Bill Manassero, of the Old Dawg’s REI Network, talks with Josh Miller on how he got started in real estate investing, what wholetailing is, investing in crypto, how to find the right zip codes and distressed property owners, and more!
In this podcast (see video below), Josh, Founder and CEO of GoForClose, reveals how he built up his REI business, buying properties at a discount, the lessons he learned, and how he created the only all-inclusive marketing agency for real estate investors and wholesalers.
2:00 – Intro
3:22 – Josh’s Story, from Corporate to Real Estate Investing
15:00 – Using Data to Find Distressed Property Owners
19:14 – Getting a Cash Flow out of Crypto
22:29 – Deciding What to Do with Your Properties (i.e., a Disposition Strategy)
24:23 – Wholetailing vs. Wholesaling vs. Flipping
25:22 – Who is a “Distressed Property Owner”
26:25 – 30,000 New Investors a Month (Saturated Markets)
30:56 – Data Mining to Find Distressed Property Owners
32:24 – Finding the Right Zip Codes
34:10 – GoForClose for Investors and Wholesalers
36:31 – Figure Out What You Want
39:50 – Josh’s Biggest Mistake in REI
41:23 – Josh’s Biggest Success in REI
42:28 – Josh’s Advice for Established Investors Nearing Retirement
51:06 – “Wrap It Up” Lightning Round
Listen to the Old Dawg’s REI Network below.
The Old Dawg’s Real Estate Investor Network is an investor podcast founded and hosted by Bill Manassero. Bill hosts various real estate investing professionals to discuss tips, tricks, and techniques in the industry, with an audience of listeners, 50 years of age and older, who are motivated to increase their cash flow for their retirement years.
https://youtu.be/xT_Nd7GFtk0
1. The Best Advice for Real Estate Investors and Wholesalers Starting Out
Do what you’re good at. This sounds cliché, but think of it this way: if you’re a natural at sales and a people-person, but you struggle with marketing, then be a salesman and outsource someone to market to leads for you.
Maybe you’re a better marketer than a salesperson, like Josh. Josh was good at data and marketing, but not sales, acquisitions, or dispositions, so he outsourced people to handle those tasks that were not in his skill set. As a result, Josh has bought and sold hundreds of properties and held 120 rentals in his portfolio, but only spoken to two property owners.
It is always better to stay in your lane and outsource areas of your business you’re not comfortable with or are less proficient. This way, you don’t feel overwhelmed or lose sales opportunities because you’re spread too thin.
2. Wholetailing vs. Wholesaling vs. Flipping
Wholesaling is when you get the property under contract, and you find another investor who will buy that contract. Wholetailing is when you actually close on the property, and then you relist the property. The only difference between wholetailing and flipping is that (with flipping) you fix up the property yourself and make repairs on your dime. With wholetailing, at the very least, you may do a trash sweep and pressure wash, but you do not make repairs or renovations.
3. Does Investing in Bitcoin or Crypto Work?
Yes, and there are several ways you can make it work for you. Josh loans crypto out to companies and earns interest back. Success varies, depending on how aggressive you want to be. Josh is conservative, between 6% and 8%.
However, what needs to be understood is that crypto and bitcoin are not where you “make your money.” Josh makes his money in real estate and keeps it passive in crypto.
4. What is the best method for finding distressed homeowners?
Data is key. Lists are available through third-party sites, like ProStream and ListSource, but those lists are free to all subscribers. Over a thousand investors subscribe to those lists a day, which means 30,000 investors saturate the market a month. That’s a lot of competition.
GoForClose goes a step further in compiling a motivated homeowner list. In addition to the data gathered by PropStream, ListSource, and others, we scrape websites for county records, probates, pre-foreclosures, water shutoffs, and other unique data sets, then skip trace names, numbers, and addresses to ensure deliverability. We also use prediction models, inputting demographics and property characteristics, to determine what a distressed property owner looks like. We then compare our predictions against those data points on motivated sellers to determine who will sell soon and sell to an investor.
Our motivated homeowner lists are market-exclusive. This means one list per market per investor – or to put it simply: first come, first serve. This way, the value of our list is preserved, and the investor who chances to get it has information that is exclusively available to them, giving them the advantage over the competition.
5. What’s the Best Way to Choose a Market?
Find the right zip code. Before you even go about finding distressed homeowners, the best thing you can do is find the right zip code. Think of it like a needle in a haystack: when you find the right zip code, you make the haystack a lot smaller.
GoForClose has a new, exciting tool that helps you find the hottest zip codes where cash buyers are buying. You can identify those areas where absentee owners and distressed property owners are and market directly to them, or you can let us handle the marketing for you.
Josh created GoForClose to “stop reinventing the wheel.” He wants fellow real estate investors and wholesalers to achieve the same success he did. We make it possible for real estate investors nationwide to access high-quality data, marketing, and people at an affordable rate.
If you have questions or are curious to know more, request a free consultation below.