How to Get Real Estate Deals Without Trying

Dan Austin: [0:00] Hey there. Welcome back to another episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, the podcast where we talk about making massive income, not just passive income. Today is a Friday episode. It's a monologue with me as your host, Dan Austin. I'll keep this one short and sweet, and I wanna talk about the serendipity, the serendipitous situations that help you make money here in real estate, just because they've been they've been kinda piling up lately, and they've literally been just by me being in the right place at the right time, and we don't necessarily talk about that enough. We always talk about always hear like, oh, go networking. I talk a lot from the dispo side because that's what I focus on right now in our business. You gotta talk to your buyers. You gotta connect with real estate agents because they also have buyers. You gotta do all this stuff. This episode is not about this. This episode is just to really show you where, in fact, you can monetize by being in the right place at the right time. It's so important to be active. That's how a lot of stuff I mean, Mike and I have have made our money just by being active, by putting ourselves out there, by talking to people, by putting stuff on social media. I know it sucks.

Dan Austin: [1:04] I am the worst at social media. I hate it the most, but putting yourself out there is is a good example of doing that virtually, which you can do anywhere from your cell phone in comparison of being in, like, a meetup or going to lunch with somebody or being at a a conference where you're gonna meet people. Right? Like, social media accomplishes that sort of. Being in person, I I think, still can vastly outpace that or or do better. But in lieu of that, social media, you can reach a lot more people, especially if you're, like, popular or cool or you know what you're doing. Like, I'm none of those things. So I post on social media, and I actually get some feedback from people and have done deals that way, so it's worth it. But anyways, I digress. Back to my point, the serendipity that happens by putting yourself out there. I'm gonna give you the number one example, not the number one, but my first example on how this works. This was not too long ago, and actually, all of these examples are just from from this year. So I was walking a property with another wholesaler. I didn't wanna buy the property. Didn't really care that much about it. But I knew the wholesaler. I hadn't done a deal with him in a long time, maybe a couple years. And so I was like, you know, I'm gonna go check out this property. Just go walk it, shake his hand, say hi to him, see what's going on. And, also, it's good to kinda see what other products people are selling.

Dan Austin: [2:17] And so I didn't wanna waste his time cause I was looking for a flip, I wasn't really confident I was gonna buy this one. So I went there, met him, walked it, and it worked out really, really well. Like, him and I chatted, had a good time, told him why I didn't wanna buy, and he totally understood. Well, a week later, he called me and he said, hey, man, I can't find any buyers for this. Like, you know you know anybody and I happened literally happened to be having coffee with a guy who's a flipper here in town and I just said, hey, you wanna buy a flip right now? Blah blah blah blah blah. Address, here it is. Here's what it looks like. Here's my opinion on it. Yeah. Sure. I'll buy it. Boom. $5 right there. Literally, I just said, hey, just give me $5 for this and for the connection for the JV setup, and it was literally just pretty much out there walking a property, having coffee with another flipper, and everybody's in a good mood. We're all buzzing on caffeine, and it just made it happen. You know? And that that to me is like, that is the ultimate serendipity, just being in the right place at the right time, talking to the right people, but it had to start by by me getting out there. Another good example of this was, and this isn't necessarily gonna be open to everybody, but as you get more as you get more experience in your market and people get to know you more, you'll get asked to speak at events or something like that. Was speaking at an event and didn't think anything of it, made some introductions, talked to some people, put my phone number up on the whiteboard, hey, if you guys ever have anything, give me a call, this is the number.

Dan Austin: [3:42] I was sitting there, I was traveling, I was like out of town somewhere, and I get a random phone number, like, if you're in this business, you end up answering random phone numbers if it's not filtered for spam anyways, which sucks because sometimes you get caught talking to some dummy. But anyways, I answered the phone, and it's a real estate agent. Never met her. She said, hey, this person referred me to you, gave me your name and your phone number, and said that you buy off market houses. And I was like, yeah, I absolutely do. You're talking to the right person. So I talked to the lady for a bit. She had a I think it was her sister that passed, so her niece her nieces were trying to sell the property. Funny enough, it's in the same neighborhood as that last example I just shared with you. Anyways, I basically said, yeah. Sure. She's like, I'm trying to help them. I know you guys can do close fast closes, but I you know, it's gotta be a good price. It's gotta be a good price, and she was really pushing. She she was right. It's a great neighborhood. It's a great spot, so it definitely demanded a decent price. So went out there. We walked it, good little property, told her, you know, I don't know that I could I could get you an offer what, you know, that you're gonna want, gave her the whole spiel, here's our cash offer, here's what we could do, and, you know, we kinda played did the whole song and dance, but either way, we ended up wholesaling it. We made, like, $15,000 on the wholesale deal, and and it worked out great because they got to do what they need, which is move the house fast.

Dan Austin: [5:00] They got a good price, and we were able to make a little bit of a little bit of money on that too. But again, it's like, just happened to be in the right spot at the right time with the right people that also were in the right spot at the right time when they get a phone call from some real estate agent, they're like, that's not my game, but I know a guy, and I liked what he was saying at this meetup. Right? So there's these opportunities. And then I'll close out with this this example, and then I'll just talk a little bit more into into detail on on things that I see work for people. But golly, this was a couple years ago. I had I got cold called by a commercial broker looking to offload a duplex. She she called me. She's like, hey, I see on the county records that you own this duplex that you bought last year. I have a duplex that's just like that. Would you wanna buy it? And I was like, oh, send it my way. So I looked at it, and I told her, said, hey, this is too nice for me. I buy really, really crappy houses. If you find any really crappy duplexes, definitely give me a call. But I said, I really appreciate your hustle and your cold calling to do this, and just left it at that. And then Mike and I had an eight unit property that we were going to sell, and we wanted to sell it with a commercial broker. We wanna try that anyways because it was in a rural area, and just throwing it on the MLS, we just didn't feel super confident that it would get the traction it needs in hindsight, and maybe we could have. But anyways, guess who I called? I called this lady, and I said, hey, guess what?

Dan Austin: [6:23] Remember that guy you cold called? Well, yeah. She said, yeah. And I was like, well, that's me. I'm the one dummy that answered the phone, and guess what? I'm going to give you my eight unit listing. Would you wanna do this? And she did, and she sold it for us. We made money. We got what we wanted for. It was a great deal. Transaction was fine. And then I, you know, I just personally stayed in touch with her. She stayed in touch with me, and I told her what I'm looking for. I told her several things that I am looking for. She's a commercial agent. Hey. If you come across these sorts of things, I'm your guy. And, again, as serendipity would have it, we've bumped into each other at different real estate events, at just different things. Like, I'm having coffee with somebody, and she happens to be at the same coffee shop. Right? Spokane is not a small town, but it's not a big town either, so it happens more often than you think. And the other day, I was sitting there having lunch with another investor here in town, just casually having lunch, sitting in this this newer restaurant. Well, she happens to be behind me having lunch with one of her groups that she's the president of. Spots me, sees me.

Dan Austin: [7:18] Hey. How's it going? Blah blah. Haven't seen you in a while. You know? And, like, honestly, we we actually talk pretty regularly now. It's kinda funny how that this works out just because there's enough crossover in what we're trying to do. She helped us get an office recently too. So, anyways, just these little small incidents. Right? And then I'm top of mind. So she calls me. She's like, hey. I've got this strip mall. It's a great deal. It's here in town. It's off market right now. Would you wanna take a look at it? 100%, wanna take a look at it. I don't know if I'm gonna buy it, but I want to be the first person you call when you're going to send it out to you. I wanna be on your shortlist. And so I'm right now underwriting, you know, a a strip center here in town. That could be a good deal, could be a terrible deal. It may never work out. If it works out, obviously, I'm gonna do a podcast. I'm be so excited that it works out. But it's those weird circumstances where you just happen to do something by putting yourself out there, and the universe pays you back. And I I want to share this as an example because we see it in our scale community where people finally start really turning the corner, and it's funny. The time that they start turning the corner from not doing any deals in the off market space to starting to do deals, they make one good connection or they they start putting themselves out there and they start connecting the dots of the market and who the right people are to call. A lot of times, I see this that one person that they connect with, that one really well connected real estate agent, that one wholesaler, that one flipper, and they do that one deal, and now they have the next one in the pipeline, and the third one, the fourth one, and the fifth one, and this this all comes from putting yourself out there and being in a situation that honestly, it's never the situation that you try to put yourself in.

Dan Austin: [8:58] It's something adjacent, something tangent. So if you're at that point where you're kinda stuck, you're beating your head off the wall, or you're trying to offload a deal, or you're trying to scale your business, you're trying to do something, think about these examples of serendipity. Honestly, none of the the money I made on any of these weren't directly correlated to what I was trying to accomplish in those moments when I was was there. The one where I made $5, I was literally having coffee with another flipper because I was, you know, just keeping up with them, seeing where their business was at, and I literally got a phone call from something that took place a week prior to that. I wasn't never connecting those two. I wasn't trying to. So think about that, like, what can you do to get yourself out there and do it? And and I'm gonna give you one last example, and I'll leave you with this little teaser here. Maybe we'll talk about it later. But, you know, Mike and I started our hard money lending company, and that has taken off with fire. Not because we have all sorts of money and we can loan it out, not because we're better lenders than people, not because of we have better terms, anything like that. We do have better terms than a lot of people, and we are better lenders. But more importantly, we've talked about it, and we've talked to a ton of different people. We were building experience over a long period of time as flippers, as wholesalers, as buy and hold investors, as business owners. We've talked to people.

Dan Austin: [10:17] We've gone out there, and and we've told people what we're doing, and we've put ourselves in situations where you have me talking to someone, do they connect the dot and say, hey, this deal looks really good. Can you guys loan on it? Right? And so that has really underpinned our ability to do deals. So when we bring on investors, we have all these these great borrowers that are solid people because we've really underwritten them over years. And then we also have all these great investors that want to join on and see what we're doing, and that's because we put ourselves in those positions. And sometimes, serendipity is all you need. I'd rather be lucky than good, as they say. And so just think about that. Put yourself in situations. You don't know what the outcome's gonna be. Sometimes it's gonna be scary. You might not know anybody in the room, or or you might not necessarily wanna have to go spend your afternoon having coffee with somebody, but do it. Because that weird thing, when that person runs into somebody that they know, and then they that person knows you now, all over a cup of coffee, and now you have a lender, now you have a buyer, now you have somebody that can coach you on flips, whatever it is. That all happens.

Dan Austin: [11:25] It all happens to you. You just have to do it and and really put yourself out there and and believe in the in the universe really paying you back. That's a little, like, woo woo here, but I'm serious. I just gave you three examples. I could've given you a dozen more examples, not because I was putting in the work, but just because I was in the right place at the right time. But you have to get out of your office. You have to get out of your shell. You have to go go do those things for serendipity of the place. So I'll stop saying that word because it's kinda hard for me to say, and I will leave you with this. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Hit me up on Instagram if you think serendipity is dead and it's not a real thing at investor man dan. I'd love to chat with you about it or any deals you have or anything you're doing. So other than that, have a great weekend, and we'll catch you guys next week.