Epic Real Estate Investing - EREI 056: How Success Happens and Your Questions Answered

Episode Date: July 16, 2013

Matt returns to the airwaves introducing a new era of the Epic Real Estate Investing podcast. After a few announcements, Matt dives right into a listener email that illustrates perfectly how success happens in the business of real estate investing. If you've been struggling to get your business going and feelings of frustration and discouragement are causing you to second guess yourself, you must tune into this episode and get back on track. The show continues with Matt taking your phone calls and personally answering your questions. If you have a question that you'd like Matt to answer on the air, please call 1-888-891-7203 and leave your question. Download the free real estate investing course at FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Epic Investors. Before we get started today, I just want to extend a deep thank you for your support of this show. Thank you for telling your friends about the show. Thank you for sharing with me, your success stories. And thank you for your favorable and your really kind ratings over at iTunes. I read all of those. I really appreciate your comments. You know, all of those things that you do when you continue to do really help me keep the shows flowing over here.

I just want you all to know that I have never, nor will I ever take you in your time for granted. It's very important to me that the time that we spend together is, is of extreme value to you. So thank you as we enter into a new era of the Epic Real Estate Investing podcast. Enjoy the show. Broadcasting from Terrio Studios in Glendale, California. It's time for Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. Hey, this is episode 56 of the Epic Real Estate Investing podcast.

My name is Matt Terrio, the Rat Race Escape, artist and this is still, it's still the place that will show you how to get out of the rat race using real estate. But today, today is a new day, a new beginning. You see, it's the first day in my new million dollar multimedia studio. And, you know, as you just heard, we've got a new introduction, a new introduction to the show. We're broadcasting from a new location. This is Terrio Studios in Glendale, California, what I've just built.

And we've got a fresh new intention on getting you out of the rat race, all about you. That's what this show is about, all about you getting out of the rat race so you can live the life that you want to live without money even being a concern. And everything is all supported here by a brand new website, which you can find at epic real estate.com. Actually, I'm in the middle of, you know, I just finished it and I was really happy with it. And then I saw somebody else's website in a totally unrelated industry. And it gave me all kinds of new ideas. So I'm going to go ahead and recreate that. So the next, I don't know, next week or so.

it'll be up. The old one is up and running. It's not very old. It's just a couple weeks old. But there's going to be a newer one upcoming very shortly. And, you know, most everything here is free. The wholesaling course is still free. You can find that at free real estate investing course.com.

Still free. And, you know, I'm currently in the process of making some upgrades to that course. I've learned a lot of new stuff over the last couple of years that I want to make sure that I implement and don't leave anything out. So I want to make that course as complete as possible. and I'll let you know as soon as those upgrades are done. And the information that you receive here on the podcast is obviously still free. That hasn't changed. It's not going to.

It costs absolutely nothing to download this from iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever you're accessing this from. However, with a new show, a new location comes new expenses for me. So although I will still offer to you as many free services, products, and information as I possibly can, that's not going to change. I do want to extend to you the opportunity to support this show financially at your discretion, of course. I mean, there is no obligation, there's no conditions. This is solely at your discretion.

And there are a few ways that you'll be able to support this show if you feel so inclined. Okay, it's totally up to you. And now that I'm redoing the website, I can't really share those with you because I'm recreating those options for you. So stay tuned. And, you know, as I had to plan on talking about all of those today, but I'm not going to be able to. so it's a little premature with the website design. But some of you have asked about how you could contribute. Some of you have expressed a great deal of gratitude

and you can't believe the information is free. So if you feel inclined, I don't want to block you from contributing because the electricity here is not free. Okay? So having said that, there is another thing that I promised that will not change. You know, as I promised from day one,

there will be minimal selling or promotion of products and services on this show. I think on episode one I promised to keep it less than 5% of this show's content. And in reality, as I look back, I really, I think it's been less than 1%. And I'm going to continue to keep that promise. But just know, I do have to keep the lights on here in some way.

And if you feel inclined to help out, I will periodically let you know how you can do so. Deal? Cool. All right. So while I've been away conducting my own business and building this new facility, the emails have been backing up. And the listener calls have been accumulating as well.

So today I want to take some time to address your comments and questions and just really dedicate this show to you. Okay, so the first one, the first podcast listener, first epic listener that I want to direct my attention to, it came to me in the form of an email. It comes from Jedediah Schmidt, and Jedd wrote Matt. You probably don't know who I am. I am in your community of followers, but my name is Jedediah Schmidt out of Phoenix, Arizona, originally from Des Moines, Iowa.

I am at a point in my investment journey that I thought I should share with you my progress and most importantly thank you for the confidence to overcome the initial fear that was standing in my way. My story started back in November 2012 as I was working on a customer issue with my job at 2 a.m. and realized how much I can't stand these middle of the night phone calls. I checked my email and saw another overdraft protection email from my bank basically letting me know that I have no money. And then I saw a $500 deposit in my other account.

This deposit came from a rent payment that my wife's aunt pays us for a $70,000 house that we inherited when my wife's dad passed away. Now, I had not been to that house for four years. We had not touched it or done anything but pay the taxes. At the time, we didn't even insure it, although I hate to admit that now. Anyway, that night was the light bulb moment for me. I am working endless hours with no money, and I have a neglected house sending me money every month. That is when my research began and where I quickly found you.

I ended up signing up for the daily feed videos. That will be the free real estate investing course. And I'm so impatient that I wanted all those videos right now and right away, and I just signed up for the Epic Pro Academy on November 10th with the rent money aforementioned. And I immersed myself in the studies and started with the basics of yellow letter market. The problem that I was having is that I am a director of 35 people and have three kids and a wife at home, so finding the balance was tough. The yellow letters were getting me some calls, but mostly from other investors trying to sell their houses at retail. I was setting up meetings with for sale by owner sellers also, but just wasn't able to secure terms yet with them, but the experience was definitely happening.

Then one day I got a call from one of my yell letters. I didn't know it at the time, but this guy held the magic key to my network of people. He was actually an agent for investors and an instructor of other agents. I developed a relationship with him, and he helped me get in touch with a hard money lender after 10 other hard money lenders turned their nose to me because of my current liquidity. So once I got in with the money lender, I started bidding on HUD homes and won three of those bids. Once I had them under contract, I went searching for money. I found two private money investors that are close friends of mine,

and one that just knows I will be successful at whatever I do, and the other had wanted to get involved in real estate investments, but didn't know how. Each of them loaned me $25,000 for six months at 15%. That was the break that I needed. I bought and flipped all three homes with their money. The first couple were pure learning lessons. I did not lose money, but I didn't get the big pay either that I was hoping for. After factoring in closing costs, commissions, carrying costs and

expenses I made $1,000 on the first, but had that one sold before I originally close it to a cash buyer without doing any rehab. The second one, so the first one, he made $1,000. The second one was the same story. Cash buyer, no rehab, made a $3,000 profit, a little better. And then the third one, I put $16,000 of rehab into it and made a $9,000 profit. Not too shabby, Jed. Nice work. And so this got my juices flowing, the hard money lender that I now had was impressed, and he connected with me my now partner in crime that had just broken away from an REI hedge fund as their acquisition manager and was initially open to helping me acquire properties at the auction house. HUD was simply too slow. Understandable. Now, to cut to the chase, I have since purchased a, oh, excuse me, I have since purchased or currently have in contract seven,

properties, all in different phases with six of them acquired at auction. From my first property acquisition that took place in February of this year, I have flipped two, fix and flipped one, and I have seven others in the works right now while I still manage my day job, for now. My point in writing you this email is to thank you. I needed confidence to see past the roadblocks. I found a path in this and jumped on it full steam, but it took me 90 days to do it. Not too bad in 90 days, Jen.

And I joined my local REI organization to get market data, et cetera, so I knew the lingo and the trends. I built a business plan for investors to invest with me, and I have since raised $107,000 from individuals, along with my own $50,000 that I pulled out of my rental property to help grow the business. Right now I am after cash, but I will soon be after cash flow to set up my wealth building. Thank you, Matt, for all that you do. Your program and support is incredible. and anyone that can take what you have laid out, oh, excuse me, your program of support is incredible

and anyone that can't take what you have laid out and find their path within it likely just isn't a hustler or entrepreneur. I'd love to have a call sometime as I am just getting started to take off in this game. Thank you, Matt, call any time. Jedded-Eyes Schmidt. Well, Jedd, awesome story.

Thank you for sharing your success with me. Thank you for sharing it with the listeners. Thank you for being an awesome example. And, you know, it's just awesome work. There's nothing I can say about that. Now, there are a few points of Jed's email that I want to touch on. There are a lot of lessons in there. And I'm going to try to get to all of them, but I'm sure I'll miss something

because there's just a wealth of information there. And it was a long email. And typically, I don't read them all the way through like that. But there was so many points in there that I didn't want to touch on. The first is Jed was sending out Yale letters and getting a bunch of calls from sellers and investors that, wanted to sell their properties at full retail. Well, that happens.

So the fact that he was getting those types of calls says to me that he was doing it right. That's what you can expect. You know, regardless of what your numbers are, you know, roughly we've kind of figured out and narrowed it down to once you have a little bit of experience on your belt, you know, one out of 30 calls is going to be a motivated seller.

Well, one or two, and one of those is actually going to be a deal. Okay? And, but what that means is you're going to get 28 to 29 other calls that are completely garbage. People that want to sell you property at full retail. So keep that in mind. I mean, if you push through and you get 15, 20, 25 calls from your yellow letters, and it's all a bunch of people just asking for retail prices, know that you're doing it right.

That's what happens. That's how it works. If you don't want to go out and do the prospecting and you want to entice people to call you, those are the types of calls you're going to get. but you only need one good call to make it all worth it. And that brings me to my second point. The second point that I want to point out in Jed's email is he got a call from someone,

not a motivated seller, mind you, but a real estate agent that worked for investors. So the opportunities that come to you through these phone calls might not always come in the form of a motivated seller. I believe several episodes back when I interviewed Alan, one of my coaching clients, he built a number of relationships through his marketing and through his yellow letters and through his internet Craigslist ads that weren't motivated sellers. But those relationships led him to motivated sellers. That's the same situation here with Jed. After developing a relationship, he even said that, developed a relationship. That's what this business is about. It's a people business.

It's about creating relationships. After he created a relationship with his agent, Jed was able to connect with a hard money lender that literally turned his entire business around, changed everything for him. So we went through a bunch of unreasonable investors and sellers wanting to sell their properties of full retail, and he gets one call that's not even from a motivated seller, and it turns his entire business around. Now, the third point is Jed's persistence. Absolutely essential in this business. If you don't think you can be persistent, if you don't think you can stick to it, then this is not the business for you. It's just not. You know, initially, the yell letters, They didn't seem to be working for Jed, but he persevered.

He kept sending them out. Also, his first couple of flips. They didn't present the big payday that he was expecting. But he persevered. He kept moving forward. He kept doing the right activities. We talk about this all the time. And this is the secret.

Did the right activities. He did those activities consistently, and he did them persistently. And he got the results. And that's all you have to do. You two will get the results. There's no way around it. That's how life works. You know, I talk about all the time.

There's no way that you can cut calories and exercise more and not lose weight. There's no way. If you do the right activities consisting of cutting calories and exercising more, and you do those consistently, do it four or five, six days a week, and you do it persistently over time after a few months. There's no doubt you're going to be fitting into those pants that you couldn't fit into two or three months before that. That's exactly how this business works also. You go and you do your marketing.

Your marketing makes your phone ring. You talk to people. And through those people, opportunities are created. And that brings me to the fourth point. Through Jed's persistence, he has set an example to his community, to his friends. He set that example to his family and his associates. He has demonstrated that he is determined. He has demonstrated that he is competent.

and because he's demonstrated those qualities, he's now finding people with greater ease, and he probably could have even remotely imagined just 90 days earlier. And these people are willing to invest in him because he was persistent and his community was watching him. I mean, you know, Jed, just thank you so much for this email

because what you have experienced and what you've demonstrated is exactly how success in this business happens, you know, performing the right activity, consistently and persistently will put you in the path of opportunity. It'll put you in the path of people that can help you. It'll put you in the path of those relationships. And continuing to perform those activities consistently and persistently

demonstrates to all of those that are watching you. And believe me, people are watching. You see, Jed, when you are on fire and everyone else, when you're on fire like Jed, people from all around will stop what they're doing to watch you burn. They will travel from miles and miles and miles to watch you burn. And because so many others out there that they either lack the money, they lack the time, they lack the knowledge, or they just flat out are afraid of the fire themselves, they will want to latch on and participate in any way that they can with someone else that is on fire. And in this business, that usually looks like people investing money with you.

That's what it looks like. And that's exactly what Jed is experiencing. And in just 90 days. I mean, he talked about 90 days, like, that was a long time. How many of you would like to have, you know, two flips, or three flips behind you and seven more properties under contract in just 90 days? Awesome work, Jed. Awesome.

Thank you for sharing that with me. Don't stop. And if you got a story out there that you want to share of your success, please share it with me. And I'll let you know. you can send me an email or you can give me a phone call and I'll share that number with you in just a moment. And, you know, I just love to stop and really focus on stories exactly like Jeds because this is how real success works, lasting success in this business works. And it's how it happens. And, you know, it's so difficult for me to convey that, to teach that. But if you just

do the right activity, you do them consistently and you do them persistently, it's going to happen for you. You see, success is attracted to motion. If you're sitting home or you're sitting on your hands and you're not taking action, you're not out there moving around and just staying in motion, success is not going to find you. Success is attracted to motion. So the real lesson I want you to get from Jed's email is to stay in motion and don't stop. Stay in motion performing the right activities and don't stop. Success will find you.

I guarantee it. I guarantee it. Okay. So the second person I want to address and discuss comes from our Epic Real Estate Investing Hotline. And that number is 1-888-8-8-8-9-8-203. 8-9-1-7203. That's the Epic Real Estate Investing Hotline. You can call there and you can leave a message.

And I didn't get a name from this call, but here's this question. Hey, Matt, I got a question about call-up the sale by your owner on the SAC credit list or, you know, just riding around. Whenever you call, like, owner, like, how did you kick off the conversation to collect the information? That's my first question. My second question is, do you collect the mortgage information to structure the around-the-depth on the initial call? That's pretty much it. I look for it to hear you answer those, and I will talk these long to hear. Okay, so how do you kick off the call when you call a for sale by owner, a FISBO?

And you collect the mortgage information. All right. So there are multiple approaches to prospecting FISBos. There's a lot of gurus out there that teach a strategy, a lot of gurus out there that teach the strategy to real estate agents as well. And the one thing you'll want to get right up front to understand is it's pretty difficult to say the right thing to the wrong person. I mean, that's somewhat the bad news. I mean, if they're not going to want to sell, there's not a whole lot of scripts or tricks

that you can use that's going to cause them to sell. That's the bad news. But here's the good news. It's just as difficult to say the wrong thing to the right person. I mean, unless you're a total idiot and none of you are. So just get that out of your head. It's very difficult to mess this business up. And a lot of you are afraid of messing it up.

don't if you just follow the basic rules that I outline in the free course you're going to be just fine so understand that it's it's difficult to say the right thing to the wrong person but it's also very difficult to say the wrong thing to the right person and many new investors they just overthink this part and you know a very simple approach in simple words to say could be hey I'm calling about the house for sale can you tell me a little bit about it very basic That didn't take any fancy words or fancy scripts. That's the for sale by owner. They're advertising their property for sale.

So call them. And call them. Just ask what you want to know about it. Hey, I'm calling about the house for sale. Can you tell me a little bit about it? They're going to be happy to tell you about it. They're trying to sell it. That right there is going to open up the dialogue.

It's going to break the ice. And here's what I recommend is you just listen. Just listen and keep asking questions. Just listen and listen. and then at some point when you're going to, you're going to want to work in the basic question, hey, can you tell me why you're selling? Sometimes they'll tell you, sometimes they won't.

But I'm telling you, if you do a good job of listening on that first question, you're more likely to get an answer on the second question. That second question being, can you tell me why you're selling? Now, the third question, this is how you're going to wrap it up. Hey, if I was able to present an offer to you that you found acceptable, How soon would you want to move? And what you're doing there with that question is you're trying to detect urgency. Okay, you're trying to detect urgency.

So the first is, hey, I'm just calling about the house for sale. Can you tell me a little bit about it? Second question, at some point, once you've done a lot of listening, can you tell me why you're selling? It's going to be a little indicator of their motivation. And then your third question, hey, if I was able to present an offer to you that you found acceptable, how soon would you want to move? It's just a way of detecting urgency with their motivation.

Got it? Really basic. Don't overthink it. Very simple. And then the next question he had was, do you collect the mortgage information? Yeah, you can. I mean, you don't need that right yet, though.

That's not information that you need to collect right now. And if you go through the free real estate investing course, there's an actual seller question error. And that question, all those questions about the mortgage information, it's on that questionnaire. So if you're in a position where it feels comfortable to proceed with that questionnaire, maybe you're face to face or you're at the doorstep of this for sale by owner, then by all means, go ahead and, you know, just walk through the questionnaire.

And to walk through that questionnaire is very basic also. Don't overthink it. Hey, I have a list of questions here on this piece of paper that I ask everyone I talk to. Do you, the same questions I ask everybody? Do you mind if I just read from the papers to make sure that I don't forget anything? Because I really don't want to forget anything that's going to cost you any money or an opportunity. Is that okay if I just read them right here from the paper? they always say yes always who's going to refuse that i don't want to lose any money i don't want to lose

an opportunity yeah the better remember your questions that's what they're thinking they're the same questions you ask everybody so it's it's nothing special it's just your routine shows that you're professional and then you don't have to memorize anything either okay so i show you exactly how to do that in the free course so uh don't overthink it you know it's basic hey you got the house for sale can you tell me a little bit about it that's how you'll break the ice and yeah you're gonna need to collect the mortgage information but don't use you're going to need to collect the mortgage information but don't That's not like the second thing that you got to do, so don't rush to that information, okay? All right.

So the third call comes from Steve in Denver. Hello, Matt. My name's Steve. I am in Denver, and I've got a question for you as I'm processing your wonderful information. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. On your epicanalyzer.com site, I'm using the fix-and-flip portion of that site. I put in four comps and the fair market value comes out way lower than the average. And I'm wondering, it sounded like that was essentially taking an average of those properties.

So I wanted to drill a little bit deeper and just give you this example. Here are my four comps, 134 grand, 140 grand, 100 grand, and 140 grand. So it sounds like the average should be much closer to the 134 grand than 100,000. hundred grand. Yet the fair market value in the analyzer comes out to 102-800. So I'm looking for an explanation. If you can tell me why that's so much lower than the average of those four, I only had four good comps there. And I know your advice was if you can't generally get at least four or five or more, it's probably not happening enough for that, and it's not an active, but not a market.

So I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks, Matt, keep it up. Okay, Steve, on the Epic Analyzer, and this is one of the tools that I give you for free inside of the free real estate investing course, and when you're going to analyze a property for a fix and flip, the analyzer asks for five comps, five comparable sales. And five comparable sales are required to compute an accurate average

because the little calculator automatically divides by five to find out the average. So if you only use four comps, it's going to average that fifth comp as a zero, which will obviously bring your average way down. Okay? So I like to find, I chose five, because I like to find at least five recent comparables for fix and flips, because what that does is it indicates the market activity. It indicates if people are actually buying and selling property in that area. And this is really important if it's an area.

that you're not too familiar with. There's always exceptions, and local knowledge overrules everything. But as a rule of thumb, if I can't find five good comparables, then fixing and flipping is going to be something I want to look a little bit deeper into to see if this is going to be a good market

for that strategy. That's why I ask for five. And again, this tool, it's not the end-all-be-all. It's just your quick and dirty math calculator to give you an idea of what you could offer for this property. and what you should try and get this property under contract for, or what price you should get this property under contract.

And then if I only have four comps, what I do is I use the lowest comp twice. I use the lowest comp twice. It's just a little extra level of security for me. Okay, so there you go, Steve. Hopefully that answers your question. The fourth call comes from Brad Weber in Cleveland. Hey, Matt.

This is Brad Weber from Cleveland, Ohio. My question for you is, I'm absolutely 100% into this wholesaling idea. I'm sending out my other letters. I'm getting calls back. I'm right now just kind of searching for the right deal. My question for you is wholesaling HUD properties. How easy is that?

How simple is that? Can you break that down for me? My concern is that the banks are going to toss up red tape and doing the HUD properties might be a little bit more difficult in terms of assigning the property or doing a secondary. a B to C contract on the property. I just don't want any hiccups if I decide to target those as potential deals.

I'd appreciate any insight you can give me and thank you very much. I enjoy the show. Okay, so I haven't traditionally wholesaled a HUD property before so I'm probably not the best resource to ask this question. And I believe, and I'm sure there's someone out there that could chime in on this and correct me if I'm wrong,

but I believe you would have to close on the property first and then sell it. So you're essentially going to have to flip it. I don't think you can actually assign a HUD property. But then again, I've never tried to, so maybe you can. But I do believe that you're... Everything I do have, the knowledge, I do have the experience I do have. I do believe you're going to have to close on it first and then resell it.

I don't believe HUD properties, though, have any sort of deed restriction like Fannie Mae houses do. But again, if there's someone out there that, you know, maybe I'm inaccurate. So you're going to want to confirm this with someone else. But I don't believe there are any deed restriction. So you could close on the HUD property first and then resell to your buyer either that afternoon the same day or the next day. And if you don't have the funds to close, that's probably your next question. What if I don't have the money to close on the property first?

This is where you want to use a transactional funder, transactional lending. And you can just Google. Go Google, transactional lender or transactional funding. You're going to get pages and pages and pages of options. And through those, you just start making phone calls and you should shop them like you would any residential or any real estate loan. Okay. All right. And what transactional funding is, is they're going to give you the money. It's a very short-term loan, typically 24 to 72-hour loan.

They might charge you 1 or 2 percent, depending on the amount. And they loan you the money for just a few days, so you can close on your A to B transaction and then resell on your B-to-C transaction. Okay, so the fifth call comes from... Hey, Matt. This is Tom. You're good enough to send me an email, responding to a question I had. The question was basically, I'm a real estate agent in a couple of states, and I'm just, you know, just getting going.

And my concern is just disclosure. You know, I'm going to be implementing some of the strategies that you're sharing with us. And at least in the two-state time, and I, I mean, the commissions are so concerned about consumer protection, which of course. But at the end of the day, I mean, you know, it says it on the PNS. If you don't understand something, then please, you know, then basically please contact an attorney. So my point is, is it worth having a license? Some of my other investor friends or associates that I know have actually returned, a couple of them return their license.

So I'm sorry this is long-winded. But my concern is, you know, are the ramifications of having a license. license, potential ramifications worth it. Leave it alone. Thank you very much. Love your stuff. Terrific. You're actually everything.

I love listening to the podcast and just appreciate it, peace. Okay, his concern is about being an agent, disclosing the fact that he's an agent if it's worth having a real estate license and the potential ramifications. Okay, so as I've shared a few times on this show,

I was a licensed real estate agent. I did let my license expire however just almost a year ago exactly because almost of the day i didn't need it i didn't want to keep paying the dues and paying the fees to keep it active i have no intention of ever going back to being a real estate agent and uh you know what's the the funny thing is i think i've easily sold no no i don't think i know i've easily sold more houses without my license than i did with it and you know if i received any sort of benefit from getting my license prior to being an investor i would say all it was, was I understood the paperwork better. I understood the paperwork better than my,

my other investor associates. But, you know, you absolutely do not need a license and you don't need to jump through all of those hoops and pay all of those fees that are required to understand the paperwork. You can certainly learn it all on your own. It's just I was forced to learn it, so that's why I learned it better. But you can certainly force yourself. So I would say it's not worth it to get a license if your intention is to be an investor. And something, people have said, well, I get to apply the commission to my sale. Yes, but I mean, you can easily negotiate that and say, you know, Mr. Motivated Seller, Mrs. Motivated Seller, you know, would you be open to an offer after all of the typical, after all of the, the typical marketing fees

were deducted? That's it. Boom, you just got your 3% and your 6% off just like that with that question. You don't need a license to do that. The investor world and the real estate agent world, they're two totally different worlds. Yes, they both have to do with buying and selling real estate, but they are two totally different worlds. Do not get that confused. There's very little overlapping gray area between the two. So getting a license, the only reason you need a license is because you want to buy or sell real estate

on the behalf of someone else. You want to represent them. It's a customer service position. It's a transaction coordination position. It's not buying and selling real estate as an investor. all right now if you do have a license and you're concerned about disclosing that fact i wouldn't be but if you are i understand once you've done it a couple times you realize that's no big deal i mean like everything else that you're going to have to disclose it's best to do it as early in the

transaction as possible you want to you want to disclose everything that you kind of fear whatever that may be um you want to disclose all that right up front and you know i used to open dialogue with motivated sellers by saying something like, Mr. Seller, I'm a real estate agent, but I'm not looking to list your property. I'm actually looking to possibly add your property to my existing real estate portfolio. Would it be okay if we discussed that? That's it. I'm, I'm an agent. I'm not looking to list your property. I actually want to buy it because I buy property. I have bought some before. Would it be okay if we just discussed it? It's as easy as that. And if you present that right up front, there'll be no surprises down the road that you have to explain away.

So that's very simple to disclose that. And now with regard to potential ramifications. Okay, so this is a valid concern. Here's where you will need to be careful. And that might even be a strong word. Not necessarily careful, but just aware that should you ever find yourself in court over a real estate matter, if you are licensed and your opposition is not licensed, you are likely going to lose. you do not have the advantage, let's put it that way. Even if you're right, even if you did everything right,

you are not an advantage by being licensed. See, real estate is just one of those industries where so many times the little guy has been screwed that anyone with any sort of experience or a license, it's believed just by public or the court opinion that you should have known better. You're the expert. You shouldn't have taken advantage of the...

this poor little person. I don't care if you're right. You shouldn't have taken advantage. You knew that they didn't know, so we're going to hold you liable. Just kind of how it happens. More times than not. So the licensed and the experienced,

they just often lose in court. But, again, nothing to be concerned about. Just don't end up in court. Conduct your business with a high level of integrity. Be totally transparent. And here's the key. Here's the key. Make sure everybody gets paid what they were promised.

make sure everybody gets what they were promised in the transaction. If you do that, you're not going to end up in court. Just make sure everybody gets paid. A very wise mentor of mine gave me that very basic advice. Because when investors come into real estate, you know, they're always thinking about court. They're always thinking about messing up the contract. They're always thinking about getting into trouble. And so many questions.

stem from that fear. And the one answer is just make sure everybody gets paid. And if there's any sort of dispute, take the high road and pay it. Whatever it is. Whatever it is, it's going to be far less than what you could possibly win in court. And it's likely going to be far less than what you would have to pay an attorney to defend you. And it's for sure going to be far less than what your time is worth in trying to be right.

It's not worth it. Being right is very expensive. So just make sure everybody gets paid and move on to the next deal. It's that simple. All right? Nothing really to be afraid of. Just something to be aware of.

Okay, so if you happen to have a question, comment, or concern that you'd like me to answer or address here live on the show, please share them with me on the Epic Real Estate Investing Hotline just like everyone here did today at 1-888-891-7203. 18888-891-7203 and I will answer your questions and comments right here live on the show. All right, so before I go, thanks for hanging in there with me during the last few months.

I'm very excited for the future and I'm excited with how you and I were going to help each other achieve more. That's the goal here. Absolutely stay tuned over the next few episodes and you can expect weekly episodes from this point forward as I'll be sharing with you some totally awesome tools and resources to help you be more successful. That's the goal here. We've got to make sure that the time that we spend here is worth it, and it makes both of us richer. Good? All right, so that's it for today.

And until next time, as a very wise person once said, sometimes you've got to take a step or two back to take three steps forward. Always invest in your future. To your success, I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream. You've been listening to Epic Real Estate Investing, the world's foremost authority on separating the facts from the BS in Real Estate Investing Education. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to visit iTunes and share your thoughts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time here at Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.