Success Story: How A Home Seller Turned $0 to $70,000

We have a quick success video. We haven’t done one of these videos in a while. Sometimes we do these on Wednesdays and this video is just a quick little case study in how we got a seller $70,000 when they thought they were going to get nothing. Again, I know real estate is tough because you can’t get into tons of details. You can kind of tell what’s going on a little bit. You can’t get into tons and tons of details because there are obviously people involved. Their names were involved, a lot of financial stuff’s involved so you can’t get into an incredible amount of information. But I’m trying to give you an overarching view of what’s going on and even while I’m going through this, we don’t, you know, try to plan these things out too, too much other than “Hey, what topic are we going to talk about?”

So you might even see me and hear me stumble, mumble a little bit because I’m trying to piece together my head and basically kind of, you know, what can I say and if I even think I can at all, but I’ll probably step back and scale back a little bit. So, again, just want to kind of walk through this. We haven’t done a video like this in a while. So what ended up happening, we had a seller and this is something unique that we’re doing now, just our real estate team and partnering with real estate investors of ours and in different advisers, in different vendors that we have, different business partners. What we have done is in essence really kind of created our own little niche of, you know, again in the investment world you might hear called “wholesaling” sometimes. Then, you know, you hear it in the business world just in general. You hear again just partnering with somebody, our business partner and we’re kind of doing a combination of all those things. In real estate and you hear sometimes “distressed properties” and things like that.

It’s Always About What the Sellers Need

Well, we’ve run into a number of issues with homeowners and they’re dealing with properties that there’s distress on them. There are liens on them, they’re going to probate, there might have to foreclose as a possible short sale. There’s, you know, the city coming down on them. There are assessments, whatever it may be, there is, if you know the right people, then there are ways around things. There’s creativity. Its real estate’s one of the coolest things out there because there’s limitless creativity that you can impart on a transaction and things you can do to help homeowners, to help people, to help buyers and sellers, whatever it may be. What we do in essence is we’re taking a lot of those homeowners, a lot of those potential sellers and this case, for instance, it’s a lady that lives down the road from us and from the office here and she has a beautiful home she lives in, but she has a situation that is not the best in the world. She has some family issues going on and she has a situation where she has a land contract and it’s just not a great situation. She’s trying to figure out what to do and ultimately, you know, there are payments not being made on the property for about two years of back taxes, all these different issues going on.

So as a general real estate agent, 99.9% of agents walk in and they have no idea what to do. They can’t do anything and quite frankly, that was me for a number of years. That was me for a while. I came from the investing world. I transitioned into realty and really focus on that for three or four years and just in the last while, the last couple year or two, really been able to focus back on the investing side and get into, you know, “Hey, where is the opportunity? Where is the ability to help more people?” Before I walk in, most agents, almost every agent walks in and they just had the mindset of putting a sign on the ground, trying to get the best price for what it’s going to sell for and going through a marketing program, talking commission, and then you know, “Okay, let’s go sell the thing. Hopefully, that works in the retail market.”

“One Size Fits All” Doesn’t Do Much

Quite frankly, that just does not work all the time. There are certain situations where that just doesn’t work and not every seller wants that recipe. There’s not a “one size fits all” for a home seller, for a homeowner. There are many different things that go into it. One of the biggest things that we try to do, going into a situation like that is asking “What are your biggest priorities? What is your ‘why?’ Why are you doing this? Why are you selling?” Once we kinda get that out of somebody, then there’s a lot of times you had to go a couple levels deep. You got to go one, two, three levels deep or more in order to get that, what the true purpose is for why they’re selling and what their actual needs are. Once we know those things, then we literally go and I can now go with the partners I’ve developed over the years and it really the last year to being able to step back from the business a little bit and start working on the business that has in the business so much. You know, we’re very fortunate to have a handful of agents on our team that is unbelievable at what they do and they can go and show a property and go on a lot of appointments and it gives.

The business owner gives me the ability to really gain plan and business plan and develop systems and processes and train my people more. It gives us the ability to serve more people at a higher level. So in doing that, the last year or so I’ve been able to kind of pick my head up out of the mud a little bit and in the craziness of everyday life and be able to gain plans so now we can serve more people. People we met with initially, instead of wasting their time and just saying “Oh it’s going to be this or that” and just putting a sign on the ground now and “Well, it priced a little bit less because you got some issues there.” Well now we’re getting them money when they never thought they were getting money and we’re getting them out of situations and in better terms, terms that they like and more favorable for them than they ever thought they were going to get.

That’s what I’ve been able to do now doing that. So it’s unbelievable when you put other people in the right place to succeed. What can happen, right? I couldn’t do this by myself. I wouldn’t be able to. I didn’t do. I wasn’t able to do for years because I was just thinking very, very small, very small minded, really truly in essence. So how can I get with other people and use their experience and use their professionalism truly and their expertise to get a problem solved for other people and for other home sellers?

There Is Always The Best Option To Suit Your Needs

So what we did was this lady was in a bad spot. She thought she was gonna get nothing for the home. She’s just going to lose it to the tax auction. She was just going to lose it to the person in her home and she wasn’t getting anything. By knowing people who know people and other creative solutions, we’re able to devise a plan over a couple of week period where we give a base of letterhead and it lays out the different options that we can present to a home seller. You know, we can go sell it to the retail market and that public just through the MLS. We can give you a cash offer for the home. We can give you a seller finance. Maybe you want to do seller financing and make interest on the loan for the next 6 months or 3 months or 18 months or whatever it may be, you know, what kind of solutions can we provide to you to get you out of a bad situation and get money in your pocket, make the terms more favorable for the seller instead of, you know, “Hey, another buyer’s coming in.” Maybe getting a price that you didn’t want and then you’re not getting the terms that maybe you want either.

This gives you the options. You’re getting a letterhead basically, a menu of options that you can pick from, you can choose from and say “Yes, that looks like to the best to me.” Ask questions about it. What does that entail? How does that work? What does it mean for me? Pick which option is best for you and you’d be surprised. A vast majority of people that we would walk into in situations like this, people that I couldn’t help before, people that 99% of agents can’t help. You’d be surprised at what people pick. The vast majority of the time they’re picking some creative option. They’re not picking, you know, “Put a sign on the ground, Brandon and go put the property on MLS.” That’s generally not what’s happening. It’s generally, you know, “Hey, I love that cash offer and close in 7 to 10 days, 7 to 14 days or”Hey, I’ll do seller financing. I would love to make some interest payments, get the property off my plate and make some interest and then get my lump sum in a year or whatever we did agree on.”

Tailored-Fit Solutions

So again, it’s providing solutions and options for people, creative options. I think the one thing, the reason that real estate agents and politicians and used car salesmen, all these people have such a bad reputation is because they were coming in and they’re not listening to you and they’re just hammering, hammering and hammering you with their solution, with what they think is the best solution for you. But what do we know? We know that people want to buy things. They want to select and choose what they’re going to do. They don’t want to be sold. I don’t want to be sold. I want to have options. I want to choose what I’m adding to my cart before I check out. I don’t want to be told “This is what needs to be done” and that’s it. I want to see all the options and I want to make my own choice for myself, my family, and that’s how everyone feels and that’s where this game is.

That’s where real estate is changing immensely. It’s going to change a ton. You see Blockchain, all these different things coming into the business, all the tech, AI, VR, all these things are disrupting the business like crazy and the people that can rise to the top and provide the most value to the most amount of people at the highest level are going to win. That is it. Because that’s what the consumer wants, that’s what consumers deserve. That’s what I want. I want that, as a business owner who’s doing things like this, who has a business doing this, I want to be served a certain way so we need to serve those people in a certain way and you’re going to see more and more and more of this as time goes on. Right now we’re fortunately in a niche where I’m really, you know, sitting there, looking, you know, who can I put in the place, in the right place to get these things done and solve these problems for these people because I just saw way too many people over the years where we really couldn’t help them. We weren’t in a place to help them at that time and now we have systems and solutions to get those problems solved for those people and then they can move on, move to the next chapter, like crossed those goals off. They had one, two, three, seven, nine goals wherever they had, wherever their why was, crossed those off, get what they need, the money, the stress-free living, whatever it is and get it and move forward on the next chapter of their life.

So that is one of our success stories, again, can’t get into too much detail, but I wanted to give you an overview of basically what we’re doing and what a simple case study of what we just did in the last week, what is happening and what can be done if you get the right creative solutions, right people in place. So I appreciate you guys for your time and attention for listening. It’s the most important thing that we have. You can’t get any more time, so I appreciate your time and attention listening to us and spending with us. Humbled and honored for that and we will see you very soon.