Epic Real Estate Investing - Using the MLS to Find Motivated Sellers with Jim Huntzicker | EREI 177

Episode Date: October 19, 2015

If you’ve been a listener for any amount of time, you may have heard this before: The foundation of every deal lies in the seller’s motivation to sell. Today’s guest uses the multiple listing service (MLS) to find that motivation. A real estate agent since 2006, Jim Huntzicker has used the MLS to buys renovate, and sell over 450 residential properties in Chicago and its suburbs. Jim’s MLS Domination technique has gotten him as much as 32% off of MLS list price and his tips and tricks could do the same for you! Enjoy! ------- The free course is new and improved! To access to the two fastest and easiest strategies to a paycheck in real estate, go to FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com or text “FreeCourse” to 55678. What interests you most? E ducation P roperties I ncome C oaching Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Real estate investments involve a high degree of risk. Residential income and returns may vary and are not guaranteed. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Nothing herein shall be construed as investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. This is Terio Media. Broadcasting from Terrio Studios in Glendale, California. California, it's time for Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. Uh, yeah, hello, and welcome.

Welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing, the place where I show people how to escape the rat race using real estate. And what you need to do is just shift your focus from making piles of money to making streams of money, change that one thing, just one time, and you are on your way to financial freedom. It's not the most exciting path. I promise you that, but it is the fastest. and that there is a promise as well.

And once you get there, life then becomes exciting. And to take your first step to that exciting life, go to free real estateinvestingcourse.com. Free real estate investing course.com of where you'll learn the most valuable skill of a real estate investor. If you get this one skill down, boy, the money, or the world is your oyster. You actually got a cash register machine if you can adopt and obtain this skill.

And that skill being how to find motivated sellers. Why is that important? Well, the foundation of every deal lies within the seller's motivation to sell. So you've got to know how to find that motivation. And you have to know how to identify. And that's what I show you how to do in this course, as well as everything else to bring it all together

to collect a paycheck. All right. So go to free real estate investing course.com, my free gift to you. And I've got a great show for you. you today on how to use the multiple listing service, the MLS, to find motivated sellers. It's another approach. But before we begin, I've got another gift for you.

As I was listening to a podcast this weekend, a podcast on podcasting, so as it be, they were sharing tips on being more productive. And they weren't really podcasting tips. They're more business tips. And one of the tips that they gave had to do with doing a bulk unsubscribe off all of those unwanted email subscriptions that you're on. and I don't know about you, but my Gmail inbox has become almost completely unusable because I get so many solicitations and so much useless information that all the stuff that I want

to read, stuff that's important, gets lost and buried in my inbox. And this year has been by far the worst. I think it's just, I've reached critical mass. I've had so many years of this building up and that's just kind of the point where I can't even deal with it anymore. And many of you probably already know that because you've sent me emails. and they've gone unanswered. And that's really for two reasons.

The major reason is I get a lot of them, and I don't know if I could really possibly respond to all of them. And the second reason is I get so many solicitations in this unwanted information that even if I did have the time, I probably still wouldn't answer your emails because I don't even get to see them, because they end up on page two of my inbox, typically within four hours of them landing there. So quick side note, though,

if you do want me to answer your emails, please just send me one or two questions. Leave out the three, four, five paragraphs, the three or four chapters of the pre-story to get to the question because I just, that's what makes it impossible. That takes a really long time to go through. So just one or two questions, and I'll do my best to get back to you. No promises, but you got your chances of me getting back to you are far greater that way. Anyway, yesterday I took my first step to regaining control over my inbox, and with one swoop, I unsubscribe to over 100 lists that I had been subscribed to.

And I already noticed the difference this morning. I mean, just it was overnight and there was an obvious difference. So here's the site, unroll. Dot me, totally free. I get nothing for this. This is just my gift to you because it was very liberating this whole process. Unroll. Dot me.

Just go there, type in your email address and it will search your inbox or I don't know if it searches your inbox or searches your internet or searches the internet. for everything that you're subscribed to, and it magically brings it all up on one page. And then you'd have to go down that list and select every list that you want to unsubscribe to. And boom, you're done. All on one page.

And you know what? If you see my name on there, or the Epic Pro Academy, or Cashflow Savvy, and you do not want to receive information from me, please unsubscribe from me too. All right? I will not be offended.

I'll actually be very appreciative if you do. And here's why. I want you to do that for two reasons. I don't know, maybe I've got three. Maybe there's even four reasons. First, the more people on my list, the more expensive it is for me each month. It takes money to database and warehouse all of those email addresses. So if you don't want to be on there, you actually saving me money by unsubscribing.

Okay. Second is, I don't want to send you information if you don't want to receive it from me. I don't want to be a pest to you. I want to be of service to you. So if the information you're finding that you get from me, and I don't even send out that much, If you're finding that of no value, then go ahead and unsubscribe. That's fine with me. I don't want to say, I don't want to bother you.

And third, I'm really tired of receiving the nasty grams and the nasty emails from people complaining that I did not get their permission to send them information or that they never signed up for my emails. Or they're like, how did you get my list? I'm going to report you to the spam police, all that kind of stuff. Tired of receiving that stuff because the reason I'm tired of receiving those emails is because it's just not my fault that you signed up for something of mine. and you forgot.

And now you're taking it out on me like I'm trying to force you into something. If I have your email address, it's because you gave it to me. I'm sorry if you forgot that you gave it to me, but you gave it to me. That's the only way I would ever have it. And having said that, I'll have you know. I'm no different. There's the irony. I do the same.

And when I went to unroll. When I went there and I unsubscribe from the 100 plus lists, I bet 80 of them, 80 of those lists, 75, 80, maybe even 90. I don't know. I didn't really count, but it was the majority, vast majority of them. I had no recollection

of ever signing up for. So I understand how you can forget, but just kind of spare me the drama. It's going to be okay. There's an unsubscribe button in every single email I send out it's a click and you're done or you just go to unroll.

Dot me and you can get rid of everything that you don't want to receive. All righty? You've got better things to do, right? Anyway, that's my gift to you today. One of many, unroll. Dot me. I kept on going to unrollme.

and that is wrong. It will not get you there. It's unroll. Dot me. All right. So let's talk about real estate. This is a real estate podcast. After about, you know, four months of working directly, I don't know, it's probably

six months now and I'm really thinking about it, of working directly and intensely with my virtual assistance. I've been sharing that with you here and there. And specifically on the property acquisition side of my business, things are really starting to click. And the system that I set out to set up is actually closing. deals on its own now without my involvement whatsoever. And that was the intention.

That was me having this declaration of wanting to put more of my business on the B side of the quadrant, of the cash flow quadrant by Kiyosaki. And that B side being the business side of where your business works with or without your presence. And I know I've played a few recordings here on the show of my VAs, of which none of those that I played for you, none of those turned into deals. But since things are starting to click now, I'm amassing quite the inventory of recordings of calls that have turned into deals.

And I thought it'd start playing some of those for you right here so that you can learn from real world experience. Not real world experience because that's always been my intention, but this is real world successful experience to see how good you have to be at this business to get it done. Or even better. How good you don't have to be to get this business done, to get results, because you don't have to be great. And then I have a special guest for you after that on the phone who's going to share his system for using the multiple listing service to find motivated sellers. And we're going to get started in 30 seconds right after this.

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Go to Epicfastfunding.com. So this call, I'm going to play this recording by my VA Tony. I believe I've played his calls here before. You'll probably hear a little bit of an improvement on him or from him. This deal, this call that he's talking to, this turned into a $6,000 deal for me. $6,000 check is what we received. And I know, that's not anything to brag about. That certainly doesn't break any records.

But you know what? It happened while I was on vacation. That's what makes it so sweet. Check it out. Hello? Hi. Anthony. Is it Edom? Yes.

Yeah, I got your voicemail regarding a property that you're looking to sell. I think it's on Norman Avenue. Oh, yeah. Yeah, are you available right now? Because I have some questions about the property, and this will just take about five to ten minutes

of your time. Sure, ma'am. What's up? Yeah, I just want to check. You mentioned the address itself is 9-01-Norman Avenue, Yuclite, Ohio. Would that be correct? Correct. And just want to check as well. This is a three-bedroom and one bath. Would that be right? Yes.

I see. And does this property need any repair? Did you know of? The garage is a one-car garage that doesn't have a roof or a door. I see. And also, do you have a mortgage on this property? Nope. I see, and I think the taxes are being paid on time, right? They're current. Yeah, they're on a payment plan. Okay.

And also, yeah, just one thing. You mentioned you're selling it for 40. Would that be correct? That's my bottom line. You know, I just had an appraisal done on it, and it came back with a little over 50. I just talked to the guy. He hasn't sent me the final appraisal yet, but, said he'd get it to me this week.

But he said that the properties in that area are typically selling for 60 to 65 with the garage the way it is. He estimated, based on just the initial reaction, was going to be over 50. So as soon as I get that final appraisal, I could let you know what it's going to be. Yeah, that will work. Anyway, we're going to be doing some market devaluation as well on our end, and we're going to be checking the area. So normally we'll also get back to you within a day or two, so we can give you an offer that is suitable with the price of the property.

Yeah, now listen, I had, on one of my other properties, I had some guy do similar things as what you're doing. Basically how it works is you're going to give me a contract saying that there's no money being deposited in escrow. and you're going to buy the property for $40,000. And closing date is in 30 days, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then what you're going to do is you're going to market the property to your investors for 30 days. You should find somebody to buy it. You'll come through.

If not, then we walk away. Is that correct? Actually, it depends because my boss is actually purchasing properties for cash because he's going to be using it for rentals. Right, but he's got to market it to his investors, correct? It depends. If it's not going to be needed in his portfolio, then he's going to be marketing it. But if he wants it, then he'll be the one of the way to buy it. Okay.

All right. Yeah. I mean, I had another guy do the same thing with one of my other properties, and he marketed it to his investor for 30 days. And then at the end of 30 days, he bought it. So I just didn't know if this was the same type of deal or not. What happened to that property? Was it sold, or did it wrap it? or something.

No, I sold it. I was sold. Actually, it's actually the same thing, but the difference is that as I mentioned, my boss is looking for properties if he likes to

he buys it, but if he doesn't need it, he's going to be marketing it to other investors. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, I mean, I've got a couple properties, so, I mean,

I'm pretty hip to how it works. I see. Anyway, can I also get your email address so we can easily mail you the offer? Yeah, it's live, L-I-V-E,

the letter N like Nancy Local L-O-C-A-L-O-C-A-L at Got it And also can I get your mailing address So that if in case we have everything set up We can easily mail you the paperware Yeah, it's 2450 Buckeye Boulevard

Rivana, Ohio R-A-V-E-N-N-A Ohio 442-66 Okay, got it. So I'll also call you back to check once you've got that proper review that you're working on and also be calling you back within the year, too.

All right, give me a couple days. I'll have that appraisal. Got it. Thank you for your time, Adam. Have a wonderful day. Now, what did you notice about that call? It was really short, right? We actually even, and there wasn't even a whole lot of motivation there,

so we marked this lead as a cessation. suspect, thinking that this probably was not going to be a deal. So we marked him as a suspect. He went through our system to the suspect department, and we just sent him an automated three-option letter of intent. Boom, just put it in the mail, forgot all about it, and went on calling the next leads. And that three-option letter of intent, the cash offer there, I believe it came out to right around $34, $35,000.

And if you heard, his bottom line was $40,000, wasn't it? This is why it's so important just to always write the offer, to always put the offer for in writing and you got to mail it. Email is okay if it's a last resort or in addition to, but you got to mail it because it changes the psychology of the entire conversation about this sale. So we put it in the mail at 35,000, even though he said his bottom line was 40,000, and he accepted the $35,000. And then also, if you heard, he shared, how many of you would have crumbled here, he shared how he's been through the process of working with another wholesaler. he knows how the whole business works.

I got it. I know exactly how you're going to do it. He ran down the play by play and everything. And then when he asked if we were going to do the same thing, if we were going to market to other investors, Tony did a pretty good job on answering. He said, it depends. It depends. We want to hold, but if not, we'll go ahead and we'll market it.

So it wasn't perfect. And I, you know, I went in, after I listened to this recording, I called Tony and we talked and I sent him a little script. I coached him up a little bit. I just want him to be a little bit more confident in what we do. I mean, he still got the job done, but I think it could have been better, especially with, if this person wasn't so, I don't know, wasn't so open-minded. And I wanted him to be a little bit more confident, and I wanted him to relay the benefit to the buyer. I think that's really important.

For example, when he asked, is this what you're going to do? Are you going to take my property to wholesale it? I coached Tony to say it a little bit differently like this. No, not necessarily. My boss is primarily looking to add rentals to his portfolio. though, and your property fits his profile. If after his due diligence, it happens not to fit, no need to worry, as he'll share your property with his network, he'll find you a buyer, and get you your money anyway.

After all, that's what's most important, right? That's how I coach him to say it. So it's not entirely different than what Tony said. It's just stronger. And it asks for an agreement there at the end. Like, after all, that's what's most important, right? after all, getting you your money, that's what's most important, right? Uh-huh, yeah, right?

So I coach him on that. And what I hope you got out of this whole section right here was, one, you don't have to be great at this to get deals done. Because Tony is good, but he's not great. And he gets a little better with each call, but he's certainly not anywhere close to being perfect. And so you don't have to be perfect. And it's really tough to, what I also want you to get out of this, it's really tough to say anything wrong to the right person.

And the right person being a motivated seller. The foundation of every deal lies within the seller's motivation to sell. You know, at that initial call, this seller is saying, no, 40,000 is my bottom line. We said, okay, whatever, that doesn't work for us. We'll send you an offer for 35 and see what happens. And boom, because that there was actual motivation there, they accepted the offer. So what you've got to do is really just do it. Just do it.

You know, and keep doing it. This short little call resulted in a $6,000 profit. And there was no magic here, was there? There wasn't. And hopefully you can take that and say, okay, I can do this. If that guy calling from halfway around the world in the Philippines can get this business done, I certainly can do it because I live here. And I know how to do this.

I can do this, right? Hopefully you take that confidence from here from that example. All right. So our guest today has used this particular strategy, this strategy that has made his business and many others absolutely explode just by using the multiple listing service as his primary deal source. Finds deals other ways. You should have multiple ways of finding deals.

But this is his primary source. And it saved him and his students thousands of dollars. Gosh, I mean, if we used only the multiple listing service, it might send a, save us hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it saved he and his students thousands of dollars at least on private seller marketing. And that's why I've asked him to come here on this show and share with you today, just as an alternative. So I'll get him prepped and we'll be back right after this.

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Stop doing what poor people do and do what wealthy people do. VAs for real estate.com. And on the phone, I'm joined by MLS Dominator, Mr. Jim Huntsicker. Jim, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Thank you for having me, man. Looking forward to it. Glad you're here. How's the weather in Chicago?

It's good, man. Today, it's actually like 75. It's perfect. It's like perfect fall day. It's awesome. That's nice. I just got back from Nashville and it was like 68 and it was just such a pleasant experience because it's still 100 degrees here today and it's been 100 degrees for like three months.

It's been really hot summer for us. Yeah, it fall is my favorite time of year, especially here. It's all the tree. I love it. It's a good time of year. Right. Are you a football fan, college football fan? No, college, no, but I do, yeah, I'm a Bears fan because of where I'm from. It's difficult to be one these days, but I am a Bears fan.

Right. Yeah, it goes in cycles. It's tough to be a Lakers fan right now, and we're so used to winning, and I know you guys have a great history used to winning. Share with me. Give me a little bit about your background and how you got involved in this thing called real estate investing. Yeah, so I started about 10 years ago as an agent. I'm still a licensed agent here in Illinois, but I was doing, my father was an agent, too. And so long story short, when you get in the business as an agent, you call your friends and family. That's who you hit up first for business. I didn't have that luxury because my father was a, you know, he had all our friends and family already working with him. So I would have to steal his business as he was still in the business.

So I had to find other people to work with. So I found real estate investors. And it took me about, you know, six, eight months of work. with these real estate investors, finding them deals and selling them, and they would make like a $30,000 check, and I would make like a little commission. So it didn't take very long to realize I was on the wrong side of that transaction. Sounds exactly like my story. Is that right?

Yeah, one day I said, I'm sitting on the wrong side of the desk here. This is not where I'm supposed to be. Yeah, no, I mean, there's nothing wrong with making $3,000 or, you know, whatever on that deal. There's nothing wrong with that. But when, you know, I created the spread for the guy who just made $30, at least I felt that way or I could do it. So anyway, yeah, that's how it started.

So I started rehabbing myself. My first deal, actually, I got a great story. It's terrible, but it's good for learning for people that are listening. My first deal, I was going to lose money on it. Because I had worked with these investors, I could do this myself. And so I didn't have any education, but I was an agent. I had MLS access. I'm like, I could do all this.

So my first deal was about to lose. I didn't know how much. It ended up being about 35 grand. But I didn't know that at the time, but I was very desperate. So that's part of how I got into my first deal that I made money on. which is my second deal. And it was listed for $400. I didn't have any money.

I didn't have a proof of funds. I didn't have the earnest. I had nothing. But I was desperate because that first deal that I did put together, I knew I was going to lose money on. I didn't have any money to lose. So the property is listed at $400. I ended up getting it for $300.

I ended up $4.40. I'm sorry, $440. 31% off price. I got up for $300,000. And when they accepted it, now I didn't have the earnest money. I didn't have the earnest money. That I put $5,000 on the contract.

I didn't have the money to buy. it. And I found an equity part, we ended up splitting the deal 50-50 because the deal was so good. But you can't make this stuff up. But the one that I had that I was going to lose money on, closed on Friday. I lost $35,000. But the day before on Thursday, literally, the day before I closed on the second deal that I did where I made, that profited about $75,000. And half that was mine. I lost it all the next day, and then I've never turned back, and I've been involved in, you know, 450 deals since. But that is, I mean, literally, like, they could have closed three days apart. They could close a week apart.

They were literally one day apart, the day that I made my first dollar as an investor, and I lost it all the next day. And now, you know, I've never looked back since. But that's just, it's a great story about how I got started. I thought, you know, in that process, I got educated, I went and learn more about real estate investing, how to flip, how to deal with contractors, how to bid jobs, and all that up that I thought that I didn't need to know or I didn't know that I didn't know. So, anyway, that's the beginning story of how I got started.

So I always like to start with, you know, the story of how, you know, I lost money because not that you should do that, but I didn't educate myself. I was stupid. And so I always recommend everybody that, you know, everybody who's listening, I'm sure, is getting educated, and that's why you're listening. But it was such a huge thing for me. I thought I was an agent. I thought, I thought, I was wrong.

And so once I got educated, then I, you know, learned how to make money as an investor. Right. It's funny. One of probably the most common question I get from brand new people is, should I go get my license or not? And it's just amazing on how different actually real estate agents and real estate investors are how those two different fields are so far apart. I mean, there's a small little overlapping gray area between the two. But really, they are just, they're tiny little small. But they're two completely different worlds. It is.

Because if you try to talk to an agent about your investment life, they have no clue about what we do. Right. They hardly have any clue about what they do. That's true. Well, the average agent only does three deals a year. I mean, the average agent in the National Association of Realtors does three deals a year, which is embarrassing, but it's true. And we did that today, right? Yeah, seriously.

Totally. Cool. So, all right, so, you know, you have this thing, and I've seen you around the internet and I'm always looking for for new ideas and new ways to generate leads to generate deals because there's there's an endless amount of ways to do it there's a couple big big places that probably predominantly you can get most of your leads from but another place where brand new investors think about is you know let's look on the multiple listing service and you have this thing called MLS domination and and I just I'm intrigued I want to know all about it how are you

pulling deals with equity off the MLS when the rest of the world is looking at the same deal, and how do you know the difference between it, a good one and a bad one? Yeah, I mean, it's like, so it's all I knew at the beginning. When I started this, like I said, where I wasn't really educated as a real estate investor, all I knew was the MLS. That's all, I didn't know about private seller marketing. I didn't know about banning signs. I didn't know about all the different ways to go to the RIAs and meet wholesalers.

I didn't even know what a wholesaler was or what they were doing. Because of an agent, I actually probably thought it was illegal because that's what most of them think. but it's not, by the way, because you could wholesale the MLS too. But that first deal that I told you about that I was losing money on, that was a deal that was in the MLS, and it was a bad one because I lost money, but the second one was also in the MLS. And what that deal, the reason I tell people about those deals is it's true. And that first one, I bought it for 4-4.

It was listed at 440. I bought it for 300. That's 31% off the list price. Now, I was on the market for 350 days. It was, I looked up the tax record, the public record. I saw it was paid off. And so I knew it was possible to get it for less. I just didn't know how much.

And I didn't have, the reason I put the offer at $300 and stuck to it, I didn't have a choice because I couldn't afford to buy it. I didn't have the money. I expected them to reject the offer, quite honestly. There's no way I, I did not think it was coming together. They came back at $420. I stayed at $300, $300, $300, $3.60, $3.40, $3.30. I always stayed, and they accepted my $300.

I couldn't believe in myself that they had. accepted. I was shocked, and so, but what I realized from that is I went and saw the property three times. The homeowner was home because it was an owner-occupied property, but that taught me something. Like, and I've done that 30 times since. I've been doing this, you know, I've been an investor now for about seven years. I could go, I call it fishing. If I need a deal, and I'm like, I'm going to go fishing, I'm going to go, I go in the mouth, and I look, there's an art to, like, to get a deal like that. It's not, my wife has, because she used to be in the car with me when I would go see these houses, my wife would be with me, this is pre-kids, that I'd call the agent,

up and be like, oh, I just saw your house over on Cherokee. Man, do I love that house? But it's priced at like $400. And I don't want to insult anybody, but I really like it. I don't know. I don't think we're going to put an offer. It's a little too high for us. And then usually the agents, because most agents suck, will say, oh, yeah, yeah, you

know, if you're coming too low, you know, because they're lazy or they don't know how to negotiate or they don't have to talk to their seller to get them down. So what I do is, then I'll call and schedule another showing. I don't go to that showing, but they think I do. And after that scheduled showing, I'd call it and be like, oh, I just thought. But again, man, do I like that property? I love that neighborhood. You guys are at 400.

I'd be closer to three. Do you think, do you think it be open to an offer or? And then I'm fishing with this acting that I do. It's all sincere. It's never lying. It's always genuine. It's just I'm really kind of putting it on for them, you know, so that they, you know, I need them to take that emotion back to the seller of how

interested I am. Right. But I need them to get to my price, right? So usually it takes about three times. What I'm trying to do with this particular type of sale, because there's other ones I'll get into in a second. But with this sale, because it's my favorite one. When I get these deals, I love it.

It just keeps me going. And so I'm fishing for the agent to say, hey, just bring us an offer. What's this thing together? I know you're going to be off. Just bring me an offer. I want them to ask me for the offer. So then when I give them my offer, like the best deal I ever got was listed for $400, and I bought it for $273, which is 32% off the list price.

Now, again, 300 plus days of market time, that property was originally priced at $5.50 down to $400, and I bought it for $273. And get this, the agent, after she told me to bring the offering, I came in at 273, and I say the same thing I always do after they get pissed off, is, hey, based on what I do with the property, this is the most I can pay. They don't have to accept it, and you don't have to be happy about it, but this is the most I can pay for what I'm going to do with this property. And that particular deal, she called me back in 10 minutes, accept it. Literally, there was no negotiation.

They just accepted it. We closed in two weeks. And so 32% of my record as far as I mean. But there's times that stuff comes down the market that I pay over the price because the brand-new listing, they underlisted it, and I can pay over. And there's a different line of communication I talked to with that agent. Because on an estate sale, which is my favorite sale in the MO, it's a new estate sale, they're going to get multiple offers.

And so with the state sales, for instance, like the last one I did, it was priced at like 169, the most I could pay was price for 160. And they came back to me, the agent came back to me. And because of the conversations I had with the agent initially, she said, hey, you're at 160. I know you told me that's your highest offer, but we have two other cash. offers that are at 170 and 175, but the sellers really liked what you had to say, that they like what you're going to do, the property, they like that you're going to put a

family in there because all my houses sell the families because I sell retail, right? That's who buys my house where I work is all young families. So they're happy to hear that there's families, and I know what I'm doing because I'm a seasoned investor, but can you match the one? And here's what I say. This is what gets me half the time when my offer is not the highest cash offer. This is how I get it. I say, just like I told you before, 160 is the most I could pay, and you want to stick to your

guns on that because you want to make sure that they don't think there's room for you to move. But I say, hey, I can get my work done as cheap as anybody, right? So let's just assume that the guy at 170 and 175 can get the work done as cheap as me. So we can all get the work done for the same. So what are the odds that if you accept that 170 or 175 offer, that in the inspection, which I've waived, by the way, at this point, I've waived my inspection right, so I cannot ask for any inspection credit. Well, these guys haven't, and I know that they haven't.

So what are the odds they don't ask for? Some crazy ridiculous $20,000 inspection credit, because they realize they overpaid for the property in the process. And you might come back to me in two weeks and I say, hey, you know what, 160 was good, but I actually spent that money on something else, or I might say, you know what, I'm actually at 150 myself. That's all I could pay. But today, I can waive the inspection and I can close at 160 and I can close in two weeks. And so that's having that kind of dialogue with the agent, you know, knowing your stuff, but being professional, you know, you've got to be confident without being cocky. And that gets me deals that when I'm not the highest cash offer, that's how

I get it done. Because they want to, you know, there's just always take. highest cash offer. So it doesn't always work. Right. But there's some security that, you know, if you've communicated properly, there's a security in closing without trouble. And that's what,

that's, there's more value in that to some people than there is more money. So it just depends on the seller. Got it. So, so those are my two favorite sales, right? So there's one other great, I mean, I can go all day long about how to use EMOs,

but the smaller argument. Let's, let's, um, okay, we'll talk about that. We'll come right back to that. But I have a few questions I wrote down here. All right, so you're looking on the multiple listing service, and me just thinking, I'm just going to play devil's advocate here. Sure. I'm thinking like, God, with all these houses, how do you identify which ones to start analyzing first?

Do you go buy, you kind of mentioned it maybe, do you go buy days on the market exclusively? Or what else do you look for? No, no, that's only why I'm fishing, right? If I'm fishing, like, if I'm looking to buy deals and there's something that's kind of jumping out to me in my normal searches, I'll go fishing for, and I'll start with just market time. And I don't put any of my other criteria in. the primary way I use the MLS, all my automatic searches that are set up are set geographically, of course,

where different towns, or sometimes subdivision, what area I'm buying or what I'm trying to buy. So I generally I'll have, you know, six to ten different searches set up that are automatic searches. But those I pull, there's a keyword search,

you know, that you can pull from the remarks. And so that's the primary focus, you know, because there's, because the MLS, I'm sure everybody knows the MLS stands for and stands for motivated list of sellers, right?

Well, it's not, if it's multiple listing service. But it's the largest list of it because everybody in there wants to sell. I mean, if you do direct mail, you know, if you're looking for property and you direct mail and you get 3% response, you are ecstatic with that, right? That's a good response. You're happy with that. I don't know if you're ecstatic, but it's acceptable. And so the MLS is no different.

Like maybe 3% to 5% of the properties that come in there, we can actually buy. Most of them don't qualify for what we do. So it's, you know, looking through the MLS for pulling the keywords out, you know, like REO or foreclosure as is, needs work, TLC, you know, there's all these keywords that we use and we plug into the remark section and that's what it searches by. So we search by remarks and then we search by the geographic area we're looking in. And, you know, sometimes a price range, but in my area that I don't put a price range in because I'll buy anything.

As long as I can, you know, flip it on the other side and make money. So I don't look, I don't put a price range. I just put a geographic area in keywords. Okay, got it. All right, so you've got your custom searches set up. And then let me ask you on, like, say if you're looking days on market or like times when, you know, right now the real estate market is pretty hot, especially on the retail side. Inventory is really low in most parts of the country. Do you make any adjustments for that or does this always work or you just have to kind of ebb and flow with the market?

I mean, it's changed every year I've been doing this. I started doing in 2008, probably the worst time to do it. I didn't know that at the time. Actually, I was a blessing. But it's changed every year. Every year, my, you know, like right now, like literally, I just came from a lunch appointment. And right now, I'm only, I was doing high-end stuff, you know, a couple years ago. I got into selling it only over, you know, my area high-end is 600 and over.

And so that market died last year. It's still dead. It's still very slow here. So I transferred back to the low-end market of, you know, just to stuff that, like, we can sell it, 150, 170, and there's challenges there with financing right now. So now I'm back to all I am looking for. The after-repaired value, the ARV has to be between three and five. That's all I'm buying currently.

So it changes all the time. What I'm looking for, you like, and even beyond that, those auto searches I have set up that have pulled from the keywords, I still have BAs that are pulling virtual systems that I have, or could be your, office assistant or whoever, it used to be me when I started, then I do three times a day I check automatically in my hot markets, like my office is in Chambore, Illinois, for instance. That's an area I grew up in, so I know it very well. So I will buy anything I can get my hands on in Chambor. I know the market. I can look at it in two seconds and no. So I check every listing that comes up in Schaumburg three times a day. And there's other markets I do that in two. So I do manual checks with no filters

other than the geographic area three times a day to pull listing that could because what you get is with those state sales, which are my favorite sale in the MLS, once in a while you'll get an agent, you know, probably one of those agents that sells one or two houses a year, that things are doing their client has not been updated since 1960, but it's totally immaculate, like super clean. The oven looks like it's never been used. You know, a time capsule, but still, it's not moving ready. Well, I guess it is moving ready, but nobody would move right into that, even though it's clean. It's from 1960. So they're selling this as a nice house, moving ready, bring your family, and there's none of my keywords are in the remarks because they're so, I bought, you

So every year I buy a handful of properties that miss my keyword search because they're trying to sell a crappy property or a property that fits my criteria as a rehab as a nice property. None of my keywords are in the remark. So that's why I recommend, you know, still checking it three times a day manually. Okay. Got it. All right. So a couple other things came up for me there. Let's go back.

You said you get about 3% of the deals you look at or the ones that you buy. No, 10. So all the deals actually put offers on, it's 10%. I was using a number of, like, you know, comparing it to direct mail. When I said 3%, I get about 10% of my, so if I want to buy five properties, I got to put out 50 offers. These are strategic offers. These are not, you know, offer-bought style offers.

You know, we're just kind of randomly throw them out. I'm talking, you know, I've never put an offer out ever in my life. I've never put an offer, whether it be as an agent when I was working for clients. I've never, you can't hide behind an email or a fax machine if you're going to steal these properties away. Or even if you have to pay over a list price, if it's a new listing, And it doesn't matter if you're going to try to get up for 30% under list price or you're going to pay 10 grand over the list price. Having communication with the agent is key to getting those deals done. And so I get about 10% of what I put out.

If I want to buy one, I've got to put out 10 offers. I know that. Got it. Okay, because I was going to say even 10% on the multiple listing service are extremely good numbers. But the difference I'm hearing is that you've got this communication with the agent. you're selling the emotion to the agent, which I think is great. In your offers, you're waiving the inspection rights, which I think is fantastic strategy. And then you warn the agent of what the other guy is likely to do, so he might accept the lower price, but he's going to come back and accept a higher price, but he's going to come back and negotiate with you later.

And then you also use the close, your speed of close as a negotiating factor as well. Yep. And that, you know, this is all, it's not like I'm making stuff up with the other, what the other guy's going to do. That's happened over and over when I started my, you know, started my investing career. Agents would call me back and tell me that happened. You're like, oh, we didn't take years because, you know, this offer was higher, but then in the inspection they asked for some crazy credit, so because your offer's still good. That happened to me so many times, like, crap, I've got to start pointing this out to the agent.

So they may not believe me or they may not take my offer, but at least I gave my heads up that it's possible. And so doing that after it's happened so many times, you know, agents started, they started taking my offer when I wasn't the highest offer because I opened their eyes to what's possible. Right. That's just proper communication. I believe you 100% because I was four years an agent myself. And I started as an agent in 2001, 2002. And for four years, I mean, I was in Los Angeles market, probably one of the more competitive markets at that time were inventory.

Like, we only had, I think, like, 21 days of inventory at any given time. So every time, I can, I totally relate with you of refreshing the listings like three, four times a day. as soon as one came up, boom, I was in my car, I was on my way out there, and then I was calling my clients on the way there to meet me there so we could write the offer right on the front doorstep. Right. And so that's what I learned in. That's the environment that I learned how to be an agent. So a lot of the things that you're saying are really resonating with me as far as what's so important, most important to a listing agent is almost the certainty of clothes is more important than the price that they get. Without question.

Yes, they just want to know it's going to close. And when you have an enthusiastic buyer, and I love her, how you're selling the emotion and you put your wife in the car and you're presenting yourself as the people that really love the neighborhood, that goes a long way, a lot further than I think most people realize if they don't have real estate agent experience. Huge. I mean, it is like, it's, I mean, my wife called my acting job, but I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't being disingenuous.

I was being completely genuine, actually. I was over, I was pouring it on. I was really overdoing it. But it was all genuine. I wanted to buy the house. I love the neighborhood. I'm a rehab, you know, like, I was all, but I was like, really. pour it on because I want, I need the agent to take the emotion that I'm giving them back to their

seller so that you get excited after 360 days in the market. It's hard to get excited about anything. You're just like, get rid of this day house. And so that's the goal. The goal with what I was doing was trying to get this, get the emotion into the agent so she gets excited or he gets excited and it takes it back to the seller so they get excited. And then when my offer comes in, they're like, oh, but we need to sell it and they're excited. So it doesn't always work. I mean, I'm not saying that that's a fail proof it's going to work every time, but, man, I've done that so many times over the years, and it works. Got it.

You know, I've got a few more minutes, Jim, and I want to touch on a few things here real quick. Sure. And then the one thing was, all right, so one out of ten, you're getting accepted. The key there, the distinction there I'm hearing from you that's different than from almost everyone else I've talked to that does this similar strategy, is that you have a lot of interaction with the agent. So that's number one takeaway. Second thing is, there's a lot of deal analysis here, and there's a lot of contract

writing. Are you doing that? Do you have an automated system for that, or do you have a VA? How do you? Yeah, well, my assistant, I mean, she works mostly from home, but I mean, it's an assistant that used to work in my office. She still does work in the office, but she's mostly from home now. And I haven't written an offer in like six years. Like, so I don't even know what our contracts look like anymore. All I do is I text it with the address, the price, the rest is filled out already. You know, the contracts are already, they're done. Like, our contract here in Illinois is 13 pages. So that, like, that's a difference between the private seller market and the, you know, the MLS is you can't use your one page or two-page contract like you use with private sellers.

You have to use the board contract that the realtors expect. So it's 13 pages. And so we have it, you know, in a, you know, Adobe, do we just plug it in and put the address in the bottom of every page? You know, put the offer price and submit it with the proof of funds. But I never want that offer to go out before, you know, I've talked to the agent. So, yeah, basically I have a VA, I have a virtual assistant that does all my offers and submits them all for me, but not before I call. I'm always calling, letting you know the offer is coming in,

want to discuss it with him a little bit, because give them a heads up that if it's going to be low or if it's going to be high over a list price, either way I want to talk to them and let them know what to expect it and talk to them, let them know that I'm, you know, see an investor, just, you know, just get some reports. I mean, you've got to build relationships with these agents. They want to work with somebody who's going to close on the deal.

Your whole goal with talking to the agent is they have to take back to the seller that you're the offer they should take. Got it. Okay, so the next, the big elephant in the room is this audience is primarily built of real estate investors, and most of them don't have a license. How do they go about implementing your strategy if they don't have access to the multiple listing service? Well, I recommend getting access to multiple listings. There are several ways to do that without getting your license. The most common way that I've found that friends of mine that are investors

have done is they become an assistant. I know you can't see my air quotes over here, but they become an assistant to a licensed agent, and then you get your full access, everything that I see you could see. And so, like, my assistant has full access to the MLS. You could see everything. Right. That's one way. But you guys have Redfin, does that exist where you are in California?

Yes, yes. I don't know, Redfin. I know it wasn't always nationwide, but it might. Their system, their MLS is incredible. Like, their site. I mean, I don't know they're a real estate company, but, I mean, that for people that are just getting into it. I mean, it's a great site to you.

I had clients that were using that Redfin that knew about listening before I did. Like, they were so up to date. It was incredible. But, I mean, anybody who's flipping it on any kind of serious level should have an agent on their team anyway. So, you know, if you have an agent that you work with, I mean, every MLS allows for the agents to have an unlicensed assistant to get access. So if you have an agent you're working with that you have a relationship with that you know, I mean, my buddy, one guy pays $1,500, $1,500 plus the MLS dues. Like our MLS dues for my assistant in Illinois are $3.50 a year. Pay, like one guy pays $1,000 plus $3.350 to an agent.

and they get their access that way. So I highly recommend doing it. It's an easy way to do it. If you're, you know, if you're selling houses now and you're selling them, you know, on the MLS you obviously have an agent, you have a relationship with, approach that agent, and, you know, see if you can get access that way. But, you know, people don't realize if you get your license, you do. Because I get asked a question all the time, too, should I become a real estate agent?

Like, you know, from new investors. And I say, absolutely not. It can't hurt to get your license. Don't get a real estate license. Do not become a real estate agent. That doesn't make any sense. Right. Because there's a difference there, right?

Getting licensed, you know, real estate agent is an occupation. Getting licensed is just something that tools you use as for your real estate investing business. You should do that. Don't become a real estate agent. Cool. All right, Jim, I got to wrap this up,

but I know you do have a course on exactly your strategy and your techniques, and I know you've got lots of tricks. I can tell, by the way, you're talking, that we've just touched the surface there. If someone wanted to learn more about what you do and your course, where should they go? this should go to

MLS domination Live.com MLS domination live.com will be that's a page of a more information

about it and yeah they can find out there you know there you'll I teach more on the REO the smaller

REO agent which is the biggest most consistent stream of deals when you meet them in the right way you're double

on the deal meaning getting both sides of the commission how to approach them there's tips there about how to meet them

when you've never even if you've never going to deal in your life I can give you tips on how to meet these smaller

area agent So really good stuff. We did just scratch the service. I mean, we could talk all day about this stuff. So, yeah, go check out MLSDominationslive.com. There's more information there. We'll do.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much, and thank you for your generous sharing of information. And let's do this again sometimes. Sound good, buddy. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me on. You bet, Jim. Have a good day.

You know how some people want to invest in real estate, but they don't know how? Oh, yeah. And you know how some people want to invest in real estate, but they don't have the time? Oh, yeah. And you know how some people want to invest in real estate and they simply don't want to do all that work? Oh, yeah. Do you know someone like this? Mm-hmm.

Perhaps that someone is you? Uh, yeah. If so, subscribe to the Turnkey Real Estate Investing Podcast, the show for busy people who want to invest in real estate, but don't have the time or the desire to take on the heavy lifting. Turnkey Real Estate Investing. Subscribe today. It's free. Yeah. Turnkey, Real Estate Investing.

That's it for today. I'll see you next week on Epic Real Estate Investing. 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 Terry O. This podcast is a part of the C-suite radio network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.