Epic Real Estate Investing - Calling All Wholesalers! Noobs and Veterans, alike! | 1123

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

In today’s episode, Matt is joined with a great guest IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE WHOLESALING PROPERTIES! Please, welcome to the show Mr. Cameron Dunlap, a Founder & CEO at Real Estate Wealth Network with 28 years of professional experience in buying, selling, funding, rehabbing, managing, and developing RE properties! Tune in and learn why wholesaling is not going anywhere, yet it turns out into a greater opportunity than it was! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit R-E-I-A's.com.

Here's Matt. Hey there, Epic Investor. It's Matt Terrio from Epic Real Estate, where we show people how to invest in real estate with an emphasis on retiring early. That's what it's all about. And if this is your first time here, really glad that you found us. If you like what you hear, make sure you hit the subscribe button before you go. And if this is not your first time here, welcome back. And thank you for sharing this with your friends, your family, your network, your associates, with everybody that you know, because you're the absolute best. for doing that. We just wouldn't be here if you didn't do that. So thank you again.

Eternally grateful. I've got a great guess for you today if you want to continue wholesaling properties. Many states are pushing back on the practice with some already having rendered them. Quote, unquote, I've got air quotes up here, illegal. And it has a lot of people concerned. But people just read the big, bold print, and they make up their mind about it. They start passing it along on social media, they start sharing it through their social circles, and these rumors turn into something that they simply are not. So my guest today is going to explain why wholesaling isn't going anywhere. And it could actually turn this turn of events, could actually turn this into a bigger opportunity for you. As long as you've got the right knowledge and you've

got the right tools to navigate these new wholesaling waters. He's been buying, selling, funding, rehabbing, managing, and developing properties, both residential and commercial full-time since 1993. It's been doing it a while. And he's participated in hundreds and hundreds of deals, made millions and millions of dollars along the way. And he's still going. He doesn't see himself stopping anytime soon. I mean, why would you when you love what you do? And if you've perfected the tools and systems that make the business easier and more profitable. And I'm going to ask him all about that and so much more. So without further ado, please help me welcome to the show from the real estate wealth network, Mr. Cam Dunlop.

Cam, welcome to the epic real estate investing show. What a thrill to be here, Matt. My first time, and I'm so fortunate. Yeah, it's weird that it is the first time, and we have travel in the same circles. We have a lot of very valued mutual friends and, you know, birds of a feather, and eventually we made it here. Exactly. And it's been a real pleasure and a treat to get to know you.

So thanks again for having me. You bet. You bet. likewise. All right. So yeah, let's get to know you even better. And so I know you're involved in real estate investing, obviously, and very much heavily on the funding side. You've got a great solution for people that are getting started. I want to talk all about that. But share with me what you were doing just before you got started involved in real estate investing and what inspired that move. Sure. Yeah. Like so many other people I've met along

my journey. I grew up the son of an entrepreneur and unfortunately my father's business crumbled in the early 90s because of that horrible recession. I went to work for a giant corporation because I had the right skill set and it was a fairly easy transition for me to make. But I hated it. I absolutely hated it. I was there two years and, you know, with an entrepreneur's work ethic, I didn't fit in at all. And so, and then they messed with my money on a bonus. that I had earned Fair and Square and they, you know, so I just needed to find it out. And I was looking for every opportunity or any opportunity, frankly, when I saw an infomercial at two in the morning and bought it, bought the program. And in that, all in that same year, which was 1993,

I quit my job, went into real estate full time, did my first deal, got married, moved not 900 miles to from Connecticut to Florida, Connecticut where I'd grown up and went into the business full time. And it's been a, it's been an absolute black. last ever since. Fantastic. Yeah, it's kind of a typical story, right? You've got this day job in corporate America and you might have been there on thought it was a good idea or maybe what were pressed there based on circumstances be under control, whatever it may be. But then you just decided, hey, this is not what I really want. And I want more for myself and real estate poses that type of opportunity for my opinion that more than any other opportunity for

the average person, for sure. Totally agree. And the proof of context. For me, Matt, was the first deal I did. I made about 12 grand on it. And at that time of my life, that was a massive amount of money that helped me to realize without anybody telling me. I mean, it was literally in my brain proof of concept that I could do this. So that was a powerful thing. Yeah. Just the evidence that it works can be like the one thing that just gets you to stick, right? I mean, my deal was kind of. I don't lose sight of that. For my clients, if they're new to the business, I understand. maybe perhaps even better than they do, that that first paycheck is like a newborn baby's first breath of air. Yeah. It's critical to their survival. So we got to get them to that first check at all, you know, be damned with everything

else. Get them to that first check. Yep. Yep. We very much focus on that. Because I, too, you know, know exactly how valuable that is. My first deal was kind of a home run, kind of like yours where it just seemed like this massive amount of money.

But it took about seven or eight months before I got my second one. But if I hadn't had that first one, I don't know if I would have stuck it out seven, eight months because I knew what was possible, you know. You'd said something. If you've got people around you who are doubting what you're doing and putting that seeds of that doubt in your head, it's easy to walk away if you don't have some sort of proof. Yep, totally. You'd said something, and I don't know if I've ever had a guest that said something

like that before, and I'm a little bit envious or intrigued by it at the very least, being that your dad was an entrepreneur. I came from a family of civil servant. They worked at the DMV and police officers and fire department people. And my whole family thought I was absolutely insane. I don't even know what question to ask about what was it like to grow up with a dad as an entrepreneur. Maybe that's the question. Well, I went to work for him.

He owned a printing and pre-press business where he was involved, directly involved with big corporations and their advertising collateral. So they're advertising messages. and images. And as a kid, I went to work for him and did, you know, when I was young, I did nothing but wrote tasks that, you know, it was like, kachung, kucheng, kuching. And that was my, you know, what I did. But then I'd work there summers and during school breaks and stuff and, you know, got more involved and more responsibility and then decided ultimately to go to college and my,

and major in what I was doing with him, which was printing systems technology. and I got a Bachelor's of Science in Printing Systems Technology, which does me absolutely no good today whatsoever. But it was the bomb back then. And so when I got near to graduating college, my dad offered me a job, as you might imagine. But I said, well, let me see. I'm not sure. And he said, what do you mean?

I said, well, I want to make sure that I could get a job without you. I want to know that I can stand alone in the marketplace. And he was like, good, I like that. So I went and I did a bunch of interviews and I got a couple offers. And then I took those offers to him and I said, hey, you got to beat these. Right. And so I went to work for my dad. But then the recession hit came like 89, 90, 91, 92 right in there.

And it just crushed them. And so we spun off and worked together. as brokers, but then we got squeezed and the business couldn't support us both. And I was the one that was going to be most easily re-employed. So I went and worked for the big corporation, which was a good experience in what, for me anyway, in what not to do. So I can, you know, I can say, I checked that box for sure. From an entrepreneur perspective in your endeavors today, what would you say is the most

valuable thing you learned from your dad. You know, it's really funny. I was just talking a friend of mine about this just the other day. We're on a long drive and we're talking about it. Two things, if I might. One is he taught me that if in business, if you focus on revenue, you will chase your customers away. And if you focus on, or conversely, if you choose to focus on your customers, the revenue

will come. That was a great lesson. And I saw it firsthand. It wasn't something he said and that I had a, you know, it was something I saw, he said and I saw in our business. And I've been grateful to have learned that when I did ever since. The other thing he said, and this one you might have to think about for a sec, but he said, you can have it good, cheap, or fast pick two. Good, cheap, or fast pick two.

So if you want it good and cheap, it's not going to be fast. If you want it fast and good, it's not going to be cheap. If you want it, you know, you can only pick two of those. And that was a great life lesson for me to sort of help moderate my expectations in the business world when I'm out there as a vendor or, you know, or I'm sorry, when I'm working with a vendor or or the other way around. So that was also a really great lesson. Nice. I love it. Well, thank you for letting me live vicariously through you there.

You're welcome. I didn't have the entrepreneurial father. But super. So, you know, here we are coming. Hopefully we're coming out of a pandemic. And the economy seems to be opening up a little bit. I just saw Iowa removed all of their restrictions, their COVID restrictions and stuff like that. So, I don't know, tell me what does business look like for you today?

Well, I'm pretty bullish in terms of pricing and demand for sure. I don't see either of those changing. too much in the near future. I do see supply changing a bit when the moratoriums are or continue to lift. I think we're going to see not like 2008, but I think we're going to see a lot of foreclosures and not just homeowners who, you know, ran out of opportunities with their bank to do another, you know, payment vacation. But also with smaller mom and pop landlords who have rental properties that are dying on the vine right now because of an inability to collect rent. The big institutional companies that are owning rental properties, they seem to be doing okay.

They're in A and B class properties in markets where people can work from home because they're higher paid and they have less service oriented jobs and more tech and higher end jobs. in a lot of the smaller markets where a lot of the employment base is from the service industries, they're not faring so well at all. So, like I said, I'm bullish on price and demand, and I do see supply opening up for us as investors. Another thing is that different from now than 2008 is that homeowners have, categorically speaking, they have more equity today than they did in 2008. And what that means is we as investors have a greater opportunity to buy their houses because there's more room between what we can

pay and what they owe. And houses that are in need of repairs that have deferred maintenance, that's what generally what we always are looking for. And in this cycle, those same houses have more equity. So it's actually a better, more fertile environment for us. Yeah, I actually recognize the same thing that because I hear a lot of people, especially if you read the comments on the YouTube channel that we have over here. If I, when I read those, there's a lot of people predicting 2007, 2008, it's going to be just as bad, just as bad. I'm just like, the circumstances that cause that don't exist today, first of all. And secondly, what you just mentioned, what I haven't heard anyone else mentioned until you just mentioned it with me right now is, you know, people that are behind

on their payments or are without a job or with whatever that may be, they got equity. They didn't have equity in 2007, 2008. It's not going to be, they're going to have options. That's what equity gives you. It gives you options. So I don't know what the, I think there will be a lot of people selling. I don't know if things are going to go to foreclosure in a great abundance. But, you know, that's the game of... Well, I think they'll will at least get back to a normal foreclosure rate. I mean, if you look at it right now,

it's like a flat line. Yeah. And I think even just the normal foreclosure rate is going to seem, after nearly a year of moratoria, I think will seem like a bonanza to those of us that are really paying attention and are doing the business.

Right. No, exactly. In contrast, it will seem like a lot for sure. Yes, that's my point. You're right. Yeah, I got it. So haven't gone through a whole year, I mean, everybody had to change their business and the way they operate a little bit, regardless of what industry you were in.

What are some of the things that you made changes in during our lockdown that you've decided you're going to hold on to and keep it into the future with or without a pandemic? That's a great question. I love it. So one thing is I never realized how readily I could walk 10 times. steps in a day. It's not that hard. It just seemed like an awful lot to me until I started doing it every day.

No, but all kidding aside, I think for me and my clients, the prospect of investing virtually, and I mean, without having to go to the house, went from this sort of obscured. your talking point to mainstream. So virtual investing is now normal where, you know, a couple of years ago, I'd be sitting in my house where, you know, I live in upstate New York, most of the year and in Florida, some of the year. I'd be sitting in my office and I'd be, you know, ready to make an offer on a house in North Carolina or Alabama or California or Florida, wherever.

and I'm not there. And the realtor would say, well, I'm not going to accept an offer from someone who hasn't even seen the property. Now, first of all, they have to accept it. But just that whole attitude just completely went away. And now the concept of buying houses site unseen is not only normal for investors, but it's normal for retail buyers. Right. Right. Yeah, that's a good one for sure.

And what that does for anyone who recognizes that and who's willing to embrace it is, is it opens up the entire United States to you as your market, not just your backyard or wherever is within a comfortable drive, but anywhere, so long as you have the right tools and you have a little bit of chutzpah to where you can buy a house without actually seeing it yourself. And boy, I'll tell you what, the first time you do, you'll be like, what the heck was I thinking?

I didn't need to see that place. In fact, I'm told it smelled horrible, and I'm not sorry, I didn't smell it. Right. What are some of the tools you think someone needs to do this virtually? Well, I think data, clearly, well curated data. I think for sure funding. You know, with regard to wholesaling assignments are the blooms off that rose, man. I mean, just look at Illinois.

What happened in the fall of, I guess it was 18, then they, or 19, the fall of 19 when they passed that law. So you got to have funding and you got to have buyers. And then some boots on the ground, which frankly, none of those are particularly challenging. But for some folks, any one of them might become, you know, insurmountable just because they don't know where to go. They don't, they don't know how to, how to source that particular component. Right.

And so they feel like they're stopped in their tracks. And I said about a long time ago to fix that problem for myself, first and foremost, I mean, let's be honest. But then for my very, very small clientele as well. And I feel real good about what I started creating a long time ago and how the market has evolved and how incredibly relevant what I did, what I started years ago, has become today in large part as a result of COVID. Right, right. This is one thing we were talking about when we were last saw each other, about the whole wholesaling thing. We were talking about Illinois specifically in the assignment thing.

And looks like many other, I don't know, just bringing up to speed or bringing everybody up to speed. What's happened in Illinois and how could that potentially dictate where the future of wholesaling goes? Sure. So I'm going to warn you ahead of time. I'm very cynical, okay? So there you go. I said it. Sometime in the fall of 2019, I first heard about a law being passed in Illinois that everyone took as to mean, you couldn't wholesale houses in Illinois.

So I took a big interest in it and really dug into it. And what I discovered is if you want to do an assignment of contract, which is a very common strategy within wholesaling where you don't have to take title, right? you just basically put the house under contract and then sell the contract to another investor at a profit. Well, to do that in Illinois with this new law, you either had to have yourself a real estate license or you had to hire an agent to represent you through that transaction and insert the cynical component. The reason I believe that that came about, and I don't have the facts and figures to back

this up, but my gut is very rarely wrong. I believe that the realtors lobby, maybe the state board of realtors in Illinois, decided that there was a particular state senator or state member of the House of reps who would make a great sponsor for a bill like the one that eventually got passed and in exchange for a ginormous donation to his or her reelection campaign, that happened. They sponsored the bill and then they got some momentum and they got behind it. And, you know, the realtor, the, the national board of realtors and then on the state level and even county levels, they have a lot of clout and they have very strong lobbyists. And so my belief is that it went down that way and in large part because realtors are feeling more so than ever very, very threatened.

I think they worry about, you know, whether or not their existence is assured for the long haul. And I can tell you that companies like Zillow and now Trulia, which is one, have made it their mission and not covertly at all to literally eliminate the need for realtors. So with Zillow, you know, they just added a big home builder. They partnered with a big home builder. So now you can literally sell your house, buy a new house, move into the new house, and never need a realtor throughout both of those transactions. And I don't blame them for feeling threatened, just like buggy whip salespeople did in the day. So, you know, when you, when someone feels threatened or cornered, they get ugly.

And that's, I think, the backstory. So now we know that politicians are copycats. And so I'm hearing about Texas, Oklahoma, and, you know, some other states that, you know, there's rumblings that they're going to adopt a very, very similar, you know, law. And so what it comes down to, and by no means is this the end of the world. In fact, there probably are some unintended consequences that will actually benefit us from this as investors. But what we need to do in order to not worry about that is simply buy and sell real estate. So in the law, they describe a real estate investor as someone who has the intent to and then follows through on that.

intent to buy and sell real estate and who also has the financial means to do that. So when we're wholesaling, if we buy and sell the house and we have the financial means to make that transaction happen, whether it's through a third party or, you know, ourselves doesn't matter as long as we have the means to make that happen, then no one could argue that we're real estate investors. Right. And so that's been my perspective on it. My take on it is, you know, if you're in a state or if you're talking to a closing agent that doesn't want to do an assignment, well then do a back-to-back or simultaneous closing. And that's that particular, the funding, the third-party funding that is super niche oriented toward that specific

type of transaction, which is typically called transactional funding. And it is, exactly what we've been doing and are, I believe, the best in the business at since 2009. Got it. So by getting into that business in 2009, I had no way of knowing how much that would benefit me and my clients today, now that the bloom is off the rows in terms of assignments. And it's been another, you know, another example of a good move on my part that has made us extraordinarily relevant and in large part thanks to COVID. Yeah.

I have a similar situation when I started my podcast 11 years ago and nobody knew what a podcast was. No idea that it would be mainstream, you know. Yeah. In your type of situation because, you know, I think you're very right. You know, there will be copycats. I mean, already there's documentation or some guidelines you have to follow inside of Ohio. inside of Pennsylvania. They're all pushing back on it.

And I think you're right. I think the real estate agents were threatened. I don't think of wholesalers posting on social media. They're big checks on how much that money they just made helps at all their cause because realtors see that. But there's not to prevent them from becoming a wholesaler. Say again. Really?

I say there's really not much to prevent a realtor from becoming a wholesaler and joining in the fun. Right? Why not? Totally. There's an awful lot of our clients who are realtors. And I applaud that. I absolutely applaud that. And I have my clients to ask me all the time, should I get my real estate license?

I realize this is a little tangential, but I think it's pertinent. And I say to them, maybe if you want it, sure. And I'll tell you what, aside from commissions, there's one big advantage to having a real estate license as an investor. you have an option B to offer the seller if they don't want to sell at a price that works for you. You can list the house. That's kind of a huge benefit. Sure.

And then having the wide open avenue of referring to other agents as well, particularly if you're going to be done this virtually nationally. Yeah, that's actually something I've started just to toy with because I had my license. I let it expire. I just didn't like the recurring or the continued education. I just thought it was a pain. But now I'm thinking like, okay, well, maybe from a referrals, perspective, that might be a good thing to have. If more states do follow suit with Illinois, you know, what's the big deal of just getting

a license? It's not that difficult. It's not expensive. And I think it's, I think it where you were talking about unintended, unintended consequences of maybe potentially helping us in the long run, I think it's just enough of a little bit of a hurdle to start thinning the herd a little bit and thinning the competition that's out there. That's exact.

Yeah. You know, Matt. You nailed it. Yep. I don't mind that at all that, you know, I say to my clients all the time, time, I say when you run into something that you see as a real live, genuine, you can point at it challenge, good. Because in the old days, the saying was when the tough, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Today, it's more like this. When the going gets tough, most folks

lay back down on the couch. And so you nailed it. Eliminate competition. Yeah. So hopefully not anyone, hopefully not anyone listening to this podcast right now. Right, right. Yeah, they have zoned out during that spot. No, I think it's going to be a huge advantage for those that are just willing to take a little bit of an extra step. I think that could be very fruitful for you just by doing that. And I already know people that have heard about this and they just quit and decided to go something, do something else because they didn't think they could wholesale anymore, which was a tragic lesson to learn from this. For them.

For them, yeah. You know what? There's lots of distractions. You know, if you, if you think that real estate is no longer the thing and you're chasing, you know, cryptocurrencies or the stock market or whatever, you want to be a day trader, good for the reason that Matt said. There's more for us. Yep, yep.

In real estate, regardless of what new thing comes along, it really is the final frontier where the average person has a legitimate shot at creating real wealth for themselves. they do. And you know what? It's so interesting because some people say, well, wholesaling, you know, there's that it's a grind, you know, you don't earn if you're not grinding. And there's truth to that. But one of the things I teach my clients is, look, when you're wholesaling houses, you're going to make money and you need to be thinking about where that's going to go. It's going to fall into one of two categories or go into one of two categories, in my opinion. It's going to go to lifestyle or legacy.

And so the argument is that wholesaling, there's no residual income. There's no leverage. If you stop working, you stop earning. Okay, yes. And know if you use some of the money you make and some of the houses you find to hold on to, then you can parlay that into potentially a huge portfolio of properties over a relatively short period of time. And you know what? When you're a wholesaler, you get to cherry.

pick the best ones for yourself. Totally. Yep. Cool. So you and I were going to be getting it together next week. And I want to share this and extend an invitation to whoever has aspired to be a wholesaler who has struggled with finding the money, who has struggled with finding buyers, who has struggled with the doubt that wholesaling might not be around for too much longer.

If that's you in any of those categories, I'd really like you to join us next Wednesday. Cam, can you tell us a little bit what you're going to be sharing, what we're talking about, how we can kind of kill all of those ideas? Yeah, so what I look forward to having the opportunity to do is sort of way out in front of you a very simple to understand end-to-end solution for anyone who is new to the business, or who's into the business and wants to wholesale houses. So if you're new to the business, there's no doubt about it. Wholesaling is the fastest, easiest money in real estate.

It's not the most money. Notice I didn't say the most. You can make more money per deal utilizing other strategies, but they involve more risk, more money, more skill, more contractors, more everything. where wholesaling is just simple. And if you're in the business, I'll make the case that it's the perfect add-on strategy. So when I started in 1993, you know, Carlton's course covered basically two things, and that was buy fix and sell or buy hold and rent.

I never learned wholesaling from him. I learned it later by accident on a racquetball court with a friendly competitor who I played Rocketball with at 6.30 in the morning. When I told him about a deal I had under contract but didn't really have the capacity to jump on it, my intent was to rehab it, and I had two full-time crews at the time. And I knew I could see there was no way I was going to get to this house for at least the next couple, two, three months and I was going to have carrying costs and, you know, vacancy risks and all of that. And I was just lamenting about that. And he said, well, tell me about the house. And I did. And he offered me five grand for the contract. And I was like, whoa, wait, what?

And that was my introduction to wholesaling. And what I discovered was that the skills you learn as a wholesaler are like the fundamentals of anything, right? So if you're a golfer, you've got the fundamentals and you need to practice those fundamentals every day. And if you're in real estate, you need to practice the fundamentals every day. And those fundamentals ultimately are what you do as a wholesaler. And so when you get good at being a wholesaler, you can then get good at any part of

the business because you can cherry pick the deals and the skill set you've acquired will serve you in any aspect of real estate. Yep. Perfect. So we're going to go through that and so much more. If you'd like to join us, it's next Wednesday, February 17th at 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. And Cam has been very generous to carve out some of his day to share that with you. You can go to Wednesday webclass.com. Wednesday webclass. class.com. All righty. Cam, did I miss anything?

Did I forget anything? Well, I'll add a couple, just a couple last little bits to hopefully push anybody who's thinking about joining us next week over the edge. While we're together, I'll show you some software that will blow your mind as far as what is available to you in the marketplace when you have the right software with the right curated data or with the right data that's well curated. I mentioned that before. I'll show you how our funding works.

And here's a part that, honestly gosh, you might think is too good to be true, but I'm going to prove to you it's not. I'll tell you now, but I'll prove to you on Wednesday it's not. When you are part, when you're on our team,

when you're part of my extended family, the CAMFAM, which was coined by one of our clients, you have access to our funding, that transactional funding, on an unlimited number of deals for one full year with a maximum

of $1 million per transaction with no fees whatsoever. We call it no fee funding. And there's the part where you're recoiling and you're going, oh, no, no, that's BS. That can't be too good to be true. It's not. I will show you. I'll prove it to you.

Let me prove it to you. Challenge me to prove it to you next Wednesday. I'd love to do that. All right. The challenge is on. I want to see this work too. So meet me there and we're going to challenge Cam together. And then we'll go from there.

But thank you very much, Cam. Appreciate you, bud. My pleasure, man. Thank you. See you next week. All right. All right. All right.

Bye-bye. If you found this episode valuable, who else do you know that might do? There's a good chance you know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, share it with them and ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here. And tell them about Wednesday webclass.com as well. And invite them,

having them be your guest and you both can be my VIPs. And I'll take great care of them. And you and both of you will have a great. time and learn great stuff so we can go earn big stuff. All righty. That's it for today. God loves you. And so do I. Health, peace, blessings, and success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us. We got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite radio network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.