July 5, 2025 • 18 mins
Yo, today we’re diving into the world of wholesaling real estate, and trust me, it’s gonna be a ride! We’ve got the awesome Paul Lizell with us, who’s been hustling in over 45 states—yeah, you heard that right! He’s spilling the beans on how to make wholesaling smooth and painless, so you don’t end up pulling your hair out like I almost did. We talk strategies for finding deals, avoiding the dreaded Dakotas (sorry, not sorry), and how to make cash flow work for you, even if you're starting with zero bucks. So stick around, ‘cause you’re about to get some real talk on leveling up your real estate game!
Virtually wholesaling all across the country with Paul Lizell - Payneless Wholesaling Podcast
Visit https://www.paynelessflipping.com to learn how to do real estate deals the payneless way!
Wholesaling across the U.S. can be a wild ride, and today, we’re diving into the nitty-gritty with Paul Lizell, a pro who’s been in the game for over 22 years. From his first bank-owned property back in 2001 to wholesaling in 44 states, his journey is anything but typical. We chat about the importance of understanding markets, and how choosing the right states can mean the difference between cashing in big or, well, not. Paul shares his decision to shift from the risky fix-and-flip model to a safer, more profitable wholesale strategy, especially during the 2008 crisis. He emphasizes how finding the right deals in the right markets is key, and how sometimes, you just gotta go where the money is. Plus, we get into some real talk about the best areas to target—hint: think Midwest for some sweet deals!
Takeaways:
- Wholesaling real estate across the US can be a wild ride, but it's doable if you know the game.
- Paul shared he wholesaled in 44 states, so there's definitely a method to the madness for nationwide success.
- Starting with 18 months of savings is key before diving into full-time real estate investing, trust me on this one.
- Don't underestimate the power of networking in real estate; it's how deals get done, period!
- Using online auctions for sourcing deals is a game-changer, especially if you want to avoid traditional marketing costs.
- It's essential to know your market and where to find the best deals—sometimes the hot spots aren’t where you think!
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Citizens Bank
- Auction.com
- Hubzu
- Hudson and Marshall Realty
- Bid
- Auction Network
- Williams and Williams
- Kiavi
- Dominion Financial Lending 1
- Lima One Capital
- Coco Capital
- Lee Arnold's group
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
We are live with the PainlessWholesaling podcast.
I'm here with Paul Lizell.
Is that right, Paul?
Is that right?
Good, good to have you onhere, everybody.
Today, stay tuned becausewe're going to be talking about how
to wholesale across the UnitedStates, across the nation.
We got Paul, I think you weresaying you've done over 45 states
wholesaled in over 45 states.
(00:29):
So 44 to 50 states have wholesale.
Yep.
Man, what about those ones you haven't?
Are those ones still like keepyou up at night or are you going
for those?
Not really.
If something happens, great.
There's certain states I avoidand they, a lot of them fall into
certain states.
The only one I would probablydo additionally would be actually
to Hawaii and the three.
The Dakotas and Hawaii Bother.
(00:50):
Yeah, yeah.
I know that when I was doing alot of marketing and nationwide for
pay per click leads, theywould tell us to not even turn on
the Dakotas.
They're like, don't even worryabout it.
Yeah, well, that's really interesting.
So let's dive right in.
If, if this is your first timetuning into the Painless Wholesaling
podcast, what our goal is isto make wholesaling and real estate
investing painless for you.
(01:10):
Because everyone knows ittakes time, it takes effort, and
if you do this on your own,you feel like you have to do on your
own, you're going to make alot of mistakes.
So we try to make take awaythose mistakes by bringing on experts.
So we have Paul here to tellus a little bit about his business,
his life and provide as muchvalue as we can in the short time.
So Paul, take it away.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and what got you into real
estate.
Sure.
(01:30):
So I'll go back to where I started.
2001 is when I very end of2001 is when I started investing
in real estate and I bought myvery first bank.
Owned property off the HUDhome store and I partnered with a
guy on it.
We picked it up for 29,5.
We put four grand into it, wesold it for 69.
We each walked away with 15,000.
So a 30,000 net profit in afew months.
It was great.
And then I rinsed and repeat.
(01:51):
But I was doing this while Iwas working full time for a bank.
I was a commercial loanunderwriter for a small community
bank for a year.
Then it became a businessbusiness development officer for
a couple years thereafter.
And then I went to CitizensBank, a bigger bank, bigger regional
bank there.
Went for a few years till 2004when I finally quit my job and went
full time in real estate investing.
Wow.
Sounds like you went throughquite a bit in that that time.
(02:14):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And my.
And one of my keys was like.
And I had to do this, convincemy wife potentially as well.
But for definitely for myself,I had to save up 18 months worth
of bill paying ability, inother words, a year and a half a
bill paying ability before Iwould eventually just jump on, go
on my own.
That's what I did got.
Once I got that 18 month boom,it would end up being like December,
end of November, earlyDecember of 2004, I quit the job.
(02:37):
And it did it.
Ever since, you know, I wentthrough that financial crisis 2008,
shifted my model.
That's where I was doing a lotof fix and flips.
And I was buying almostexclusively off HUD and bank reos,
off the MLS in the suburbs ofPhiladelphia at that point.
Okay.
And then I kind of shift 2009once I lost a ton of money on a bunch
of the fix and flip side going.
(02:57):
I'm like, I did a couplewholesale deals and they were easy
money and I didn't have any risk.
Why don't I go back to doing that?
So I flipped my model from 90%fix and flip and 10% wholesale to
90% wholesale and 10% fix and flip.
And I did that for a while,you know, until 2013 roughly, when
the market shifted and startedto go positive.
And then I did a mixture ofstuff, but I started doing all over
(03:20):
the country and um, reallyended 2009 going into 2010, when
it became a little bit easier,I started buying in Indiana and Ohio,
New Jersey, Virginia, theCarolinas, Florida.
Before you know it, I bought44 out of 50 states.
Wow, that's amazing.
And if you had to go back,would you have changed anything on
the model of going to moretowards wholesale?
(03:41):
Would you wish you would havekept more?
Oh, definitely wish I wouldhave kept more.
I think we all say that we'vebeen around for a long enough time,
22 years doing this businessnow, right.
Always wish I would have kept more.
But I've also done really wellin building up some rentals, selling
them when the market's gone upand then building up getting some
more and sell them when.
I didn't expect the market togo parabolic air after Covid.
But it did and I sold somemore and made some more.
(04:03):
Now I'm building again andwe'll see where that leads.
But now what I'm building is Igot some like 12 unit building, 5
unit building in Wyoming.
I'm going to probably justrefinance, keep those things long
term and they'll, they'll bein my, you know, just stick it, set
it and forget it because theycash flow very well and then I'll
add more as, as I need to atthat point.
You know, pick and choosewhich markets I want to be in for
(04:23):
the buy and holds.
Yeah.
Are you continually,continuously looking for more deals,
like multifamily deals rightnow or not so much?
Yeah, we do.
But not the big moldies right now.
The big moldies, we look atthem but when you do the underwriting
on them, they just don't makesense right now.
And especially with the costof capital right now on a refinance
side now the smaller ones tosay, you know, 20 and under or 30
(04:44):
and under units, that's,that's a largely ignored class.
So you can go in there and getsome pretty good bargain basement
pricing.
You can even get some ownerfinancing on occasion.
Right.
And those are good onesgetting in so you could really do
some value add with them.
Like the one I picked up atCasper, Wyoming, I picked it up for
430,000.
I put 500k into it, but itjust appraised at 1.3 and I'm roughly
(05:05):
about a million into it andI'm refinancing it right now and
I should be able to pullalmost all of my cash out.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
So the reason I'm asking youis because today one of my family
members has a website where hetraff generates traffic to I guess
leads from multi family andsometimes he gets them outside of
Tempe out of Arizona.
And we got, he got one inSelena, Colorado which is like close
(05:28):
to Pueblo and it's a 12 unitand I don't have any buyers there.
I'm interested.
Yeah, yeah, I'll have to, I'llhave to send you the information
my way.
Yeah, it's under, it's under rented.
It's like each unit's between500 to 700 and way, way under rent.
But again, I don't really knowthat area and I don't really mess
with, you know, outside ofUtah when it comes to multifamily.
(05:50):
Look at that.
I'll send you that.
Interested.
Those are like that 12 units.
He's been my specialty number.
Okay, well There you go.
12 units right there outsideof Pueblo and like south of Denver.
So that'll be cool.
Awesome.
Awesome.
All right, well tell, tell meA little bit about what you do to
help new investors get into wholesaling.
Because you said you dovirtual real estate wholesaling.
So do you teach it?
(06:11):
Do you?
What do you do?
We do.
We do.
So we have REO Auction Academy.
You see it right here behind me.
And what we do is we dosomething totally different than
everybody else out there.
And it's kind of how I got in.
Right.
We teach people how to buybank reos, but mostly on online auctions,
whether it's Auction.com,hubzu Zone, Hudson and Marshall Realty,
Bid, Auction Network, Williamsand Williams, any of these platforms.
(06:34):
And even every once a bluemoon there used to be stuff on ebay
that you can get and there'ssome smaller little auction houses
that are more local indifferent markets that you can also
sign up for and potentiallypick up stuff.
So that's what we specializein buying in.
We have an educationalplatform, teach people how to do
that.
And a lot of people are leeryof buying outside of their area where
(06:54):
they are.
And we kind of take theheadaches away from you there.
It's not as daunting as it seems.
Systems and how we go aboutdoing it.
And it's fairly simple andwe've been doing it since 2009 and
with really, really good success.
Like an example of a propertywe just are about to close.
And I think on a 23rd of thismonth here in June in Hubbard, Ohio,
we picked it up for 177,000.
(07:16):
It's a big, big house.
Six, 6,088 square feet, I believe.
And like a three or four cargarage, big, huge finished basement.
We picked up for 177.
We put almost 40, just under40 into it.
We're selling it for 345.
We had six offers in or sixoffers over.
Asking price.
We went highest and best.
And that's gonna be 105k payout.
(07:38):
It's a rarity.
Right.
They get one that makes agreat one.
Yeah, that's amazing.
But they do happen.
And we have another one inCuero, Texas, which is south of Houston.
We picked it up for 53, putjust about eight or nine grand into
it, and we're selling it for 128.
Wow.
And.
And on these auctions you needto come up with the cash.
Correct.
Like you gotta buy it all out.
So how do you, how does thatwork for, you know, someone that
(08:00):
probably has $0?
So some of our students willjoint venture with them.
Right.
If they've got no money ifit's a deal we're gonna do it, we'll
JV with of course.
Yep.
JV is always a great one for them.
We have private lenders on ourplatform believe it or not that will
fund a lot of deals as well.
Other people, other studentswill sometimes join venture with
each other on different dealsand one person comes in as a capital
(08:22):
partner the other person isone that finds the deal.
So we got that.
We also connect them withcompanies lasted based lenders like
Kiavi, Dominion FinancialLending 1, Lima One Capital and others,
Coco Capital, Lee Arnold'sgroup out there and we're working
on a few different other onesas well.
That way they can get in there with.
Without having to worry aboutcoming up with money.
(08:43):
Right.
And the funds themselvesbecause that is you do when you buy
these bank owned propertiesyou've got to come with the cash.
Cash.
Right.
It's not assignable contract.
They don't let you in general.
Yeah.
So you've got to do a back toback closing.
However there are states ifyou work with the right title company.
There's wet fund states anddry fund states.
If you're in a dry fund stateyou can use your buyers cash to pay
(09:04):
for you on the A to B side andyou're just collecting the difference
there which we do as well.
So that's a way to do itbasically with almost no money down.
Because those are the best.
Those are the best.
I love when we get those.
And you can focus on thosemarkets if you wanted to do you know.
A couple mark of those marketsoff the top of your head that you.
Can say we do Texas with thata lot.
I believe Mississippi is one too.
(09:24):
Mississippi is.
I'm trying to remember.
I don't think Alabama was.
I believe we did New Mexico.
I'm sure Missouri, Nevada.
I think there's either eightor nine of them somewhere in there.
I have a list somewhere.
Yeah, those are seriously the best.
We did one of those where wehad the.
We used the, the.
The end buyer's money.
Yeah, that's great.
Those are the best when youcould do that and again you need
(09:45):
it.
You need a title company to beon board with you to be able to do
that.
Because not all of them willdo it because they want to make sure
none of them get cause any issues.
So that's the main marketingstrategy you teach in reo auction
is how to find these sources deals.
Is there.
Would you say there's a limitor is it because it's the whole United
States that you can open thisup to is.
Is there no limit?
There is no.
(10:06):
There's limit.
And I used to do the directmail marketing, right.
Which I cut off in 2013because I just had too many deals
on the auctions.
I didn't need to do any direct.
I was doing it super expensive too.
I'm sure this your strategy isinexpensive, costs nothing, right?
So there's zero marketing costs.
That's a big bonus that whenyou think about getting in about
that do you want to spendthree or ten grand a month marketing
(10:28):
when you could just do it now?
It's your time and your timeis a value, right?
You and I, we have value onour time, right?
So if you're putting in 15hours a week, there's no reason you
can't find a deal maybe two orthree a month putting in that.
Once you get good at it, right.
Once you get good at compingproperties and know how to contact
the agents and what questionsask them and get the information
that you need, it becomes more simplified.
(10:50):
So these, these bank ownedproperties are represented by real
estate agents still.
It's not, not all of them.
There are some that aren't.
There's a program out therecalled the HUD CWCOT program which
they created a few years backwhere instead of throwing them on
a HUD home store becausethey're trying to get away from the
HUD home store.
So if you go on there and lookat it, you'll find very limited inventory
(11:11):
in most of them they throw inthe online auctions but with the
HUD CW cot they'll forecloseon them and then just list them with
an auction company.
And they're not list on the mls.
They're like off marketproperties, right?
They're off market technicallyand don't really have a price on
them unless they feel likethrowing something on Zillow, which
they will at times put it onZillow to put a number on it.
(11:34):
And then, and then basicallywe're trying to find an agent in
that area who's somebody who'san expert in that area.
He's been there for a while.
To give us an idea what theythink it would be worth.
Go out there, take a look at it.
A lot of them, they don't letyou in even if they are vacant.
And we try to get our studentsfocused on the vacant ones not occupied
because of course withejecting or evicting anybody focus
on those.
If they could peek intowindows, they'll generally the agents
(11:55):
get a pretty especiallyexperienced Agents could go there,
peek through the windows, getan idea what they think it's worth
and what kind of repairs theythink it needs, and then just give
you a ballpark estimate.
And then you can assume, youknow, there's 15 or $35 per square
foot to renovate the property.
You, you put those factors in,you come up with your MA lab will
offer.
Man, I really like this strategy.
I haven't really heard of ittoo much.
(12:16):
That's very interesting.
I've been in the game for along, like five years.
I'd say that's a long time.
But no, I haven't really heardthat people using this marketing
strategy very much.
Do you know why that is?
I don't know why.
And we're the only ones in the game.
I think people are creaturesof habit and they're used to your
traditional.
If you think of it this way, it's.
It's riskless if you're doingyour traditional wholesaling method
direct to seller.
(12:37):
Except you are risking yourmarketing money, right?
You are, you are risking thatwith ours.
You actually have to close ona property.
So people feel maybe it's alittle riskier.
But for we did.
A lot of our students, believeit or not, are experienced investors
that do a ton of deals incertain markets and they feel like
they're missing out on the REOinventory and they just buy.
In our program, they usuallyassign somebody to just deal with
(12:58):
the REOs and then theyrealize, shoot, I can go in other
markets too.
And it's another segue forthem to start another market to invest
in.
I love that.
I think that's amazing.
Do you.
Are there some states thatjust because it's a hot area, hot
state, I guess, market there'sless REOs or is there always opportunities?
There is always opportunities,but there are areas where there's
(13:19):
just such a little bit of inventory.
It'll go like that regardless.
Like a lot of these propertieswill move really, really quickly
or the asset managers or bankswill recognize that instead of putting
it on the auction platform,they'll throw it on the MLS figure
and they can get more of that.
We can't blame them, right?
I can't blame them.
No, of course.
Especially.
What's your market again?
I forget.
(13:40):
Salt Lake City.
Yeah, it's pretty hot.
It's a hot market.
Being a big time hot marketfor a while now.
So it's hard to findinventory, at least fairly priced
inventory.
But I'm assuming the Midwestprobably has tons of opportunities
like Ohio, like you.
Said Ohio, Indiana, Michigan,Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas,
the Carolinas, Maryland, Pennsylvania.
(14:02):
Yeah, a lot of we focus just.
Knowing where to look.
You just got to know where to look.
You just got to know where to look.
Right.
And if you followdemographics, where people are leaving
the cities that people arevacating, the states people are vacating
like Illino way.
Right.
That's that market is really falling.
New York, crazy parts of New Jersey.
New Jersey's weird becausepeople are leaving maybe more towards
(14:22):
the city and they're shiftingdownward within the state.
So they're going more towardsthe shore points where they're going
to Delaware or Pennsylvania.
So that market has become red hot.
But other markets people areshifting out of, they're going out
of Minnesota.
Minnesota is losing a littlebit of its luster in around minute,
what do you call it,Minneapolis, all the issues they've
had there, other parts of it.
(14:43):
The suburbs are doing great,they're flourishing still.
So if, if they are losing thezeal or like we're talking about
some of these markets, thoseare where you would target or you
wouldn't target.
I wouldn't target if I'mlooking to hold long term.
But you can target to findbargains occasionally.
If you.
And I won't, I won't do cashflow rentals in those markets because
I don't trust the, thegovernment, the local governments
(15:05):
and miss Valleys there.
They'll let the, the tenantsstay in for forever.
So I tend to go just zeroincome tax for my rentals.
But some people do it right.
It's their market.
They don't mind doing it anddealing with that.
So you can occasionally findsome really good deals because there
is a little bit moreinventory, especially outside of
Chicago proper.
Right.
The suburbs of Chicago arestill very hot.
But you outside of that andmore rural areas and you'll find
(15:27):
really good deals in those markets.
Same with Kansas, the samewith Oklahoma, in Tulsa, different
markets.
So there's some really good,really good opportunities.
You kind of want to focus and stuff.
You're looking at Missouri,St. Louis, focus necessarily on St.
Louis itself because you gotso much competition there.
But if you go 30 minutes, 60minutes out to floss more, say or
even a little further out,you'll find really, really good deals
(15:49):
in that market.
Sounds like somebody need tocheck out.
Paul, I didn't know about this.
So Paul, for my listeners onhere, since we're going to wrap up,
what would their this call to action?
What would you have them do ifthey want to learn more about what.
You'Re talking about so ifthey want to learn more about this
like if they want to reach outto us, that's great.
They can reach out to us@reoauction academy.com and we have a
(16:10):
couple platforms they could ifthey feel like they can do it themselves.
We have a do it yourselfprogram for like 497.
497 and we also have a fullfledged coaching for 5500 where we
show them everything and theyget all kinds of training videos
and all kinds of access tolenders and other things.
Wow.
But if they want to do it ontheir own, start with your local
reos on on MLS.
Look@auction.com Hubzu thosetwo platforms have a ton of inventory,
(16:33):
your two best biggest sourcesfor looking at properties and then
start contact the agents andtry to feel like what, what is the
value of this particular property?
Right.
Start targeting properties andtesting it and seeing if you can
come up with a good compinglike if you figure out what the value
of the property is as opposedto what the realtor gives you, it's
good way to test yourself.
Of course.
And so if they come, if one ofthe listeners today finds something
(16:57):
but they don't know what to dowith it, could they also reach out
to.
You and say hey absolutely,we've done that with people.
People have reached out to us.
They found deal.
They can't fund it, they don'tknow what to do.
We look at it, we analyze heyyeah, this is deal.
We'll go, we'll join jointogether with you.
Or we say this isn't a deal.
The reason you're not findinglenders for is because you're overpaying.
Here's what the comps are andhere's what you're paying.
Here's kind of repairs andyou'd sell.
(17:17):
Gotcha.
Do that and then maybe helpthem get out of that deal so they
don't lose their earnest money deposit.
Well Paul, it's been apleasure speaking with you and I
actually I'm going to send youthat deal that I have the 12 Plex
in Selena, Colorado and alsothey are willing to do terms.
They I talked to him about it.
He said he'd be open to doing10 years, 10 to 15 down 10 year balloon
amortize over 30 years.
(17:39):
So we'll see.
Again I come to the pointwhere this is kind of a newer territory
for me in a different marketbut I have all the per the performer
and all that information.
I'll send it to you and you can.
Yeah, I'm extremely interested.
This is right up my alley,this type of property.
All right.
Hey, we.
Hey, everybody is listening.
Network, network, network.
That's how you do deals.
All right.
Thanks, Paul.
(17:59):
Thank you.
Appreciate it, Sam.
We are live with the PainlessWholesaling podcast.
I'm here with Paul Lizell.
Is that right, Paul?
Is that right?
Good, good to have you onhere, everybody.
Today, stay tuned becausewe're going to be talking about how
to wholesale across the UnitedStates, across the nation.
We got Paul, I think you weresaying you've done over 45 states
wholesaled in over 45 states.
(00:29):
So 44 to 50 states have wholesale.
Yep.
Man, what about those ones you haven't?
Are those ones still like keepyou up at night or are you going
for those?
Not really.
If something happens, great.
There's certain states I avoidand they, a lot of them fall into
certain states.
The only one I would probablydo additionally would be actually
to Hawaii and the three.
The Dakotas and Hawaii Bother.
(00:50):
Yeah, yeah.
I know that when I was doing alot of marketing and nationwide for
pay per click leads, theywould tell us to not even turn on
the Dakotas.
They're like, don't even worryabout it.
Yeah, well, that's really interesting.
So let's dive right in.
If, if this is your first timetuning into the Painless Wholesaling
podcast, what our goal is isto make wholesaling and real estate
investing painless for you.
(01:10):
Because everyone knows ittakes time, it takes effort, and
if you do this on your own,you feel like you have to do on your
own, you're going to make alot of mistakes.
So we try to make take awaythose mistakes by bringing on experts.
So we have Paul here to tellus a little bit about his business,
his life and provide as muchvalue as we can in the short time.
So Paul, take it away.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and what got you into real
estate.
Sure.
(01:30):
So I'll go back to where I started.
2001 is when I very end of2001 is when I started investing
in real estate and I bought myvery first bank.
Owned property off the HUDhome store and I partnered with a
guy on it.
We picked it up for 29,5.
We put four grand into it, wesold it for 69.
We each walked away with 15,000.
So a 30,000 net profit in afew months.
It was great.
And then I rinsed and repeat.
(01:51):
But I was doing this while Iwas working full time for a bank.
I was a commercial loanunderwriter for a small community
bank for a year.
Then it became a businessbusiness development officer for
a couple years thereafter.
And then I went to CitizensBank, a bigger bank, bigger regional
bank there.
Went for a few years till 2004when I finally quit my job and went
full time in real estate investing.
Wow.
Sounds like you went throughquite a bit in that that time.
(02:14):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And my.
And one of my keys was like.
And I had to do this, convincemy wife potentially as well.
But for definitely for myself,I had to save up 18 months worth
of bill paying ability, inother words, a year and a half a
bill paying ability before Iwould eventually just jump on, go
on my own.
That's what I did got.
Once I got that 18 month boom,it would end up being like December,
end of November, earlyDecember of 2004, I quit the job.
(02:37):
And it did it.
Ever since, you know, I wentthrough that financial crisis 2008,
shifted my model.
That's where I was doing a lotof fix and flips.
And I was buying almostexclusively off HUD and bank reos,
off the MLS in the suburbs ofPhiladelphia at that point.
Okay.
And then I kind of shift 2009once I lost a ton of money on a bunch
of the fix and flip side going.
(02:57):
I'm like, I did a couplewholesale deals and they were easy
money and I didn't have any risk.
Why don't I go back to doing that?
So I flipped my model from 90%fix and flip and 10% wholesale to
90% wholesale and 10% fix and flip.
And I did that for a while,you know, until 2013 roughly, when
the market shifted and startedto go positive.
And then I did a mixture ofstuff, but I started doing all over
(03:20):
the country and um, reallyended 2009 going into 2010, when
it became a little bit easier,I started buying in Indiana and Ohio,
New Jersey, Virginia, theCarolinas, Florida.
Before you know it, I bought44 out of 50 states.
Wow, that's amazing.
And if you had to go back,would you have changed anything on
the model of going to moretowards wholesale?
(03:41):
Would you wish you would havekept more?
Oh, definitely wish I wouldhave kept more.
I think we all say that we'vebeen around for a long enough time,
22 years doing this businessnow, right.
Always wish I would have kept more.
But I've also done really wellin building up some rentals, selling
them when the market's gone upand then building up getting some
more and sell them when.
I didn't expect the market togo parabolic air after Covid.
But it did and I sold somemore and made some more.
(04:03):
Now I'm building again andwe'll see where that leads.
But now what I'm building is Igot some like 12 unit building, 5
unit building in Wyoming.
I'm going to probably justrefinance, keep those things long
term and they'll, they'll bein my, you know, just stick it, set
it and forget it because theycash flow very well and then I'll
add more as, as I need to atthat point.
You know, pick and choosewhich markets I want to be in for
(04:23):
the buy and holds.
Yeah.
Are you continually,continuously looking for more deals,
like multifamily deals rightnow or not so much?
Yeah, we do.
But not the big moldies right now.
The big moldies, we look atthem but when you do the underwriting
on them, they just don't makesense right now.
And especially with the costof capital right now on a refinance
side now the smaller ones tosay, you know, 20 and under or 30
(04:44):
and under units, that's,that's a largely ignored class.
So you can go in there and getsome pretty good bargain basement
pricing.
You can even get some ownerfinancing on occasion.
Right.
And those are good onesgetting in so you could really do
some value add with them.
Like the one I picked up atCasper, Wyoming, I picked it up for
430,000.
I put 500k into it, but itjust appraised at 1.3 and I'm roughly
(05:05):
about a million into it andI'm refinancing it right now and
I should be able to pullalmost all of my cash out.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
So the reason I'm asking youis because today one of my family
members has a website where hetraff generates traffic to I guess
leads from multi family andsometimes he gets them outside of
Tempe out of Arizona.
And we got, he got one inSelena, Colorado which is like close
(05:28):
to Pueblo and it's a 12 unitand I don't have any buyers there.
I'm interested.
Yeah, yeah, I'll have to, I'llhave to send you the information
my way.
Yeah, it's under, it's under rented.
It's like each unit's between500 to 700 and way, way under rent.
But again, I don't really knowthat area and I don't really mess
with, you know, outside ofUtah when it comes to multifamily.
(05:50):
Look at that.
I'll send you that.
Interested.
Those are like that 12 units.
He's been my specialty number.
Okay, well There you go.
12 units right there outsideof Pueblo and like south of Denver.
So that'll be cool.
Awesome.
Awesome.
All right, well tell, tell meA little bit about what you do to
help new investors get into wholesaling.
Because you said you dovirtual real estate wholesaling.
So do you teach it?
(06:11):
Do you?
What do you do?
We do.
We do.
So we have REO Auction Academy.
You see it right here behind me.
And what we do is we dosomething totally different than
everybody else out there.
And it's kind of how I got in.
Right.
We teach people how to buybank reos, but mostly on online auctions,
whether it's Auction.com,hubzu Zone, Hudson and Marshall Realty,
Bid, Auction Network, Williamsand Williams, any of these platforms.
(06:34):
And even every once a bluemoon there used to be stuff on ebay
that you can get and there'ssome smaller little auction houses
that are more local indifferent markets that you can also
sign up for and potentiallypick up stuff.
So that's what we specializein buying in.
We have an educationalplatform, teach people how to do
that.
And a lot of people are leeryof buying outside of their area where
(06:54):
they are.
And we kind of take theheadaches away from you there.
It's not as daunting as it seems.
Systems and how we go aboutdoing it.
And it's fairly simple andwe've been doing it since 2009 and
with really, really good success.
Like an example of a propertywe just are about to close.
And I think on a 23rd of thismonth here in June in Hubbard, Ohio,
we picked it up for 177,000.
(07:16):
It's a big, big house.
Six, 6,088 square feet, I believe.
And like a three or four cargarage, big, huge finished basement.
We picked up for 177.
We put almost 40, just under40 into it.
We're selling it for 345.
We had six offers in or sixoffers over.
Asking price.
We went highest and best.
And that's gonna be 105k payout.
(07:38):
It's a rarity.
Right.
They get one that makes agreat one.
Yeah, that's amazing.
But they do happen.
And we have another one inCuero, Texas, which is south of Houston.
We picked it up for 53, putjust about eight or nine grand into
it, and we're selling it for 128.
Wow.
And.
And on these auctions you needto come up with the cash.
Correct.
Like you gotta buy it all out.
So how do you, how does thatwork for, you know, someone that
(08:00):
probably has $0?
So some of our students willjoint venture with them.
Right.
If they've got no money ifit's a deal we're gonna do it, we'll
JV with of course.
Yep.
JV is always a great one for them.
We have private lenders on ourplatform believe it or not that will
fund a lot of deals as well.
Other people, other studentswill sometimes join venture with
each other on different dealsand one person comes in as a capital
(08:22):
partner the other person isone that finds the deal.
So we got that.
We also connect them withcompanies lasted based lenders like
Kiavi, Dominion FinancialLending 1, Lima One Capital and others,
Coco Capital, Lee Arnold'sgroup out there and we're working
on a few different other onesas well.
That way they can get in there with.
Without having to worry aboutcoming up with money.
(08:43):
Right.
And the funds themselvesbecause that is you do when you buy
these bank owned propertiesyou've got to come with the cash.
Cash.
Right.
It's not assignable contract.
They don't let you in general.
Yeah.
So you've got to do a back toback closing.
However there are states ifyou work with the right title company.
There's wet fund states anddry fund states.
If you're in a dry fund stateyou can use your buyers cash to pay
(09:04):
for you on the A to B side andyou're just collecting the difference
there which we do as well.
So that's a way to do itbasically with almost no money down.
Because those are the best.
Those are the best.
I love when we get those.
And you can focus on thosemarkets if you wanted to do you know.
A couple mark of those marketsoff the top of your head that you.
Can say we do Texas with thata lot.
I believe Mississippi is one too.
(09:24):
Mississippi is.
I'm trying to remember.
I don't think Alabama was.
I believe we did New Mexico.
I'm sure Missouri, Nevada.
I think there's either eightor nine of them somewhere in there.
I have a list somewhere.
Yeah, those are seriously the best.
We did one of those where wehad the.
We used the, the.
The end buyer's money.
Yeah, that's great.
Those are the best when youcould do that and again you need
(09:45):
it.
You need a title company to beon board with you to be able to do
that.
Because not all of them willdo it because they want to make sure
none of them get cause any issues.
So that's the main marketingstrategy you teach in reo auction
is how to find these sources deals.
Is there.
Would you say there's a limitor is it because it's the whole United
States that you can open thisup to is.
Is there no limit?
There is no.
(10:06):
There's limit.
And I used to do the directmail marketing, right.
Which I cut off in 2013because I just had too many deals
on the auctions.
I didn't need to do any direct.
I was doing it super expensive too.
I'm sure this your strategy isinexpensive, costs nothing, right?
So there's zero marketing costs.
That's a big bonus that whenyou think about getting in about
that do you want to spendthree or ten grand a month marketing
(10:28):
when you could just do it now?
It's your time and your timeis a value, right?
You and I, we have value onour time, right?
So if you're putting in 15hours a week, there's no reason you
can't find a deal maybe two orthree a month putting in that.
Once you get good at it, right.
Once you get good at compingproperties and know how to contact
the agents and what questionsask them and get the information
that you need, it becomes more simplified.
(10:50):
So these, these bank ownedproperties are represented by real
estate agents still.
It's not, not all of them.
There are some that aren't.
There's a program out therecalled the HUD CWCOT program which
they created a few years backwhere instead of throwing them on
a HUD home store becausethey're trying to get away from the
HUD home store.
So if you go on there and lookat it, you'll find very limited inventory
(11:11):
in most of them they throw inthe online auctions but with the
HUD CW cot they'll forecloseon them and then just list them with
an auction company.
And they're not list on the mls.
They're like off marketproperties, right?
They're off market technicallyand don't really have a price on
them unless they feel likethrowing something on Zillow, which
they will at times put it onZillow to put a number on it.
(11:34):
And then, and then basicallywe're trying to find an agent in
that area who's somebody who'san expert in that area.
He's been there for a while.
To give us an idea what theythink it would be worth.
Go out there, take a look at it.
A lot of them, they don't letyou in even if they are vacant.
And we try to get our studentsfocused on the vacant ones not occupied
because of course withejecting or evicting anybody focus
on those.
If they could peek intowindows, they'll generally the agents
(11:55):
get a pretty especiallyexperienced Agents could go there,
peek through the windows, getan idea what they think it's worth
and what kind of repairs theythink it needs, and then just give
you a ballpark estimate.
And then you can assume, youknow, there's 15 or $35 per square
foot to renovate the property.
You, you put those factors in,you come up with your MA lab will
offer.
Man, I really like this strategy.
I haven't really heard of ittoo much.
(12:16):
That's very interesting.
I've been in the game for along, like five years.
I'd say that's a long time.
But no, I haven't really heardthat people using this marketing
strategy very much.
Do you know why that is?
I don't know why.
And we're the only ones in the game.
I think people are creaturesof habit and they're used to your
traditional.
If you think of it this way, it's.
It's riskless if you're doingyour traditional wholesaling method
direct to seller.
(12:37):
Except you are risking yourmarketing money, right?
You are, you are risking thatwith ours.
You actually have to close ona property.
So people feel maybe it's alittle riskier.
But for we did.
A lot of our students, believeit or not, are experienced investors
that do a ton of deals incertain markets and they feel like
they're missing out on the REOinventory and they just buy.
In our program, they usuallyassign somebody to just deal with
(12:58):
the REOs and then theyrealize, shoot, I can go in other
markets too.
And it's another segue forthem to start another market to invest
in.
I love that.
I think that's amazing.
Do you.
Are there some states thatjust because it's a hot area, hot
state, I guess, market there'sless REOs or is there always opportunities?
There is always opportunities,but there are areas where there's
(13:19):
just such a little bit of inventory.
It'll go like that regardless.
Like a lot of these propertieswill move really, really quickly
or the asset managers or bankswill recognize that instead of putting
it on the auction platform,they'll throw it on the MLS figure
and they can get more of that.
We can't blame them, right?
I can't blame them.
No, of course.
Especially.
What's your market again?
I forget.
(13:40):
Salt Lake City.
Yeah, it's pretty hot.
It's a hot market.
Being a big time hot marketfor a while now.
So it's hard to findinventory, at least fairly priced
inventory.
But I'm assuming the Midwestprobably has tons of opportunities
like Ohio, like you.
Said Ohio, Indiana, Michigan,Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas,
the Carolinas, Maryland, Pennsylvania.
(14:02):
Yeah, a lot of we focus just.
Knowing where to look.
You just got to know where to look.
You just got to know where to look.
Right.
And if you followdemographics, where people are leaving
the cities that people arevacating, the states people are vacating
like Illino way.
Right.
That's that market is really falling.
New York, crazy parts of New Jersey.
New Jersey's weird becausepeople are leaving maybe more towards
(14:22):
the city and they're shiftingdownward within the state.
So they're going more towardsthe shore points where they're going
to Delaware or Pennsylvania.
So that market has become red hot.
But other markets people areshifting out of, they're going out
of Minnesota.
Minnesota is losing a littlebit of its luster in around minute,
what do you call it,Minneapolis, all the issues they've
had there, other parts of it.
(14:43):
The suburbs are doing great,they're flourishing still.
So if, if they are losing thezeal or like we're talking about
some of these markets, thoseare where you would target or you
wouldn't target.
I wouldn't target if I'mlooking to hold long term.
But you can target to findbargains occasionally.
If you.
And I won't, I won't do cashflow rentals in those markets because
I don't trust the, thegovernment, the local governments
(15:05):
and miss Valleys there.
They'll let the, the tenantsstay in for forever.
So I tend to go just zeroincome tax for my rentals.
But some people do it right.
It's their market.
They don't mind doing it anddealing with that.
So you can occasionally findsome really good deals because there
is a little bit moreinventory, especially outside of
Chicago proper.
Right.
The suburbs of Chicago arestill very hot.
But you outside of that andmore rural areas and you'll find
(15:27):
really good deals in those markets.
Same with Kansas, the samewith Oklahoma, in Tulsa, different
markets.
So there's some really good,really good opportunities.
You kind of want to focus and stuff.
You're looking at Missouri,St. Louis, focus necessarily on St.
Louis itself because you gotso much competition there.
But if you go 30 minutes, 60minutes out to floss more, say or
even a little further out,you'll find really, really good deals
(15:49):
in that market.
Sounds like somebody need tocheck out.
Paul, I didn't know about this.
So Paul, for my listeners onhere, since we're going to wrap up,
what would their this call to action?
What would you have them do ifthey want to learn more about what.
You'Re talking about so ifthey want to learn more about this
like if they want to reach outto us, that's great.
They can reach out to us@reoauction academy.com and we have a
(16:10):
couple platforms they could ifthey feel like they can do it themselves.
We have a do it yourselfprogram for like 497.
497 and we also have a fullfledged coaching for 5500 where we
show them everything and theyget all kinds of training videos
and all kinds of access tolenders and other things.
Wow.
But if they want to do it ontheir own, start with your local
reos on on MLS.
Look@auction.com Hubzu thosetwo platforms have a ton of inventory,
(16:33):
your two best biggest sourcesfor looking at properties and then
start contact the agents andtry to feel like what, what is the
value of this particular property?
Right.
Start targeting properties andtesting it and seeing if you can
come up with a good compinglike if you figure out what the value
of the property is as opposedto what the realtor gives you, it's
good way to test yourself.
Of course.
And so if they come, if one ofthe listeners today finds something
(16:57):
but they don't know what to dowith it, could they also reach out
to.
You and say hey absolutely,we've done that with people.
People have reached out to us.
They found deal.
They can't fund it, they don'tknow what to do.
We look at it, we analyze heyyeah, this is deal.
We'll go, we'll join jointogether with you.
Or we say this isn't a deal.
The reason you're not findinglenders for is because you're overpaying.
Here's what the comps are andhere's what you're paying.
Here's kind of repairs andyou'd sell.
(17:17):
Gotcha.
Do that and then maybe helpthem get out of that deal so they
don't lose their earnest money deposit.
Well Paul, it's been apleasure speaking with you and I
actually I'm going to send youthat deal that I have the 12 Plex
in Selena, Colorado and alsothey are willing to do terms.
They I talked to him about it.
He said he'd be open to doing10 years, 10 to 15 down 10 year balloon
amortize over 30 years.
(17:39):
So we'll see.
Again I come to the pointwhere this is kind of a newer territory
for me in a different marketbut I have all the per the performer
and all that information.
I'll send it to you and you can.
Yeah, I'm extremely interested.
This is right up my alley,this type of property.
All right.
Hey, we.
Hey, everybody is listening.
Network, network, network.
That's how you do deals.
All right.
Thanks, Paul.
(17:59):
Thank you.
Appreciate it, Sam.
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