Tax Lien Investing and Land Banking with Sean Walker, Response #DDRE37

Sean Walker is an experienced real estate investor that has done thousands of flips using strategies including land banking and tax liens. He’s strategically used data to grow his business over the years, even when it involved painfully combing through microfiche data with a pen and paper. Learn how Sean selects the areas to invest, strategies he's deployed, what he's doing today, and how he's used data to uncover the opportunity.

Get your questions answered on the upcoming show by posting your questions in our community: https://bit.ly/ddre-37

00:00​ The Data Driven Real Estate Podcast Welcomes Sean Walker of Response.com
02:02​ Sean's unusual path into real estate investing
07:16​ Over 3,500 tax lien and $30 million in tax lien investing and what made it possible (hint: data!)
10:00​ Example of costly mistakes in data
12:24​ Land banking, timing, and sourcing land
14:11​ Seller financing land for investors and consumers
18:24​ Data clues in identifying potential markets to invest
20:54​ Desperate for data, Sean's plan to get more to avoid costly land mistakes and speed up drive-bys
22:22​ From microfiche to today, how the data game has changed
30:50​ What data are they looking at to decide on which property is a good investment
30:50​ What data does Sean look at in a down cycle like the Great Recession
33:19​ The mistake investors make with CAP rates
42:18​ How does Sean explore other markets for investments and not in his backyard?
43:44​ The 100 tiny home project with containers
53:12​ Ways to build relationships with money investors
57:37​ The painful past of data curation, microfiche, and messy public records collection

Episode Transcript

Aaron Norris (00:06):
Welcome back to the Data Driven Real Estate
Podcast, the podcast for realestate professionals dedicated
to driving business using data.
I'm Aaron Norris, along withSean O'Toole of PropertyRadar,
and this is episode 37. Today wehave Sean Walker. This week we
cover a lot of different topicsfrom tax liens, to land banking,
to small villages of Tiny Homes.
Sean has been in the industryfor over 20 years and has used

(00:28):
data in very creative ways tomake deals happen at all
different times of the market,often very contrarian, you won't
want to miss this week. Welcomeback to the Data Driven Real
Estate Podcast today we are veryfortunate to have Sean Walker.
Sean, thank you for joining uson the program.

Sean Walker (00:44):
Thanks, Aaron.

Aaron Norris (00:45):
What keeps you really excited about real estate
in 2021?

Sean Walker (00:49):
Well, you know, you see a lot of different
economists out there, especiallyones that are in the real estate
industry, whether they're withthe National Association of
Realtors, that, that paint asunny picture no matter what the
markets doing. And there's a lotof different data out there to
track. But quite frankly, Ithink we have another tsunami

(01:11):
coming, I don't think we canavoid it at this point. I don't
think a lot of those smallbusinesses are coming back for
people to, once they come out offorbearance, the investors and
the secondary market are goingto say foreclose, they won't
have a choice financially, theycan't keep stringing it out
forever. So, I think there's alot of opportunities. And I know

(01:31):
a lot of the big hedge funds,the invitation homes out there,
they're saving up their drypowder to hit the market. I
think for the individualinvestor, it's time to really
get your ducks in a row, gatheryour financial resources, and
start building capital, whetherthat's private investor
partners, or whatever resourcesyou have available and make sure

(01:54):
you have good clean data goinginto this next wave. So, you're,
you are ahead of the pack onthat hunt, if that makes sense.

Aaron Norris (02:01):
All right.

Sean O'Toole (02:02):
I want to back up just a tad. I flew out to your,
to your offices in Utah. Andthat was on Andrew Cordell's
"Money Is" show, which is in thesame building. And, you know,
and was really impressed by allthe different things your

(02:24):
company has going on. And, youknow, and, and, you know,
there's clearly an educationcomponent, you're, you know, a
prolific podcaster and, or Iguess, really webinar host,
maybe it's better way to putthat. And then just lots of
interesting projects from TinyHome developments to all kinds

(02:47):
of stuff. And then you have thisincredible background of tax
sale liens and single-familyhome and land development deals.
And the rest. Just walk usthrough what your, what you're
doing today. And, you know,Aaron does provide a background,

(03:08):
but I want to just talk about ita little bit.

Sean Walker (03:10):
Oh, yeah, no, thanks. We, you know, my
background, I kind of fell intoreal estate investing. I was
started a little mortgagecompany with a good friend of
mine, we quit our corporate jobsin '98. And we just started a
little mortgage company, we justfigured it out. And that's back
before they had the currentlicensing requirements that they

(03:31):
have now. So, it's pretty easyto get involved back then. But
we were professionals, welearned the trade and the craft
and built up that client base.
And in the client base, westarted noticing that there are
people that would just get introuble. People that would, you
know, lose their jobs, orthere'd be divorce, they'd be
people that would need to getrelocated for their job. And we

(03:53):
were just referring all thatbusiness out to our realtor
friends saying, oh, here's a fewrealtors that may help you
liquidate your property and helpyou relocate to your new market.
And about you know, three orfour years into the business
that had been our standardpractice. But one of our clients
who had been divorced, his headsaid, You know what, I've met

(04:17):
with your Realtor friend thatyou sent over. She called back a
few days later, and he wants meto do all this fix up. I'm a
single mom with three kids under10. I'm getting remarried. I
can't do it. And, and she goes,why don't you and your partner
just buy my house and make anice little rent on she started
telling us how much we couldmake with the rental. Right?
Like I, there's a lot of nicerentals in this area. It's very

(04:39):
clean. The house isn't verytrashed. I mean, the kids have
been hard on the paint. Thecarpets gotta go. I'll just give
...

Sean O'Toole (04:47):
...make money off me.

Sean Walker (04:48):
Yeah. And she, well she she didn't want to go into
the new marriage with any debtor an obligation of a payment
with her new husband, which Ithought was admirable. You know,
so she wasn't looking for sugardaddy, per se. But she goes,
'Well, I'll just give it to youfor what I owe on it'. And so, I
was kind of patronizing, to behonest with you. I just said,
'Oh, that's nice. Well, let usconsider that'. And I did the

(05:12):
first time I'd ever thoughtabout investing in real estate
for myself, other than mypersonal property. And so, I
hung up the phone, I looked overat my partner who sat about 10
feet away from me. And I said,'Hey, do you want to buy a
rental property?' And he goes,'I don't know, can we make any
money?' I said, 'I don't know'.
But what we weren't good withwas, was math, in our, in
spreadsheets. And we store anamortization schedules for our

(05:32):
clients. And even if theyprepaid it a little bit, they
could pay it off early, and thenreinvest back into the market.
And so, we ran an amortizationschedule, somebody else paying
the rents and their labor, wethought, Wow, this is great,
because we're not having to work40 hours a week to pay this rent
payment. This is a nice way toleverage our time, because we
knew with our little mortgagebusiness, that we only had so

(05:55):
many hours in the day, we'dalready capped that out, after
about three, four years. We justcouldn't work any more hours in
a day to keep growing our incomeunless we wanted to go with more
of a brokerage model. But thenyou've got employees and the
hassle and all that fun stuff.
And so, this was kind of like ahuge light bulb went off for us,
then we found out that we ranout of capital very, very

(06:17):
quickly. You know, because youhave to put a down payment for
it. So, we started flipping somehouses to get capital to buy
another rental, our goal was tohave 10 rentals. And that would
be our retirement and have someresidual income in case one of
us got hurt or something likethat. And that was it. That's
that's the whole start. And thenin around 2005, we started

(06:37):
looking for other passive waysto generate income. And that's
when I came across tax liencertificate. And there's,
certificates, and there's a hugedearth of information about
there that's false. Just what doyou wanna call fake news? And it
was all get rich, quickgimmickry. So, I bought a book

(06:58):
that just gave me a list of allthe counties that sold tax lien
certificates, and I kind ofignored all the tips on getting
rich overnight stuff. And I juststarted calling the counties and
doing my own research. And so,we started investing, we've
created two funds for our taxlien portfolio that have done
very well over the years.

Sean O'Toole (07:16):
How many tax liens have you done?

Sean Walker (07:18):
Roughly about 3500.
And that's a 30 plus milliondollar portfolio that we built
out. There's two separateportfolios, one that was
leveraged, so we worked with abank via via federal out of San
Diego, and had a credit line, a$50 million credit line for that
one. And then the other one wasa cash and partner portfolio
that we built up. And then.

(07:43):
yeah, sorry.

Sean O'Toole (07:44):
Let's just talk about that really quickly. You
know, so data, right is uh...

Sean Walker (07:49):
It's huge.

Sean O'Toole (07:49):
Is an important part of that. And, you know,
this is a Data Driven RealEstate Podcast. So, I always
come back to data. And talk tome, was it was it hard to, you
know, find data and you know, todo that business?

Sean Walker (08:04):
It's super data intense with tax liens, because
what you're not just going outand looking at a handful of
properties on a Saturdayafternoon on a drive-by, because
at scale, when an auctionscoming up, you might be bidding
on three, four or 500 houses.
But based on competition, youmight end up getting, you know,
20% of what you bid on, but youstill have to scrub all that

(08:27):
data. So, literally, with thecounty, you would download an
Excel spreadsheet, somecounties, you didn't even have
that, it was in a newspaper orPDF when we first started, then
we'd have to convert it into,you know, try to get clean data
into a spreadsheet. But theboots on the ground, I mean,
this is...

Sean O'Toole (08:48):
And that data is just 'Hey, there's a property
going...

Sean Walker (08:50):
Yes.

Sean O'Toole (08:51):
It doesn't give you any information about the
property, and...

Sean Walker (08:54):
I might just have a parcel ID and a truncated legal
description without a propertyaddress even.

Sean O'Toole (09:00):
Wow, so, so, you even had to go do the research
to find the address before youcould even do say is this thing
worth bidding on?

Sean Walker (09:06):
That, that's exactly right, then we'd have to
sort, sift, and filter byproperty type. When we get the
master bulk list from thepre-auction data from the
county. We didn't want to doanything other than
single-family residential andvacant develop lots or building
lots. We didn't want to docommercials outside we didn't
want to do raw land per se. Wedidn't want to do anything that

(09:32):
we didn't really know aboutbecause if you buy a tax lien
certificate, you couldeventually end up with that
property. And so, it's justscrubbing the property types was
a you know, a major thing aswell and it never really got
easier.

Sean O'Toole (09:48):
It was really eye opening for me when I first
started doing some tax deals waslike how many of there's like
parcels where there's like, youknow, off ramp and stuff and it
ended up with this little pieceof dirt. It's like...

Sean Walker (10:00):
1000 foot fiber optic strip, easement strip that
nobody wants to ever buy. And wemade some mistakes, I will tell
you not having the right data.
Here's a classic mistake, Ican't make this story up. So
this, this is how importantgetting good data is. We saw 13
acres come up, and that thetaxes were about $2500. So, by
the taxing certificate what theprincipal amount owning was at

(10:22):
the time, right? And so, wethought, Man, that's a great
deal. And so we didn't reallysee what type of property it
was. And so, we purchased thattaxing certificate on the 13
acres, this is in CentralFlorida. Come to find out in end
even, this is the early day, sodon't judge me too harshly Sean

(10:42):
on us, but we even took it toforeclosure, which was a few
1000 more. And we had somebuilder contacts in the area and
things like that. We thoughtgosh, it's such a great possibly
to wholesale it to them or jointventure on this 13 acres. Well,
the first person that we took itto once we got the deed, they
said, uh, you know, this is on apower line strip, right? There,

(11:03):
like we had maybe five 6000 intothis so far. And we're like, oh,
and then we pulled up the Googlemap the imagery. Oh, so we is a
total goof up. And again,

Sean O'Toole (11:18):
The whole thing is just a power line easement.

Sean Walker (11:20):
Yeah.

Sean O'Toole (11:21):
Completely unusable.

Sean Walker (11:22):
And when we, and the thing is, is with the Google
overhead view, it wasn't readilyavailable. Because there's a lot
of trees and woods and stufflike that. It was really hard to
see what exactly it was, unlessyou were local. So, a couple key
lessons there, do your boots onthe ground. Number two, make
sure you have really clean databecause had we had better data,

(11:43):
we would have easily seen that.
Now, we got bailed out on thatone. I can't make this up. We
got approached with a letter, allama farmer that had an
adjoining llama farm right nextto it reached out to us and
asked if he could lease it outon an annual basis to let us
llama grace. And we said, yeah,go knock yourself out.

Sean O'Toole (12:07):
So, you still own it. And you're still...

Sean Walker (12:08):
Yeah he pays the $780 a year. So, we might break
even. I don't know, by the timeI retire. But it, it you know,
again, it's, I'm not sayingthat's a great scenario. But the
data is key if I'm given a hugeplug for data here. Yep.

Sean O'Toole (12:24):
So, that that's an interesting one where, you know,
you were thinking maybe it was alittle subdivision or something
and you went on to do a lot ofland and subdivision deals. Is
this a good segue into that,maybe?

Sean Walker (12:38):
Yeah, you know, we did we, at first in our
acquisition model, we did startbuying at auctions. So, two
different acquisitions modelsthat we have.

Sean O'Toole (12:47):
This is the digital foreclosure auctions?

Sean Walker (12:49):
Yeah. And we primarily focused in Florida,
Arizona, and Nevada. Okay. Andso, we had two focuses on our
single-family residentialportfolio first, which was
Arizona and Las Vegas area, ifyou will, Metropolitan
Statistical Area. So, that wasour main push at first for

(13:09):
single-family residential. Andthen I, and also the taxing
certificates that we were buyingin Arizona. And in Florida, at
first, we're only on SFRproduct. We didn't look at any
building lots or anything likethat, even though there's a ton
of those. In Arizona, where thelast recession, the builders
just went belly up.

Sean O'Toole (13:30):
Yeah.

Sean Walker (13:31):
And they left all these vacant, develop lot. Some
of them weren't titled some ofthem weren't. Some of them were
stubbed in utilities, some ofthem weren't. And so, what I
started seeing, as I said, Man,if the if the building market
ever, ever comes back, I can getthese lots, dirt cheap, like
$1500 for something that tradedout in the marketplace in 2005,
for 35,000. And I get it for1500. I can clean the title with

(13:55):
a quiet title action for maybeanother 2000 and then land bank
it or I can resell that on aseller finance deal to a retiree
couple which we did about 2200of those. We put those out,
and...

Sean O'Toole (14:08):
With 200 lots you resold to people who wanted to
build?

Sean Walker (14:11):
Yes, but they did a payment plan with us. So, they
put 500 down and pay us 75 bucksa month or whatever. And they
did multiple years. So, we did abunch of that seller finance.
That's a common technique withjust kind of mom and pop land
bankers. You see that quite abit.

Sean O'Toole (14:28):
They're buying a lot to build their future
retirement home, but not rightnow. Maybe in 10 years or
something.

Sean Walker (14:32):
That's right. And then in our Vegas, Arizona
markets, especially we werehitting the auctions as soon as
that inventory started to freeup and this was more in that
2012 mark because a lot of stuffwas locked down. If you remember
Vegas, there was a judge thatslapped around the bank saying
hey, you don't have the originalink, you can't foreclose. So, a
lot of that stuff was stalled upin courts and I don't know what

(14:56):
eventually happened to a lot ofthat stuff. But when the
inventory started to flow, webuilt our portfolio in Vegas.
And, and I will tell you it wasa nightmare because we were
doing a lot of short saleoffers, of course. But with the
auctions, you would hear aboutstuff coming available for
auction. And we literally haddrivers, if I would have better
data, again, another big plugfor data here, it would have

(15:19):
saved us so much time andexpense, because our drivers are
drive throughout the night. Andsome of these weren't the
greatest neighborhoods either,okay.

Sean O'Toole (15:27):
Now, you know, PropertyRadar was in Vegas when
you were there, but you were anEast Coast guy. And we're a West
Coast company.
We didn't, you never. I know.
Never thought I, I think I blewyour mind, when I gave you a
demo of what you could have hadthat whole time in Vegas.

Sean Walker (15:42):
It would have put a lot more money into our bottom
line, because there's a lot ofthose properties we wouldn't
have chased in the first place,or even attempted to bid on. And
so it, you know, it was, it waslike three stooges running
around, and then our guys would,you know, go out and they'd be
driving, driving driving allover Vegas on these properties
or coming up to auction. Andsometimes that data would come

(16:03):
in last minute. And sometimes itwas wrong. Meaning they would
get the properties confusedbased on a drive by it was dark
when they drove by, and, and youknow, where we were scrambling
against other investors andother big investors that were
you know, Wall Street wasstarting to take notice, right
of this marketplace of the SFRmarketplace. So, I never,
specifically, we, we had oneproperty that ended up being not

(16:30):
in the right neighborhoods,okay, for sure. And it was
completely overtaken by thehomeless. And there was a bunch
of chickens in the back, weended up buying this property.
And so as a joke, and everybodyblamed me, it was, I was really
the end call to say 'bid'. Andhere's the top bid on some of

(16:51):
this stuff on a big chunk of itanyway. And so, we were, we were
down in Vegas doing boots on theground just because we go down
almost once a month. And some ofthe guys were getting me back.
And so, they took one of thechickens from the backyard and
put it in my hotel room in abox. So, I came in. So, that was
revenge for not having gooddata. We bought a property. Now,

(17:14):
we just kept it as a rentalforever. In real estate time
heals all wounds that feels likeand so we sold it in about late
2017. But it...

Sean O'Toole (17:24):
You bought a lot of building lots, maybe even
entire subdivisions in Floridatoo, right?

Sean Walker (17:29):
Well, yeah, that most of the time we did it in
what's called a scattered lotsubdivision in Florida, Florida
is very unique in the fact thatyou have retirees migrating from
each decade, no matter what. Andso on, on a on a singular
street. You'll have a housebuilt in the 50s 60s 70s 80s
90s. One from 10 years ago and abrand new build right next to

(17:52):
it.

Sean O'Toole (17:53):
Every decade, new groups coming in and...

Sean Walker (17:56):
Yep. And I'd hate to be an appraiser. I've
mentioned that before in thestate of Florida. It's
interesting, though.
Aaron, you're amused.

Aaron Norris (18:04):
No, I was, I'm laughing you, as you drive down
the streets too you get all thedecade because of builder code,
the elevation of the house.

Sean Walker (18:12):
That's right, that's right, because they...

Sean O'Toole (18:14):
Some houses are down here and somewhere up here.

Aaron Norris (18:17):
Right next door, you can have a four-foot
difference. I'm not kidding.
It's so...

Sean Walker (18:20):
That's right.

Aaron Norris (18:21):
Like, 'Oh, 1990, 2010'.

Sean Walker (18:24):
That's exactly right. It is so interesting to
see that. And then anotheranother big thing for us in the
Florida market was, we were, Iwent to Urban Land Institute
conference, I think was in Tampain 2015. And they were starting
to talk about boomers,retirement birth years, and when

(18:47):
they were going to startpeaking. And so, 2016 was the
peak for a 10 year period forboomers retiring. And we thought
let's compile more lots becausewe'd started a couple years with
taxing certificates. But weweren't getting a ton just from
buying tax lien certificates.
It's a great methodology. Butwhat we then did is we worked
with some local agents, and thenwe started doing our campaigns

(19:10):
out to, out-of-state owners. So,we would send out mailers and
postcards. And if it was acouple in Arizona, that owned a
lot in Florida or a couple up inArkansas. And if there was a
singular name on the lotownership and they lived out of
state, those were the ones thatwe hit first, because we figured
the other spouse had potentiallypassed away. And we were getting

(19:33):
people to sell us their lots forfor you know for very, very low
prices because they didn't wantto keep paying the property tax
on those.

Aaron Norris (19:42):
Well and I want to get some history, because you
and I both know the area thatyou're building and then
Southwest where you're gettingthese lots. In 1960 this, these
brothers from New York came downand this area has been made
popular by Thomas Edisonactually, Edison, Firestone, and
Ford used to have their winterhomes down there. And then Cape

(20:03):
Coral is just slightly north ofFort Myers. And there's
literally they were bringing inpeople from New York, they put
them in a plane and you woulddrop a sandbag. And wherever
your sandbag dropped is whereyour lot was. And they built out
this infrastructure. I don'teven know how you do today. Cape
Coral is a huge area. Yeah. Andyou've got all these canals,
some go to the Gulf, some arefreshwater, if you don't know

(20:25):
what you're looking at. It'sextremely risky. On top of that,
you also have environmentalproblems. You've got tortoises,
burrowing owls, when I firstwent through there, I thought a
whole bunch of people had gottenmurdered on the side of the
road, because...

Sean Walker (20:38):
You're talking about the environmentalists. So,
I'm not making fun ofenvironmentalists, but they are
religious. Like cultish.

Aaron Norris (20:46):
Some, some of the state of lives in public
records, but you can't get onstuff like you really have to
understand the nuance downthere. And how did you plug in?

Sean Walker (20:54):
Well, again, you know, the data that we would do,
we got so desperate for gooddata, that I had my son who was
in college at the time forsoftware engineering. He, he
wrote a macro to scrape the datafrom the county sites from Lee
County and Sarasota and a fewothers. Some were easier to do

(21:18):
than others. And so, literally,he'd ride a backhoe, we get this
data, but it wasn't pure. Itwasn't clean. And so, that was a
that was a major challenge.
Again, we would do ourdrive-bys.

Sean O'Toole (21:32):
Yeah.

Sean Walker (21:33):
Yeah, we, we would spend a lot of time boots on the
ground. But that, you know,again, getting the data in
advance before you do that, wellwould have saved us 50% of our
drive-by times, and I wentstreet by street in these areas,
because we had investorsinvesting with us, I felt it was
my obligation to note everysingle area and street and take
notes. And we did having adrive-by app. And I'm cheap. I'm

(21:56):
giving you a cheap plug here,Sean. But you guys have some
amazing features for that right?
On the on the drive by stuff.

Sean O'Toole (22:02):
And you know, it's, it's so funny, you get new
folks, and they just expect allthis stuff to be right at their
fingertips and all the rest. Andthey have no idea how hard this
business was just 5, 10, 15years ago, not that long ago,
like how much it's changed.
Okay, how much more data isavailable? It's crazy.

Sean Walker (22:22):
Sean, I'm gonna really date myself, because I
know we're roughly about thesame age, right? Yeah. Okay. So,
in the late 90s, early 2000s,when we just first started our
mortgage company, I would haveeven used your product for
mortgages back then if I had,had it just to get more details
about the house, right? Becausewe were running, do they have

(22:43):
enough room to refinance? Isthere enough equity because I
would pull public records offmicrofiche. Okay, I was pulling
Notice of Defaults, I would pullanybody that had, had any change
in a conveyance per se, or anynew liens that had come on. So,
I'd look for somebody that maybehad just purchased their home.

(23:04):
And then after about 12 monthsor so after they absorbed some
of those initial costs, I'd hithim up for a refinance on a
little marketing campaign. But Iliterally had to go to
Microfiche, I have my bignotepad there, every Friday
morning, from 9 to 12. I wouldgo there. And I'd see all the
other slumps down there justlike be trying to it's mostly
realtors, trying to harvest forleads, and then get the notice

(23:25):
of default list. And then we'dsay hey, you don't have to lose
your house, let's do a subprimerefinance for you. But that was,
we didn't do a lot of thosebecause it really put him in
such a bad interest rate andloan scenario. And, you know, in
two years, it was gonna startjacking up the rate. So, we got
away from that eventually. Butthen, it was like a miracle.
Early 2000s, the, a lot of thetitle companies had technology

(23:48):
to at least scrape data from thefrom the counties, and they can
print a list for you.

Sean O'Toole (23:53):
Yeah.

Sean Walker (23:54):
And so, Friday mornings was a mad scramble to
go pick up the physical listfrom the title companies.

Sean O'Toole (24:00):
Everybody trying to get the list first. Yeah, for
sure.

Sean Walker (24:02):
But it was a paperless. So, you're still
sitting there. And I canremember when I first became an
investor, I would go hit theFSBOs. And I'd say go get by the
frickin newspaper with myhighlighter. And, I mean, that's
so I, if I've got an app orwhatever it is on my phone. As
I'm doing my drive-bysespecially this is like gold and
people don't get how valuablethis is. If you're an active

(24:24):
real estate investor, you'llwaste so much time not having
the right data at yourfingertips, before you even make
those offers, before you hit thestreets even to do your, your,
you know, driving for dollarsI've heard is a technique right?

Sean O'Toole (24:37):
Anyone you know because especially with our app,
you know, because we show everyproperty as you're driving down
the street and equity andforeclosure and all those
things. And then you just oh,that one's interesting. You
press tap and up pops all theinformation you need to call the
owner.

Sean Walker (24:53):
Well, and a lot of times what I'm looking for is
I'm driving around if I wouldhave had the app, especially
when we are driving on our lots,if I would have seen a business
holding a vacant lot, that hadan out of state address, I'm
like, 'Oh, I'm gonna jump onthat a single person holding an
ad, an out of state, or on ourhouses, when we're driving

(25:15):
around, if I already knew ahedge fund owned it, I'm not
gonna bid on that, you know, oryou know what I'm saying. So,
there, there was so manyapplications, if you had that
data, if it was held in trust,and it was out of state, couple
different things happen, meaningit was an inherited property, or
some kids now own that trust andthe mailing addresses go into

(25:36):
them out of state. But thesubject property is in Florida,
for example, Arizona, where thewhere the the grandparents or
whoever the parents had livedfor their retirement. So, that
would be one that would triggerimmediate activity. For me, if
it's an out of state rental fromsomebody that's inherited a
property, well, eventually, theymight get a nasty eviction at
that moment in time, I want themto call me first. And if I had

(25:59):
that information, just on adrive-by it's like, literally
having X-ray goggles, as you'redriving by.

Aaron Norris (26:05):
I like that X-ray.

Sean Walker (26:06):
Yeah.

Sean O'Toole (26:07):
X-ray goggles.

Sean Walker (26:08):
because we can see what's happening with the family
immediately, we see trust,mailing address out of state.
And that tells me so much aboutwhat's going on with that
scenario, it's going to triggeras a high quality, high, high
activity lead that I got to jumpon faster than the rest of the
houses on the street, forexample.

Sean O'Toole (26:26):
And we're now at that point where it's just those
are just criteria, right? Youdon't want the individuals I
want the out of state mailingaddresses, and show me all of
those for all of Florida, right?
Like, it's super easy now. Andit's unbelievable how hard it
was a few years ago.

Sean Walker (26:43):
Yeah, one of the cool things too, is that with
the data, we had particularinvestors that would be
attracted to us. Some of themwould look us up on public
record.

Sean O'Toole (26:55):
How many deals you're doing?

Sean Walker (26:56):
Yeah. And on the land, we had builders looking us
up. So, there's Adams homes,there's Lennar down in the
Florida area, there's DR Horton,there's, there's quite a few
small to midsize builders aswell. But those are some of the
big fish down there. And so, wehad DR Horton, just reach out to
us. And they wanted to pick up80 of our lots that we had

(27:20):
acquired through ouracquisitions channel. And we
made a very reasonable deal withthem in bulk. And it worked out
well. Part of the reason was, isI also wanted to have an outlet
to sell in the future. Or ifthere was any possible joint
venture potential on building,for example, now they won't, DR

(27:41):
Horton won't do it. They wantall the money. Okay, I get it.
But we have done joint venturebuilds with builders, where we
had the underlying collateral ofthe lot, it met all their
criteria, as well. And so youknow, it when you, when you can
actually compile inventory, thatother investors like that starts

(28:03):
to attract them to you, becausethey're doing their, their
research online as well. They'llsay, 'Oh, this company owns
these 20 pieces. Let's, let's,let's reach out to them'. And
it's even more surprising thatDR Horton even hit us up because
we bought tax lien certificateson a bunch of their
subdivisions. Up north, becausethey're all over the state,

(28:25):
they've got about 30 locationsin the state of Florida. And
what the developers did afterthe last recession, which I
suspect may happen again heresoon, is they stopped paying the
taxes. And they would wait tothe very last month before they
were going to get foreclosed outand pay just enough to get
foreclosed because they were alljuggling cash after the last
recession. So, they owed us$560,000 on a whole subdivision.

(28:49):
And we were going to take thewhole thing down and sit on it
because they had already put theroads in, they had nice entrance
area. And they wouldn't dealtheir attorneys out of Texas
wouldn't deal with this when wesaid okay, click. And they knew
we were going to take it toauction. So, literally a couple
days before the auction, theysent us the check with interest.
And they tried to bargain withus on the interest the attorneys

(29:09):
did. And he said no click,because it's all state statute.

Sean O'Toole (29:13):
Right.

Sean Walker (29:13):
So it's, as you you know, get the right types of
inventory. For that market, it'sreally key because you need to
look at days on market per pricerange as well. So, there'll be
certain price ranges that arethe hottest spot within that
market on price range, right?
Might be anything. Yeah, otherthings will sit or the high end

(29:35):
stuff as longer days on market,but your flippers, your
rehabbers they're going to belooking for stuff that can turn
over the fastest. So if you havethe right data, and you've got
this list of investors that youknow you can work with partner
with or maybe even wholesale tosome people wholesalers stuff.
It's a great tool to then onlyfocus on the hottest selling
lowest days on market, types ofinventory and sort by bedrooms,

(29:58):
baths, okay, and then gaugethat, which is it three ones
that are selling the hottest isat four twos, and then look at
days on market, and then evenjust break that down by
subdivision zip code, and onlyfocus on buying in those areas.
Because everybody else istracking the data as well, the
real professionals, they'regonna see you buying in there as

(30:19):
well. And when you get somethingthey want, it's a really nice
relationship that you can build.

Aaron Norris (30:27):
Hey, I want to make sure people appreciate sort
of the data aspect of whatyou're talking about in this
area. I've seen the land cost atone point during the peak of the
market, some of these thingswere going for $90 to $100
grand, and then they went under$10,000.

Sean Walker (30:41):
That's right, on the on the lead up to 2007. And
a lot of European buyers werecoming in paying crazy prices on
a quarter acre lot. Or kindof...

Aaron Norris (30:50):
What, what data were you looking at saying, you
know what, this looks like agood idea. Because at that
moment in time, you don't have alot of competition, because
people are scared, they'relicking their wounds from going
from 100 grand to 10 grand. Andyou're like, I'll take some of
that, and then just hold theworld together for the next five
years. And I'm good with that.

Sean Walker (31:11):
Yeah, it was it was two phases of our operation.
Meaning we, when we first wentinto Fort Myers, Cape Coral, we
were focusing on short sales,and, and flipping and keeping
rentals. And so, when we wouldflip, we would take some of that
money, get another rental, or aportion of those funds and put
it towards taxing certificates,but we'd only do it with per se

(31:32):
with profit. So, if I'm going tohold land that needs to come
from net profit after payingtaxes and overhead on a flip or
something like that, then wewould take a portion of that and
acquire taxing certificates ormaybe buy some lots. And we
figured if we could have enoughto hold this lot for at least
five years, we think the marketmay come back by then. But it

(31:54):
was a gamble. And so, we had tokind of juggle the cash flow
because you can't just go outeven when the markets down and
acquire stuff that's notbringing in income and expect
you can just sit on it forever.
So, you got to have some cashflow coming in and with those
proceeds, don't go buy a newPorsche. Get with a good tax
accountant, pay your taxes, makesure you have enough operating

(32:15):
expenses to run your business,but take the surplus and
reinvest in a very desperate orlow market to control the
inventory.

Aaron Norris (32:26):
Because I mean, this is a market that's been
around since 1960. And so you'reoften talking to people maybe
who have inherited this twogenerations back and they have
no personal connection to it.
And it has its ups and its hasits downs. So, I was just
curious about that.

Sean Walker (32:40):
Well, our main focus was the fact, uhm,
migration patterns was my mainfocus, because in certain areas
of the country, we were lookingfor areas where the data showed
us that we, if we acquired aproperty, we could successfully
cashflow it with at least abouta four to 6% cap rate. Or we

(33:00):
could flip it with a reasonableflip if we made that choice. So,
we were looking for for datathat would support optional
markets and you take a town likeNorthport right now crunch the
numbers. It still works in atown like Northport Cape Coral
is starting to squeak up a bitmore on that, but that's the
type of models we're targeting.
Go ahead.

Sean O'Toole (33:19):
I want to focus on that for a second, because a lot
of people go, 'Oh, four to sixcap rate. That's not very good.'

Sean Walker (33:24):
Right.

Sean O'Toole (33:25):
But what that is, is that's your safety net.

Sean Walker (33:27):
Yeah.

Sean O'Toole (33:27):
Right? So, and this is, this is something I
actually think is like reallyimportant for like the real
estate market at large and likelending and, and all the rest,
right? So, if you think aboutloans in 2005, when prices were
so high, right, like inCalifornia, you were getting
down into one and two cap.

Aaron Norris (33:45):
Oh, yeah.

Sean O'Toole (33:46):
Right. And so, if the lenders taking back that,
that product, and they have torent it out, you know, they're
getting a return that's lessthan treasuries. And it doesn't
really make a lot of sense to meto be making loans into that
market, really at all.

Sean Walker (33:59):
That's right.

Sean O'Toole (34:00):
By 2005, we should have pretty much stopped lending
unless you were putting 50%down. Instead, at that point in
time, we had the pulse loan,where anybody with a pulse could
get loan, right?

Sean Walker (34:12):
Yeah, Social Security Number, pulse, and
maybe it even wasn't your socialsecurity number.

Sean O'Toole (34:16):
Then jump forward to 2009 I know the California
numbers better, 2009, right,you've got houses that are 15%,
20% returns on investment.
Right? And the banks won't makeloans. And of course, smart
investors like you though,whether I flip it or keep it or
whatever, it's fine. And I thinka lot of our investors would go

(34:38):
a four to 6% return isn't verygood, what you just said, but I
love that you said okay, we'regonna buy assets that have this
return. If something goes wrongand we get stuck with it. It's
better than treasuries. Youknow, it provides a return on
that capital. We're not going tolose money, right? And on the

(34:59):
other side, there's a flippotential here where we can make
a profit. So, now you've gottwo, you know, you've got a
backup strategy. And that's howI think you can really, I mean,
I think it's just such animportant point. It's just you
just glossed over it. But it'ssuch an important point, because
you gave yourself a backupstrategy that if something did

(35:21):
go wrong, you still have income,and you still got an okay
return. It's not a great return.
It's not the rental portfolioyou'd want to build. But it's a
great backup.

Sean Walker (35:33):
Yeah, I thank you, Sean. I mean, there's some great
points I, we're overlysimplistic anymore. Meaning we
don't even compare this, ifanybody's comparing this to what
your stockbrokers telling you oryou know, the latest crypto
craze, or whatever it is, I getthat. I just don't understand
those types of investments thatdon't, aren't backed by

(35:54):
collateral. And maybe that's,maybe that in some circles or
some of my golf buddies and say,'Oh, well, you know, this,
you're not doing the new sexything'. And I'm like, Yeah, I
mean, whether or not you believewe were created, or Adam, and
ever since man has come to be inthis modern age, whatever you
think that is. And they gotbooted out of the garden of Eden

(36:15):
and needed a place to keep therain off their head, that will
never go away. I don't care whatthe assessor says about the
value of my property. I don'tcare, I hope they're all zero.
So, I don't have to pay propertytaxes, right? I don't care what
a realtor thinks, or anappraiser thinks. I don't care
if the cap rate is zero,honestly, at the end of the day,

(36:36):
now, yeah, we like to makemoney. But at the end of the
day, if the market crashes, Ican still rent that property out
and push along. That was ourwhole goal when we acquired
then, was to get a hold up theasset. And when we looked at the
statistics, since roughly 1990,well, then you can look back
there's Case Shiller and allthese indexes. And you see these

(36:57):
different time periods wherethere's been a recession, real
estate has just done this. Butit's, it's it's continued. So,
if you bought a house...

Sean O'Toole (37:07):
Beat that.

Sean Walker (37:08):
Right, if you bought the same house in 1990,
in Cape Coral, you're probably75,000. Today that's going to
trade in the Upper 280 range, ifit's in pretty good shape, brand
new properties are trading inthe 330 range, they're a nice
fixed up three bedroom, two bath16, 1800 square foot property in
Cape Coral, that same exactproperty is going to sell for,

(37:29):
you know, 75 to 100,0000 in1990. What's it selling for
today? So, we know looking atthe history of real estate, and
you think back to well, thestock market, that's nice way up
here. But how come yourportfolio of a couple 100,000
you started with in 2011 hasn'tgone up 15 fold, like the stock

(37:50):
market has, you're still sittingroughly maybe 280. Why? Because
you've been traded out so manyfreakin times, because that's
how they make their money is byturnover of your money, not the
growth of your money. Ingeneral. Now, I'm overstating
my...

Sean O'Toole (38:03):
And in the stock market, you don't have a tenant,
right? Paying down the moneythat you borrowed to buy the
asset in the meantime, right.
So, not only is it theappreciation there, but you've
got a tenant and income. And ifthat incomes not coming to you,
it's going to paying down theyou know, maybe the debt you
used to acquire it. So, youknow, it, it's really, it is

(38:23):
quite different. So, I'm notgoing to sell you on the latest,
non functional, token idea.
And...

Sean Walker (38:33):
There are some cool things that could be in a, just
on the moving money. So, I thinkthe technology is amazing. As an
investment vehicle, I don't getit. Here's, here's why. Here's
what we focus on as well is, Idon't feel sorry, for anybody
that loses money in the stockmarket, because it's 100% out of
your control. As much researchas you're gonna do, you have

(38:55):
zero control of what happens tothat investment and it can go to
zero, you have no recourse toget your money back once that
money is gone, it's gone. Withreal estate, you make your money
on the buy side. So, if youscrew up and buy in a bad
neighborhood, you have the wrongdata, and you buy the wrong
property, then it's gonna be along struggle, but it's still
real estate, maybe 20 years fromnow you get out, you know,

(39:18):
finally make up for it. But youstill have some collateral
there. And if the market tanks,and the value of my property
goes from $200,000, down to$100,000, I haven't realized
that loss, and I can still rentit out. And I still have the
opportunity for that piece ofreal estate to bounce back. But
at the end of the day, theutilitarian use of that asset

(39:39):
will never change. Meaning keepsthe rain off our head. And it's
really that data when you go infor the buy, whether it's
auctions, whether or not you'redoing some marketing campaigns,
the integrity of that data iseverything because you're making
buying decisions off of thatdata. And it...

Sean O'Toole (39:57):
That's what we do.

Sean Walker (39:58):
Yes, yeah, and until the last several years
it's been a, yeah, until thelast several years, it's, and
getting high-speed internet,broadband plus speeds and fiber,
Google Fiber speeds makes a hugedifference as well for providers
like you, and the consumers onour end, the investor end to
really get access to everythinga lot faster.

Sean O'Toole (40:19):
So, let me ask, let's jump on that. How are you
paying attention? You mentioned,you know, data access, and I
think that's about to change,maybe some home values with
Starlink and low Earth orbitsatellites. Are you following
that at all? And look what youmight do for rural areas?

Sean Walker (40:34):
I haven't but I want to follow that.

Sean O'Toole (40:35):
Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting one. Sorry, you
mentioned it so I thought maybethere was a segue there.

Sean Walker (40:42):
No, and I, I want to talk about, you know,
companies like Zillow. We kindof laughed at in 2007. But what
do they really have at theirfingertips, they're tapping into
I mean, the, the division ofReal Estates, the National
Association of Realtors justrolled over and just said, oh,
here's all our data withoutthinking about the long term

(41:04):
consequences that companies likeZillow, and in their platforms
would just put them out ofbusiness. And they're, they're
doing it.

Sean O'Toole (41:12):
I don't ... I think the FTC had a lot to say.

Sean Walker (41:15):
Well, I know, I know, I know. What it feels like
I, you know, I'm a licensedagent as well, it feels like you
pay it all these these funds,and no representation, I don't,
think but it's because they haveaccess. And they get they've
gathered this user data, anddata from the counties for years
and years and years that theyhave at their fingertips now.

(41:35):
And some might say, well, theygot lucky or they're so big, but
they weren't that big to beginwith. The difference is, to me,
if we're kind of comparing whatthese large outfits have done in
the real estate space to us asindividuals, the difference was
as they went after the data, andnow they could now they control
it and, and realtors have to payhomage to Zillow, if they want

(41:59):
to get leads. Pretty much. Youknow, and it's mostly buyers
leads because Zillow has all thedata and all the leads.

Sean O'Toole (42:08):
On the buyer side.
I agree on the seller side, theyshould use us but on...

Sean Walker (42:12):
Yes, that's right.
That's right.

Aaron Norris (42:15):
No, you're, you're based out of Utah, correct?

Sean Walker (42:17):
Yes.

Aaron Norris (42:18):
So, we've mentioned several markets, but
none of them Utah, Utah has realestate, the last time I checked.
So, can you talk a little bitabout why not Utah and the data
that you're using to select thestate that you're in?

Sean Walker (42:29):
Well, yeah, no. And we were, again, we look for
markets where we can purchase,and potentially that's getting
harder and harder, obviously,unless you go really rural. Or
you can potentially rent it outor flip it, Utah was, I would
say 2015. To where that was itkind of hit that benchmark
criteria, that inflection point,if you will, the where that

(42:52):
became difficult. A lot of it isbecause in my area, we have two
major universities. And so,there's a lot of rent control.
And coming from California,Sean, you might relate to that.
But you know that, but so whatwe did is we focused on
commercial. So, we've puttogether a good sized commercial

(43:13):
portfolio here with warehouse,some retail and apartment. And
that's been our push in a marketlike this.

Sean O'Toole (43:20):
You guys have some beautiful apartment projects are
really stunning.

Sean Walker (43:24):
Yeah, it's it's it's been fun. And but SFR is
really at the end of the day.
Single-Family residential, isreally the core element, I think
of what is a long term successand commercial that a, you know,
A class commercial right now, ora class A commercial is just
taking a beating.

Sean O'Toole (43:44):
I know you're part of a larger company, a lot of
stuff going on. So, I don't knowif you were involved, are you
involved in the Tiny HomeProject?

Sean Walker (43:51):
Yes. So, that's uh...

Sean O'Toole (43:52):
Can you talk talk to that?

Sean Walker (43:54):
Yeah, exactly. So, again, I think if you look back
at this kind of movement, if youwill, it really kind of started
in the 60s. I know soundsterrible. But think about this
kind of free spirit that's comeback around and of not being
tied down. And yeah, I mean,really, it started in the 60s

(44:16):
but it was in a Volkswagen busor an encampment somewhere or
something like that.

Sean O'Toole (44:22):
No, it's in a $130,000 sprinter.

Sean Walker (44:24):
Exactly, exactly what the Mercedes symbol on the
front and so, but but the factthat some Tiny Homes you can
relocate is wonderful. Now ourprojects a little bit different
in the fact that they're goingto be attached meaning to the
ground so they can get some moretraditional type financing
because if you still have anaccident, something the major

(44:45):
lenders aren't, the home lendersaren't going to touch it.

Sean O'Toole (44:48):
Okay, it's personal property.

Sean Walker (44:49):
That's right. So, it'd be considered chattels or
like an RV luxury type loan thatyou're looking at there, which
is crazy rates, right?

Sean O'Toole (44:58):
Yeah.

Sean Walker (44:58):
So, you know, what we did is we got a city that
would play ball with us and acounty with the density level
that we would need. How muchdensity we could get per acre.
And, and so, you know, what wehave is a massive, massive
shortage of inventory right now.
For example, my son who's justturning 30, he wanted to get
into his first townhome. But wedid some auto hot sheets, the

(45:23):
daily things that would give usnotification of what townhomes
would come, because that's thenew starter home here because of
price race. But everything wasgone within hours. So, we went
and got our data, our off marketdata. And we found a guy that
owned a townhome. And it was asingle, it was an individual.
So, there's just one name ontitle.

Sean O'Toole (45:48):
Yeah.

Sean Walker (45:48):
And I went back and looked at his history. And it
used to be two names. So, Ithought either it's a divorce,
or he's widowed. And it turnedout, he was widowed. And he had
his teenage son still livingwith them. But, but I caught him
just at the right time, to wherehe wanted to build for him and
his son a house. And he had, andI could see his equity position

(46:09):
as well. So, I could see kind ofwhat the current value was
because I knew that market,because I could see all the
data. And I could see what heowed on the property. And he had
been in his loan about 19months. So, I just ran a quick
emphasis and scan, I thought,Oh, he's probably about right
here on what he owesapproximately. And so, because I
had that background, and thatdata, reached out to him, and I
said, 'Hey, are you eventhinking about selling because

(46:33):
I, we can do it all without anagent, my son's looking for a
place, he's prequalified. And Ican just set up the deal for
you. And I've got some attorneyreferrals, where you could have
them analyze all the properpaperwork to make sure you're
comfortable with it, and soforth and so on'. And we caught
them at the right time. Now youmight have to send out hundreds
of, you know, postcards orsomething to get a hit like

(46:54):
that. But we knew we had to gooff market. And we, and it was
just it was like a miracle.

Sean O'Toole (47:02):
100% what's driving our business right now,
like, I just there aren't listedproperties, if you want to buy
something, and you want to get areasonable deal, and, or you
just want something that meetsyour criteria, period. Even if
you're willing to overpay, youhave to go off market right now.

Sean Walker (47:18):
And getting the data like PropertyRadar has, is
really key for especiallybeginning investors. And here's
why. Because realtors aren'tgoing to pay attention to you at
first, okay, they're just noteven if you have a lot of cash,
it won't matter. Because of themigration patterns. Because
you've got folks fromCalifornia, going out to Arizona
with their cash, they'll selltheir place in Cali, they'll

(47:40):
roll in with $400,000 cash ofequity, that'll give them a nice
property in Phoenix, forexample. So, even if you're a
cash investor doesn't matternow, you need to chase those off
market deals. And becausethere's a lot of real estate
agents, because they do not wantto list properties, where
there's tenants in there thataren't paying, okay, they don't

(48:01):
want to list properties that,that are made...

Sean O'Toole (48:04):
Or houses.

Sean Walker (48:05):
Yes, or where there's somebody that's in
hospice, but all this stuff isstill there, the family doesn't
have any money to get grandma'sstuff out and stored and or get
the property fixed up to getretail and the realtors don't
want that inventory. But you asan investor can track it down
off market, make arrangementswith the family to help all in
the contract, of course, andfind those deals because what we

(48:26):
do know is there's never ashortage of human suffering that
we can help out as an investor,that, I'm not putting down
agents, but that's above theirkind of mindset or duty in most
cases to go...

Sean O'Toole (48:40):
Well, you know, if they've got enough business
without that, Why do that? Or itcould be a decision by the agent
not to take on those hardprojects, because they're going
to spend a lot of, a lot of timefor not any more money. They got
two listings for $400,000. Thisone's got a ton of work.

Sean Walker (48:55):
And it sells day one.

Sean O'Toole (48:56):
...It's the same commission.

Sean Walker (48:58):
Yeah, I think to me, if I were a practicing
agent, I have my license forinvesting. But if I were
practicing agent, I wouldabsolutely use PropertyRadar to
get my listings, quite frankly,you know, and then...anyway.

Sean O'Toole (49:13):
Back to the Tiny Home. How big is that project
and..

Sean Walker (49:17):
13 acres and I think we have eight units
approved per acre.

Sean O'Toole (49:22):
Okay, yeah, so about 100 units on 13 acres,
eight units per acre.

Sean Walker (49:26):
Containers, so we gotta get those shipped over.
That's kind of a prefabcontainer to where the insides
basically to an installationlevel are done. Quarter inch
sheetrock on those, kind of aveneer if you will. And yeah,
and they're stubbed out to abasic design parameter with what

(49:49):
in layman's terms, what holesare in the, you know, access and
so forth. For you know, powercoming in and ventilation and
all that sort of stuff. So, it'skind of this template that we
get. And then we build out theinterior when it gets there.

Aaron Norris (50:04):
Is that a lease project? A lease project or
you're selling those?

Sean Walker (50:07):
Uh, you know, we thought about rent to own. And
we've done that, but not with aproduct this expensive and all
at once. So, we've donelease-to-own on a one-off basis.
You know, depending on theproperty scenario, but we
haven't. And we did a lot ofland, you know, lease to own or
rent to own on on building lots.
But those were small dollaramounts.

Sean O'Toole (50:31):
You're not holding these long-term rentals?

Sean Walker (50:33):
Yeah, you know, I don't think so. And I think that
if we put these up, we're stillkind of tinkering with our
price. But kind of the low endtownhomes, for about the same
square footage are going forabout 275 to 285. We're thinking
about coming in about 230 to 35on these, but we haven't tested
that, that marketing yet.

Aaron Norris (50:53):
For container home, how many square footage?

Sean Walker (50:56):
Oh, gosh, we're 1200, we got 1200 foot model.
Well, we've got them down evensmaller than that, but it
probably be under $200,000.
We're just going to kind of testand see what kind of marketing
bounce back we get on this.

Sean O'Toole (51:08):
So, 1200 square feet doesn't really sound like a
tiny home, but you're buildingthem using containers. So, it's
like three 400 foot containersconnected?

Sean Walker (51:18):
Yes, there are some. It all depends. So, we're
gonna have probably two or threedifferent models. One is a
stripped down model, for sure. Imean, one is just get in. And
we're probably going to start atabout 160 for that. But
honestly, we don't, we might noteven do that. Because we think
even at the top model price thatwe'll just sell them right away.

(51:41):
In financing, we're still kindof wondering about I don't, I
don't know if conventional banksare gonna touch this yet. They
might. But it's, that's, that'sthat's an issue as well, that
we're kind of working out. We'vegot a non-conventional kind of a
minus paper-type that will. Putin a big plug for like an RCN
Capital, they're one of thelarger private lenders out there

(52:02):
in the space. But taking it downto Chase or Wells right now. I
don't know yet.

Sean O'Toole (52:08):
That'll be tough.
Yeah.

Aaron Norris (52:09):
Utah private lending, the last I checked
you're like 15% rate for hardmoney out there, your known for
really hard.

Sean Walker (52:15):
Yeah, you know, it is a bit of a challenge. Because
even if they were to get in oneof ours, even if they were with
kind of a minus pay per lender,at that five to 7% mark, per se,
that still cuts down theaffordability, where they could
just go get a townhome, orcondo, at whatever the par rate

(52:36):
of the day is on a 30-yearfixed, and probably be around
the same payment. So, that is abit of a struggle that we're
working through right now. Wecan offer our own financing
packages, and we're consideringthat we just don't know if we
want to have that much hangingout there. At one time, you
know, maybe sell some and maybefinance the back end of the,
the, the portfolio. We'll see.

Sean O'Toole (52:58):
I know we're coming up on a hard stop.

Sean Walker (53:01):
Yes.

Sean O'Toole (53:02):
Let's talk a little bit about you have a
webinar series now. I don'tknow, is that publicly available
to anybody? Or is that just foryour guys's core, core folks or
how is that?

Sean Walker (53:13):
It's for core investors. Yeah, it's, it's for
our core investors. We don't doanything on YouTube or out in
the mainstream. You know, we'vejust built up a group of
investors over the years throughvarious types of relationships
or, or, you know, differentinvestments that people have
done with us over the years. Andwe put that out as just a way
to, you know, with our clients,and if you're an investor,

(53:37):
yourself doing something, whatAaron and Sean is doing here is
absolutely brilliant because itkeeps your people engaged with
you. Whether it's once a monthor once a week, I would highly
recommend doing it. And we'retalking about the gear before.
And it's not much but if allyou're doing is the new investor
is just going on and talkingabout deals you're looking at.

(54:00):
And if you're using, now Sean,here you go. And Sean has not
paid me to say this you guys, ifyou're using PropertyRadar, one
of the coolest things in theworld is to do screen capture
webinars with PropertyRadar toyour investors, because it makes
you look like you're a geniusthat's been doing this for
30-years. Because you can sayhey look, we're gonna break down

(54:22):
the San Dimas area, I'm lookingat these three zip codes. Let me
pull up my my absentee ownerlist here. Okay, I've got about
320 potentials here, but Ireally want to go with stuff
that was built after 1970. Idon't want to get into the super
older neighborhoods here. And Ireally want to get above about
1500 square feet. So, I know Ican get at least three bedrooms,
two baths, because if I'm goingto flip that thing, I need that

(54:44):
square footage in those beds andbaths to get max retail. And I
also know that because a lot ofour cash investors, that's what
they're looking for. They don'twant the teeny 800 square foot
house in those olderneighborhoods, the crime might
be a tad higher. So, I'm goingto push to this type of product
for this type of investor and Iknow I can move those out fairly
quickly or find a partner rightaway from this type of product.

(55:04):
So, if that's how you're talkingon the webinar with, with
PropertyRadar, it's just goingto attract that money to you, in
my opinion.

Sean O'Toole (55:14):
If people want to follow you or learn more about
you or learn more about yourcompany or become, you know, be
an investor with you, or thatkind of thing, how do they find
you?

Sean Walker (55:23):
LinkedIn is probably the best way. Yeah, I
was telling Aaron I don't, Idon't have much of a presence on
the, on YouTube or Facebookand...

Aaron Norris (55:32):
It was hard. It was hard to find you. But that's
how I stumbled across youractivity in Southwest Florida.
Um, like, what are the chances?
That is so weird?

Sean Walker (55:38):
Yeah, no.

Sean O'Toole (55:39):
And this is a challenge. It's a challenge for
us as a company, right? Becauseget guys like you, they're out
doing this kind of deals likeyou're our perfect customers,
like, cuz most of our customersare the larger investors that do
a lot of deals, right? Like, wehave a lot of customers that are
doing 1000 properties a yearkind of thing. And, you know, we
certainly attract the newbiestoo, but we're more geared

(55:59):
towards the higher end folks,you're really hard to find like,
there's still list of guys likeyou...

Sean Walker (56:06):
I'm well-known amongst the hedge fund
community. Really boringbankers. And so, I've gone to a
lot of the conferences like fivestar and a lot of those and tax
lien conference. And so, there'slike a, an investor community
that's out there. But thesethat's a different community.

(56:27):
There's than say, like theYouTube community, where there's
guys out there that, you know,look great, smell great. And you
think they're worth 50 millionbucks. And, you know, they're
making money off YouTuberevenue, nothing wrong with
that. I think that's wonderfuland do a flip a year or
something like that. And I'm notsaying I'm any better than that.
I'm just saying that. There'stwo types of people in the

(56:51):
business. There's ones thatactually send the wire and ones
that don't. And the ones thathave the ability to send the
wire there, they're not publicfigures most of the time.

Sean O'Toole (57:02):
They're usually not on Facebook, and they're,
yeah.

Sean Walker (57:05):
And they, they're all super boring sites like
LinkedIn, and so forth. Butwhat's okay, so...

Sean O'Toole (57:10):
It's Sean Walker at LinkedIn.

Sean Walker (57:12):
Yeah.

Sean O'Toole (57:13):
So you can find the right Sean Walker, because
I'm sure there's more than one.

Aaron Norris (57:16):
I'll post the link on our show notes to the right
Sean Walker.

Sean O'Toole (57:19):
Sean. I really appreciate you joining us.

Sean Walker (57:21):
Thanks, you guys.

Sean O'Toole (57:22):
And, yeah...

Sean Walker (57:24):
And that's a privilege. And I, you know, I
love your product. And when yousat down to the demo, I wish I
would have had that 12 years agowould have made all the
difference in the world.

Aaron Norris (57:32):
Don't you miss Microfische?

Sean Walker (57:34):
Yeah, well, we did.
Yeah. So...

Sean O'Toole (57:37):
I actually think like, there should be a
prerequisite before anybody usesour product, that they go to the
county and pull a document onMicrofische, right, and then go
to the clerk and ask for a copyof it and pay the $35 for the
copy of that one document right,or spend the 20 minutes writing
out all the fields from it likethat should be a prerequisite to

(57:59):
the people like public recordsare free, like...

Sean Walker (58:01):
Or ordering a property card from Kentucky, we
bought. Here's the last thingI'll give you why this is such a
great product. We ordered, webought a small tax lien
portfolio in Kentucky. And someof the counties there aren't
even on Microfische. And thiswould have been about 2012.
Maybe they've upgraded now, butthey have index cards in file

(58:23):
folders. And so, they're four bysix, and they call it a property
card. And for $3.50, you canorder the property card. Now,
not in the main counties likeLexington, some of the bigger
towns, but in the very ruralareas where we had some of these
tax lien certificates. We wantedto get information about the
property, especially when we goto foreclose on it. And we would

(58:47):
have had to order these and thenwait a couple weeks and you get
your property card. And, and soyeah, things have come a long
way since then.

Sean O'Toole (58:55):
Crazy, crazy business. People don't have no
idea what it is that goes intoit. Yeah. Well, thank you, Sean,
really appreciate having you,thank you Aaron.

Sean Walker (59:02):
Thanks, guys. Been privileged to be here.

Aaron Norris (59:06):
Thank you for listening to the Data Driven
Real Estate Podcast, you canfind show notes and links to
some of the resources mentionedin the show at
datadrivenrealestate.com. Clickthat join the community, and
you'll be forwarded to thePropertyRadar community where
you can ask questions about thecurrent show and even see
upcoming guests and askquestions there. We'd love to
engage with you in thecommunity. So check it out.

(59:26):
Please don't forget to like,favorite, subscribe and share on
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Thanks for listening, and we'llsee you next week.