When we dialed back to Having a much smaller team and doing less Deals, but doing bigger deals, that’s where we really fell in love with doing that.

Just making sure that you put the priorities on your calendar and then you hold yourselves accountable.

It’s worth every dollar to get around these people because the connections and the speed and things like that is just so helpful for our business. Even putting down 20% by the time you pencil out that price, the rate, the interest, the taxes, the insurance, all of the goodies that go along with it, HOA, sometimes maintenance repairs, you don’t cash flow. Once you understand the strategies and maybe Kind of change things up slightly.

Welcome back everyone to the REM podcast. My name is Noah and today we have …

Jenn.

And I’m Joe Delle fave.

Delle fave

Awesome. Awesome. Welcome to the show, guys. Looking forward to getting to know you guys a little bit more better, get to know your business a little bit better. And yeah, just curious, what were you guys doing before real estate and then what you guys got you into real estate?

Well, I followed the traditional path of what we were all supposed to do back in the ’90s. Graduated high school in 99, went off to college to be a teacher. And that’s exactly what I did for eight years. And I taught public school, middle school, high school teacher, English teacher. And it wasn’t until 2008, couple years in where I met Joe, who’s my husband now. But at the time I owned my own property. I actually had a girlfriend living with me to help the mortgage expense because teacher’s salary wasn’t very great. I was definitely getting in over my head, trying to pay for my master’s degree, owning a home and making not a lot of money, just being a public school teacher. So I meet this handsome fella and he’s busy at a car dealership, but had dreams of getting back into real estate because he actually did his first deal in the year 2000.

Yeah. I got a course, this was 25 years ago. My buddy actually bought on TV. We’re all hanging out at his house and he never opened it. It was on one of those late night commercials. So I saw it and I was like, “Make $3,000 in 30 days.” And I was broke. I was like 22 at the time. I was stone cold broke. So I begged him to let me borrow this and he reluctantly did. But I listened to what the VCR tape said in the book. I went out and did it. My first month, I had a deal under contract and I had no money. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I found a cash buyer. I found an attorney who could do a closing and we ended up doing a double closing and I made almost $13,000 checks. The biggest check I ever saw in my life. So that’s what got me hooked, line and sinker into real estate. But I had a job at a car dealership and I was moving up to the corporate led of their sole cars and I was in finance. But when I meet Jen in 08, when I had my own house, she had hers, we were the accidental landlord where we were going to rent hers out because fell in love, moved in with me. But then we were also finding in 08, the market was crashing, if you remember. And there was deals popping up. And we’re from Rochester, New York, so upstate New York. And we’re finding houses that were nice neighborhoods, great school districts for like 40 grand, 30,000. So we just started scooping them up doing the Burr method before we even knew what that meant.

Didn’t know I had a name or have Shake.

Yeah. We just found some fixer uppers. We would model them, rent them out, go to the bank, pull my money out, go find another deal. And it was working. It was really slow. It wasn’t making us a whole lot of money actually. But then fast forward after we got married and had kids, Jen walked away from her teaching job. And then in 2016, we had two little ones at home and I was at the bank refinancing out of one of the properties. And my friend who worked there was like, “At 10 mortgages, we cut you off. What are you guys going to do after that? ” And it was like I witnessed a car accident. I was like, “Oh my … ” I didn’t know they’d stop you. I had a good credit score. I had great income. Our debt was low besides these rental houses. So I was kind of shocked. And that’s when we dove down the rabbit hole after months and months of research and looking. I mean, I was poor my wife. I was driving her nuts with all the stuff I was looking up, but that’s when I found out you can buy real estate without using banks, without having huge down payments, without needing a credit check, without needing the appraisals, all of this stuff. And when I found that out, I looked at her, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is the future for what we want to do. ” So we started getting into that and all of a sudden our business just took right off.

That’s awesome. And what does your business look like today?

So we’re still buying deals today, fast forward. But what happened was when we learned how to do creative finance, the first deal we did was back in 2017. We had a seller who owned a house outright, inherited it from his grandfather passing, had it rented out to a coworker, really wasn’t making much money. So when he said, “Hey, I want to sell it, ” he reached out to us. He was like, “Hey, this isn’t a fixer upper. I don’t want any low ball offers from you investors.” And I was like, “No, I could pay your price if you’re open to me doing payments.” So he asked what that looked like. And what we did was I bought that house with only a hundred bucks down. I didn’t come up with 20% down or 10% down or half down $100 down. We did pay a few thousand in closing costs, put an insurance policy on there. This was the first house that we bought that was turnkey. We didn’t need contractors renovating kitchens and bathrooms. And it was actually really nice. And so when we offered it as a rental, we actually changed our strategy of offering it with a lease with the option to buy like a rent to own. And our renter moved in short time after and gave us $10,000 down to move in. So once we found that deal out, we’re like, oh my gosh, because he was so happy we paid his price. No, he didn’t even charge us interest. It was a 0% mortgage. We just paid 500 bucks a month flat towards what we owed him. Yeah, it was just once we figured that out and then we got paid to buy it from our renter moving in, giving us such a big check, this is where we’re like, “Okay, we’re going to do this from now on.

” We basically doubled our portfolio. In 2020 happened, he walked away from his car dealership job because everything shut down in New York. And I was like, “Holy cow, this is a dream come true. We can now work full-time.” So we built the team, hired people to work with us. And through 2020 to 2022, it was just cranking. We were doing deals nationwide. And then we realized that we didn’t really want a huge team. We really like kind of keeping it small and really found the pockets where we wanted to hold our properties too. So we’ve been able to really dial in because you’ve got to kind of do some things to figure out what you don’t want to do too.

Oh, for sure. When it comes to the team right now, what does the team look like? How many people are on the team and how much volume are you doing with that team?

So I have one acquisition manager. I have one virtual assistant, he’s actually out in California who works for us. We’re able to do a handful of deals every single year from doing that. It’s usually like one a month or two. I’m depending on what we’re doing. We’ve already got a decent portfolio, so that’s been really been fantastic. And for us, I still love to do deals, so that’s why we continue to do it. But what we were doing, I mean, there were some months we were doing 10 deals in a month. And as fun as that was at times, I mean, I’m trying to dispo deals in North Pole, Alaska, in Montana and I mean all over the Country,

All over the place, Texas, all over the place. And so from doing that, I realized keep it small, but keep it all because I have a lot of friends who have these big, huge wholesaling operations, but man, they have some major expenses. And so they do a lot of revenue, but they don’t actually net a whole lot in their pocket because a lot of it goes to their team, marketing, all these backend software. So I know a lot of guys and girls out there who are doing a lot of volume and a lot of top line revenue, but bottom line revenue, it just, it’s tough. And when you’re having all these mouths to feed, we had a team of 12 people at one point. So when you’re the last one to get paid because you’re paying your whole team, there was some deals I’m looking like, man, they all made more money than we did, right? And it’s us putting up the risk and all the money and all those things. So when we dialed back to having a much smaller team and doing less deals, but doing bigger deals, that’s where we really fell in love with doing that. So if the deal doesn’t pay us a bunch of money, rather it’s a fix and flip or a wholesale, or my favorite is when I’m just buying a house with either seller financing or things like that, I don’t want to touch them. There’s no more $5,000 wholesale deals and things like that. It’s just not worth the time. It takes the same amount of time to make a $5,000 deals. It does a $50,000 deal.

It’s like it takes less time sometimes.

Yeah, no Kidding.

Oh yeah. And you have such more peace of mind, for sure. I mean, I know a lot of investors that have … Everyone gets into the business for the same reason, right? It’s time freedom. Most people come for the time freedom, and then they end up being like, oh, I’m going to do 100, 200, 300 deals, and then their time freedom is out the window. How do you balance that as far as a work-life balance?

Well, I think what we really, like you said, we had to take a step back because when we were doing that many deals, we even went and got an office. So there was a point in 2022, 2023 where I’m kissing him and he’s rushing out the door and then I’m with the kids we homeschool and I’m like, well, this feels backwards. You got into this to be a family, to spend more time together. And it was just a little bit nutty. So that’s where we decided to really shift gears. And then you can do this business remotely, but you got to be really particular about the deals that you’re going to do. And so I can’t say there’s a true balance. I know that we try really hard. And sometimes your effort and energy has to go if you’ve got a big thing that you’re closing, right? And we’re honest with the kids. And then there’s other times where like, okay, we’re not working, we’re going to Disney World and that’s where our focus is. And just making sure that you put the priorities on your calendar and then you hold yourselves accountable. I think that, I mean, I could go on and on, working together as husband and wife, how do you separate work and just being married, it’s a little bit crazy at times. So you’ve got to make an effort.You’ve got to go on date nights and you got to catch each other if you start talking about deals and sellers and the team and be like, “Okay, let’s table that. We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” because you care about it, but also you got to go have fun.

Yeah, we’re both guilty of it

Too. Yeah, definitely hard not to, for sure.

Yeah.

we’ll be on a date night and one of us will bring it up and it whirlwinds into this whole conversation like, “How do we even get here? Stop. It’s after hours.” But when we had a much bigger team, I mean, we’re doing deals. There was sometimes where a seller, because they might’ve been in the West Coast, we’re on the East Coast and my acquisitionist is talking to me at 10:30 at night. Meanwhile, I’m trying to get in bed. They’re like, “Hey, should I write this deal up?” And that stuff’s happening. And I found myself in more meetings now than I ever was, even though our team was all remote around the world, around the country here too. But it was just acquisition meeting, disposition meeting, TC meeting, training.

meeting doubt.

It got to the point where, like you mentioned, we built this to have the lifestyle that we wanted to because from living in upstate New York when we do this full time, we moved to Florida almost, well, three and a half years ago and we thought we couldn’t do this till we were super old and retired and things like that. But when I walked away from my job in my young 40s, we could go travel anywhere, we could be anywhere. So this is where I loved it because this summer we took a month off, went through the whole East Coast up to New York, Boston, a bunch of different cities, towns, Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia. And to us, your kids are only young once and you don’t have that much time with them, 18 summers, 18 holidays and things like that. So we really want to make the most of it.

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When you put it that way, it definitely puts it in perspective for sure. But I definitely think that’s probably 80% of New Yorker’s retirement plans is to move to Florida. So you definitely beat them to it for sure. But I guess I’m curious, what did your guys’ life look like before hopping into real estate investing as far as day-to-day, as far as your relationship, working not with each other, to working together, what did that all kind of look like?

Yeah. So we met, I feel like a little bit later I was 26, you were 30. So I’m well established in my teaching career. I literally was like, “I’m not going to date anybody. I got three major grad classes again. I got to get my master’s degree. I don’t have time.” And then of course, right, the universe is like, “You will make time because the right one is showing up at your door.” And so you finally meet someone that you want to spend all this time with and that was the one thing we couldn’t make more of. And so it was super frustrating. I’d get up early, some mornings at like 4:30, five o’clock on a snowy Tuesday to drive an hour and a half into work, white knuckle because it’s like crazy weather out there. And he would be sleeping and then I’d work all day. I’d come home at like four, five o’clock. He’d be working until 9:00. So now I’m trying to stay awake to make him dinner, spend a little time. And we were like, “Is this it? ” A whole couple days goes by and we barely see each other, this is life. And so we started really having those questions and he’s like, “Well, being the visionary that he is, if we were to buy real estate and have a rental portfolio, work for ourselves, there’s this whole other life out there because it was a rat race.” There were plenty of days that … And then we have kids and now the kids don’t really see him that much unless I drive up to the dealership. So it was a typical … It wasn’t even nine to five. It was like eight to nine most nights. And I had

To work Saturdays. So the only day that we were all together, either myself and Jen or all of us once we started having kids was just Sunday.

Sunday.

That was the only day that all four of us were ever just together. And so we really knew that there was something more to life than just this. And I didn’t want to work till I was 90 at a car dealership, although the pay was fantastic. It had a beautiful house, beautiful neighborhood. But I knew that you got to start your side hustle while you already have a good income, while you could already have build some systems in place, build a pipeline of deals and some flow and start working on your system so it could give you the ability to have more options. And the option was when COVID happened, I could either go back to work when the curve flattened. Remember how they told everybody that we’re waiting for a couple weeks for the curve, but Jen was like, “You’re not going back. We’ve been fantasizing about doing this full time. Now’s the time.” So we started doing this in the beginning of global pandemic. And when we brought on a couple interns and we went from doing a deal every year to doing a deal every month, then we brought in another two, and then now we’re doing multiple deals every month, that’s where we’re like, holy cow, this is exciting. And then we’re from Rochester, we’re doing deals in Buffalo, New York, we’re doing deals. And then found a deal in North Pole, Alaska. Then we’re doing deals in Florida. And I’m like, well, if I could dispo a deal in North Pole, Alaska in three days, a great deal’s a great deal. We could do them everywhere. So then we tried doing nationwide, which don’t recommend doing that. It’s absolutely, you’re copping houses in the middle of the desert.

But I love that you asked that question because if you do go back to 2008 when we first met and he’d done the one deal and then he stopped for eight years and then he … When I hadn’t even met him yet, I got this email and he was like, “Yeah, I want to fix up a house.” And I was like, “Well, I have an old house, help me with mine.” And then it was one property at a time. And then the one eventually turned into five and then the five was like, “Okay, what are we going to do now?” Which then we got into the creative and then the lease option. And that was when I finally really jumped on board because I was like, “Okay, this is turning into more than a you can handle on the spare time that you have. ” So I started really taking a step in a seat in the business, finding our rent to own buyers. And we hired a coach is when everything really changed too. It was like we took it super seriously and it became like no Netflix and chill. We’re not going out with friends at the bar, not that we were anyway, but anytime we did have was super strategic. So with like early mornings, he’s studying and reaching out to sellers and on his lunch break, he’s calling people and then after work it maybe go to a home and get a contract signed. And so it’s making the time, not saying I don’t have the time was really important so that when COVID did happen and we had 10 rental properties, we were like good to go.

That’s awesome. When it comes to the coach aspect, I love that you brought that up. I mean, everyone always thinks, especially an entrepreneur is like, “Oh, we got this. We could do it on our own. We don’t need anyone.” When you look at sports, everyone has a coach, no matter what it is. If it’s an individual sport, I mean, golf, you have a golf coach, if you’re a gymnastic, you have a gymnastics coach, if you’re on a football team, you have a coach. When it comes to an entrepreneurship and investing specifically, how important do you think finding a coach, finding the right coach was to your business?

It was essential, but you’ve got to be ready for it because I see so many people signing up hoping that the coach is going to fix it or do it for them, but that’s just a part of it. That person can help you, guide you, answer questions as you’re taking the messy, massive action along the way, but they’re of no use if you’re not going to put in the work. And I know for a fact, every time we’ve paid money to a coach, maybe they weren’t like the perfect person, but man, we learned so much and I’ve never wasted a dollar on a mentor, a mastermind or any sort of service that I was paying for a value to take the easy button. They already made some mistakes and now they’re pouring into you so that you don’t make them or just to have them on hand of like, “I got this situation popping up, what are the next steps I should have? ” So I just think for us, it took him a couple of times. Our coach was Tony. He would hop on a seller call and Joe would be like, “Oh, that’s all he’s got to say.” And so once he heard it a couple times, he was off to the races and doing it himself. So just those little steps along the way can make such a huge difference. Instead of waiting in the water, just kind of like, “I don’t know, will this work? Will it not? ” And then you kind of second guess yourself and you never take the action. I think that’s the worst.

Well, and I think guys have an issue. We have an ego, right? There’s nobody smarter better than me and you just got to lose your ego because there’s always somebody better, smarter than you at whatever task.

I think That can happen for-

Get in the right rooms and learn from these people. And if you’ve got to pay to be around them, like high level top earners, they’re not just going to give you all the info for free, not at a consistent basis where you’re going to need it like a one and done.That’s a different story, but continuous help and consulting is huge. And then I think the second thing is, it’s like what Jen said, put in the work because they could give you the recipe, but if you don’t do it. So for me, it was like, just show me what to do, get that heck out of my way, let me go do it and then be there when I have a question. So we saw the value in that. So we’ve been with so many of the best coaches around the planet. We even have one now. We’re in a high level mastermind that we meet a few times a year from people all over the world and there’s some heavy hitters in the group. So we pay. I mean, the mastermind alone costs almost as much as that first house that we did, but it’s worth every dollar to get around these people because the connections and the speed and things like that has just been so helpful for our business.

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, Mastermind’s alone. I mean, we’re in, well, depending on what company, but for some of our companies, we’re in four or five masterminds. I travel to all of them, so I’m at a mastermind probably two to three times a month. And the knowledge you get, the people that you meet, I mean, even as simple as like, “Hey, I’m having a problem in my business.” And then you hear five or 10 other people have that same problem and it’s more of just collectively finding an answer versus, or maybe someone already found the answer, right? So definitely a huge thing. What do you think the biggest challenge is right now in real estate or in your business? Well,

That’s two different questions. I think the biggest challenge right now with real estate is, I mean, it’s situational, right? Because I’ll give you an example. We do business in multiple markets right now. The Florida market is definitely slowed down. Inventory is spiking up. Really, there’s not a lot of property selling. There’s still a lot, but not like it was. And the challenge is because these interest rates are so high, you’re still paying six, 7%. And so it’s impossible to do a deal where you’re going to either do a Burr or buy a deal, even putting down 20% by the time you pencil out that price, the rate, the interest, the taxes, the insurance, all of the goodies that go along with it, HOA, sometimes maintenance and repairs, you don’t cash flow. I mean, I’ve got friends that are investors that said they haven’t been able to buy a rental in two, three years. And so here it’s really diving into a lot of these creative deals because like we just helped one of our clients in our coaching group lock up a deal in Venice, Florida where the seller’s already moved to Vegas, house is turnkey, beautiful house, beautiful neighborhood. They tried listing it 455 a year ago, didn’t sell. Now it’s been vacant, tried listing it with an investor who was going to do a novation, didn’t sell. So when our client reached out and got me on the phone, we negotiated for a 317 price. He’s got a 2.25% interest rate on his mortgage and they only need two grand down to do the deal. So two grand down, they’re taking over the existing mortgage, not assuming it, they’re buying the property, but the loan stays in the seller’s name and now our client gets it at a 2.25 rate. So it’s the challenge is if you’re an investor waiting for rates to drop, that’s not a strategy that’s going to be working because it’s not going to get down to these rates. But once you understand the strategies and maybe kind of change things up slightly, there’s a lot of these motivated sellers out there right now. And the traditional way of putting on the market, it’s been a challenge. So I think with having this extra strategy, more people are saying yes now than it’s been crazy. On the flip side, if you’re wholesaling or fixed and flipping even worse, that’s a big challenge. I mean, you’re buying this house, you’re raising all this capital, you’re hiring contractors, there’s a lot of risk that goes into that, pulling permits, like doing all this work to list it. It might be months before they sell and you’re having all these carrying costs. So for us, I love buying these, accumulating these cash flowing deals where I got super low rates, no huge down payments. Meantime, if I’m going to do a deal, it’s a fixed upper, I want to wholesale that more than I want to do a six month fix and flip. So I promise my wife, even though we got one going on right now, we’re doing a bunch of other wholesales.

Keep telling me no more fix and flips Noah, but here we are fixing and flipping.

But that one’s in New York.

It was a great deal.

Yeah. I mean, it’s a crazy great deal for the house.

That’s awesome. When it comes to creative financing, the only thing that I get questions about all the time, which it takes the right person, right? I mean, if someone has that two point whatever percent, but then they need it off their credit for the next house they want to get or whatever the case may be, how do you handle that or how do you get around that if there is a way to get around that?

Yeah, there’s definitely a way because we have that happen all the time. Sometimes that seller needs to buy a property. Sometimes they’ve already bought, right? Easy, peasy, lemon, squeezy. We don’t have to worry about anything there. Sometimes they’re going to plan on buying it a few years down the road. And if that’s the case, the way that we do the paperwork, it shows our incoming payment help washing out their debt so it doesn’t goof up their DTI or their debt to income. So most of the time I just say, “Hey, if you’re going to go buy a house, get me in touch with your mortgage person.” I’ll forward them all the docs showing that we bought it. There’s a new note created showing that we’re making the payment and we’ll actually show the payments coming out of our account. So now it doesn’t hurt them trying to buy another property. And we bought a lot of houses this way and this happens all of the time. So that’s been a really easy way, just making sure you cross every T and dot the I, and you want to do it that way because they’re going to want to buy a house eventually or something will happen. And so we just keep the docs closed by and when they need it, we just send it right to them.

Awesome. What do you think the most common misconception is about what you’re offering?

As far as like a creative finance deal?

To a seller or to like someone who wants to, as an investor?

I would say maybe both or two questions.

I see a lot of investors who are like, “Hey, I want to learn how to do this. ” And they think they need to offer half down or something crazy, these huge down payments. And I mean, to be quite honest with you, we typically buy with no money down. 100 bucks, a couple thousand bucks. We did one in New Smyrna Beach, which is the other side of Florida. The house is built in 2022, so it’s relatively new house. We did this deal last year and we gave them 10 grand down because they were actually moving to Texas. His job transferred him to Texas. His wife was still back in Florida. They already bought the new house. He’s like, “We just can’t swing two payments. We’re struggling right now.” And so when we looked at the house, turnkey, beautiful house, new development. And so he’s like, once we negotiated the deal, he’s like, “Just give me 10 grand down and you could have it. ” So once we did that and we paid the closing costs, we had a turnkey house in Florida with a 4% rate with only 10 grand down. It’s the misconception is it doesn’t work in my area. And if you believe that, you’re right, although it works everywhere. So you got to remember it does work everywhere. There’s motivated sellers all around the country. You don’t have to offer them these crazy terms. You just got to get great at asking the seller really good questions and have them make you the offer. And when the seller makes you the offer, now you’re either going to accept it, decline it, or counter offer. It’s pretty simple. But usually newbie investors or negotiators, they’re like telling the seller what they’re willing to do. And you’d be surprised how many sellers are just like, I’ve got the guy with the 2.25 rate. He bought the house four years ago. So he owes 26 more years left on the mortgage. So I said, “I’ll give you two grand down and we’re just going to take over that payment for the next 26 years because the true value is that 2.25 rate and that’s why we’re wanting to buy it. ” So just being very transparent with the seller, don’t hide, don’t beat around the bush, be very crystal clear, ask good questions, do good deals.

When it comes to the acquisition role, I know a lot of acquisition people like to throw a number out there or kind of like what you’re talking about, like tell them what we will give you. When you hear an offer that’s good enough or one that you can do, do you always or usually try and go lower and see what they’ll take or do you usually give them what they’re asking?

Well, that’s a great question. So the neat thing about creative finance, there’s four different levers. There’s four different negotiating points. When it’s a cash sale, there’s only one and that’s the price. That’s the only thing that matters. And a cash deal is the price. With a creative finance deal where I’m buying a property with seller financing, the first thing I look at is my down payment. Can I get into this deal with a hundred bucks down in some closing costs? The second thing is, what’s my monthly payment? Can I cash flow? And then the third thing is my term length. Some of these sellers might want to get paid off in one year. I don’t like that. I want somebody who’s going to give me 10, 15, 20, 30 years, and there’s many that do. But then the last thing I focus on, which is the price, which to the seller, that’s usually the most important thing. And out of all four, that’s my least important. So I’ll give you an example. If it’s a $400,000 home and they want $400,000 for it, but they’re going to sell me the deal with no money down, they’re not going to charge me any interest, give me a super low payment for the next 30 years, what do I care? And it’s a turnkey house. I don’t have to get a contractor involved. I’ll pay 400,000. And it leaves a lot of these other investors scratching their head saying, “How could you pay 400,000?” Now don’t get me wrong, I always want a deal, but the deal could be built on the terms, doesn’t always have to be on the price. So when we do some of these creative deals, we’re creating a win for the seller, a win for us as the buyer, to where we both walk away feeling amazing and I could pay top dollar and don’t have to low ball them and nobody’s going to take a super low ball in a turnkey beautiful house. They want a good buck for it. And I don’t blame them, I would too. So the fact that we can do that now because of this strategy, this is what changed the game for us because when we were first only dealing with junkers, the fixer uppers, if I couldn’t get a deal at 50 cents on the dollar or better, I wasn’t buying it. So it took a little bit of a mindset change for me. A seller wants 400,000 and I’m about to pay it. I’ll be honest with you, it kind of freaked me out. But then when I’m like, well, okay, only a hundred bucks down and they’re not charging me interest or I have a 2.25 interest rate, which I could definitely take those all day long and they’re giving me super long terms, sure, I’ll pay your price. And I’ll still try to get a little bit wiggle on it too, and I usually do.

Yeah, That’s awesome. What mistakes do you often see investors make in today’s age in real estate?

Well, I think it’s the information overload. So obviously there’s a lot of podcasts, which are great. Love that we’re on one right now, but you can’t let yourself just get consumed in the research mode and following the YouTubes and the videos or even signing up for courses and you’re just like learning, learning, learning. I think that it really does come down to like you’re going to learn best when you actually go do the deal. So education is important, but you need to actually be doing the things that you’re learning about. And then just not doing a bad deal. So knowing the real difference between what’s a good deal, what’s a bad deal, like your numbers truly matter. So if you don’t know the area that you’re trying to buy a house in, learn the area because where we’re from in upstate New York, there’s a reason why some of those houses are super cheap down in Rochester. And I’ve seen some people really lose a lot of money. I know that there was a seller reached out last year, was it? And you’re trying to help her, but what she bought it for, it just made no sense. And you feel bad, but you don’t know what you don’t know. You could really get yourself in a jam. And unfortunately lessons will teach you a lot and you just can’t quit. You got to keep going and know that if you’re around the right people, they can help you out in situations like that sometimes, but also just don’t go do a deal to do a deal. I feel like a lot of people are just trying to get another door, but stop, look at everything and make sure that you really, especially if you’re taking over a seller’s mortgage payment, don’t promise that you’re going to make that every month you can’t. So make sure that you’ve got the capital, the know- how, like exit strategies and cover all your bases because it’s really important.

Well, and I know the deal you’re talking about because she was in Colorado. She bought a seven unit in the city of Rochester, way overpaid, like 1150,000 over paid for it, got terrible tenants, place got trashed. And so she was open to doing a deal with us with seller financing with only five grand down. We could take over the property, take over her payments. And when I penciled the deal, I’m like, “My gosh, she just got hosed.” So sometimes you just need help analyzing a deal because I know for me it was a lot of times like I’ll pick up the phone, I’ll talk to people, I’ll message people, but like, how do I know if it’s a great deal or if this is a deal I should run from? So I think the biggest mistake is just trying to learn as you go, learn it on your own. That’s the most expensive way to do it because if you’re just hoping a YouTube video is going to give you all the behind the scenes, the small little details and you don’t have anybody to turn to who’s already blazed that trail, that’s where I think a lot of people fail because I see a lot of these deals on the internet, all these Facebook groups and I’m like, “My gosh, who would the heck would do that deal? That is absolutely horrible.” The investor wants an $80,000 assignment fee. The deal has, they want a million dollars down, there’s negative cash flow. It’s like the worst deal ever. I’m like, why would anybody in their right mind buy the deal? And then you still see it surfing around months and months later. Meanwhile, the seller hopes they have it sold and this investor has no clue what they’re doing. So I feel like it’s … I don’t like having industries being overregulated, but I feel like the real estate business in general for investors needs to have something in place to get some of these knuckleheads because you’re messing with somebody’s house. This is the biggest investment they’re going to make their whole life, these people. And you have a lot of amateurs in this business just trying to figure it out as they go by watching YouTube videos, which don’t get me wrong, everybody starts somewhere. But if you’re going to do this serious, you got to get around the right people who make sure you can cross every T.thei, do it professionally. This is not a get rich quick overnight.

I was just going to say, I think that’s honestly one of the biggest struggles too, is Instagram makes it look like tomorrow you can have a Lambo. And that’s just not reality. Wealth is built over time and it doesn’t even … All of a sudden you’re going to wake up and be like, “Oh, what’s your net worth?” Once you start adding all your properties together, it’s not an overnight thing. So there are going to be Maybe maybe some tears because I’ve definitely had a few or some frustrations, but overall it just takes time and you got to put in the work.

And I think especially newbies, they just want to get their first deal done. And I heard this the other day actually, and it was very eye-opening. A fellow investor mentioned the first deal has to be positive. You have to make money off the first deal. And you have to pick the first deal very wisely because a lot of people call themselves investors and then there’s investors. And I think the thing that washes so many newbies out is they do a deal, they don’t make money or they lose a lot and they’re like, “Oh, it doesn’t work.” Or to your point, they’re like, “Oh, well I didn’t get my Lambo 24 hours after I started. It doesn’t work.” So I definitely agree with that wholeheartedly. I think that’s definitely the biggest part is picking the deals. And even going back to what you said earlier is finding good deals and doing less good deals than people that are doing 300 deals a year, but they might be only making 5K a deal. And then when you factor in all the people you have to pay and everything, it’s kind of a wash at that point. So definitely agree with you there, 100%.

Well, I mean, it’s great to see you make a million dollars, but if you had to spend a million dollars to make it, then you’re flat.

And you don’t know it. Until you’re in the industry and you start really getting to know people and you really see things, because otherwise everything on Instagram looks like people just trip on a beach and make a ton of money.

Oh, they got the Rolexes on, they got the Lambos and you don’t know they’re defaulting on their marketing or they’re defaulting on this. And it’s like there’s so many people that you see them as a top dog and they can’t pay their marketing expense or they can’t pay their team. It’s crazy for sure. This industry is definitely not always as it seems for sure.

Well, I feel like once again, everybody shares their highlights and their wins, but they want to see your true self. So this is why we share so much on our social media because there’s times where in this business you do anything long enough and you’re going to get kicked around a little bit. And so it’s being just transparent. We have a lot of good deals. We’ve had some bad stuff happen too. I mean, we’ve had houses catch on fire, squatters, I mean, evictions, bug infestations on a couple houses. We bought a meth lab, didn’t know it was a meth lab until it was surrounded by the SWAT team. I mean, we could spend a whole other podcast on just all of the wild stuff. We had a lady who stole some guy’s house. Florida, wild stuff, buddy. Stole the guy’s house and was going to do a deal with us and then come to find out she did a quick claim deed, falsified everything.The guy didn’t even know his house got broken into, didn’t know that the house was deeded to her. He’s just some guy up north, had a house in Florida. He was

Not dead in fact.

He Wasn’t dead. And she told us that he was dead. So I mean, I’m on the phone with the sheriffs. I’m like, wait, he’s not dead because we have this deal under contractor. We’re about to close on this.

That’s crazy. I could believe Met Live in Florida for sure.

That was in New York.

In New York. Oh, wow. I mean, that makes sense too actually though.

Yep. It absolutely does.

Yeah. That was one of those properties where like, let’s just list it when we got all done. Yeah, glad to see that one go. And I think we just celebrated our fourth anniversary four years ago. We had clean out in Watertown, New York. And we got a call from the sheriff office that day too that the people we hired to clean out dumped all of the stuff into a cemetery. I don’t know who, why. So that was-

This was like a reputable company. And so literally, I get a call from our seller freaking out because she’s like, “I’m at a cemetery right now and there’s a huge pile of all of my stuff here. And I’m with the state trooper because the trooper went through this huge pile, found papers with her name on it, called her and was like, why are you dumping all your stuff, Lee’s like I sold the house.” Well, then I’m on the phone with the state troopers and I’m like, “Well, I hired this company to do it. ” Professional company, not like some do with a trailer, but instead of actually getting a dumpster, their master plan was just dump it at a cemetery.

Like what?

Yeah. So that was just a Sunday morning, bud. I mean, you do this business long enough.

you got to share that, right? Because we can laugh now, but there was definitely, I was like, “Are you kidding me? I’m shaking.”

You were laughing Then. No, you weren’t laughing for sure.

No, man.

No.

I love Watertown though. It’s a good TV market actually. It’s a really good market. Yeah. It’s good market.

We crushed that military base up there. We do really … Actually, Jen just said we should buy more houses up there because-

Little town of Ogdensburg, New York. It’s cashflow. Cash cow. And the tenant pays on time.

Oh yeah. That’s awesome.

Now we’re telling secrets on your Podcast.

I know. We’re abundance mindset, everybody. There’s enough people out there to help. There’s too many deals. We can’t do them all, but yeah, reach out if you do find anything you don’t want.

That’s awesome. Fair enough. Well, let’s say you were to start from scratch today. What would you focus on first?

I would be posting in Facebook groups that I buy houses. We actually have a way that we’re generating off-market leads for free, so I don’t have any money. I could target anywhere in the country. So if I want to target, let’s just say Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas City, Kansas. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Join groups in Kansas, make my post in these groups. I’m starting incoming leads for free without spending a dime, message a bunch of them, weed out the tire kickers and the time wasters. Only pick up the phone with the very best, which is probably two out of every 10. So if I generate 10, 20, 30, 50 leads, I’m only at the talk of the phone, maybe it doesn’t, and that’s where your deals will come from. And I’m either offering cash on the junkers, which I’m going to wholesale them or those turnkey houses. I’m going to offer every one of those with seller financing. The thing is, the key is only work with motivated sellers. So we ask some questions to weed out those unmotivated sellers quick. And when you could only work with the most motivated leads and you’re getting those for free, it’s like you’ll get a deal. You just got to not give up.

Right. Who do you think has been the biggest influence on you guys and your business?

I got to say for me, it was Ron McGrath.

I was going to say, yeah, I mean, definitely the OG terms, creative real estate here.

Yeah, because I got Ron’s course, my friend did 25 years ago. And then when it was 2016 when I learned we’re getting cut off at banks, now Ron didn’t have VCR tapes anymore, but he had a YouTube channel. So I watched some of his YouTube stuff. He’s like late 70s now, got out of Jacksonville, Florida. One of the godfathers of doing this stuff. He’s been doing since the early 80s before my wife was born.

Literally the year I was born okay. 44 Years.

Yeah. He’s been doing it forever. So when we hired his team to be our first coach, that’s when things started once again to really kick off. So now that we’re in the same mastermind with him, it’s just completely awesome because you get to see him and talk to him. And there’s so many others, but he’s been one of the biggest because I didn’t know you could buy real estate this way. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know when I would’ve figured this out. Definitely would’ve not figured it out on my own, but it was somebody who’s already doing it for decades.

Give so much. I remember the content, like this guy’s voice was everywhere. It was in the morning while he’s getting ready in the shower and getting dressed for the day. Anywhere he’s driving in the car, every date night we went on, there was no more fun date night music. It was Ron’s voice talking away about how to buy and how to sell. And I just think about the knowledge too. Even in 2020 where we decided to take this full time and Ron’s doing these day long, like free workshops online. We’re taking advantage of that and listening and asking questions. And we’re still, to this day, we’re always learning. And I feel like you will never be a true master at anything until you’ve done it. I don’t know how many hours it is or whatever, but there’s always, especially with real estate, things are always changing. So just know who you’re listening to and really vet the source, make sure they’ve been doing it long enough to really see the markets changing and the cycles that do happen because Ron’s seen a lot and he’s very upfront about it and what to do and what not to do. And I think he does care. You could really hear he comes off a little bit gruff at times, but he has such a big heart.

He’s old school.

He definitely is, that’s for sure. Well, where can people connect with you? Where can people find you?

I definitely am an Instagram girly. So Jen Delefave, J-E-N-N D-E-L-L-E-F-A-V-E.

Joseph Delafave on Facebook, same thing with Instagram. And we do our free workshops all the time where we’re just sharing how we’re getting leads and all of these things too right in our Facebook group, Creative Finance Playbook. So if you join our Facebook group or go to that. Com, create a finance playbook, you get the link. But we host these trainings which is just showing how to get leads. What do these deals look like? We did one last month. I did a live seller call during the training, just called this lady up and she was like, “Yes, let’s go ahead and do the deal because she’s got a house. It’s not selling. Beautiful house close to us in Florida.” She’s even tried listening for rent. She’s moving and she’s like, “It’s not selling, it’s not renting, but the payment’s low, the deal pencils out. ” So we just like to show people how it’s done because if I didn’t get Ron’s course for free, because I was so broke 25 years ago, I don’t know if I would not even be doing right now. I wouldn’t be on this podcast with her, with you, that’s for sure. So it’s changed my life. And there’s more of these sellers out there that need help

Yeah

There are people like us looking for that right now. So sharing what’s working. And I’ll tell you what, you could make a lot of these deals and build wealth over time. And this is the best way to buy real estate by far.

That’s awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on and appreciate you guys’ time.

Thank you so Much. Thank you so much for having us on.

Thank you guys all for watching and we’ll see you next time.