff to.
I've never ran into a scenario
where I haven't been able to overcome somebody get their mortgage,
like Dave,
the guy who I told you about on 2720 North Sterling,
he was in the process. He already put 20 grand down on a new build. He was in kind of a stressful
situation because he was at the point where the builder was like, dude, you're going to lose
your $20,000 deposit until you sell that house. Like you got to hurry and sell that house and
you'd better tell your real estate agent to crack the whip. Let's get this thing done.
That's the lender that told him, Dave, you can't have both houses in your name. That's the lender
I went to and I showed him, here's how we do it. And the lender's like, this is just,
genius goes to the underwriter, goes to the company of the mortgage broker company and says,
yeah, we can do that, no problem. I've never, not one single time not been able to overcome that.
That's cool, man. That's very cool. Yeah, I never really knew about that either. So, like, I will say,
like, going into this, like, for the years, like, I deliberately didn't put a subject to section
into my, the book on investing with no and low money down because I didn't do it. I never understood
how you overcome these three things. And,
I will say. Yeah, and there's like five other bogeyman, five other bogeyman that people talk about,
but we don't need to get into them. I love them. I love this stuff. I could talk about it for hours.
Well, dude, I'm a believer now. You've converted me over to the subject to world. I like it.
But I don't want to leave the show there. We got more to talk about. So let's jump over to the
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So can you explain what that is for people who may not know what seller financing is?
And then how do you convince a seller?
That's probably the biggest question I get from people when I teach seller financing
is how would you convince a seller to even do that?
So what is it?
And how do you, why would somebody do that?
So usually, so here's the thing about like wholesaler.
right wholesalers are looking for what wholesalers are going out and they're looking for sellers with
pain right somebody with motivation and i would say that subject two is also in that same category
where people have pain but in seller finance it's not pain that you're looking for it's gain
typically seller sellers selling to you on seller finance they're looking for a number they have a
specific number they have no financial hardship typically right their house is usually paid off
And there's a combination.
I don't want to get too much into the weeds with the listeners, but I call it a hybrid where I'll do like half
subject two, half seller finance.
Like we have one from a couple weeks ago where I bought it for 200 grand.
Seller owes $100,000 to their bank.
I took that over subject to.
And then they seller finance their $100,000 sell equity to me at 0%.
So that's a hybrid, right?
Part sub two, part seller finance.
So seller finance typically is somebody who's looking for a value.
very specific number and they want to win. In their mind, they want to win. I want to win this
battle with you on price, which is so interesting to me because I'm usually like 80% of time,
I'm getting 0% seller financing and I'm getting a lot of time zero percent down, right? So I've got
a really good story, actually, if you guys don't mind. I've got a house. Check this out.
This one's really good. So check out this. This is a note. And why it's from a year ago,
but why I really like this one, like check it out from a year ago.
March 31st, 2020, a little bit over a year.
The seller, seller financed the house to me for $100,000, right?
This is the no, or anybody that doesn't know what a note is.
It's basically just an adult I owe you.
I owe you money.
So I'm going to write it on a note, right?
So Dale and Susan, this is public records, so I don't mind sharing this with you.
Dale and Susan Poyer are the sellers.
This is how I got the deal.
every wholesaler was offering these sellers like $60,000 and $50,000 on this deal.
And the ARV at the time was like $100,000.
And so the seller in her mind, she looks at Zillow or Redfin and what does she want?
It's $100,000.
Guys, ask yourself this question.
If you're a listener to this, how many times are you talking to sellers that they just look at Zillow and they go, that's the number I want?
and there's nothing you can do, no negotiating tactics, nothing you can do to convince them
otherwise that they're going to get that $100,000.
Well, the good thing is most of the time where I'm buying seller finance, I've already had
wholesalers beat these sellers up on price, you know, low balling of 40, 50, $60,000.
So really, seller finance is way easier.
It's probably the easiest strategy of all time because you're giving the seller exactly
what they want.
So here's what I did.
I told Susan, and I have this call recorded, by the way, and I've gotten Susan's permission
to share this.
So do you want, I'll share this with your listeners.
They can hear me in her living room negotiating this exact deal.
I'm at her kitchen table, recording it on my phone.
I'll share it with your audience.
Happy to do it.
Sweet.
Yeah, we'll put in the show notes.
BiggerPockets.com.
I show 527, by the way.
Cool.
Yeah.
Your team said that they would do biggerpockets.com forward slash pace.
Oh, that's even easier.
Even easier.
Perfect.
So what she really wanted, Brandon, is she wanted 10.
$10,000 down.
Okay.
So I said, no problem, Susan.
Can I give you $10,000 down over time?
So not only did she sell her finance.
So she has the house paid off, right?
So seller finances somebody has the house paid off free and clear.
They don't owe anything on the house.
And we tell them, this is my closing line for a seller.
As I said, you know what, all I'm trying to do, Susan, is I'm trying to upgrade you from being a landlord to a lender.
Everybody wants to be the lender.
nobody wants to be the landlord.
And luckily, she was Native American, so I brought up the totem pole.
So I said, who's at the top of the totem bowl?
She's like, the eagle.
I go, is it surprising why so many banks have an eagle as their logo?
They are the top of the totem bowl.
They have the least responsibility.
They make the most amount of money.
So I'm trying to upgrade you to the lender.
So what I did in this situation is I said, what's the magic number for you?
And she said, $100,000.
Me and my husband, this is why, this is her.
her why, because everybody's like, why would a seller do this? Because Dale and Susan, there's always a
why, right? Dale and Susan are traveling around the country in their RV. They don't want to be
bothered by tenants or calls about toilets or any of that kind of stuff. They're like, if we get our
number, we will sell the house to you, no problem. So I said, if we give you $100,000,
can we move forward on this deal? She says, yes. I go, okay, great, what kind of down payment do you
want. She says, I want 20 grand down. And I go, okay, I'm not going to give you 20 grand down. I could
buy two houses or three houses with 20 grand down. I'll give you 10 grand down if you even
seller finance your down payment to me. So this is a really interesting thing. So check it out.
I bought the house on March 31st right here. My first down payment portion was due six months later
on September 19th. My second down payment portion was due March 19th.
roughly a year after.
Why is that so cool?
This is why it's so cool is because when I bought the house,
Susan paid the closing costs.
Okay, Susan pays closing.
And then Susan left her tenant in the property.
So I had no renovation.
The tenant was paying about $1,600 a month.
And what's my payment to Susan?
My payment to Susan, you guys can see in the note right here.
It's $375 a month at the magical number of zero.
percent. Okay. So what happens is out of that 1650, I pay my $375 to her. I pay roughly another $275 a month
in other miscellaneous expenses and whatever else. And I was netting on this deal, I was netting
about $1,000 a month on this deal. So my first payment of $5,000 is due six months later
for five grand. Her tenant paid for my down payment. We do deals like this all the
time. This one's really pertinent because we just finalized her down payment just a couple of months
ago. But this is what's kind of cool about seller finance. Why did she sell? Well, because I paid her
40 grand more than anybody else. That's the answer. So many people are like, why are sellers doing this?
I'm like, there's 40,000 reasons why she did it, right? She then continues to receive that payment for
$3.75. They're a little bit older. So they said, we'll finance you at 0%, which 0% going at 30 years was
just too small of repayment for us. So we did 30 or we did 20 years at 0% and she asked for a 15 year
balloon. So we actually told her no. We told her no on the balloon. We said we want to have
it amortize all the way through. We want to have it pay off. And so we, we kept it that way.
There's no balloon on it. So at the end of the day, the question is, why would a seller sell to you on
seller finance? Well, why does a seller sell to you? Here's my question. Most of the people
asking me that are wholesalers. I go, why would a seller sell you at 60 cents on the?
the dollar or 70 cents on the dollar. That to me, that doesn't make as much sense as somebody
wanting 100% of the value of their home and just being willing to do it. So here's my story
real quick. I'm very sorry. I'm being so loquacious. So Susan says, I don't understand what
seller finance means. I don't know what that means. And I said, well, you're going to be the bank.
And she's like, I don't under, I don't comprehend that. I'm not a real estate investor pace.
Like, what are you talking about? I said, okay, Susan, let me tell you my,
infamous F-150 story.
So this is what I told her.
He said, look, I was a contractor for a very long time,
and we had this F-150 in our fleet.
And this F-150 hit like 320,000 miles,
and it just came time we needed to sell it,
go get something different,
because it was starting to have little issues here and there,
and it would cause issues on job sites and whatever else.
So I go on Kelly Blue Book, which, you know,
you guys know what Kelly Blue Book is.
It just tells you the value.
It's like the Zillow for cars, basically.
And I go on Kelly Blue Book,
and I go, what the heck?
My truck is only worth $5,000?
Like, screw that.
So I go, Susan, I did what you did.
I asked for basically an insane amount of money or what I think it's worth.
And I actually put it on Craigslist for $10,000.
Do you think I got $10,000, Susan?
She goes, no, you probably got an offer at $7,500.
I go, no, I didn't even get a phone call.
And after three months of trying to sell this truck for more than anybody was willing to pay,
my wife came into my office, touched me on the shoulder and says,
hey, sweetheart, is there any way we can get that stupid truck out of the driveway?
I'm like, what do you want me to do?
The truck is worth more than $5,000 to me.
And if I put it on Craigslist for $5,000, then I'm probably going to get low balled at $3,500.
And I'm just not willing to sell it for that.
And I'm like, Susan, does that make sense?
Do you kind of in that situation right now with your house?
It's like you are getting people lowballing you and it's just not worth it for you.
She goes, yep.
So my wife says, well, Pace, you're the creative finance guy.
Why don't you put it on Craigslist and tell them that you'll take payments for the $10,000.
And I go, oh my gosh, why didn't you?
Where were you three months ago, sweetheart?
So I go back to Craigslist.
I change one thing.
I change F150 will take payments.
And I said, Susan, do you think I sold that truck for $10,000?
She goes, oh, probably.
I go, I had to turn my Craigslist ad off in like 45 minutes.
I was being overwhelmed with calls, I ended up selling it for $12,500 because I gave somebody the ability
to give me payments.
And I said, that's what we're doing here is if you're willing to take payments for your home,
I'm willing to pay more than anybody else.
But your terms have to make sense for me.
I give you the price you want.
You give me the terms I need.
And that's my line.
And she's like, genius.
And so what was so great as I recorded that call, it wasn't a call.
it was an in-person appointment in her house.
I recorded it and I've used that multiple times with other sellers where they maybe won't
get on the phone with us or they'll say something like, hey, can you send us a testimonial of like
other people you've done this with them?
Like, yeah, go listen to this call with me talking to Susan of like what seller finance is.
And then here's Susan's phone number.
And I tell Susan, I'll pay her 50 bucks every time she gives a testimonial to another seller.
And so she's probably done that 30 or 40 times.
Yeah.
That's cool, man.
I do the same thing.
I explain the seller financing as a car model.
for some reason, everyone can grasp that.
I always say, like, imagine you're going to sell your truck to your brother-in-law.
He doesn't have enough money.
So you're like, hey, just take the truck.
It's your truck now, but you've got to pay me $200 a month for a couple years.
And everybody understands that because everyone I feel like has either done that or
know somebody who's done that.
It makes perfect sense.
Everything has to be a third grader story, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
And it makes so much sense.
I want to bring up a couple points about the seller financing that your story earlier
illustrated so well and how it ties in a lot with what I've done.
For example, my very first apartment complex was a 24 unit.
the reason they sold to me is not because they were trying to like I was trying to rob them of some deal I wasn't trying to pull one over them in fact it was his suggestion though the owner's suggestion why don't we do seller financing why because he was an older guy who wanted to travel in his RV so it's funny how we have that similar like that's a common threat is people have owned a real estate piece for a long time they go sell that property well now what they got to pay all these taxes on it they got to go and try to find some investment to put it in they're terrified of the stock market they're terrified of everything but they're terrified of everything but
They are happy to get payments.
That helps them get into retirement for years and years and years.
So it really is a win-win, which I love to see.
Yeah, that's, you're, you're explaining it so well because obviously you've done it.
And it's amazing.
It's kind of like one of the, I call it the Tacoma effect.
It's like, I bought a Toyota Tacoma when I was like 25 and I thought I was so cool because
I never knew anybody else had a Toyota Tacoma.
The second I bought the stinking Tacoma, I was like, everybody and their dog had a Tacoma.
I was like, where are these things?
So it's kind of the same thing with seller finance is that your audience.
might say, well, this isn't that common. I find more of these opportunities than anything else.
Sub 2, seller finance, all these things. I find them so frequently because I think maybe I just am
aware of them and I've done a few so I know what to look for. Well, this goes to my analogy that I use
all the time when it comes to seller, I mean, creative finances. Creative finances like tools in your
tool belt or in your toolbox. The more tools you have in your toolbox, the more projects you can
take on. If all you have was a hammer, all you have is 20% down bank loan.
that's all you have in your head, you can do like very limited projects.
Like, because most people just, you can't talk people into necessarily seller financing or
subject to.
It's like, you're not going to make someone do something that they don't want to do.
But when you got the hammer and the saw and the drill and all that stuff, all these ideas,
like, oh, yeah, I can, like, maybe this is a good opportunity for seller financing.
Oh, you have a mortgage?
Well, maybe it's a good opportunity for, you know, a subject too.
Oh, you're, you're just looking for a rock bottom price.
Oh, this might be a good wholesale opportunity here because they just need to get out tomorrow.
So by just understanding the basics here is huge.
So when you're going into a situation where you're with a seller and you're in their living
room, let's just say, and you're talking with them, I mean, how do you navigate that
conversation to figure out, this is a broad question.
So let you take it where you want.
But how do you just get from that, hey, nice to meet you, Mrs. Johnson to you got a contract
signed.
Like where do you go?
How do you get them there to figure out what the best creative strategy is?
So I promise your team that I would do this for your audience.
I love calling sellers, even though I'm no longer really in my.
sales department, my team runs without me and I'm not really going on physical appointments.
The only time I go on physical appointments now is when a seller has a tax related question and
my team can't answer it. And I've done it so much that I can answer those questions. But I call sellers
frequently. So what I'll do is I'll gift you guys like a bunch of recordings of me on the phone.
Like I call with video, I'm on the phone and I explain all of this stuff and I start the conversation.
The first thing I say, people in the audience, you want to write this down. The first thing I say,
is catch me up to speed.
Catch me up to speed.
Because if I'm in your home,
it means you're in the market to sell your house, right?
And what I know right now with the advent of technology
and all these ways for people to get a whole of sellers
like text blasting and RVMs and all this stuff,
it's so easy that there's usually 20 or 30 people
that the seller is juggling behind our conversation,
at least three, at least four.
And so I just say, catch me up to speed.
You know, what are you trying to accomplish?
Those are the first two questions I ask.
And they go, well, what do you mean?
I go, well, you know, I'm sure you're talking to other investors.
Why haven't you sold the house to another investor?
Because we're all basically trying to buy it for the same price.
And I always go for cash first, Brandon, always go for cash.
And the reason I go for cash is because sellers will typically, right when I go into that,
I go, well, I'm sure you're talking to other people.
Why haven't you sold?
And you get those open-ended questions.
going. Oh my gosh. You start getting the word vomit of like, well, this guy's low-balling me here and
this guy's low-balling me here. And okay, well, how does that make you feel? And does that accomplish
everything you're looking for? Okay, great. So they then give me their price. I've never once,
this is another thing that in some of my seller recordings, you'll get sellers that will say stuff
like, I'm not going to give you my price. Why don't you tell me what you'll pay for my house?
I have never once not been able to overcome that objection of I'm not going to give you my price.
So some of these recordings.
Yeah, I mean, real quick, how do you do that?
What are some of the ways you can over?
Because I get that sometimes.
Back to Craigslist.
It's like one of my favorite basic things because everybody understands Craigslist.
I'm like, would you imagine ever putting your car on Craigslist and not listing a price and you just say, give me your best offer?
And they're like, no.
I go, well, then why would you do it with the largest asset you have?
You've got to tell me where you need to be before we get going because I have three or four different strategies I'd love to come to you with to help you get to the number you need.
but I don't know what that is
and I don't know what strategy to give you
unless I know where you're trying to be.
So give me your perfect number.
Give me the number that makes you smile
and that's usually how I get the price.
You know what?
What that illustrates really well,
something I've found about human nature
is people will oftentimes have,
like, they will go into a say negotiation like that
and they'll be like, I'm not going to tell him my price.
I'm going to make him tell me my price.
And that's as far as they've thought.
But as soon as you push them on it,
like all of a sudden people,
like they will drop that quickly
because people don't like conflict.
And when you like hold them to like,
I need you to give me a price.
You need to give me a price.
Most people are going to fight you indefinitely on that.
They just go, well, I tried.
You know, I said I wasn't going to.
I tried.
And then they will quickly.
Quickly fold.
Quickly fold.
Because nobody likes that conflict or that like that stress in the air, that, that weird feeling.
That's one thing, uh, the never split the difference guy.
What's his name?
What's his name?
Chris Voss.
Yeah, Chris Voss.
Like nobody likes that awkward, that tension.
Yeah, they don't.
And it's an interesting world.
And the great thing is like, I walk into a seller appointment.
and what will happen is I'll get people that will go,
like I'll post something on Instagram and I'll go,
hey, I'm leaving this house or I'm heading to this house for a seller appointment,
something like that.
And I'll get somebody to DMs me and go,
oh my gosh,
you're going to that appointment.
I just left that house two days ago.
I'm like,
yeah,
there's no way you're buying this house.
Like with creative finance,
there's no way you can even come close to what I have to offer,
not even close.
So for me,
it's just people think like,
oh, Pace is a great closer.
Pace is an amazing salesperson.
I would say I'm a great.
storyteller, but at the end of the day, the creative finance is paying way more money to these
sellers and giving them way more than what they were hoping for or giving them exactly what they're
hoping for. I'm just asking for something in return, right? And we're letting both of us win rather than
in a cash transaction, I got to buy that at 60 cents on the dollar or sometimes 50 cents on the
dollar depending on how much renovation the house needs. So it's actually pretty easy. So this is what I
tell him, this is how I convert the conversation from cash to terms is I'll say, so it looks like
you're looking for, you know, more than most people are willing to offer. If I was willing to
come up to that number, would you be willing to give me terms? That's the question. Now,
most people don't know what terms are, which is a very intentional reason why I use that word,
because I want them to pause for a second and then ask me, what are terms? And then what story do I tell
I tell them my Craigslist F-150 story.
Or in your situation, Brandon, my brother-in-law wants a car, doesn't have credit story.
And then boom, a light bulb goes off and they go, that's it.
I'm like, yeah, that's it.
It's not that magical, honestly.
Yeah.
I love the storytelling and stuff.
I'm a huge, huge fan of storytelling.
Have you ever read the book Storyworthy by a guy named Matthew Dix?
Phenomenal.
I think you'd love it.
What's it called Storyworthy?
It's called Storyworthy.
One word, story worthy by a guy named Matthew Dix.
I thought about bringing them on the podcast trying to reach out to him.
I've never thought it's very real estate related, which is why I haven't.
But now that you talk about storytelling, maybe it is.
This guy's like the world champion for like competitive storytelling through like the moth podcast and that kind of world.
Yeah, one of, I would say my top like 10 favorite books of all time.
And he's just like, this is how you tell a good story.
This is how you get people engaged.
This is how you have the hooks in there.
And like I feel like my storytelling skills improved like tenfold.
I would say that your analogy skills personally because I'm a fan of the show.
I don't, I truly consume the show.
Your analogy skills and your ability to draw parallels is like incredibly high.
It's amazing.
Well, no, I'm no David Green, but I'm working on the analogy side.
But thank you.
Yeah, it's such a way to communicate to people by telling stories or I like acronyms.
I like, like, all that stuff.
If you can take a concept that takes more than three or four or five words to explain, put it into a framework that people can understand.
framework could be a story. It could be a burr, like an acronym like that. It could be a phrase like
house hacking. Those things make people remember them and then get excited about them. And you're
doing exactly that with the seller. So good job, man. Yeah. So for any of your audiences,
paying attention, we'll put a bunch of my seller recordings, like start to finish. Like,
I had this deal. I just closed on it last week. It's a deal in North Carolina.
Seller gets locked up in a contract with a wholesaler. The wholesaler, you know, kind of brand new,
just learning on YouTube, which is nothing wrong with that, but they didn't know how to comp the
property. So what they did is they locked the seller up in a contract at retail, right? The seller
says, I want this number because they were willing to sell. The wholesaler gets her into a contract.
She then believes I'm taking care of. Everything's good. She gets a U-Haul. She puts all her stuff
in a U-Haul. She spends all her money and expects, I'm going to have a big, fat, juicy check on
closing day in three days. So I'm fine. So she's sleeping in a sleeping bag.
side of her house, getting ready to move across the country in her U-Haul, right?
And one of my people come to me and go, hey, Pace, this whole seller came to me and said,
he's in a bad situation.
He doesn't know what to do.
And I then go to that seller, and this is where Sub 2 or Subject 2 is so beneficial,
because you can pay full retail and you can take over people's debt without any cash,
without any credentials or without any credit.
And so I go to this lady and we solve her.
situation. Turns out it's her birthday, of course. It had to have been her birthday. We solve her
situation. We transfer the contract from that wholesaler to me. I pay the wholesaler like a thousand
dollars. And I said, here's what I want to do with you. Because he was like, you're going to
yell at me and scream at me. I don't want to get on the phone with you because I didn't take
care of the seller and I did this, this and this. I was like, no, no, no, no. I just want to spend
like a day with you and teach you at a comp so that you don't put any seller in this situation ever again.
What I love about subject to in seller finance is that I can pick up the pieces for
from a wholesale situation where wholesalers are like,
I locked this up in a contract.
I don't know what to do with it.
It's falling apart.
The sellers are in a bad situation.
And I thought my number was good,
but it's not selling.
Subject to in seller finance comes into play there
and picks up all the pieces.
So most of my outside of the state deals that I buy,
mobile home parks,
all my Airbnbs that are all over the country,
every one of them has come from a wholesaler coming to me and going,
I put a seller in a bad situation and I don't know what to do.
Can you help me out?
So for those leads, I'm not even paying money for them.
So knowing creative finance, you don't even have to have leads.
Like, it's crazy what can happen with creative finance.
That's so good, man.
That's really good.
Well, dude, we can talk for hours and hours and hours,
but we got to get you out here pretty soon.
So we got a couple more seconds from the show to hit.
Why don't we next get to the deal deep dive?
All right.
We haven't done a deal deep dive in a while.
So let's see if we can remember how to do this.
The Zeal Deepdive is a part of the show where we dive deep into something that you've
recently bought and we can just go through all the details on it.
So why don't we, do you got some in mind that we can dig into?
Sure.
I mean, we just did a deep dive on that note, the 0% but we can do another one just real quick.
Okay.
Yeah, if you got something else in your head.
Cool.
I've got a mobile home park.
We got eight questions to ask you in a row, but go ahead and go in show it.
I'll let you ask the question because I could talk all day long.
All right.
I'll start and you'll, I'm sure, hopefully we'll cover it all.
First one was just basically what kind of property is at,
where's it located? So we know it's a mobile home park. Where's that located? Mobile Home Park,
Yuma, Arizona, where a lot of Californians are leaving to go to Arizona to get out of California,
but still want to be close by. So rents are going crazy all over Yuma. So Yuma's a great spot to buy
property right now. How big is that? How many lots? It's 35 paths. Okay. And how did you find it?
Same way. Wholesaler came to us. They were in a wholesale program. A good strategy is I just go to people
that are taking like wholesale education. And I go to them, I go, if you guys ever run into a seller that
needs full retail or they have no pain or maybe they have no equity, I'm your guy. And so this
wholesaler comes to me, brings the deal to me. Still to this day, I've never even spoken to the
seller. I just coach the guy on how to, you know, negotiate it. I'd send him videos and I send
him stuff to his credit. He did all the negotiations. And what I did, because he lives in Yuma
as a reward, I'll kind of tell you what I did it towards the end. But seller goes, you're not
going to buy my house cash anymore. The wholesaler says, well, I paid
too much. And I'm in a bad situation. I either have to cancel the contract or I need you to
give me seller finance. And seller says, okay, if you can still give me the number I'm looking for,
I'm okay with seller finance. It actually will help me out with my capital gains and some other
things as well. So it's 30. That was my next question. How much was it? The purchase price of the
house was, or the property was $600,000. Okay. For 35 pad mobile home part. Cool.
Yeah. So. And that's what you ended up actually getting it for four. I got it for 600.
and I paid the guy an assignment fee $30,000 for it.
So I didn't give the seller any money.
The guy who brought the deal to me is the one who made all the money.
I paid him $30,000.
He originally wanted $60.
And I was like, how about this?
I'll pay you $30.
And then on top of it, I want you to be my partner.
I want you to be a 5% owner so you can be boots on the ground because I'm just getting
started in Yuma.
And so he's my partner on the deal.
I kept him with 5% ownership.
so he deals with any of the headaches.
And we have an on-site tenant there as well.
And that property brings in, I'm pulling it up right now,
that property brings in $15,000 a month in income.
It's about $15,400 in income.
My payment to the seller, who I still have never spoken to,
my payment to the seller is $4,500 a month.
And here's the magical thing.
It's 0%.
So the seller wanted a specific number.
He wanted $600,000 because he was,
getting offered from wholesalers and other investors, he was getting offered like $450, right? And so he's like,
nope, I want $600. If I'm not getting $600, I don't even care. So we gave him $600. We got it for
zero down, zero percent interest. The way we worked out that price on the monthly income is I always ask,
or I tell people to ask, I go, what would you like to receive on your property per month? And in his mind,
$4,500 is the number. I don't even know why. I never spoke to the seller. I don't know why he
wanted $4,500, but we wrote it in the note that he gets $4,500 a month until the loan is paid off.
With that $4,500 and then another miscellaneous, about $4,000 a month with landscape and
capax and all the things, right?
Actually, Brandon, you had such a good post on your Instagram the other day, like breaking
down all of the things that you, I don't, are you the one posting that stuff?
Because that is a, that was a genius post.
Yeah, I got a virtual assistant as well who helps me with it.
But yeah, he's, I think he actually took it from my, so many people.
So many people don't understand, like, what it takes.
Anyway, that mobile home part, here's what we net.
This is net net in my pocket after.
This is my sushi money.
I get to buy sushi with it and not even have a care in the world about it.
We end up netting about $6,100 a month on that property.
I've never been there.
Never spoke to the seller.
I didn't have to raise money, use credit, use any credentials whatsoever.
I did come up with $30,000 to pay the wholesaler,
and I paid closing costs for about $5,000.
So for $35,000 payment, I now own that 35 unit mobile home park.
And my net income on that is $6,100 a month.
You know, you probably could have done.
I'm sure you thought about this and maybe the wholeser didn't want it.
But I bet you could have seller financed that payment to the wholesaler too.
Freaking thought of it.
But what I really wanted is I wanted the story.
And now that you're saying that, the story of that would have been way better.
It's like you pay them, you pay them 500 bucks a month for 10 years.
What I really want is I wanted a story of like,
I wanted a story that showed wholesalers, hey, I can pay you hefty assignment fees, even at full
retail as long as you negotiate the way I want you to negotiate.
And now it's like, you're saying that.
I'm like, holy crap, how smart would that have been?
The story of that would have been even way better than the story of the 30 grand.
What I like about that idea, I never thought of this at Al before.
I like this kind of group brainstorming thing.
But wholesaler is one of their biggest things that they all, I mean, they listen to shows like
this and other real estate shows.
So they know they want passive income
And they know what they're doing is not passive income
So if you're like, hey man, I know you wanted that $60,000
Instead of having it, yeah, you could be like,
how about I gave you the $60,000?
But I'm going to pay you $6,000 a year for the next 10 years,
0% interest.
Now you're getting sick.
I should have done that.
Yeah, now they get their full amount that they want.
You're paying them 500 bucks a month.
And they get, you would have that for no money down then.
That's fascinating.
Freaking genius.
See if I can play with that.
Honestly, I close it like a week ago.
I wonder if I can go back.
back to them and offer them more. It's the exact same concept, but you're just explaining, like,
the paying more because of terms. Yeah, and I let my cash flow pay them instead of it. And that's a great
point for anybody that's paying attention because a lot of people go to like, they listen to Subject
to or Seller Finance conversations and they go, I can't do that. I look at subject two in seller
finance. I see more people doing their first deal on subject two or seller finance, even flips.
Like I don't really hear a lot of people talk about Novation agreements, but we do a lot of our
fix and flips where this we don't actually purchase the home we just fix and flip it and when we sell it
we give the seller the number we agreed to so a innovation agreement i seller finance the house is on fix
and flips and we'll even do it on a sub we call it a subtail where we'll buy it subject to and we'll
take it retail we call that a subtail where we're fixing and flipping without getting hard money we're
fixing and flipping without getting bridge loans we're fixing and flipping without any of this kind of
stuff and so guys i'm telling you creative finance for me
If I could have started all over, I would have started with understanding not just cash, but also
terms because I would have, when you're generating leads, you're going to double or triple your
conversion rate when you're spending money on leads. Easy. Yeah, I am. I'm also fascinated that more
people don't flip with the seller financing or subject to it because I feel like it's, there's even
opportunities I've heard of a few people ever doing it where you partner with a seller. Like the seller is,
no, I want my $600,000. You're like, all right, well, we're going to flip this property. So we're going to
buy this, you know, let's partner together on it and we'll split profit some way at the end of the day.
Yeah, we've got one in Houston right now. The sell, same exact situation. Seller wanted 500 grand.
It was tight. And I go, look, if I don't have to acquire it and pay closing costs and hard money
fees and all the things and utilities and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when we sell it at,
let's say, $6.50, you get $5.75 and I get everything over that. And that, yeah. So we call that
a novation agreement, or at least in my world, and it's so easy and people don't ever talk
about it.
No, it's not common at all.
But I love that.
I love it, man.
All right.
Are we missing any questions from the deep dive, David?
No, honestly, I think Pace got, he saw what we're going to ask and answered every
single question on there.
I did.
I did my homework.
Yep, absolutely.
You funded it with seller financing.
Your guys's team is amazing.
Like, the organization before you get on your guys' show, it's like, you guys are
amazing.
Well, that's all Kevin and Eric.
They're smart dudes.
They make our life much, much easier.
All right, dude, well, that's amazing.
So let's head over to the last segment of the show.
It's time for our...
Famous Four.
This is the Famous Four.
The same four questions we ask every guest, every week.
And we're going to throw at you right now.
So number one, Pace.
What is your either all-time or current favorite real estate-related book?
I'd say the last couple of years,
and I've been trying to get this guy to hang out with me a little bit,
and you guys know him, Matt Fear, Cloth.
His how to raise private capital funding.
I mean, private company.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry,
I said the wrong name.
Yeah.
It's a genius book because some of it I was already doing and it just reconfirmed
that I was not being crazy and, you know, utilizing social media, some of the stuff he talked
about in there.
I'm like, okay, so people are doing this.
And then I also opened my eyes to like what Grant Cardone was doing on his Instagram.
I'm like, oh, that's what he's doing.
So it's really impactful.
And what I'm trying to do right now is I'm trying to create a 16 hour challenge.
Just for fun, just something we do on like YouTube Live, where I get like two or three known money raisers.
And we find a deal in two hours.
And we then go and have to raise capital in 14 hours after that.
So 16 hours total.
And just show people how you can do it with public record and you can do it all sorts of fun things.
And so I'm trying to link in with Matt.
My team's been talking to him.
That's one of the best books I've read.
Yeah.
Yeah, Matt's amazing.
I love that guy.
I was just hanging out with him.
Actually, David, David and I were both just hanging out with him in Colorado.
a couple weeks ago. It was awesome. Yeah, he was at the GoBundance event we were doing. I'll introduce
you, Base, if you want to meet Matt. Please, please. My team's communicated with him, but I don't think,
it's like I'm, I look like a gnat on a horse's butt. He doesn't care maybe. I don't know,
but I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy is so dang good. That book is amazing. All right. What about
your favorite business book? Rocket Fuel. All day long, rocket fuel. It helped me realize that I,
not everybody's born to be a closer. Not everybody's born to be systems. And so many people,
people wear way too many hats in their first couple of years of business thinking that that's the
way it's supposed to be. It wasn't until I brought in partners in my business. They're all my
integrators. You'll never really see them, but they're equity owners. And I just say, I might be the
face of the organization, but these people are the backbone. Like, I did not understand it. And it's
so simple after you read that book, Rockefuel, it should be common sense and it should be taught.
But it just isn't. And so many people, even all these integrators that are good at,
computers and great at organization, they feel like when they get into business or into real
estate, they feel like they have to learn how to be a closer and like go into living rooms
and get deals and contracts. And that's just not the case. Read Rockaville will change your whole
perception of like who you are as an individual. Awesome. All right. When you're not being a nat
on a horse's butt, what are some of your hobby? Um, you know, I heard you guys talking about golf
with Ken McElroy.
And then I've heard Brandon say analogies about golf, by the way, and, you know, about how you
just got to get out there and swing.
But golf really is a sport that you have to utilize multiple different strategies and multiple
different shots to actually accomplish a hole.
And so it feels like I'm playing real estate to some weird degree.
It's like, okay, well, this isn't going to work with this strategy.
I got to use this strategy, which is why there's a putter and a driver.
you're not trying to drive a ball with a putter.
So I play a decent amount of golf.
And most of the time, honestly, when I have free time, is I'm doing weird challenges,
like that 16 hour live or we did this thing where we go, how fast can we get to deal
with no money?
We just do fun challenges like that, just me and my buddies.
And that's really what I do in my spare time.
I think when the TV show comes out.
Oh, the TV show premieres on October 2nd on A&E.
and the name of the TV show is triple digit flip.
So it's all about fixing and flipping.
Little teeny bit of creative finance.
The first episode,
I am out knocking doors authentically,
which is great because when A&E reached out to us,
we were like,
guys,
we don't want to be on the TV show.
Like most of these TV shows are so full of it.
You know,
it's like you don't talk about closing costs.
You don't talk about lender fees.
You don't talk about anything,
anything that actually is important
that could teach people what this business is about.
So they're like,
well, actually the most important thing,
was you guys don't show people where these houses come from.
Like, how do people get these houses?
Where's the story of the seller?
Where's the story of the situation?
And so they were like, well, what do you want to do?
I go, I'll show the audience how to knock doors.
So here I am, have three cameras following me along as I'm knocking doors.
And the first guy, I knock his door for the whole entire series.
The first guy I knock on his door, I knock, knock, knock, three times.
I go to his side yard.
I go back a fourth time because I'm showing.
the audience like don't give up just because they didn't answer the first not go back so go back a fourth time
guy walks out naked naked like naked so they're going to have to like blur that all out and he goes
mr pace morby i go what he goes oh yeah i see you all the time you're the subject two guy i'm like
oh my gosh how how do you know me goes i bought this house subject to in 1986 and i'm always researching
subject two and this that and the other mic so there's like certain aspects of that stuff in the
TV show, which you've never seen in any other TV show. So I'm excited for those things. But at the
end of the day, it's just a fix and flip show. Awesome. All right. Well, my last question.
What do you think separate successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail,
or never get started? I call it the campfire effect. It's like if you're trying to get warmed up
and you're cold, you don't look at a picture of a campfire. You go stand next to a campfire.
And so it's the same thing in business and in real estate is what you need is you need a battle
buddy you need a community you need friends you need people that you actually get around because we are
all undisciplined we are all you know non motivated every once in a while i don't feel like this
ultimately comes down to discipline i think it comes down to being around people that are willing to
help you and you know for example bigger pockets like in the forums those are all like battle buddies
like those are people that are trying to get into the business and they develop relationships i feel
like this is the reason why people hire personal trainers and this is why people
to Rias and they go to meetups and they go do that stuff because they yearn for somebody to go to
battle with. And so I tell people, if you're going to be in real estate, get a battle buddy.
Don't just be on YouTube consuming. Go get a friend. Go meet up at Starbucks. Go cold call together.
Go door knock together. Read books together. Get a battle buddy because it will cut a lot of the
discipline and the non-motivated moments out of your life because you're looking forward to hanging
out with your friend the next weekend rather than being fearful of, you know, doing something you've
never done before. Yeah, it's a phenomenal answer.
Phenomenal, man. I love it. All right. Last question of the day, Pace, where can people find out
out what about you? I think people can find out about me on biggerpockets.com forward slash pace.
What I'll do for you guys is I have like seller recordings. I have all sorts of stuff I'll
give over to you guys, me closing sellers, me explaining terms to sellers. I've got deep dives
and all sorts of stuff. I'll let you guys just put on your website. And I just am so grateful to be here.
I was talking to your team and they said that there was a possibility of like doing some cool stuff for your pro members.
So maybe in the future you guys will see me do some stuff for the pro members talking about all sorts of cool stuff.
But between now and then, beggar pockets.com forward slash pace.
Perfect, man. I love it. Well, this has been phenomenal. One of my favorite shows ever. I got five pages of notes.
I'm kidding. I took notes the whole time. I got five pages of little handwriting notes.
So I'm excited to get this out to the world. Thank you.
Guys, thank you. I'm just so grateful. Thank you so much.
This is David Green for branded my big bearded battle buddy brother Turner.
Ooh, battle buddy.
I saw you pull that in.
I love it.
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