KGCI: Real Estate on Air - 1242: How to Sell Homes That NO ONE Wants to Buy With Edward Peugh

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Let's face it, when you show up at a listing appointment and the house is hell outdated and beat up, you're just like, so what do you do when you're trying to sell a property that no one wants? And it's taking up all of your time and energy and you probably won't get paid that much out of it anyway. Well, today's guest is Ed Pugh, a former Marine Corps vet turned real estate agent and investor out of Charlotte, North Carolina, and he specializes in creative solutions for sellers and agents, especially when it comes to ugly busted properties. Expect to learn the four types of buyers looking for these properties, exactly where to find those buyers, how to make sure you get paid, pitfalls to watch out for in this creative space,

and stick around to the end if you want to learn about an unconventional loan product that I've actually been using for years in building out my own portfolio of rentals. You guys are listening to the Real Estate Rockstars podcast, the show for agents who've been around the block and are finally ready to build a sustainable, scalable business. Learn the exact steps to build a business that runs like a machine, one that you don't secretly hate or want to escape from. My name is Shelby Johnson, and I'm an Army veteran-turned real estate entrepreneur. I've closed hundreds of transactions as a solo agent, team leader, and real estate investor,

before taking over hosting this podcast. I'm also an agent in Lexington, Kentucky, ready to love on all of your referrals, so hit me up on the gram at The Shelby Show. More on that whole journey coming soon for today. It is time to learn how to sell distressed properties. Rockstars, welcome Ed Pugh. Okay, Ed, let's just pretend that I'm a normal agent and I'm selling market ready, pretty homes, and then one day I get a call from a seller and I go to the property. I'm really excited about this listing. And it's a dumpster, fire, hot mess. And also to continue the scenario, the seller does not have money. What do I do? So the first lever, I think, really makes a lot of sense is to find someone who's open to buying the house as it sits, as it is. Right? So you're going to

go and be like, look, my seller's not making any repairs. That hole that's in the ceiling, it's going to still be there when you guys close on it. Heck, that tenant that's a holdover tenant, he's going to still be sitting in the house too, the fleas. They're going to still, like, all those things are still going to be there. What many agents are maybe familiar with, but not as deeply, is there are category of buyers who that's a perfect house for. And so the ones that folks know really well probably are like the open doors of the world or like when companies like Zillow or others, I think KW has a buying program.

I think a lot of firms are doing this. So there's what are considered like national buyers like that. And a lot of times that collectively, that group of people who refer to as iBeyers or institutional buyers. So that would be kind of one of the categories of folks. I would Google I buyers. Again, like Open Door is one of the largest. So if I were trying to help a client find a buyer in this category,

I would just Google Open Door. And then I'd look at the sponsored ads because all of Open Door's competitors have paid to have placement when someone searches for open door. So I would go out and do that. And one of the reasons it's a little difficult to give specific lists of iBuyers is different eye buyers function in different markets. So, you know, in Cincinnati as an example, an iBire might be present that isn't present in Phoenix and vice versa.

So, but I would just go like Google Open Door, Google Zillow and see, you know, what names come up and call them and simply say, look, I have a house, this is the thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, what would you give? And if it's my client, I'm going to probably treat whatever number that company gives me as the floor. So we know right off the bat, like they are going to be a buyer. They're at this price. And one more, one more suggestion for agents who may not be as experienced in the space, you can probably have these ibuyers actually come and walk the house before they give you the contract to reduce the risk of it being retraded or a price reduction occurred. So that's something we've done in that case.

In a lot of cases there, we'll ask them to do a pre-contract inspection, which just moves their due diligence process a little forward. Some of the buyers will do it. Some won't, but it's always a good practice if they will. So below those eye buyers, there's another category of investors, which are just local mom and pops who are running businesses where they may buy two to three properties a year. They may operate one of those as a rental and sell the other two. So those are a really great source.

And often they can actually pay a little bit of a premium versus the floor created by these iBeyers. The reason they can do that is they may know the market better. They may have more efficient pricing. They may be handy themselves. So they may, for example, if it's a roofing issue, they may be able to take care of a roofing issue really effectively. So if I was going to try and find that category of investor, I might go to local Facebook group. So, for example, again, Cincinnati, as an example, I might go and look on Facebook for Cincinnati real estate investors, and I may come up with six or eight different groups. So I may try and join all of those.

And then put a post on that group like, hey, guys, have a three, two. In the zip code, it's a little bit rough shape. But if you're looking for a project, that's maybe I do. And see who responds to that with that category of buyer. Generally, they do want to walk through it before contract. So I would hold, like, maybe an open house on a Thursday or Friday. Okay, real quick, though. So in the first option, you know, with these eye buyers, you are going to them and you're basically like, what will you offer? Like you're not saying, hey, the price is this and then they, you know, negotiate that. But with this second option, when you're talking to local investors, I feel like the first thing they're going to be like is, you know, how much is it cost? What's the list price? And so for this scenario, if you're if you're a person without investor background, like how would you recommend coming to that price? Like, are you going to run numbers, try to. run numbers for the seller and be like, hey, I think this is what we can get. Or I don't know,

any advice on like that piece? Well, if you did it in the order we talked about, you'd already know your floor from the institutional buyer. And so you could say something like, you know, what's 12% above that number? And let's give that as the target and see where those investors fall at. Some investors may come and say there's no way we can pay that price. We've certainly have that experience in in our world. But I think local investors sometimes can can really add a lot of value to a property because they know the areas. They know the upside. They know where the development's coming in a way that institutional and nationwide buyers struggle with. Okay. And so with that, just to make it a little more tactical to you, so the local buyers, you have the local Facebook

groups makes a ton of sense. You go on, you search your city, you're finding all the local Facebook groups. And then depending on the floor price, that you got from the eye buyers. Ideally, you have some sort of a ballpark. You might not even put the price out because I'm actually thinking about this because I'm thinking about like the listing agreement piece, which that's maybe not the rabbit hole we dig into today. We're going to focus not so much on that. But so for that you are taking and putting pictures and being like, hey, I have this three to, you know, available, contact me with more information type of thing and just kind of doing like a hook to get them in and then talking on the, is that where

you're saying. Yeah. And just be clear, especially with those who are thinking about their fiduciary responsibilities and their agency hats and the timelines, this all probably has to happen pretty quick, especially in a lot of states, there's guidance about how soon between, because of clear cooperation, how soon between the signing of the listing agreement and making it on to MLS. So this really has to kind of happen bang, bang, bang within like a two or three day period. But yeah, I mean, put pictures if you can, host an open house. Hey, going to be at the house tomorrow from three to five or, you know, whatever you can do to drive as much traffic as possible as quickly as possible. Again, because of clear cooperation, some, some timing issues there.

Okay. One other element about local investors, and then I have actually a third category person to reach out to, but local investors, you can also meet a quick plug at local meetups. And one of the most popular meetups nationwide is called Pines and Properties. So you definitely. Yeah, right? So you could definitely attend a local meetup, both the Pines and Property Brands or the local RIA, the real estate investment associations, or other teams often host meetups. So like if you're in Charlotte, we'd love to see you guys at one of our meetups.

It's called the Exchange. But all of those different communities will have people attending who are looking for their next projects, GCs who are looking to do work, roofers. I mean, all of these different categories within the real estate ecosystem generally are going to be present at those meetings as well. I love that you brought that up. First of all, for those of you who are new listening, Pints and Properties is my event in, you know, the investor space nationwide. But Ed and I both had events for real estate investors in Charlotte. Not competitors, though, just best friends. Maybe actually competitors. Who the fuck knows? But go check out his, um, his meetup, the exchange. You can just go to theexchange.com. Is that right? Ed. The best place is actually probably just Instagram.

Hit us at CLT buyers on Instagram, and then we keep that current with like, who's going to be speaking. It's every second Thursday. I would love to see you guys. Yeah, so like that. So the third category of person to think of that this one is going to come across to real estate agents as something that has like a competitive or combative relationship, but wholesalers. So wholesalers are a category of investors who specialize in finding deals and then distributing those deals to their exclusive network. So they've built these relationships with buyers who said, hey, if you find a deal that you're not interested in, we'd love to look at it. So one reason those people can be really helpful is there's some wholesalers both locally and then there's a second category of nationally that have massive mailing lists.

And they have reached to people who may buy like one property a year or two property a year. Well, if your timing is right where that person is looking for an opportunity, this may be a really great opportunity. One delineation on the wholesalers just to be really specific is there's teams that are. are national teams. And so some common guys are groups like net worth realty or New Western. Those are two guys who like operate in probably every major metro in the U.S. And then there's folks more local in nature who will specialize in a certain metro. So those are just two things to do. Generally, you're going to be able to identify a wholesaler if they insist on an assignment

clause being present in their contract. Yeah, it's crazy. New Western especially has been able to move deals for me. like back when I was doing a ton of investor projects, you know, you'd get to that one where you think that it's going to move quick or, you know, you can work it out. And then it just sits. And I'm like, oh my God, no one's, no one's buying this. And then New West, I send it to New Western and they can move anything. It's actually incredible to the part where I'm like, who's buying this? Oh my God. Yeah. You know, most markets, those transactions are public record. So you can look for the entity that this company is buying in, and then you can actually look at what entity

bought that property from them, and actually you can basically look backwards and see who's bought product from them over the last year or two years. By the way, this is a great task for VA, and then create a subsection of that buyer's list to use in your own business. Smart. Tips of the trade right there. Yay, we're doing. But those are things if the seller is having a hard selling a property and just needs it out of their life, like really, really quickly, those are probably the best levers to pull. If the sellers have a little more time, I think there are maybe some other options where a little bit more creativity comes in and probably some support from a local at church. Do you want to hit on other agents who specialize in that?

Yeah. Okay. So I talked about investors. I talked about wholesalers. I talked about national eye buyers. Another category where as agents sometimes I think we struggle is sometimes we don't develop relationships with just other really freaking, I have to be careful, really freaking cool real estate agent. Whatever you want, Ed. Hey, we have to keep it clean for the kids. But there are really, really cool real estate agents in most markets in the U.S. who specialize in helping investor clients specifically. And so you'll see those are the most prominent in these Facebook groups. And those are the most prominent pulling open houses for flips and these different things, calling them and saying like, hey, I know you sold a property two blocks away to your buyer.

They're doing that flip currently. We're doing this one. Do you think they might want another project to walk into once that's done after they've created a higher call? And generally speaking, that can be a really productive conversation. Dude, totally. There's always some investor savvy agents in the market. And in another place where you can find them is BiggerPockets. BiggerPockets.com.

If you are not on there, get on there. It is the worldwide largest investor forum, chats, content, all the things. And it's free. And you'll see the agents in the forums. But you can also just post, same thing like you would on a Facebook group. Like, hey, I got this deal. You know, reach out to me if you have a client who's interested. Or you can even outbound reach to investors in that area being like, hey, I have this deal.

It's just a great place to find investors, people who would actually be interested in this type of property. Yeah. and have demonstrated a willingness to buy, right? All of us want people who are just willing, ready, enable buyers. Totally. Okay. So we have the eye buyers. We have local investors.

We have wholesalers. We have other agents. What else can we do to get rid to help sell? Solve a problem for this seller. Right. So this is where, like all of those things are interesting. But in some cases, that won't solve the seller's need in a significant way. So sometimes we need to add a little bit more value.

So another lever that can be pulled is if we can look at that house and again, our scenario is like the seller does not have the money to fix this home. Right. One thing we can do is we can actually go to that person and say, hey, I've got guys in my. circle of influence, who can come and fix the floors or the roof or the foundation or whatever it is, what if I were to actually have them come in and do that work? And then at the sale, so we have to create a bit of a scenario. So say we were asking like 160 for the property as it's sitting, but if we put like 40 grand into it, then it'd be worth 260 or 280. What we could do is I could actually take on the position of putting the $40,000 into the property, and then at sale,

get my $40,000 back, right? Of course, my cost would be covered. But then maybe any of the upside on the property, like we agree to split it. Maybe we do like a 50-50 split or maybe we do a 40-60 or, you know, whatever they're comfortable with. But that's one way that we can kind of solve the seller's problem in a way that's productive for that. Yeah, because then they will make more money and you will make more money. Everyone's happy. It's a yeah. In theory. And that's part of you like, Shelby, why did you pick those floors? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When we do that type of deal, it's normally structured in some type of like a seller finance, a short term seller finance deal. And I don't know if any, if you or any of your

watches the show the profit, but the minute we write the check, we're 100% in charge, right? So they don't get to come and ask me why we're choosing these vanities or these lights or any of that stuff. Dude, we need to go deeper into that. When you were talking about what you normally do with seller financing, could you go through that a little slower, a little more detailed? Yeah. So in that scenario, so the seller wants 160, we want to come in and put 40,000 into the house. We'll actually take possession of the house, right? We probably won't pay a whole lot to the seller initially. but we'll write a promissory note for $160,000 to the seller. And we might agree that he needs to get that paid off in, say, six months, right?

Because we want time to rehab the house. We want time to market the house and get it sold. So we might say the seller, okay, Mr. Seller, you're going to move out of the house. I'm going to take ownership of the house and I'm going to promise to pay you the $160,000 that you want in the next six months. then I'm going to pay the $40,000 for whatever it costs to do the rehab, and then we're going to market and sell it. And again, say we get like $2.60. So for simple numbers, we're splitting like $60,000,

it'll be a little less than that because of costs and commissions, blah, blah, but say we're splitting $50, $60,000. So at that sale closing on the HUD, there'll be my seller profit line at the bottom, but there'll be a line that says payable to seller and it's their half of the proceeds. Okay, gotcha. So by take possession, it's really, it's like two closing. So you're buying it. The seller is financing. Well, in this case, in this example, it sounds like there's no actual, like you're not

paying him a monthly payment or anything. Because any of the capital we're putting in the project, we want to do the actual work to solve their actual problem. Their problem in the moment isn't really cash flow. If they had a mortgage payment or something, we might agree to cover the amount of that mortgage payment or something. But we wouldn't generally be making a whole lot of payments there. Okay. So in an example where the seller might want a certain amount, and that's, I mean, that's all I want.

I want $160,000. I don't care how it happens. I don't care when it happens, really. This is a solution that you could, you know, if you have the means, if you have the experience or have the bandwidth to put in the work that it takes to, hire out and do the renovations and flip it and rehab it. This is just another tool, another option when talking to a distressed seller, essentially. Yes. And adding one other point, even if you don't have the means, just as an example, say my GC came and walked it and was like, and it looks like about 40 grand, it's the foundation,

it's the electrical, like these are all things we do regularly. My GC, if I have a relationship with them, I might be able to say, hey, I don't have the capital to pay you this up front, but instead of paying you 40 for the job. I don't I pay you 45 as soon as the sales. So again, you're just like engineering and bringing together the real solutions and compensating people for their willingness to be flexible. That's interesting because you could probably, in all of these little strategies, you could piece together in a bunch of different ways to make creative solutions.

Because I was kind of thinking about the first one you were talking about where it's like the seller, you know, they want this 160 still. And you kind of offered to front the money for the renovations. But in theory, you could also have your GC come in and be like, hey, man, we'll pay you more at close. And then you have someone else front the renovations and everyone's happy at the closing table. Yeah. And it's just like everything, you just need to make sure that your attorneys are comfortable with this language, that it's in writing, that everyone is crystal clear on what's happening. And then, you know, it's go out and execute and do the best you can to do everything the right way. Does every deal work out exactly as you pencil it out? No, of course,

surprises happen. You open walls. There's termite, you know, there's termite damage. There's all these different things that can happen. But as long as we're all kind of marching in the same way, then we're working towards the right thing. What would you say are the biggest like red flags, maybe not red flags, but like pitfalls? Like, hey, make sure you do this besides the attorney that you just talked about in like open communication. Like what else could get people in a world of shit here? I mean, you've, you know, you've done projects before. Really detailed scopes of work is pretty important. Like, when we first get started in the business,

sometimes we're used to like just a list of like, update kitchen, replace bathtub, change out surfaces, you know, $9,500. Like that's just like the big items. And we really need it to be more itemized than that. And the reason is for your protection and your content, which is if you get in a dispute about what it meant to change the floors, like how many square feet of flooring are we talking about? And for your contractor's protection,

if he then comes back and is like, hey, I quoted you doing 120 square feet and you're asking me to do 700 square feet. That's materially different. You know, you want to be able to say to them like, no, you already quoted 700 or no,

you quoted 120. Like, you just have to have it really in writing. So a lot of written communication, even if it feels like it's redundant or over, kill will protect a lot in in deals. And I would say too as you're if you're like, oh, this is exciting to me or better yet, if you're scared, you're like, this is terrifying. Like I like the idea, but I'm terrified. There's probably someone in your market who has done this strategy.

So like if you're in Charlotte, like clearly Ed has done this type of thing before. So it's kind of of one of those ideas. Would you rather have 100% of a potential complete and other failure? Or would you rather partner with someone, learn from their experience, and you guys share the win at the end of the day, that type of thing. And we regularly do that in our market. So those joint ventures is like when someone finds this deal, but they don't know how to put it together, they might not have the capital to do this type of update. Yeah, we do that not every day, but like many times a year.

And it's actually a lot of fun because you get to like share your expertise. People get a deal. They might not have gotten otherwise. Sellers get like, one of the cool things about our business. business is if we're doing it the right way, when it's all said and done in most cases, every party in the transaction is thankful we work towards. And those are the transactions I love when it feels like we're having to push something in a way that's not comfortable for everyone.

I don't love that. Yeah, it's really cool too because I'm sure, you know, for sellers, they've probably already heard from a bunch of people of like, you know, I have no solution for you. We can't list it like this. Like if we listed it like this, no one would buy it. It would have days. You know, they've heard every objection and every agent probably convincing, trying to convince them to find the money to fix it up and make it market ready.

And so having an option, other options that end in a solution where everyone's happy. Like, it's just a beautiful thing. Yeah. So those are like the two opportunities I would think about if like selling is possible. If selling at a value added price is possible in the near term. if the seller is open to waiting a period of time. One lever that is becoming pretty common with the introduction of something called a DSCR loan, which is a debt service coverage ratio loan.

And based all that terminology, just to say it's a loan based on just the income the property produces. So those loans have really become kind of prominent over the last three or four years. And because of that, if we can get an asset to start generating income, then we can get it financed relatively easily. So one idea is, again, a little creative in nature, but if the seller's open to, let's give the same scenario, like they want the 160, and they're open to getting it over the next year or two. Like maybe they're thinking, like, this is money I want to help pay for like college

tuition in three or four years. So they have this house. It's in disrepair. What we can actually do, and actually this is one of our favorite things to do, we consider ourselves kind of buy and hold guys is go in do a minimal update to the property like we're not trying to make it chip and joanna gains hg tv ready we're trying to be like can it be safe affordable comfortable can a family live there in a way that that is valuable and safe for them great then let's do that and let's get it to start generating income and then once we own it

and operate it as a rental 24 months later 30 months later we can find that by showing the bank like, look, this is all the rental income that's been generated. Could you help us refinance out this seller? And again, at a number like 160, when maybe the real market value, as is at the time they sold, it was like 120. In that scenario, generally we are going to make payments to the seller. Okay. Well, that makes sense because it's over an extended period of time. Yeah. Those DSCR loans have saved me for years. There was, when I first started, you know, got my license and stopped my W-2. And my whole headspace.

was I want to be an investor. That's why I got my license to begin with. And when my W2 stopped coming in and I went to, you know, get money for one of my projects and they're like, you don't have any proof of income. I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, we can't lend on you to anything that you do. And I was like, what? Like my whole world just shattered in front of me and then stumbled upon these like DSCR loans. And that's all I used for years with, you know, the Burr strategy and then get the tenant in there and show income and then magically it's able to be financed. Like it's an incredible product. A lot of folks, even when, you know, we have friends who have even like another example where DSR is really important is where they might have over-improved the house for like to sell in the

market today. So they need to kind of tread water for a little bit. Get the DSR product. Give yourself another two years. Let the market catch up to the improvements you made. And then you can exit that that property there as well. So I think there's just a lot of like those types of on-market solution-based tools. But Shelby, now that we're really even thinking about it, probably even have one more ninja thought about what we could do. So there's a whole category of folks who when they speak, and this is yet another reason why real estate agents should expand the sphere of people

they speak with. Here's an example. So I have a buyer come up to me. and they say, hey, I run a landscaping business. I run a pressure washing business. I run a detailing, whatever happens to be. These businesses that are like relatively cash-centric, sometimes those individual, real estate agents included, by the way,

sometimes our income can be like very variable. So folks like that sometimes have a hard time meeting traditional financing. And in fact, there's numbers out there that like something like, depending what stat you look at, but like 70 or 80% of people who would be interested in buying a house can't qualify. And probably that stats even worse than the house, given where interest rates have risen to in the current economy. So one category of person who would be really well served by this home is that person. So we can do a couple of things here. We can coach the seller on how to sell this home to that individual on terms, get a down payment, take payments over a time,

time, get mailbox money for a period of time, especially when that individual is relatively handy and can do the repair work that the home may need, or maybe the, this potential buyer doesn't need to move in immediately. So like they can have maybe two months or three months to get the home more comfortable and more livable. Those are both scenarios where this seller, seller financing it to a buyer, can create a win-win for both parties where this buyer may not qualified. The seller couldn't get it sold. They come together and they can both get something done. And then by the way, as our real estate agents and they're saying, well, wait a minute, how do I get compensated? Well, the seller just got that down payment, right? So at closing,

the down payment goes on the HUD. Your commission comes out of it. The seller gets the net of whatever's left. And this category of person, we have a lot of success finding in for sale by owner of Facebook groups, Craigslist of all places. Craigslist is vibrant for something like this. Sale by owner, yard sale groups, local yard sale groups for specific geographies are all great places to find something like that. Okay, let's just, let's change the scenario very slightly and talk about hypothetically the seller is able to qualify or or is open to the idea of trying to find funds to do the renovation. I know that you're really creative with like finding money. So what are some ways besides, you know, actually all the ways, like of a seller who's like,

oh, I don't have any money in the bank, but I need money to make these repairs. What should I do? One obvious place to look is like, can they, if they can qualify, like is a HELOC possible. Many places that will do some type of financing can give two different appraisals. So an as is appraisal that's like, as it sits today, the market value is this. And then a subject to appraisal, which is like, if we did this series of repair, and it looked more like Chip and Joanna Gaines ready, what would that value be? And if you can demonstrate a gap between that, there are companies that would do home equity

lines of credit in that place. If that wasn't something that someone was really excited about, there's folks out there called hard money lenders. And this may be something where a hard money lender could come in and do some of the, it's called bridge financing. The risk with hard money lenders specifically is generally that's very short-term capital. So eight, 10 months. So you've really got to get in the project, get it done, and get on your way pretty quickly.

And then another alternative is, again, leveraging the investor community, there are folks who really do this type of funding. And then maybe one other thing which folks don't think about a lot is called cross collateralization. And what that means is if I have a house A that doesn't have a lot of equity, but I have House B that might have a lot of equity or it could be paid off, we could put a lien against House B for that capital for just a short period of time while we rehab House A, get House A sold, take the proceeds, pay off the lien on House B, and we're all off and running. So there's just a lot of things to look at and opportunities to just be creative, present some security for the people giving you the capital, and go off and do the work.

Totally. There was a point in many years, actually, in my life where I was constantly. like looking for money. I was this person for like my next project. Like how am I going to finance them? And something else to add on to Ed's list here is if you have like a local bank or a credit union, sometimes they have some like really weird cool loan products. Like I went to, it was for Citizens Bank and in FIPL and I was like, hey, like what do I? I need money. What I have? And they have this like random like home renovation loan that was up to $25,000 with no financials as long as you were a homeowner. So I was like, okay, that's amazing. And you could have more if you wanted to submit financials. And then also, like, I have not personally done this one, but people talk about

credit cards. Have you ever done anything with credit cards, Ed, where it's like that 0% for 12 months? Do you know what I'm talking about? I do. I avoid that specifically. Too much for me. Yeah. Way earlier in life, I got in like really deep hole with credit card debt. And so the one thing that's like super opulent, like I don't even carry a personal credit card, as a matter of fact. Damn. I'm getting like hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for office. Like that doesn't even, I don't even blink at that. But like that $250 credit card is just too much for me.

Can't do it. That's where I draw the line. I haven't folks do that. I'll give an example of one risk with that. I think it's doable. I think it works. But I one time bought it was actually, yeah, it was. a product I bought on credit and it was like a zero percent credit. It was like $20 something thousand

dollars. And I missed the payoff by like literally a week and I ended up paying like seven grand in interest as a result. And I think I've just been like scarred, you know? So. Yeah. I mean, that is that is gross. Yeah. So these are all ideas like the stuff that you just listed for the, for your seller client if they want to do it. These are all options for them to consider or for yourself if you do want to talk about what, you know, pursue what Ed was talking about in the beginning with like the joint venture or seller financing and all of the cool, creative, all the things. One more idea.

Yes. We're just here with that. There are companies out there that will do the rehab. It's part of their business model. So you can Google companies like Curbio. There's often like a local version of that that'll serve your market. So here in our market, we have like one or two where they will legitimately as part of their business model finance you.

through closing. Dude, do you have personal experience with Curbio? No, but the local company, we've had some mixed experience with it. Okay. Yeah, we generally will serve that needed, like directly now. So we haven't, we haven't grown up. And that wasn't me like trying to set you up being like, oh, they suck or anything. Like I literally just ran into them the other day and I ran into them.

I was on EXPs, you know, our partnered vendors. and I was like, what's Curbio? And I clicked it. And I was like, this is actually genius. I don't know if the company is amazing or not. But like the idea that there is a specialized company that you can partner with, where they like go to the listing appointment and say they need renovations, they will come in and do all of the renovations and be paid out at closing.

Like that solves like so many of the problems we just talked about. And I think just like most probably, like most service providers, there's probably markets where they are like freaking killing it. And there's probably a market or two where the operator or their team isn't as professional and might struggle a bit. So definitely for those agents who are like, if you're in your market and have a local representative or a team you can talk to, call them, ask for before and afters, ask for client reviews, ask for testimonials or people you can go and talk to and see if that's an option that's going to serve your seller well. Yeah, testimonials, everything, reviews. Who has

personally worked with us, like company or client or whoever. Okay, Ed, what do we not talk about today that you want to head on. You know, those are the things that I would encourage agents, you know, to not be scared of these conversations and not, you know, it's our job to give open, unbiased advice. But if our only advice is, hey, like, give me a call once you have the house cleaned up, then there's a whole category of people who at the end of the day, you're sending to work with someone who's not as professional as you are.

And that's a shame. because sellers deserve to have really, really professional folks who help them. And when they have to just kind of defaults the lowest common denominator, they don't get that. And that's always disappointing to me. But as far as that, I mean, that's, yeah, those are the thoughts on that subject, I think. Oh, yeah. Okay, what are you working on now in your business? What does the future hold?

Hit us with some ed stuff. Okay. So we are looking at the landscape of the brokerage. business and saying, I don't think there's enough experience in the brokerage space for people who understand both on market, you know, home buyers and the experience they're looking for, and then also the off market to investor sides of the business. So we're actually expanding our brokerage business. Folks can follow us at CLT buyers to learn more about that.

We have recently grown into something that we're really excited about, which is the communal living model. Super, super excited about that. By the way, Pines and Properties in Charlotte just had our friend Sam on there, who that's his thing. Co-living is exactly his whole community and what he's talking about. So I got to learn more about that last night, so that was really cool. And then we, yeah, the communal living model. And then we'd love to see anyone at any of our local events. So we do a office hours at our office every Thursday from three to five. Open Q&A. We often have like a specific subject we want to go over. And that's our goal to both serve the community and as one of the varsity teams share our points of view, make sure that people are playing

in the space in the right way. And then also it results in a lot of JV opportunities. And we love that. And then our monthly meetup is every second Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. The exchange real estate networking meetup, we'd love to see you one. So those are the things. Yes. And I love your office hours. When I lived in Charlotte, and I think I went once or twice, but seriously, the best time ever and you're just such an open book and you can sit there and just ask any question you have about the creative financing space or off market or direct to seller or hard conversations. It's just, I really like you. I don't want to fun with that. It's the most valuable time we have probably in a week as far as like dollar for dollar return. The amount of people

who we grow, you know, look, a lot of folks are out there like, well, you're teaching your confidence. No, I'm just teaching people who are probably going to end up doing a deal one way or another with and at least I'm teaching them to do the right way. So when we get an opportunity to work together, they understand the values. So. Okay, quick wrap up questions. What is your favorite app or tool? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not a big appy guy. We've been using chat GPT a lot recently for like, you know, all the different things chat GPT can do. So like if you're out there as an agent and you're creating anything from scratch, including like letters or marketing or, here's an example, office hours, for example.

Like, we do it every week, right? So that's like, how many, 52 weeks in a year? So we had to come up with 52 different subject matters to speak about in office hours. So at the beginning of the year, we just went on chat, GPT, and we're like, what are 52 ideas that we should talk about with our real estate community and give us a list of like 52? And then we're like, I don't like number 17, 32 and this. So could you give us a couple more?

And like, just, we really shouldn't be originating a whole lot of things like that from scratch. That part of ideation should just be using tools like that. So yeah, chat APT is probably the one I would give, but I'm not like a big on my phone. I don't have like all these different apps. I love technology teams like EXP and Real for the tools they are introducing in the real estate space. I would say that as having recently moved to a brokerage like that. I think it's when we look at some of the models of some of the older brokerages, I think they're really going to start to fall behind as teams, again, like EXP. being real makes strides with AI and dynamic young agents who understand these tools and can use

them effectively. Love. Okay. What events are you going to in the next 12 months besides your own? So I am actually, so I've been involved in the mastermind communities for probably like 10 to 12 years now. We've been leaders in mastermind communities. We've been attendees. We've done all those different things. But I'm actually super excited to be joining a specific mastermind focused on helping agents, learn to be more effective investors. And it's hosted by, it's called Be Wealthy. It's hosted by a guy named Brett Tanner. And he's also the host of the KW wealth mastermind. So it's like the KW wealth mastermind. And then Be Wealthy is for all the other agents for our KW agents. How can listeners help you in your business? Yeah. If you as agents or out

there and struggling to come up with the creative scenarios that Shelby and I just, I don't know if I'm pointing this way or that way, but that we just came up with, would love to jump on a call and talk about it with you. We'll give some advice directly, and then you can go out and implement that. If you need help implementing that, that's where we would jump in and want part of the deal, but would love those opportunities. The more creative, the more challenging the situation, the better. We one time had the IRS release a $110,000 lien off of a property, which the house had been on the market for like over 700 days. We got the IRS to release the lien on the property and we're able to sell the house.

So, you know, anything's possible if you just ask enough times and, you know, like the little four-year-old, you're just really, really persistent. Okay. And where when people are like, yeah, I want to do that, where can they go to find you? Yeah, the best place to find us is Instagram at CLT buyers, C's and Charlie, Ells and Lima, Tiz and Tango, buyers, all one word. That's us. and then we've got some personal ones that you can see if you go there.

Okay, perfect. And all of his links will be in the show notes, of course. And guys, that is all we have for today. If you want to hang out with me and the owner of the show, we are Aaron and Mood Chisagie and the Shelby Show on the Graham. And otherwise, that's it. Ed, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Thank you for being one of my favorite people.

This has been really fun. Yeah, right. Okay, perfect. All right, real estate rock stars. Thanks for listening. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com