KGCI: Real Estate on Air - [REWIND] The Deal's NOT DEAD--How Closers Keep Deals from Falling Apart

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

The problem that I see with a lot of the agents that call me is they think something is dead long before it's dead. And I'm like, oh, no, no, we'll figure this out. Let's figure out of well, let's figure out. Let's figure this out. Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the hurt. Be Uncommon. Here are your hosts,

multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Saferight. Hey, friends. Welcome here to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate Podcast with your host, Chris Craddick, myself, Jeff Saferight. Today we are going to be discussing knowing when a deal is actually done. Never count your chickens before they hatch. It's a recipe for disaster, heartburn, headache.

all of the above. So Chris, why don't you jump in and kind of share kind of where, where this is stemming from. I'm sure you've never done this before. So yeah, man, just help us to learn your ways. Sure. So I've said this over and over again. I don't know whether it originates for me or not. I've actually, I've had a lot of people claim, you over here somebody claim a quote that you're like, yeah, you didn't say that. Actually, I've got to tell the story because it was just such an insane story. So, There was a friend of ours that takes a lot of credit for a lot of things. And yeah, when he, we were all having dinner with somebody that was like a mentor.

And so I think he was trying to, you talk himself up. And he was like, you know, I always say that if you're the smartest person in the room, you need to get into a better room. And his wife was like, he comes up with these things all the time that like, I don't know where, how it just comes to his mind that he would come up with something like that. And, you know, all the rest of us are like, I mean, okay, that's whatever. But, but then I was expecting him to just kind of back off and say, oh, you know, it's a common quote, whatever. And he was like, you know, sometimes just moments of genius hit me.

And I say things like that. And I was like, oh, boy. All right. So anyway, I don't, I want to do everything I can. And again, I now I sound like the douchey guy judging his friend. So, yeah, now, great. I'm sorry. I mean, I wasn't really a now thing, bro.

Yeah. Fair enough. Just kidding. Fair enough. I ran across that. I ran across that friend the other day, actually. So it's funny that you tell the story. That's interesting. Yeah. So, oh, I forgot that. Yeah. We haven't. All right. But one of the quotes that I say all the time, I don't know whether it's mine or not, but again, originality is forgetting who you stole it from is everything is figureoutable. Right. Everything is figure outable. And that's, the crazy, that's the mindset you need to come at deals with. And so that you can figure it out. And so I'll give an example right now. I was, I get a call. So what I end up doing most of the day is when agents on the team are having issues with something, they give me a call and I end up helping put out fires. I help solve problems, which I really love doing. I feel like that's in my genius zone is to solve problems. But the problem that I see with a lot of the agents that call me is they think something is dead long before it's dead. And I'm like,

oh, no, no, no, we'll figure this out. Let's figure out. Let's figure out. And so I'll give an example. Two weeks ago, I get a call from one of my buddies. And she was saying, hey, we were buying, we're buying this house with, with a client. It's got a solar panel on it. And essentially, the client's already underwater. He has to bring $2,500 to the table. But because he's late on the solar panel payments, he cannot, the bank will not allow them to transfer this loan to a new name. So essentially, it's a debt deal. And I said, well, let's call the bank about the solar panels. And so we call and for 20 minutes, we're talking to the rep and the reps, you know, the rep's job is to say no. And so I actually had the privilege of being mentored by a guy who was one of the senior aides in the Reagan administration.

So he was a much older guy. And he had said to me one time, the first time I met with him, I still remember meeting with him and his wife in their living room. And he said, hey, Chris, here's the deal. Lower tier people, people that are not at the top, it's their job to say no. They're the gatekeepers. The upper tier people, it's their job to say yes and figure out how to get stuff. stuff done. And that's also why they became top tier people. And so you always want to talk to the top tier people. But here's the lesson. If you ever asked the lower tier person for something and they say no,

and then you go to the top tier person, then they have to decide, do I help the customer or do I back up my person? Right? Because if I say, if they said no, and then you go over their head and then they say, oh, let me do what my person told me no on, then you're in trouble. And that's why, you know, Karen's go to the managers and all the other stuff because the managers can do stuff. So there's kind of the joke in our society. With that said, I just kept asking to speak to the manager over and over and over and over and again, like over and over and over again. And what the manager ended up saying was, or what the person said was no, no, no, no.

And literally finally, I was just like, come on, isn't there any way you can get us to the person that's the decision maker? and she said, you know what, she actually just walked in the office right now. Let me get you on the phone with her. And the agent on the team, literally I just kept asking the same question. And the person kept saying, no. And at one point she said, I feel like you're not hearing me. I keep saying no.

And I'm like, oh, I totally understand what you're saying. I guess the question I'm asking is, is there somebody that can talk that can say yes? And she was like, what? Are you getting me? And so we just kept going. And then the senior VP of the bank got on the phone with me and I was able to talk to the senior VP. Now, I still end up getting a no on that.

And so actually we're now under contract with that same house. It's now a short sale. So it's not dead. It just became a short sale. And we found another way to do it. But by asking the question and continuing to not take no for an answer and asking it different ways, we're able to go all the way up to food chain and say, you know, is it dead here? If it's dead here, okay, let's go to the next decision maker. Let's go to the next decision maker.

Let's figure this out. And the last thing I'm going to say is this because I've just been talking so much. And then I'm sure Jeff has just a lot of great things is that there's a book called the go getter, which every single person like on your phone, on your computer, wherever you're listening right now, Google it, the go getter at PDF. and it's like 69 pages. And the first handful of pages will be like, what am I reading here?

But then you read through it and you realize, oh my gosh, I need to be a go-getter. And this book came to me from a mentor of mine who grew up in a trailer park, joined the Air Force,

started the satellite business, sold the satellite business for a gazillion of dollars. He kept 25% of the business that bought him. And then that business resold, which sold for way more than his 75% sold for.

But the way that he created that company, he said this was the key to his company. He said every single person that started had to read the book, the go getter. We gave it to every single person and we quizzed them on it because every single person need to see themselves as a go getter. And if they weren't somebody that figures out problems and goes and gets the job done, then they weren't right for our company. And that was that was this. So that's the key to figuring out problems.

And we'll get more into. some of these here in just a second and I'll start talking through some of the strategies I use. But Jeff, you have some thoughts on this? Yeah, I mean, I guess, I mean, there's a lot of different contexts, right? So you're dealing with a bank trying to get a loan to to sell a house. You know, oftentimes agents deal with it with clients, right? With clients that are asking and maybe even sometimes demanding too much. And there's so many different directions that you can go, I guess, with this reality. I'll share one that we're about to list the house on. You know, I got the, I got the lead.

I got the information on the lead. You know, it was a situation they needed to sell the house in 20 days or less. They had to have a cash deal. They wanted, you know, top market value for it. And I don't know. It was just a very, in a very unappealing neighborhood, I guess. So all the odds were stacked against us. I talked to the client.

The client tells me everything that she wants. And to be honest, I just flat out told her, I said, you know, I do a lot of creative financing things. I told her, I was like, look, what you're asking for, like, I love the impossible. But what you're asking for is probably it's not really possible in this route, right? And I could have at that point just shut down, right? And to some degree I did, right? So I got off the phone with her. I shared some things.

I got a phone with her. I called our inside sales guy. And I said, look, this is a dead lead. I just, I really don't know what to do with it. And then the next day I got back on the phone, I call her again. And I explained here, here's what we can do. And I started talking creative finance. I started talking about different options and ways that she could do it.

It was that she wanted to do. And by simply providing different options, it got her to open up and start talking more about her situation. And oftentimes, I think that's one of the keys is you got to, you know, when you're dealing with sellers especially, they're not giving you all their information up front. And if you simply go by the information that you're getting up front to determine whether or not this is a warm lead, a good lead or a, you know, cold lead, dead lead, you're giving, you know, you're, you're shooting yourself in the foot, I guess, right? And so we, we discussed seller carryback. We discuss sub two options.

We just, we do discuss real quick. As you're talking seller carryback, what does that mean? As you understand as you understand the different tools that are in the tool belt and we're going to go through some of these in a second, you understand different options that you have. So what can you say what does seller carryback mean? What does sub two mean? Absolutely. Yeah.

So seller carryback is essentially owner financing, seller financing, right? So they're going to carry the equity and you're going to pay that equity out over time more often than not, you can give them more money than what a traditional sell could give them because it's spread out over time, just depending on the terms and how you set that up. That's for another podcast or another episode. So we'd love to do that at some point, but that opened up. Then I started talking about sub two. A sub two is where the mortgage stays in their name, right? But you take over the deed and you start paying off that mortgage for them, even though it stays in their name. It's subject to the current mortgage in place. So we talked about that. We talked about that. We

talked about some different options. We talked about why, you know, she was getting mad at wholesalers and cash buyers because they're offering 60 to 70 cents on the dollar. I explained why they were doing that, right? As we talk about those things, she starts telling me her story and come to find out, like, she didn't want to tell us this in the beginning. I don't really know why, but, you know, she has a new bill. She's about to buy, you know, they, you know, they were supposed to close in in 30 days, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, come to find out, like I said, you know, I talked to her, the new development company, right, that's doing the new construction.

We, you know, assured them that we were going to work through and that we were going to get the house sold. I explained the options. Originally, we thought we were going to do a hybrid of a sub two and seller carryback, but I still couldn't find anyone to, I couldn't find an investor that quite wanted to do that. But by doing that, I gained her trust. we call the new construction company they start working with us now we're going to actually list oh one other thing i forgot to tell you they had a tenant in there that has a lease for two more

years right and they were afraid to tell the tenant well i spoke with the tenant we we made a deal with the tenant so the tenant is moving out we're going to be listing the house in the next two weeks they're going to sell it traditionally because that just it ultimately works out best for them my point is I literally called our inside salesperson and told them this was a dead lead. I said, man, this lady is one of the, she's super closed off, but she's so nice. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do for. And within, you know, 36 hours, well, not what, 72 hours, three days, we had a game plan on place and we're about to list of property. Love it.

love it. So what I want to do with the rest of the time here is throw out the objection that looks like it's a dead deal or looks like it's headed towards a bridge out train wreck and say what would you do here and then talk about what we did and then some of it worse than some of it doesn't. So the first one I want to bring up is one that Jeff and I worked on together and it's right now still in the process of being figured out. But I think the way that the contract was adjusted that the seller signed was genius. And it solved almost all the problems. NetRet now just for full disclosure and full transparency right now,

the seller is a little bit upset about the fact that she's just nervous and upset about the transition. So hopefully everything will continue to go well, but that's where we are. So here, let me paint the picture real quick. Jeff Winton met with a seller. She has over 100 acres, has a house that's beat up, owes like no money on the house, and essentially has bought a truck that had a number of months with no payments in it whatsoever. And then all of a sudden payments were about to be due. And so, you know, the property could be subdivided in the 15 acre parcels.

And there's one house on it. Well, she was nervous about moving out of the area, right? Like she wanted to stay kind of where she was forever and didn't want to. So she was like, can I stay in the house? But I also need enough money to be able to live for life, all the other pieces. So, and I love this property. So I'd love to stay here if possible. So each of the parcels, you know, can be subdivided into 15 acres.

And so what would you do? Let's just think about it. Well, what we proposed or what was proposed to her for a sale and it was sold to an investor, right, was. Jack, do you want to just share like what the proposal was that fit her needs? We're talking about the end product, the end proposal? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure. So, so essentially what we ended up offering because the lady, you know, she feels very strongly tied to the land, not to get into too many deep deals, but she's, you know, she's, she's a widow. And she just feels very tied to the land. And so unfortunately, she's at a place where I think she's about $1,500 to $2,000 a month deficit in her, in her spending, which Chris talked about. So she needed the money. She owns the land free and clear.

So at the end of the day, what we did is we offered to purchase the land at a little bit of a discount, but that discount came with a caveat that she would get life rights to 15 acres of the land. And that 15 acres of 15 acres of her choosing. So she gets to choose which acreage or which 15 acres of that 100 and I think it's 103 acres. She gets to choose what 15 acres she wants. She's going to be able to build a, she's going to put a like, a tiny home or a or a barn dominium on that on that piece of land. And then so she has so she's going to have a life rights and she's now going to have a pot of cash in the bank that she can

draw off of every month and invest otherwise. You know, she's free to do with the money how she, you know, how she chooses. But that's that's the ultimate deal. Right. Yeah. And it gave her more flexibility and freedom because now she, if she's not staying in the house, she can get more money. and that money will then give her the time to get through what she needs to get through. This is a case of, I would say because, you know, I have another, you know, scenario that I could share. We're doing another kind of a, we're doing an ovation on another property. I spoke with them about a year, year and a half ago.

I just told them we couldn't give them what they wanted, right? We stayed patient and now we're actually, we just got a contract. We're signing it today. But I say that to say like that one. I was patient on and we're getting it, I think, 15 months later, this one, this land deal that we're talking about, I almost did the same thing there because she was so tied to the land, but I knew that her reality in her situation wouldn't allow her to stay on the land. Right.

Like she's negative $2,000 a month in her budget. She couldn't get a job. She's, you know, she's got a lot of just extra factors going on. I could have just stepped back for six months, nine months, maybe a year, who knows what it would have been. before the bank would have, you know, whoever would have come calling for the land. But instead, we started talking creatively about different options. And when we presented the life rights option where she could actually stay on the land, like, you know, my favorite part of that transaction, which I know, you know, she's got a lot of

nervousness and she's got a lot of hesitation and anxiety still as the transaction goes through. But you remember, you know, I think you were there, Chris, when we talked about the life rights, We talked about the 15 acres and where she could put it. And the light bulb just went off in her head that we had just fixed her problems, right? And she was going to be able to get everything she wanted and the money that she needed. And like she was just so in that moment, she was so stoked, so happy. And it was like the weight of the world was lifted off of her shoulders for a period of time. And please understand the people that make the most money are the ones that solve the best problems, right?

And the bigger the problem is the bigger the paycheck. So you think about like the like a digital. digger. You need a ditch, Doug. I mean, that's a small problem. And so it's a small paycheck. You, you know, and I mean, maybe more work, but figuring it out, figuring out problems, you know, that might be an intellectual lift. But as you find a place for somebody to live and also have cash rest of their life, that is a bigger problem and go from there. So we were asked, what are the terms? So barn dominium. So if you look it up, it's, it's taking like an old barn and turning a, it into a condominium. It's a fairly cheap turnover compared to other compared to buying a house.

So that's what that means. You can do it that way. You can also do, you know, for those, I'm from the country. So we're very familiar with Morton buildings. If you know what a Morton building is, is basically like a new metal barn. And they and they build out basically a condo or or an apartment inside of the bar, inside of the, the metal building. Right, right. Novation, and we can talk about some of the creative financing. Novation is when an investor, which if you are an agent, you better be an investor. If you're not an investor, I'm just going to say this. Shame on you, shame on you, shame on you. Find a way to be an investor. If you find a good deal, find a way to work with somebody, bring somebody with cash in on the deal, whatever. But a Novation essentially guarantees somebody a price for a property. It's like a cash offer, but you're able to sell it to somebody. else. So it's kind of like a wholesale, but it gives the seller piece of mind. It's not a net listing. Net listings are illegal in almost all states. It's from an investment company, which you can use your own investment company on it. But we'll spend a lot of time working on that going forward.

You know, we'll talk through sub to Novation, you know, all of those different pieces, rap mortgages, ways that you can solve problems because that's one of the ways that we can solve problem. So, I mean, I'll just share real quick. You know, I've got a deal right now. in enrichment. It's a commercial, it's a nine-unit deal in Richmond, Virginia. And I've got a guy that sold his, or sold a piece of his company. He has 10 million bucks. He's got to spend this money for tax reasons on real estate so he can, you know, mitigate his tax bill. If you don't know what a cost segregation is, Google that. You should use that as a real estate professional. You should use that. It'll help you build your net worth and pay the government less money

and a legal way that doesn't end up in an orange jumpsuit. And so essentially, he's putting down a million dollars on this property and taking 1.65. And so he's paying 2.65. He's slightly overpaying, probably maybe slightly overpaying, but the sellers are willing to do a seller carry or owner financing at 5% interest for five years. So all of a sudden, that slight overpayment becomes a really good deal because he's paying 3% less interest than he would pay if he were getting bank money.

And it makes the deal work. Right. And so that's where you can use these things where it looked like there was no deal here. But then when we brought in a seller financing piece at a lower than market interest, the sellers are going to get about $80,000 a year in interest. right so they're still going to be making money on this property the buyer's going to buy it and not have to get bank loan at way too high of an interest rate to make the deal work the deal work and it's literally the equivalent of a win-win on every scenario yeah oh man we didn't even get

into i've got like three or four others that i really wanted to talk about where it looked like they would be dead deals but we came up with as something like this the win-win and now we're we're at the end of the the hour. So I think we're due for a kind of a, maybe a creative series in different ways to create options for for deals that look dead. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we do that over the next couple,

couple weeks, maybe the next month is a creative series. And we'll go over what is a sub two? What is a novation? What is a rap? What is a seller carries? And we can walk through all of those assumable mortgage. all of those pieces. Some of it may be one-on-one-level stuff, but honestly, if you know that you can use different tools to solve different problems, then you're a winner, right? Like, I just

bought a little mini-bike, a little dirt bike at Lowe's, right? I went in to buy a battery for my weed whacker, and I am not an impulse buyer, and I walked out with a mini-buck, you know, like this little tiny dirt bike. And the interesting thing, I know, like, I am not an impulse buyer. That is not me at all. And I literally didn't buy the battery and I bought a dirt bike, which is crazy. But when I had to put it together, all my tools in our house, I haven't still set out my tools correctly. So I'm still trying to figure out where all my tools were. And so I'm using the wrong tool to try to screw in.

It just was a nightmare. But when you have the right tools, all of a sudden, just everything is easier. So yeah, let's do that over the next. four weeks. We'll do a creative series, talk about the tools, and hopefully that'll be a good win. And in the meantime, if anybody has anything that you need on any of these issues, please just reach out on DM at CrowdRive. Jeff, I know you're giving out your number. And Jeff, I mean, Jeff is awesome. When it comes to crafting creative deals, that is, I mean, I'll tell you, I think that's his wheelhouse. And he does really, really well with that. Actually, there was an agent on our team that had one that needed to be

needed like the deal was going to go away. And she called me and I was like, oh man, call Jeff split the deal with Jeff. He'll figure out, you know, it wasn't supposed to be a creative deal. And then it turned out, turned into it. And then sure enough, Jeff told me this morning, you know, he got on the phone, figured out how to be creative and just put it together. So anyway, Jeff, go ahead and take us home. Awesome. Yeah. I would just encourage you, you know, learn all the different tricks of the trade. First, and not even just for your own deals, because as an agent, the more you know about all the different options, the more investors are going to be attracted to you as an agent as well. And listen, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to skim you a little bit off the top, right?

They're investors. They're deal makers. They're not going to pay your full 6%. But you get the right investors and you will get a lot of, a lot of opportunity. And it would be well worth it. So so many different reasons to learn all these options. I'm kind of excited now to do this over the next couple months or weeks, whatever it turns out to be. So anyways, this does conclude another episode of your uncommon real estate with your host, Chris Craddick, myself, Jeff Saferite.

Listen, wherever you're at, listening to this podcast, you know where you are. Go there. Give us a review. Give us a one star, three star, five star, or whatever's in between there. Leave us a review. Let us know what it is that you have questions about where you're struggling, how we can help you level up. And we'll be sure to do that because that's what we're here for. In fact, we'll be back same time, same place, doing it live next week.

If you want to join us, until then, continue crushing it. Have a great day. Bye. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to Chris Craddock.com.

I'm