Epic Real Estate Investing - Winning Strategies for Post-COVID Real Estate | Tim Mai | 992

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

This Saturday, Matt interviews the returning guest of the podcast, Tim Mai. Tim is a hard money lender, a CEO of DoDeals.com, a real estate investment company that has been involved in over 390 transactions since 2002, and a true embodiment of the American Dream! Tune in as our guest explains how he copes with the current economic situation and shares some valuable lessons he learned from the previous market crash that will help you to make winning strategies for post-COVID real estate! 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. You just got to do one thing, one time. That's just to shift your mindset. Shipped your mindset from making piles of cash to creating streams of cash, and you are on your way. This is the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. If this is your first time here, really glad that you found us. Make yourself at home. 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.

Glad to have you. And thank you for sharing this with your friends and family. We wouldn't be here for more than a decade now if it wasn't for you doing that. So thank you. Got a great guest for you today, a returning guest. He is the embodiment of the American dream. I did this a little research on him. I've known him for a while.

But it went online and said, let me see what the story is. So having survived a childhood that included war, a dramatic escape from pirates at and languishing in a refugee camp, he arrived in America at the age of 12 speaking no English with nothing more than the shirt on his back. Typical, just a typical American dream story. It happens to everybody. But not everybody thrives and pushes through in the way he did. He seized the opportunities.

America presented him by getting his degree from a major university, working for one of the top IT consulting firms, and eventually realizing his dream of financial independence through real estate investing. He has served as president of the Certified Real Estate Investors Association since 2006 and is now the CEO of his own real estate investment company has been involved in over 390 transactions since 2002. I'm sure it's probably a lot more than that since then. And he has also trained countless other people throughout the country to become financially successful in real estate. And he's written a book too. He's done it all. So please help me

welcome back to the show, Mr. Tim. Tim, welcome back to Epic Real Estate Investing. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me back. I love being on the show. I love your contributing, making a difference for others. And so thank you. You do. And that's why you're here. So thank you for being here. So, yeah, I learned all this stuff about you.

I didn't know all of this. Every time we see each other, we're talking about your real estate or Bitcoin. Yeah. You know it's funny. I mean, it's an old bio. I haven't updated that in a long time. It looked old from where I found it. But go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. So that was cool. That was very cool. Yeah, I mean, I did come from a very humble beginning, you know, which kind of have me love making a difference for people who started with nothing. You know, that, yeah, it's like the underdog, right? I always feel like I'm the underdog. And, you know, just the whole journey of what it takes to, you know, what it takes to be successful, what takes to be where I am today. I'm super grateful for the journey.

I've learned a ton, you know, and, and yeah, so. So, which is why we're on this call right now. It's just like I'm constantly looking for ways of, you know, how it can make a difference for another person and, you know, help them succeed. Totally. Yeah, I love that about you. And we're going to talk about that. But I just want to pause for just a second because I don't see this in many bios.

Escape Pirates at Sea. Can you tell me a little story about that? Yeah, so, okay, so after the war in 1975, the communist government took over. Vietnam. Vietnam, Vietnam, yeah. And so a lot of people try to escape out of Vietnam. I was born two weeks before the war ended.

And my whole family was supposed to leave Vietnam. But because I was so young, my mom afraid that I might die, so we decided to stay back. But after that, I mean, you know, a lot of people try to escape out of Vietnam. And so our whole family throughout my childhood, there. Our whole family had tried to escape out of Vietnam, you know, many times. And when I was 11, my brother turned 18. And at that time, when you're 18, it's an automatic draft into the

military. And so my parents wanted my brother to, you know, to try to escape out again. And so, yeah, so I came along with him. Yeah, I was thinking like, oh, it's no big deal. We'll be back home anyways because like we always have. And so yeah, so we we got on this little fishing boat. Imagine 24 foot fishing boat with 37 of you on there. Yeah. So we were literally like laying like sardines underneath the boat, you know, and yeah, I remember I was the only child on the boat. And so my brother and all the man was sitting around the engine constantly scooping out water. because we had to go stealth mode. We had to get a little fishing boat,

not to wake up the guards and stuff like that as we were leaving the shore. But the port, but yeah, so we literally floated out at sea pretty much for seven days and six nights. You know, to, like if you were, and we got to Malaysian refugee camp, if you were to go on a speedboat, you know, from Vietnam to Malaysia now,

it's probably just, you know, half a day or something like that. But yeah, so that whole journey of escaping, I mean, there's many danger in that. You know, in our particular case, we got pulled over by five. It's Thailand fishermen, but they're thieves. They'll come over. They'll steal whatever they can. They'll rape the woman.

A lot of times they'll throw the men off the boat. So for us, I think we kind of get lucky that there's five of them and not one of them. You know, maybe there was some kind of social pressure not to rape anybody. But they did come over and took whatever valuables they can. And then they left us on our way after that. And yeah, so I made it to Malaysian refugee camp seven days later. And spent six months in the Malaysian refugee camp, six months in the Philippines refugee camp,

and then came to Houston when I was 12 years old. Yeah. What a journey. Yes, yes. And, you know, growing up in Houston, It was just, it was my brother and I, and, you know, we grew up in the hood. We used to live in Section 8 housing. You know, I remember, like, it was a two-bedroom apartment, and at any given time,

there were 10 to 12 other single guys living there. Most of them are runaway kids. And, yeah, we did whatever we could to survive pretty much. You know, my brother used to deal drugs back then, and, you know, when he was out of town, I would look over that. And, you know, and I've been, and, you know, and we even, even though, like, even though we were doing that, we barely had much money to really, you know, to spend. And, yeah, I remember, like, coming home from seventh grade one day, and, you know, like,

the house got raided, right, by FBI for drugs and illegal handguns. Luckily, they didn't find anything, so they left up to that. But yeah, I mean, so I understand what it's like to grow up in the herd, what it's like, you know, to come from nothing. You know, luckily, you know, both my brother and I get out of that environment. He runs a very successful business now. It's, you know, in the eight-figure range. And, yeah, you know, I was able to, fortunate enough to, you know, finish school, finish college. and I went work at an IT company after college.

And then the dot-com buzz came along, right? And then I got laid off on that and got started in real estate investing. Great. Well, the reason I wanted you to be here is I'm selecting people from my network for people that have been through a downturn before that we potentially are probably going to experience again. I want to talk about that. But the last time we talked,

you were working on a development project based after a hurricane, I believe. Correct. How did that pan out? I know you're excited meeting bids and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a whole mess. You're working, anything with the city takes forever and it still don't work out. So now the city, they still haven't done anything with that money.

Harvey has been how many years already, right? They still haven't done anything with that money. They selected three companies, to be the winners, but there was some sort of behind the scene stuff. So now they're being sued. The city is being sued for selecting those companies. And so, yeah, it's a mess. So it's not going anywhere, basically.

Okay. So what are your real estate investing efforts look like today then? Yeah. So I've been doing more hard money lending. And then, you know, I start getting into a new development building fourplexes. And yeah, and we were just starting to do the fourplex project and then, you know, this whole coronavirus hit.

So we're, you know, we're reassessing what, what that's going to look like moving forward. I got a property 5.7 acres of land under contract that we were going to build a whole subdivision of fourplexes. And, you know, and so now, you know, going back, negotiating with the, with the, with the seller to give me. six months to close instead of, you know, 30 days to close, basically giving me, allowing me enough time to, to get the land to plating stage, you know, before we commit to closing on it.

So that way we don't have all the holding costs and stuff like that. So, yeah, so things like that. Yeah, and then, you know, I do some, I do some rehabs, rentals, you know, in between that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of uncertainty. ahead of us. How are you, you said, reassessing, right? Yeah. Based on what you can see in your experience. Right. What are the predictions for you? And how is it changing the way you do things?

Right. Yeah. So first thing, you know, first thing I look at was, okay, you know, I don't want to be in any long-term projects. If I am going to be in long-term projects, you know, how can I reduce my risk, right? So, so like, there's a four-plex that we, that we're building. We're in very early stations. of that so it's not something that I can easily turn it into a short-term project so what I did was took on a partner to cover the holding costs so that you know that helped lower the risk on that and then I have a couple houses where I was I was going to convert them into duplexes and so I was like you know what because you know that takes like six months to do and so with all the

permitting and everything so I was like okay we're just going to rehab them. We're going to be in and out, you know, within a couple of months. And so, so yeah, so I changed my strategy from, you know, converting to duplexed, just rehabbing them a single family. And then there was a piece of land, like 43 acres that I was buying. And I was going to take on a private lender for the land. I was like, you know what? I don't want the holding cost. Let me take on the lender as a partner instead. So make, you know, make her an equity partner. So like, things like that. You're looking at, you know, how can I do more partnership deals to, to, to, to lower my risk. And, you know, and how can I, you know, yeah, do shorter term,

you know, until we know further, right, of what's, yeah, of what's going on. It's crazy. The news changes, like, on a daily basis. I mean, yeah. How different this country looked just 45 days ago, you know, it's like, yes, we just had our first death on March 1st, and here we are, is where we're recording this 45 days later and boy the whole country on lockdown can't even come outside you know yeah yeah um how is this offending affecting you from offending it's very i find this situation very offensive how is it affecting you with regard to your hard money your lending how are you looking at that yeah so we're more conservative without lending at this point uh you know we were doing uh we were

doing 70 percent of uh of arv we were doing up to 100 percent of purchase and repairs. So now we're lowering down to 65% of ARV, and we're doing 90% loan to cost, which is 90% of purchase and repairs. And even my private lenders, so I have a lot of friends who I help broker their money as well. Some of them has cutting back.

We don't want to lend right now just to sit out. And so yeah, so and then, you know, And then I see, too, like, more deals fall apart, you know, because the numbers now, it was make sense before all of this, right? And now it doesn't make sense anymore. Right. You know, and so, so yeah, so that's, you know, that's how I've adjusted on the hard money lending side.

Got it. So say we were out of this and let's look at this. Based on going to the last downturn, what do you think are the biggest mistakes that people make during that time. Right. So I'll share from my own mistakes that I made doing that time. That would be funny. So at that time, I was, yeah, I would, you know, when the last market crash here in

Houston, I had 20 flip houses at different stages of the process, right? You were doing it. You were worth of people that got hit really hard. Yes, for sure. So, you know. model that crushed. But go ahead. Yeah.

Yep, yeah. And, and yeah, so, I mean, I was also doing, I was doing both wholesaling and flipping. So, so the whole selling helped a lot in that market. But the flipping, not so much. So I had to convert, you know, a lot of those into rentals and renegotiate my terms with my private lenders, you know, because, yeah, I mean, at that time, Like, so, so I, and at first I didn't, I didn't negotiate early enough, which is one of the big mistakes that I made last time. You know, I waited.

Yeah, I was like, you know, I want to honor my commitments. I want to, you know, do what's right for my lenders. So I waited and waited until I couldn't, you know, couldn't pay for it anymore. And so I had to go, you know, I had to go back and says, look, you know, I don't want, you know, you have to foreclose on this. and like I can't keep on making this mortgage payments. I have all these houses that I have to deal with. So we need to restructure the term. You know, like on some cases we cut down from 12% interest to 6% interest.

We have to re-amortize the loan. So that way the 6% interest is from the beginning of the loan and not from the time that I came. You know, yeah, you know, yeah. So we had to really. I woke myself through that. So one big mistake was waiting too long to make those kind of adjustments, to make those kind of expense cuts. And then the second one was, you know, I was so disempowered by what was going on.

You know, here I am. I thought that everything I touched turns into gold, which we all do in a bull market. And here, like, I'm struggling. right and you know and and so so it took me a long time to get out of that rut of being disempowered you know and so so I was and then I was in I was in a fixing mode I wasn't in an expanding mode right and so so that that slowed me down and it also got me you know it so so my thought process with everything was very short-term thinking you know and yeah just you know you know do whatever I can not get out of that. So that's another mistake is, you know, thinking short-term.

Now, like looking back now, you know, and what I'm preparing now, like I think a lot more long-term. You know, now I think in terms of, you know, cash flow versus cash, right? In that market, you know, in the seller's market, you know, cash is great because you can always sell and get more cash. You know, and in the down market like this, I start to look at, okay, yeah, you know, the, well, one of the things I start doing in this past market that I didn't do before, now my rehabs are all rental-based, like rental-grade properties type of rehabs versus before I was doing more high-end rehabs. So those properties, even when I did turn them into rental properties, I couldn't cash flow on them.

Versus now, you know, my rehabs now is that if I have to convert to rentals, it's not a big deal, I'll still cast flow on them. You know, so that's one of the things that I change. And then so, yeah, so now I'm looking at, okay, you know, as long as I can cash flow on a property, I don't have to worry. I don't have to worry about trying to liquidate it, try to sell it. You know, I know that 10 years from now, you know, they'll be worth a lot more than they will now, just like what happens in 2008, right?

And Houston, fortunately, Houston, our home value didn't drop that much, you know, nothing like California and some other some other high-end markets you know and so and now our rental markets here in Houston is very stable especially especially if you're focused on affordable housing rentals you know you I mean yeah they you know they they cash roll and so so there's really not a whole lot to worry about so yeah so in this market like I'm a lot more clear-headed I'm a lot more you know long-term thinking uh I'm taking action a lot faster than I was before to make adjustments. So that way I limit my risk exposure. Yeah. Does that answer your question? Yeah, no, totally. I got some great nose there. So I actually

what the biggest mistakes were, but I think we got some really strong things of what you should do, right? This came up. I just got on the phone with Scott, a mutual friend of ours, Scott Myers, and he kind of came up with one of the same things that you did. You phrased that as a mistake. He phrased that as this is what you need to do. That's being proactive in your communication with all of your, the people that really depend on you, whether it's a lender or a partner or a vendor, you know, be really proactive there and stay in communication. A lot of people, when disaster strikes, they tend to sink and roll up into a little ball in the corner and hide their head in the sand and, you know, and pray for it to go away and just ride it out,

you know? And that's kind of the worst thing you could do based on experience from everyone that I'm talking to. And certainly, you know, I was a buy and holder during the last downturn. So I didn't get hit that hard. It was uncomfortable at moments, but we pulled through pretty easily or unscathed without too much damage. So that's one. Be proactive in your communication.

Couldn't agree more. One thing I should have is keep your head up, right? Yeah. Keep your head up. That kind of goes hand-in-hand with what we just did. And also, you know, there will be a lot more defense to play in a time like this, but don't forget the offense. Yep, exactly.

Good. I think long term, absolutely. I really think right now, I'm actually, I wish it wasn't for people dying around the country that has us in this situation. But I am so much smarter and wiser this time around, and I recognize all the opportunities I missed the last time. And, you know, we did well through the last time. But, like, I think I can do so much better.

And I think anyone that really focuses and thinks, long term can position themselves to be, you know, wealthy for generations to come over the next, you know, 12 to 24 months. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Yeah. And then I like this one, too. This was great. And this is kind of what I did. And it's kind of why I survived the last one was evaluating rehabs for rental, from a rental

perspective as well, right? So when you're looking at the value of the property, you know, you're going to look at equity and cash flow. If I sell it, I get this. If I hold on to it, I get this. Am I okay with that? Okay, thumbs up, let's move forward, right? Right.

Sweet. So out of those action steps, or those things to do, what else would you add to the list of things that you want to focus on right now? Yeah. So I think that, so we talk about rental properties being big. And the sub-nitch within rental properties that I see that's going to come online here a lot is subject to on rental properties. I expect to see a ton of new.

newbie landlords, you know, not making it through this market. And, you know, the last decade, pretty much, the loan has been great terms. So I, you know, so one of my strategies is to target landlord investors, landlord owners, to take over their payments. And, you know, so I started a Facebook, starting a Facebook group just for landlords. So we're going to be creating, you know, content and stuff that's specifically targeting landlords here in Houston. This is the only market I buy in. And, yeah, and, you know, and position myself that, you know, I'm a buyer of rental properties.

And so that way, you know, when these landlords can't take it anymore, they don't know how to evict the tenants, you know, things like that. Like I'm still able to get tenants out even doing this whole thing, right? just, and yeah, without having to go through the eviction process. And so a lot of landlords don't know how to do those kind of things, and, you know, they're going to go and they give cash flow here pretty quick. So, yeah, so that's my primary target, you know, coming out of this corona pandemic. And so, so, yeah, so I would say, you know, I would say if you are landlord or if you are, you know, a wholesaler, like that's going to be a great, great niche to talk.

And then another big one that I've learned just, I didn't learn this in the real estate business. I've learned this sort of in just business in general. You know, when we're running business, like by default, we rely on teamwork a lot, right? We have someone that, you know, like this podcast, is someone that's cleaning up this audio, uploading it, someone that creates a website. I know when in my real estate business before, I didn't think like that. I think I'm always thinking I'm the one that's going to do it all. I'm going to send out the marketing.

I'm going to negotiate the deal, things like that. And so one of the big things is that now, you know, now I think everything in terms of teamwork, right? Like who are my top wholesalers in town that can consistently bring me deals? You know, who are the top rehabbers that, you know, or contractors? that can get good work done really cheap. You know, who are my top, you know, property management companies that I know. You know, who are my top private lenders? Like I can convert into money partners.

So I'm looking at all the different people within my network and, you know, just looking at myself as someone who's like tying all of these players together and play together as a team. So teamwork, I think it's going to be huge coming out of this. I like it. So I think the opportunity with the absentee owners that have loans and carrying debt on their property, I think that's a really, really good spot that's going to bear a lot of fruit. Just in the last two weeks, we've had three just fall in our lap.

I mean, the people just called and say, hey, can you help you find a buyer? And I was like, tell me about it. Tell me about it, you know? So I was like, I'll take it. So I picked up three just like that without trying. So we're shipping everything around to start trying and focus on that a little bit. Still trying to be sensitive to it. I'm trying not to be soul in my head about the people's feelings and the situation people are dealing with.

But on the other side of things, people are hurting, right? They need a solution. They need escape. They do. They need relief from this. And we're in the position with the knowledge to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, yeah, and I know like when I'm in a sort of a desperate situation or crises, you know, like money is a small consideration of that, right? It's like I just want to get out of this thing so I can have my peace of mind. You know, I think that peace of mind is way more important than cash when I'm in those kind of situations. And so I can understand it from the landlord-sellers' perspective as well. So as long as I can help them solve this problem, give them their peace of mind back, so they can. can have a clear head to do whatever is next for them and make the deal work for me. Yeah, like that's a win-win situation. Yep, couldn't agree more.

So the Facebook group to kind of position yourself as the authority of landlording and position yourself in that role, what else? What else are you going to do to target these landlords? Yeah, well, I mentioned wholesalers. you know, yeah, the wholesalers has always been a great resource of deals for me, you know, and yeah, and then property managers, you know, they're a great source of deals as well. So, yeah, those are, you know, I'm looking, in terms of acquisition, you know, I'm looking at, okay, yeah, who, you know, how can I get the deals coming to me, right?

Who do I need to talk to, get the deals coming to me, you know, without having to, to rely on like marketing, your outbound marketing. Yeah, I'm a lot more about relationship type marketing nowadays, much more so. I used to do a lot of outbound, you know, direct mail, TV, infomercials, all of that, good stuff. But yeah, I think in this market, I think relationship marketing is going to be key. Yep. Yeah, totally.

I mean, that's how we, that's why my phone rang three times. in the last two weeks, right? Is because of those relationships. Couldn't agree more. Let's see. Okay. Wholesalers have been a good source of deals for you. How is your conversation with them changed?

What are they saying? Well, you know, they're still very hopeful that the prices are still, you know, it's so funny. When we had Harvey here in Houston, Harvey hit Houston hard. Hurricane Harvey. Hurricane Harvey, yeah. So long ago, it's like, it's like many other hurricanes we had something. But go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, well, so there's a term that got established called pre-Harvey and post-Harvey comps.

Okay. And so now there's a pre-Corona and post-Corona comps, right? And so, yeah, so the wholesalers are still hopeful. And, you know, when I talk to them, like, I'm having to tell them, like, look, I have to use more conservative comps. Because we don't know what the post-Havvy comp, I mean, the post-Corps. driver's cup is going to be, right? And so, so yeah, that's, that's a big change. So that, you know, they're, you know, they're having to, uh, to go back, renegotiate the price down or give us longer term. You know, before the stay at home order came in place, you know, I didn't mind

buying houses with tenants in place. Um, and, and evict them, you know, get rid of them after we close on it. But now, I was like, no, I need, you know, I need to get them out first, uh, before I close on it. I mean, I have strategies, you know, most of the time I rarely have to do an actual eviction, give them a few hundred bucks, they'll move out, you know. At some, you know, I mean, sometimes it's 300, sometimes it's 500, sometimes it's $1,000, right? At some price, they're going to move out. Right. And typically it's cheaper than the pain and suffering of an eviction. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, way cheaper. I mean, you know, Texas is a pretty, landlord-friendly state, and it still takes us, you know, at least 45 days to get someone

out normally through the eviction process. And here, you know, we can't even file an eviction. So, yeah, so anyway, so now, you know, when there's a tenant in place and we have to evict them, you know, now I'm, you know, I'm telling the wholesalers, like, look, you got to give me more time. I'm going to close on it, but I'm not going to close on it until the tenant's out. So things like that that we have to educate the wholesalers on. But yeah, the value, you know, using low comps, using super conservative comps is a, it's a big one to re-educate the wholesalers on. Right, right.

Yeah, we've actually dedicated this entire month. I, we, like, like there's other podcasters here over here. I've dedicated this whole month to creative acquisitions April, is what we're calling it. Gotcha. Going through the creative financing and stuff like that is one of the great ways to preserve or protect yourself and mitigate your risk post-corona cops. Right, right, right. You said a longer term, we've talked about that a lot, like almost every single episode,

down payments for sure, contingencies. So your contingency is on the house being vacant, right, before you actually close. Right. The other thing I was looking at is, you know, in an appreciating market, you're always looking at the cops, what are things selling for? I think right now it's just as valuable maybe even more to see what's not selling. Right. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, yeah. And I think the when something sold is as important as what it sold for.

Right. So a 100-day comp and a 14-day comp or should be weighted very differently in your calculations. Right, exactly. Sweet. Yeah. Well, Tim, this has been great. Any other? Well, I wanted to. You know, you mentioned. about your owner financing deals that you're structuring i'd love to hear more about that um you know like like the three deals that you took on and i know you didn't take it as a subject too right you actually

structure and owner financing yeah yeah all three happened to be owned free and clear oh i didn't have to do subject too um but they were small small percentage down 10 to 15 percent all three are vacant is why they're kind of freaking out a little bit so i got um small 10 to 15 percent down, I did escalating interest rates. So one of them I'm as low as is 2% for the first three years. And then it goes to three and then it goes to four. Interesting. It's a 15 year one.

So I get a lot of my money back. Like it's how I'm kind of protecting myself. I get a lot of my money back from the low down payment early in the first couple years. The other one is I've got because they're vacant, I got six month moratoriums on all of them. Nice. So I don't have a payment until November 1st on all three of those. Wow. We're all set to close on April 30.

So I'm doing that. And then, yeah, I'm just a buying whole guy anyway. Oh, and then I'm using private money for those down payments, but I'm borrowing more than I need. So I'm putting cash and cash flow in my pocket with each deal. Nice. Yeah. So those are the ways that I've done.

I've been waiting for something like when you get super creative, but I haven't had any sub twos come my way yet. But we're starting to market for them. Yeah. We're putting, you know, I've got my three-option letter of intent that I use all the time, and I've shared it with my clients, and they've all done really well with it. But now I've got just a two-option letter of intent. I'll show you the letter here.

It's just the cover letter with the options in front of it. And one is like, hey, would you be open to a full-price offer, right, to get their attention? And then option two is, and that full-price offer, I'd be happy to give you a full-price offer if you'd be flexible on how I actually paid it. So that's one. And then number two, if you want to just get out now, then here's an all-cash offer. I'm just using 60% is whatever the value is right now. Gotcha.

Okay. So that's my mailing piece just to get the phone to ring. And then we're including two signed contracts in there with the self-addressed stamped envelope in there as well. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. So I started sending these priority of envelopes, right? But they, everyone's just kind of listening to us.

I'm showing him a priority mail express envelope right now. And so I went through a whole cycle. I found 96 properties that were all owned free and clear, absentee owners, vacants. They're out-of-state absentee owners, and they had at least one lien on them. So that's who I mailed to first. And I got 96 properties. So I got one deal out of there. But that was like an $800 mailing for just 100 pieces.

Wow. So you said that has at least one lien. Like what kind of lien would they be? inside of our epic property finder software like it can be a bankruptcy it can be a judgment it could be a sewer lien it could be a tax lien i think there's child support lien there's a domestic violence lien there's a bunch of different liens there so at least i have one lien okay that's a super good list that's awesome yeah so it's uh but now i'm like i'm think like that felt like low-hanging fruit to me right right right right nobody wants a vacant house right now, but I think the degree of motivation could be higher if they

actually have a loan on it. Right. So kind of what you're saying. Right. Yeah. So that'll probably be the next batch of mailing that goes out. Gotcha. Yep. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So that's how I'm working it over here and how I mitigate the risks. I really think you can pick up a lot right now, but just by paying full price, if you got the terms all figured out correctly. Right. Right. Yeah. But again, there's a lot of uncertainty out there, so we will see. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think that as long as your term, you can get it to cash flow, I mean, you're pretty safe, right? So, you know, so, yeah, so, yeah, cash flow is king in this market. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just such an amazing opportunity to build the cash flow that you didn't have six weeks ago. Exactly. Right?

You just didn't have that opportunity. And, you know, and flipping problems. properties is great, but you'll be doing that for the rest of your life until you start holding stuff. Yep. And, but now it's, now it's the opportunity to hold. Like, to me, like, this is my whole mantra right now is, is the name of the game is control and the tactic is creative financing and get as much as you possibly can.

And then, you know, Eddie Speed. Yeah. Is he in Houston? He's in Dallas. Dallas, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I want to, he sat me down over it when we were at CG a few years ago. and kind of showed me this whole idea of the deal after the deal

and how important, because you got, because terms are so important when in creative finance, right, you got the terms of the sale, you got the terms of the loan. And then he said, yeah,

but you're missing the third one where all the money's made. He said the terms of the documents. And how he wrote his documents. And so if you can just, if you have your document straight and you just control as much as you possibly can, and you'll be able to just shift and manage all your finances to create maximum cash flow and wealth for yourself.

after this is all said. Yeah. Yeah, one of the things I learned from him that I, regarding the terms and the notes, you know, doing it longer than 12 years so that way you can renegotiate your note. Yes, yes. I love that.

That's awesome. I was just happy like you get a five-year seller carryback or a 10-year carryback because, nope, you need 12 years or more to really cash in on that deal. Right. Yeah. When he explained that to me to how the deal after the deal works, I was like, wow. I want to show and share it.

Let him tell it. He does it so much better than I do. So much more authenticity there with his Dallas Act. Anyway, well, Tim, this has been great. I mean, if anyone wanted to reach out to you, what would be for them to do that? Yeah, just hit me up on Facebook. It's fine. Just search for Timmy.

Yeah, do deals.com is our website. But yeah, that's it. That's a good one. I like the short ones. Not too many of those left out there. Yeah. The main name. So that's Tim as in my tie, right?

Yes. M-A-I. You've never that before, I'm sure. But anyway, all right, Tim, let's do this again, buddy. Awesome. Thank you so much, Matt. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for being here.

All right. All righty. So if you found this episode valuable, there's a good chance that you know someone else who would too. So if you think about it, their name comes great with them. Ask the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care. All righty. That's it for today. God loves you, and so do I. Peace, health, blessings, and success to you.

I'm Matt Terrio. Live in 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.

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