KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Leveraging relationships with Contractors

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

You're listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast, empowering agents and investors to collaborate effectively and grow their businesses symbiotically. Your host, Randy Zemnock and Eric Gross, share real-life case studies, trending tactics, and expert strategies that have helped them to accomplish over $1 billion in sales volume. Whether you're a seasoned agent looking to expand your business or an investor seeking to optimize your returns, you're in the right place. This is the Investor Agent Nation podcast. Topic today is, like we said, mentioned earlier, and is leveraging contractors to get business. So first and foremost,

if you're an investor, like looking for contractors, like that doesn't never end, right? If you're someone that does multiple flips a year, you're constantly going to be looking for contractors because what I found in my career of managing properties is that contractors get comfortable, probably the best word that can use. They get comfortable if you start using them over and over again on your flips,

if you're an investor here. And eventually they get too comfortable. And I find that you have to always keep them on their toes, right? So I think it's something that you basically have to do on a regular basis is keep always looking for new contractors, for you to interview so you can always, you know, pivot if you have to and maybe throw them a job or two to start testing them out as you're still using the ones that you maybe still are doing well with for now. And you never know. They might end up being the best for a long time. But I found in my experience that usually when I give a contractor three jobs, that usually is their max.

that what I found being kind of like the sweet spot. And the moment we go over that is when things start slowly falling apart and timelines start falling apart. However, when you ask, what I found, when I asked the contractor like, hey, do you have room for more work? They will never tell me no. They'll always say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

And to their own, you know, detriment, right? They literally will say yes with good intention, of course, because they want to grow as well. But the truth is that a lot of contractors that become business owners and they have teams and they, you know, oversee other subs or their own employees, they usually come from being the labor themselves and now they're put in the position of owning a business. And that's a little intimidating, right? they don't it's not as easy as they might have imagined in terms of actually running a business and what it takes right so that's why i always caution everybody like don't get too comfortable with one or two

contractors constantly keep looking for new ones and interview them and have a process for it and once you start building that list of a few that you not only can you use but also refer then the business starts getting easier because I can tell you as an investor, the toughest part, honestly, it's not even as finding leads is tough, but honestly, I feel personally that managing contractors is even tougher. And I would love to hear from Andrew maybe as well. What's your take before we kind of let Eric speak a bit on it? Andrew has rehabbed a lot of homes.

What's your take on that on what I just said? You know, it's funny, there's some merit to that. You know, in this business, nothing's a problem until it becomes a problem, and then it's a huge problem. So, you know, we've had some great runs done 15, 20 renovations with a set of contractors, and all of a sudden it just goes way south. I've got a couple contractors, and I'm on 10, 15 renovations with, and they're phenomenal. And the great part about the continuity is that you guys, understand each other, you're on the same page, you know what you're each looking for.

Works out well. But as Randy said, there is a lifespan of that. There's a half-life to a certain degree. And at some point, they are no longer there and you have to scramble. So again, to me, the contract part is not the hardest part. And all of a sudden, it is the hardest part because you're, you know, behind the eight ball and something. So it really depends. to continue to manage that relationship,

continue to set those expectations and hold them accountable. And the longer you do that, the longer that relationship lasts, I found. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you a quick, funny story. When I was managing the rehab department in our company that I used to run and was partners with,

I came and I was the agent too. So I was selling the properties and I was also managing, right? That's how you start. On the beginning, you wear like all the hats, right? So I went and to check on this rehab, it was supposed to be done, right? So I went to check, look at the staging, check everything out, open houses scheduled for Sunday. All the marketing went out. And I go there with my agent hat, right?

And I walk into this property and all the carpet is gone. So all the staging furniture is still there. Everything is still there, just moved around, but the carpet and the sponge and it's just gone. I'm like, what the air? How does that happen? Like, who steals just the carpet? Like, that doesn't make any sense. So guess what?

I called the GC and his name was Scott. I never forget his name, man. I'm like, Scott, dude, what happened? My carpet is gone, man. Like, what was going on? Because I figured, like, it has to be an inside job. Like, there's no way that someone breaks into a house, leaves the appliances, leaves the furniture, but takes the carpet.

Like, no, that's not normal. And then that's when Scott, the GC, was like, dude, oh man. Oh, it's my sub. It's the sub. It's the floor guy. I forgot to pay him or something. I was like, what's his number? Give me his number, man.

So I got the number, Ruben, never forget his name. I got Ruben's number. And I just handled it myself. I call Ruben. I'm like, Ruben, man, I know what happened. I heard Scott didn't pay you. And dude, I'm so sorry, man. Like, I just need my carpet back.

Like, what is it going to take? So I had to build a quick relationship and report with Rubin and not take offense to what Rubin did because it wasn't his fault. Scott, the G.C, didn't pay him. And I said, look, I'll pay you, man. Like, just can you put my carpet back in? I have an open house on Sunday. We have a day.

So he sure enough, drove back. He was apologizing. He's like, he's like, Randy, I have to feed my family. Scott hasn't been paying me. I am so sorry. I didn't know how to reach you. Right? So I just did what.

I had to do. I was like, look, I get it, man. Just please put my carpet back in. So he did. He reinstalled the same carpet for the second time. I paid him and got, you know, did the open house. But literally, that guy was our floor guy for years after that. The G.C. was fired. But that Ruben guy, he was our floor guy for so many flips. I think our guys are still using him to this day, right? Because I didn't take offense to it. And anyway, and he was a loyal, family, good dude. So you just never know what will happen in managing construction.

But Eric, I'm going to jump to you. We're still on the first slide. So I just kind of started off on how important it is to constantly keep looking for contractors because you never know. Absolutely. Yeah, so when you move, you have issues with Wi-Fi. So I felt myself going out. I heard you like break it up and I was like, I don't know.

So I'm on a hot spot. Yeah, so contractors are like one of the most important things. So it's going to come to, you know, investing in real estate when you're doing flips. I think there is 100% of half life on contractors. Me and Randy had talked about it. I've had contractors that I've used for two or three years. We've done 40 flips wet. And then out of nowhere, they have another two or three projects and they go take.

terrible. So it's one of those things that we always try to keep more coming in. Um, there's nothing that can kill a deal worse than a really bad contractor guaranteed. I've seen it. I've seen some really bad, uh, work done. So we are constantly always trying to look for it. But when it comes to the contractor, there's so much with that relationship that you can build off of that you can use. Um, one of the things that I did when I got started was partnered with a contractor and had him walk me through properties so that when I talk to other investors not associated with them. I'd have a good idea on what the rehab amount would look like, what he would recommend replacing, repairing, and a contractor is going to be worth their weight

and gold. So you should constantly be looking for new contractors. I think starting them all small, maybe it's just a smaller project, starting them off small, giving them a shot, seeing how they do, comparing price, seeing what the timeline looks like, what the communication looks like, make sure that when you are trying out those new contractors right away, that you're probably on the job side a little bit more than you'd like to be. Don't just hire somebody on to do a flip that you haven't worked with before and then just let them go at it. So yeah, constantly looking for contractors is going to be huge.

What I would do is one thing I would say is one of the first things I see that contractors are not good at is creating a detailed scope of work with pricing. So what I recommend is that you create the scope of work and you provide it to the contractor and have them bid that. And I would put in a word doc so they can edit it even. So like, because I've seen that being a big resistance point for contractors when I ask them to itemize their bid. Like very few do that. They're not used to that doing that. And you could just draw a line and say, fine.

and I'm going to find someone that does. Or I think I would recommend maybe actually you creating the scope of work and have templates that you can plug and play, give it to the contractors. And we found that we actually got a lot more bids back the way we want them because we would send, let's say, three contractors to one job and gave them the same exact scope of work. So they're bidding the same exact thing that we knew we wanted, right?

So it becomes back really clean, right? So you should do that as an investor, but then of course, if you're an agent working with investors, like this is the way you should be thinking and actually adding value to the investors you work with and bring up these type of ideas, right? Because they can sometimes ruin their own experience. Like the investors themselves are not, you know, a lot of them, they don't have systems in place. These are the things that you as an agent can actually think outside the box and bring value to the table of how can they bring systems in place. Can they work better with their own contractors?

And maybe even you are the one meeting these contractors, which is part of the things of this discussion is, as an agent, it will help you tremendously. If you have your own book of contractors you can rely on that you can refer to your investor clients, right? Because again, if you're that source of information and referral, that investor is going to remember that. It's like, oh, wow, Eric referred me these contractor and he was a freaking all-star. Not only did Eric find me the investor flip to do the flip on and he connected me to this freaking bomb contractor. Like they will never stop working with Eric, right? And you've had that happen, right? Eric, several times.

Yeah, actually just recently I had a good buddy of mine. He plays for the MLS soccer team up in Cincinnati. So he plays the professional soccer team. Just moved from Utah. He was actually traded there. And I've been working with him for six months. And he sends me this flip. And he's like, hey, do you mind walking this with me?

I've got some design question. So I just asked us, I said, hey, do you have somebody kind of in mind to list the property with, you know, if not, would love to be that option, but would absolutely love to go to the property. So doing our normal walkthrough, walking the property with him, kind of going through like what to do, paint, flooring wise, layout wise and stuff like that.

I go to the basement, Cincinnati, we have some older builds. So I'm like, dude, this is, this house is knob and tube wiring. And he's like, wait, what do you mean knob and tube? I'm like there's like this is literally knob and tube we traced it all the way through the house traced it back to the control panel so active knob and tube throughout the whole home and I'm like you got this like this is a part of your bid with your your gc right and he's like no he didn't mention anything about the electrical I'm like there's no way he should have missed knob and tube so I was like you know what just have adam who's my my rock star gc right now is like have adam come walk it get a bid for it and we'll see what's going on so um Adam is a like I guy that I've had. We've done a couple of flips together. And actually one of his flips that he did for us was on HGTV's house hunters. So, and we were the listing agent on the property.

So sent Adam to him, investor is super ecstatic. Adam went in and walked through what layouts they could do, what design choices to go with, super familiar with the area, what sells and what doesn't sell. So he's kind of like a super unique GC. Like he does everything, design and all. And he's absolutely amazing. So I give him, I give his name and number out to everyone, try to keep him as busy as possible. But also he makes me look really good because he's going out to this investor.

And absolutely just like the bid came in perfect. It was, you know, an itemized bill. It was completely written out. There was a signature to keep everybody, you know, on par with that. So it just, it looked really good on me. And then, you know, the investor text me and he goes, hey, when we go to list, we'd love to have you list it. Adam's been awesome. Thank you so much for sending them our way. So it's huge. It's a big part of our business. And when you have that person, it's just another person that you can kind of leverage.

And for me, I love being able to help Adam and keep his business growing and going. Yeah, that client is never going to like not use you. It's like, yeah, you know, for that reason. So when it comes to, you know, finishing the vetting contractors part, you know, it should be obvious, but some investors don't do this. And that is such a bad thing. But I ask for their work. Like go visit their job sites, right? They don't have any active projects currently.

I don't necessarily think it's a red flag. That's okay. Then ask for previous ones that they worked on and then ask for the people that hired them and have a genuine conversation with the people that hired that contractor, right? Like, it's a lot of work to do on a front end, but I can tell you if you do it correctly. it's going to save you a lot of headaches down the road, right? If you hire the wrong one man, it can be a total shit show, right? You can lose a lot of money with contractors.

But there's ways to do it correctly, like we're discussing and protecting yourself, which we'll get into in a moment. So how about just the whole building relationships? How do you, now let's say you found a contractor, Eric, or a couple that you really like and you've vetted them, you've checked their work, you know, they have great referrals, all of the, everything checks out. How do you maintain or build on that relationship? What else do you end up doing?

Yeah, I would say like one of the things you actually just talked about a few minutes ago was huge, which is communication is key. These investors are these contractors, they love good communication. So something that tends to happen is, you know, you take a contractor through a property, they bet out the job for you. And then the investor gets upset because something is a complete. the contractor didn't know they didn't want it or wanted it completed so you have this point of contention so communication you can never over communicate with somebody spell it out make sure everybody's on board we also always go out of our way like with our contractors just to go out to the project build that rapport see how they're doing see how the project's doing contractors are typically just like agents they have egos so they like to hear that the job looks good you can't be afraid to be like hey, you know, that tile is crooked or not set correctly or something like that.

But at the same time, if it is a really good job, go out there and just be like, you know, throw compliments their way. They love that. Something else that I know some of my investors do is if the job is on time and a good, like, the flip goes really well and it looks great as they pay the contractor a bonus. You're rewarding good behavior. So kind of talking about the half like of contractors, it's not uncommon that contractors after a while, you know, they do 10, 15 flips with you and they start to get kind of bored.

It's just go in, lay floor, paint. They know they're getting paid. Maybe they find somebody else who pays more. So they focus their attention that way. A great way to kind of keep them around and keep them motivated to say, hey, you know what, this project turned out amazing. Here's an extra $1,000 on top of what we said we're going to pay you kind of a bonus. We really appreciate the time and the effort you put into it.

As agents, we kind of like getting rewarded for a good job as, investors, we like being rewarded for doing a great flip or for finding a good deal. For contractors, they should be rewarded for if they go above and beyond. And they do a really good flip. It's a great way to keep them happy, satisfied, and just, you know, to them, it kind of builds loyalty. So it's a great way to kind of do that as well. Yeah, one thing that I actually forgot to mention, but it's so important on the vetting part, too, is you need to ask the contractor,

If they are, you know, what kind of paperwork do they have that they usually sign with clients? And you'd be surprised, man, what comes back when you ask that question, right? Many will have much, right? It will just be the bid. And then everyone just signs the bid and that's it, right? Man, so Andrew knows this, Kevin knows this, right? because we've been through the same program, right, with our education company. And we have our six critical documents.

And I can't stress enough how important it is. And let me tell you what those are. And if you want, I can't even share them with you. But every contractor is going to have to sign an independent contract agreement. We're going to have a payment schedule created together. Right. So we know which benchmarks we're going to go after and when is the payment going to be made after which benchmarks that were hit, right? We're going to have, of course, a scope of work.

That's the beginning of it all. We're going to have a W-9 signed. And then we're going to have a indefinification insurance agreement. We got to make sure that they have insurance. And then we have an agreement form for that. And then when the job is fully done, then we have the contract to sign a final lien waiver. Okay. So these are so important to have, and I can tell you, most investors don't use any documents outside of what the contractor offers, and they feel like that's just the way it should be because they're the contractor, so they must know better what paperwork. Don't think that way. You should have your own documents, review the ones that you feel protect you and protect the contractor, right? It can't just be one-sided, but we have six critical documents. I'm going to actually put a link to my drop. box folder if you would if you guys would like and you guys can download them but if they're not okay

with signing these type of documents then that's a red flag to me to be honest right uh it's it's saved us and protected us from many disasters these documents uh that i'll share with you uh Andrew and you you use them still I hope some of them I hope um yes I do and no I don't um with new contractors, again, it's set in the standard. These things are worth their weight in gold. I mean, again, for those who haven't seen the type of stockings that are laid out, it basically just sets the standard for how you want to have things work. And I use it with every new contractor for sure.

I will, though, admit, after about 10 or so projects, you do, I mean, all right, just go ahead and send me that. Yeah, that's fine. Go ahead and do that. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, lazy, which I know I shouldn't go that route, but it gets easier as you go once you have that synergy.

But yeah, at the onset, by all means, you got to use the documents. And even if you decide you want to modify those and for whatever work for you or for the contractor, which is fine, know why you're modifying them. But again, just set the standard for what you expect from them going forward. And that eliminates all those problems that you guys say you run into a contractor that's communications. Eric was discussing. You'll lay it out there. You know you're addressing the same.

it doesn't get on my wayside. So I agree. Yeah. It seems like when you set expectations, you're laying it out for every party and the entire transaction you're saying this is how it's going to go. So when it all goes that way, everybody's super happy. You don't set those expectations up front. Something backfires and either as the investor or the contractor.

You're like, well, what the hell do we do? So setting those expectations up front is, I mean, it just takes out 90% of the pain you're going to feel. So I just shared a link as a gift to you guys. Those are the documents that we've used on probably 600 flips or more. I've lost count, maybe probably even more. So they're in the chat if you want to click on that and download them, but that's what we've been using for over a decade.

And I would say on building relationships, kind of jumping back to that now is it works both ways, right? So you need to also pay on time. I don't know if you mentioned this already, Eric, but you know, you, you, you, you got to do your part as well, right? So you can't expect all of this stuff from the contractor, but then you slack on payment and be like, oh, I can't give you a check on Friday. Even you, you hit your benchmark. Oh, let's meet Monday. Like, no, no, no. If you, if you agreed and they hit that benchmark on Friday, make sure you pay them, man. Like that is a lifeline to them. Like, literally, like, because they have employees usually waiting, man, for that check that Friday, right?

So they can pay their bills and feed their families and do whatever they got to do. So there's a compound effect that takes place. If you think that moving the payment from Friday to Monday has no impact, you're wrong. It can really make or break that relationship long term. And that contractor might say, yeah, okay, that's fine the first time. But you don't know what that is actually, what damage that's actually doing, right, behind the scenes. And they're just afraid to tell you because they want to keep you as a client. Yeah. So I can't stress that enough.

On that note, Randy, real quickly, on that note, and I agree completely that, and I agree completely that we've gone to the other end of the route where most GCs will pay their subs on Friday. They can't always run, we're not go to the bank and do that thing. We've got on the point now we're paying our contractors on Thursday and that was our initiative to do that and they love it because now they can get that whole process on, hey, they're guys on Friday, which apparently is the payday for all subs in the world. And they really appreciate that back. They really do. So just by going on that extra step to accommodate them because it's two-way street, we want to work for each other. We want to make each other both successful at work.

That's so good. Yeah, that's a good tip. Even that extra extra day. And again, if they hit the benchmarks, right? Because that is the biggest problem for contractors is cash flow. Like figuring out how to run their business and cash flow is a big challenge for them. So go ahead, Eric. Keep going, buddy. Yeah. So and I'd say also too, just something that I've seen investors do is, you know, be respectful and patient with contractors.

Like if you're trying to build up that relationship, if you're trying to make it so that you can continue to use this person, we're all human if they've got a lot going on. You know, they're juggling just as much stuff as we are. I know as an agent, I definitely hit times where I'm beyond stress. I've got like 50 different things I'm doing it. I'm texting this person, calling this person, emailing this person. And everybody always has a little bit of leadway. It should be the same for a contractor. You know, if it starts to become a problem or it's consistent, you have that communication to say, hey, this is starting to become more noticeable. But if it's like one time and they've done 10 projects for you, don't just immediately

jump on it and be like, hey, we need this done like ASAP. Like we're all humans. We've all got a lot going on. So I've noticed like a lot of our contractors really appreciate that. Like if they call us and they're like, hey, we're running into some stuff this week. We're going to be just slightly behind. we apologize. I know 99% of time they're on time. And it's, hey, completely understand, man, let's just keep out of. And here, here's another way to like, you know, going on to helping each

other then, right? Because like Andrew said, it's a team. It's a team effort, right? And you got to treat that way. No one is above nobody here. So, you know, building the relationship is also helping one another grow, right? In business, as a person, in systems, whatever, right? In all those areas. One of the things that we did for, you know, we continue to do is like that Rubin guy, right, the story I shared, that floor guy that took my carpet out and then reinstalled it, who we then ended up doing a ton of business with. Later, we started referring him to our GCs because what sometimes happens, you'll get a bid from a GC. If you're, if you're hiring a GC and they get all the subs, that's one way we're doing it. Sometimes you could be the GC and you find

of subs, right? But in the case where you have a GC and they get their own subs to bid, when we would see a bid and the flooring, let's say it's way higher than what we're used to, as an example, I would say, hey, hey, GC, like, I have a great floor guy that we use, right, on small jobs where we don't need you. How about we get him to give you the bid and let me connect you to? So now I'm connecting the GC to my floor guy that I've done some work with that I know has good pricing and all the sudden my bid from the GC goes down because he's getting a better price from my floor guy. Right. And this is why it's important that everything is itemized because I need transparency, man, like with DC, right? And if we know, you know, I don't, I know you need to

make money. Like I'm not like, period. Like I need you to make money, feed your family. And at the same time, if I can help you save money, then that will save me money as well. in the long run, right? And you can maintain your profit margin. If it's 15% of managing the selves, great. But let's lower that bid, right? So that's something to think about. And then another huge thing that I've seen over the years is connecting some of my investor clients with contractors that I know, right? But also, I've had a, I have had contractors that have done flips for investors, right, where they do the rehab. And some of them are like, man, Randy, like, I wouldn't mind doing those flips myself, like for me. Like, how do I get into this?

So you can turn a contractor friend or relationship into an actual client as an agent, right, where now you're helping them find investor opportunities. Or if you have investor clients and you know them well, which you should as a client, what their struggles are. Some of them will say, it's like, oh, Randy, like, I can't find good contractors. The last one I had just completely went, you know, off the rails. It took three, you know, four months. It was supposed to be two, whatever. Well, now you can connect and recommend maybe a joint venture between the two. So now you have an investor that you know and work with. And now you have a contractor that is now interested in maybe getting into the business, you can connect those two and say, look, you guys might be a good match for each other

because if you and Mr. Investor are good on finding opportunities and you contractor do good work, which I know you do, now there's an opportunity for you guys to have a conversation about a joint venture potentially where you will basically share the profit 50-50, as long as everyone's got their responsibilities laid out, right, correctly. You guys both sign a joint venture agreement. Again, paperwork, protect yourself. But then the contractor does his work at cost, right? You as the investor, you do your work at cost, right? And if you're the investor agent and you're the one selling the property, you do that at cost, very minimal. So then at that point, everybody is trying to basically reach the same goal, which is how to maximize

profit, right? So that's something that I've seen happen over the years where literally a contractor who's got an amazing skill set and does really good work, becomes a partner with the investor and gets in the game. And sometimes they just keep going that way for a long time and they never venture on their own ever again because they can, they can handle multiple projects. The investor partner doesn't have to worry about managing them construction jobs anymore because he's got a business partner who is a contractor. And that could be a beautiful, like long-term partnership, if done correctly. So that's just an idea I want to kind of put out there, plant in your, plant that seed.

Any thoughts on that and any other things on just helping each other, right? Yeah. And I mean, if you want to know that a contractor is not going to do a bad job or overcharge you on something when you're JVing, I mean, obviously know the numbers, but, you know, when you're both trying to increase that profit margin as high as you can, it's, you know, there's incentive for both parties to do the best they can. One of the things I love doing with my GCs, especially the GCs, I've built a really good relationship with, is when I send them or when we're walking properties together or something

like that, I always ask what else they have going on, what other projects they're working on. One, again, they love to talk about what they've got going on. And I truly care to hear what they've got. But if they've got, hey, I'm working on this house in this part of town, you know, this investor purchased it. I always do bring up the fact like, hey, do you know if they have an agent that they tend to use? Do you know if they have an agent that they're playing on listing that property with? And if they say, like, not that I'm aware, I'm always just like, do you want to see if, you know, you can put my name out there? Do you want to see if they would like us to interview for the listing?

And I've gotten a few that way. It's been great because now this contractor that's doing the work and, and I know that they do good work is recommending like, hey, don't know if you have anybody to list the property, but we've always used Eric Gross or we've used him a lot. He's great. If you want that contact, we'd love to get you met, like get a meeting going.

And that's been great for us. We've been able to get listings off that. Our contractors have been able to help us. Then I turn around for that contractor and send them to my agents or I send them to my team or I send them to my investors and I say, hey, this is my contractor. So it goes both ways. We're constantly just passing each other's information off. We're both helping each other grow each other's businesses.

And it's just a great way to kind of add to your business as an agent for sure. Something else we do that I don't know if a lot of agents do or not. We do a lot of shoutouts for our contractors on social media. I don't think a lot of people have done this. I've actually set up social media accounts for some of my contractors who were not social media savvy. So we took the time and built out a social media page for them and then shouted them out. So if you want to talk about like building a relationship with somebody, they love those after the back.

Like, hey, you're marketing. What do you do for social media? They're like, we just don't have time to build that out. It's that awesome? Do you mind if we just take a little bit of time? We'll build you a Facebook business page. We'll make you the admin and everything like that. And then they were able to start getting reviews on there.

They were able to start sharing. They were able to start growing. And now they share our name to everybody they work with. Talking about, you know, creating reciprocity. type arrangement. I mean, that's, you know, that's great, man. Because that's true. Like, it will come back.

If you do things like this and it comes easy to you, then why not, right? With the right people, right? You're not going to do that for everybody you meet, like, every contractor. They're right people. You can spend a little extra time to, you know, but to you, it's nothing. To them, they would sit there for hours try to figure it out, right? Yeah, and it's, we love doing it. We love seeing that park road.

I mean, it's literally to the point with like a lot of our contractors up in Cincinnati, like our son will go with us to showings or to walk properties. And they all know Daniel. They all ask him how he's doing. And Daniel gets like super excited when we get to look at a property that needs work. If we had to show a client a house that's completely fixed up, $600,000 house, he's upset. If I tell him we're going to look at a house that almost burned down,

he's like beyond excited and like overjoyed because he gets to see our contractors and he loves them. Yeah. And just a word of caution with all of this, right? Because you might get to the point like what we're talking about with Andrew and Eric and myself. Well, you really like the contractor. You've had really a good run with them. And then you keep referring them.

And then they could, you know, go off the wagon, right? So I would just always caution every time I would refer. I'm like, look, I'm having a good experience or I've had a good experience or my clients have had a good experience, whatever the case might be. but just say, look, you got to do your own betting. You've got to do your own research. You've got to do your own betting. I would interview two or three, get multiple bids. Don't just go with this one referral that I'm about to give you,

even though I've had a good experience or I've heard good things about them. So I would always, always set that premise because if you don't and something goes wrong, the first thing they're going to do is blame you. They're going to call you and be like, Randy, you refer me to this contractor and he absolutely sucked and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, oh, man. Like so it's a very, it's, I do it with caution when I refer and I make sure when I do, of course, I say all that because I would rather receive a phone call from that client saying, Randy, man, you, you know, I know you, I know you cautioned me. and I vetted, you know, your guy and two other people and, you know, I still liked your guy. But man, he just absolutely sucked.

And I need to tell you this. Don't refer him again. I'd rather get that phone call than then blaming me that it's my fault, right? And if I can tell you, if I don't say that prior to making that referral, it could essentially ruin my relationship. also with my client as well. So not only do I not have a contractor that I will refer anymore, but I also probably lost my client. Right. And it's literally could be. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I just said it could be avoided by just sending the right expectation right from the beginning, you know. Yeah. And I, so I said that expectation with the client. I also let the contractor know that this is one of my clients.

So if I have a good relationship with that contractor, I let them know, like, hey, make sure you take care of Mr. Smith, like make sure that, you know, you go above and beyond. And that's helped too. So far, fingers crossed have not had any of my contractors go out and drop the ball. But I do caution it with that. And then I follow up with the client. And I always just like once I know the work done because I've talked to the contractor or the client just posted on Facebook or something, I follow up with the client.

How was it? Did it meet your expectations? Because it also keeps me top of mind with that client. other point of contact for me or they're like, hey, he was actually awesome. Thanks so much for following up. We appreciate the recommendation and you check it in. Yeah. And then what I would add to do as we come to kind of the end of the discussion,

I want to open up for questions. But what I would say too is as an agent, right, because I operate in both arenas, right? Now more on the agent side and my whole team. So like this client that I got the listing downtown, we sold one of his properties in a 55 and over community in Oceanside a couple months ago. And, you know, his brother used to live there and the brother moved down. And it was just kind of crappy and outdated, you know. So we recommended that we bring in someone and change the carpets and paint, you know, just do some cleanup, right? touch up some stuff in the bathroom, you know, that went a long way for us to get that relationship

and that listing because we knew who we're going to reach out to. We have a couple good kind of handyman type contractors that will do like these small little jobs, right? And boom, this contractor slash handyman went there in two days turned his job around at a really good price. And, you know, we listed that property and our client was, you know, the client paid for it. not me as a realtor, but it was a good price. And the property looked so much better before and after and then we listed it. And because of that experience, we then got a million dollar listing downtown, which is the property where he lives and he's moving to Florida.

So like you can absolutely tap into those relationships, not only with investors, but also with retail clients. Because many sellers have properties that are outdated. and because you're an agent that works with investors, knows contractors, can quickly go and show your value out why you're different than most of the other realtors and say, look, I work with a lot of investors.

And one of the things that I can do is I can come and see, you know, where you might want to be putting in your money potentially. I'm not saying you have to do it, but there might be an opportunity once I see a property that I can recommend a few things that you might want to address at a really good price. This is not retail pricing.

You know, the people that I know will do it at a very good price. And then we can net you more money when we list the property. Is that something that might interest you? And who would say no if they know they have an outdated property that they're about to list with someone? And I'm hoping it's me, you know, that they pick me, right? So it's a way for me to stand out from all the realtors that they're interviewing that might not have those relationships. So they don't even go in that direction. They don't even open up that conversation.

They're just talking about how great they are and how they're going to sell their property as is for the best amount of money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Where here I am telling them, hey, how about we fix this, this, and this. And here, call my guy. Like, who's going to win, you think? Like, it's going to be you, right, if you're that agent with those contacts. So, Eric, have you done that? I'm guessing, too, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, and then it also helps like if you're, you know, if you work with investors, you can let them know, like, hey, I, you know, I can give you a rough idea of what it's going to cost to do fixups. But yeah, we actually in our listing presentation, we have an entire three slides dedicated to just contractors. We have GC subcontractors, flooring, and everything like that. So it's in our listing presentation, we let them know, hey, at any point, if you need one of these, you know, items, if we're not asking for them to make any repairs, we're just say, you know, you can go back and look at this. Have those contractors that you have relationships with, would some of them even wait to get paid at closing? Because I've heard that some agents, you know, are able to even pull that off. I haven't done that.

Yes. So what you do is typically we'll write up an agreement in between the contractor and the client. And it's just delayed. It's just coming out of the proceeds at closing. There's actually some companies that do it as well now. but they provide their own contractors, so that's why we don't use them.

I think like Kirby is one of them, where they'll do the work up front at the cost and that comes out of seller proceeds at the back end. But we definitely have with our contractors, like agreements where, you know, if we have a seller that doesn't have the money to make the repair or do the update, we just get an agreement in place with the contractor know,

hey, as soon as we get this closed in 30, 45 days, you'll get the money from it. Yeah, yeah, that's, another way of really standing out, right, with those clients that you're looking to get the listing from. For more insights and to join the investor agent nation community, visit investor agentnation.com. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star rating to help Randy and Eric continue delivering valuable content that resonates with you. Thanks for listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast.